 growing old and leaving their children's children in high offices, and their prosperity shakes your faith-you have known or heard or been yourself an eyewitness of many monstrous impieties, and have beheld men by such criminal means from small beginnings attaining to sovereignty and the pinnacle of greatness; and considering all these things you do not like to accuse the Gods of them, because they are your relatives; and so from some want of reasoning power, and also from an unwillingness to find fault with them, you have come to believe that they exist indeed, but have no thought or care of human things. Now, that your present evil opinion may not grow to still greater impiety, and that we may if possible use arguments which may conjure away the evil before it arrives, we will add another argument to that originally addressed to him who utterly denied the existence of the Gods. And do you, Megillus and Cleinias, answer for the young man as you did before; and if any impediment comes in our way, I will take the word out of your mouths, and carry you over the river as I did just now.
Cle. Very good; do as you say, and we will help you as well as we can.
Ath. There will probably be no difficulty in proving to him that the Gods care about the small as well as about the great. For he was present and heard what was said, that they are perfectly good, and that the care of all things is most entirely natural to them.
Cle. No doubt he heard that.
Ath. Let us consider together in the next place what we mean by this virtue which we ascribe to them. Surely we should say that to be temperate and to possess mind belongs to virtue, and the contrary to vice?
Ath. Yes; and courage is a part of virtue, and cowardice of vice?
Ath. And the one is honourable, and the other dishonourable?
Cle. To be sure.
Ath. And the one, like other meaner things, is a human quality, but the Gods have no part in anything of the sort?
Cle. That again is what everybody will admit.
Ath. But do we imagine carelessness and idleness and luxury to be virtues? What do you think?
Cle. Decidedly not.
Ath. They rank under the opposite class?
Ath. And their opposites, therefore, would fall under the opposite class?
Ath. But are we to suppose that one who possesses all these good qualities will be luxurious and heedless and idle, like those whom the poet compares to stingless drones?
Cle. And the comparison is a most just one.
Ath. Surely God must not be supposed to have a nature which he himself hates?-he who dares to say this sort of thing must not be tolerated for a moment.
Cle. Of course not. How could he have?
Ath. Should we not on any principle be entirely mistaken in praising any one who has some special business entrusted to him, if he have a mind which takes care of great matters and no care of small ones? Reflect; he who acts in this way, whether he be God or man, must act from one of two principles.
Cle. What are they?
Ath. Either he must think that the neglect of the small matters is of no consequence to the whole, or if he knows that they are of consequence, and he neglects them, his neglect must be attributed to carelessness and indolence. Is there any other way in which his neglect can be explained? For surely, when it is impossible for him to take care of all, he is not negligent if he fails to attend to these things great or small, which a God or some inferior being might be wanting in strength or capacity to manage?
Cle. Certainly not.
Ath. Now, then, let us examine the offenders, who both alike confess that there are Gods, but with a difference-the one saying that they may be appeased, and the other that they have no care of small matters: there are three of us and two of them, and we will say to them-In the first place, you both acknowledge that the Gods hear and see and know all things, and that nothing can escape them which is matter of sense and knowledge:-do you admit this?
Ath. And do you admit also that they have all power which mortals and immortals can have?
Cle. They will, of course, admit this also.
Ath. And surely we three and they two-fi