Section 986

for it is as though one of us should see the sun or moon being born and all of us looking on, and should utter no word through some impotence of speech, and should not also at the same time be zealous, so far as in him lay, when they lacked their share of honor, to bring them in all evidence to an honored place, and cause festivals and sacrifices to be offered to them, and apportion to each a reserved space of time for the greater or lesser length of its year, 1 as may happen: would it not be agreed both by himself and by another who observed it that he would justly be described as an evil man?

To be sure he would, my good sir; nay, most evil.

Well then, this, my dear Cleinias, is what, you may take it, has evidently happened to me now.

How do you mean?

You know that there are eight powers of those contained in the whole heaven which are cognate to each other: these I have observed, and it is no great achievement; for it is easy enough for anybody. Three of them are that of the sun, for one, that of the moon for another, and a third that of the stars which we mentioned a little while ago; and there are five others besides. 2 Now in regard to all these and those beings who either have their own motion in these, or are borne in vehicles so as to make their progress thus, let none of us all ever idly suppose that some of them are gods, while others are not, or that some are genuine, while others are of a certain kind which it is not permissible to any of us even to express; but let us all declare and say that they are all cognate and have cognate lots, and let us render them due honor, not by giving to one a year, to another a month; but to none of them let us appoint either a certain lot or a certain time in which it travels through its particular orbit, completing the system which the divinest reason of all 3 appointed to be visible. This first the man who is blest admires, and then he feels a passion for understanding so much as is possible for mortal nature, believing that thus he will best and most happily pass through life, and at the end of his days will arrive at regions meet for virtue; and having been truly and really initiated, and won his individual intelligence, and become for the rest of time a spectator of what is fairest, so far as sight can go, in this state he continues. And now after this it remains for us to say how many and who these beings are: for we shall never be found to have spoken falsely. Thus far, at least, I asseverate with certainty: I say, once more, that there are eight of them, and that while three 4 of the eight have been told, five yet remain. The fourth 5 in motion and transit together, and the fifth, 6 are almost equal to the sun in speed, and on the whole are neither slower nor swifter. These being three, must be so regarded by him who has sufficient mind. So let us speak of them as powers of the sun and of Lucifer, and of a third, 7 such that we cannot express it in a name because it is not known; and he is to blame for this who first beheld these things, since he was a foreigner: