Chapter XIV. That They Associated Even With Irrational Animals

AGAIN as Moses has recorded that ‘the serpent was more subtle than all the beasts,’ [1] and how the serpent talked to the woman and the woman to the serpent, and has set forth the persuasions used by the serpent, now listen to what Plato writes:

[P] [2] ‘If therefore the children of Kronos, with so much leisure and ability to hold intercourse by words not only with men but with beasts also, used all these advantages with a yiew to philosophy, conversing with the beasts as well as with one another, and inquiring from every nature which by the possession of any special faculty discerned anything different from the rest to add to the store of wisdom, it is easy to decide that the men of that age were ten thousand times better than the present in respect of happiness. ‘But if filling themselves to the full with meat and drink they discoursed to one another and to the beasts of fables such as now are told of themselves, this also, just simply to declare my own opinion, is very easy to decide. Nevertheless let us leave these questions, until there appear some informer competent to tell us in which way the men of that age were inclined in regard to knowledge and the use of language.’