Euth. I say, therefore, that holiness is that which I now do, viz. to prosecute him who acts unjustly either with respect to murder or sacrilege, or any thing else of a similar nature ; whether the offending person be a father or mother, or any other whatever ; and that not to prosecute such a one is impious. For see, Socrates, what a great proof I will give you in law that it is so, and which I have also mentioned to others, viz. that it is right not to spare an impious man, whoever he may be. For men are firmly persuaded that Jupiter is the best and most just of gods, and yet they acknowledge that he put his father in chains, because he unjustly swallowed his children ; and again, that Saturn castrated [1] his father, through other things of a similar nature : but they are indignant with me, because I prosecute my father who has acted unjustly ; and thus these men assert things contrary to each other in what they say concerning the gods and concerning me.
Soc. Is this the thing then, Euthyphro, on account of which I am brought to the bar, because when any one asserts things of this kind concerning the gods, I admit them with pain ; and through which, as it seems, some one calls me an offender ? Now, therefore, if these things thus appear also to you who are well acquainted with such particulars, it is necessary, as it seems, that we also should admit them. For what else can we say, who acknowledge that we know nothing about such things ? But tell me, by Jupiter, who presides over friendship ; do you think that these things thus happened in reality ?
- ↑ For the signification of bonds and castrations, when applied to divine natures, see p. 141 of the Introduction to the Second Book of the Republic. I shall only observe here with Proclus, that Plato was of opinion that all such narrations as these will be condemned by the multitude and the stupid through ignorance of their arcane meaning, but that they will indicate certain wonderful conjectures to the wise. Hence, though he does not admit this mode of mythologizing, yet, as is evident from what he says in the Timaeus, bethinks we ought to be persuaded by those antients who were the offspring of the gods, and to investigate their occult conceptions. Hence too, though he rejects the Saturnian bonds, and the castrations of Heaven, when discouraging with Euthyphro and the auditors of his Republic, yet in his Cratylus, when he investigates names philosophically, he admits other secondary bonds about the mighty Saturn and Pluto. Plato, therefore, by no means ridicules the religion of his country in what he here says, as some moderns have pretended he does; but he admits such relations as these with pain, because he well knew that they would only be impiously perverted by, and were far beyond the comprehension of the vulgar.
