ACADEMIC But I swear to you by the dog and the plane-tree that this is so.

BUYER Heracles! What curious gods!

ACADEMIC What is that you say? Don’t you think the dog is a god? Don’t you know about Anubis in Egypt, how great he is, and about Sirius in the sky and Cerberus in the world below ?

BUYER Quite right ; I was entirely mistaken. But what is your manner of life?

ACADEMIC I dwell in a city that I created for myself, using an imported constitution and enacting statutes of my own.The allusion is to Plato’s Republic. BUYER I should like to hear one of your enactments.

ACADEMIC Let me tell you the most important one, the view that I hold about wives ; it is that none of thei shall belong solely to any one man, but that everyone who so desires may share the rights of the husband.

BUYER You mean by this that you have abolished the laws against adultery ?

ACADEMIC Yes, and in a word, all this pettiness about such matters.

BUYER What is your attitude as to pretty boys?

ACADEMIC Their kisses shall be a guerdon for the bravest after they have done some splendid, reckless deed.

BUYER My word, what generosity! And what is the gist of your wisdom ?

ACADEMIC My “ideas”; I mean the patterns of existing things: for of everything that you behold, the earth, with all that is upon it, the sky, the sea, invisible images exist outside the universe.

BUYER Where do they exist ?

ACADEMIC Nowhere ; for if they were anywhere, they would not be.As space cannot be predicated of anything outside the univerge, it cannot be predicated of the Platonic Ideas. To do so would be to make them phenomena instead of realities, for nothing in the universe is real. BUYER I do not see these patterns that you speak of. ACADEMIC Of course not, for the eye of your soul is blind ; but I see images of everything,—an invisible “you,” another “me,” and in a word, two of everything.

BUYER Then I must buy you for your wisdom and your sharp sight. (Zo Hermes.) Come, let’s see what price you will make me for him?

HERMES Give me two talents.

BUYER He is sold to me at the price you mention, But I will pay the money later on.