Chapter II. Further on the Same Subject From the Dialogue Epinomis

[PLATO] ‘WITH regard therefore to the origin of gods and of living beings, as it has been misrepresented by those of former times, it seems necessary for me in the first place to give a better representation in the subsequent discourse, taking up again the argument which I have undertaken against the impious.’

That he has good reason for repudiating the theology of the earliest writers, he shows in the second Book of the Republic,where it is worth while to fix the attention upon the number and nature of the statements which he makes concerning the same poets and theologians, from the traditions handed down from old times concerning the Hellenic gods, speaking in the very words that follow: [1]