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Updated: June 28, 2025
But what the tone of Philip's utterance was, and how greatly he was confounded by what had happened, you can learn from his letter, which he sent to the Peloponnese. You have had, as you know, many great and famous orators, men of Athens, before my time Callistratus himself, Aristophon, Cephalus, Thrasybulus, and a vast number of others.
There too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I had not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged. He was seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on his head, for he had been sacrificing in the court; and there were some other chairs in the room arranged in a semicircle, upon which we sat down by him. He saluted me eagerly, and then he said:
If they had not seen his footprints in the sand they would have thought he flew. Cephalus and others stood on a hill and saw the race. The fox tried every art; he ran in a circle and turned on his track, the dog close upon him, with open jaws, snapping at his heels, but biting only the air. Cephalus was about to use his javelin, when suddenly he saw both dog and game stop instantly.
I replied: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult.
The "Chalcedonian giant," Thrasymachus, of whom we have already heard in the Phaedrus, is the personification of the Sophists, according to Plato's conception of them, in some of their worst characteristics. He has reached the stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in advance of Cephalus and Polemarchus.
The heavenly powers who had given both were not willing that either should conquer. In the very attitude of life and action they were turned into stone. So lifelike and natural did they look, you would have thought, as you looked at them, that one was going to bark, the other to leap forward. Cephalus, though he had lost his dog, still continued to take delight in the chase.
He was not; resembling an ordinary buzzard with wings outstretched sitting upon that kind of emberesque fire that induces a man in a library to think mournfully about the past, and convinces him alas! that if he had the time he could write immortal poetry. "Not very!" Cephalus acquiesced. "Still, he's all right in a Zoo. He's queer. Look at his nest, if you don't believe it."
Cephalus was so happy in his wife that he resisted all the entreaties of Aurora, and she finally dismissed him in displeasure, saying, "Go, ungrateful mortal, keep your wife, whom, if I am not much mistaken, you will one day be very sorry you ever saw again." Cephalus returned, and was as happy as ever in his wife and his woodland sports.
For he has never yet preferred or prosecuted any indictment against me; so that by you at least, Aeschines, I am admitted to be no worse a citizen than Cephalus. His want of feeling and his malignity may be seen in many ways, and not least in the remarks which he made about fortune. For my part, I think that, as a rule, when one human being reproaches another with his fortune, he is a fool.
Moore, in his "Legendary Ballads," has one on Cephalus and Procris, beginning thus: "A hunter once in a grove reclined, To shun the noon's bright eye, And oft he wooed the wandering wind To cool his brow with its sigh While mute lay even the wild bee's hum, Nor breath could stir the aspen's hair, His song was still, 'Sweet Air, O come! While Echo answered, 'Come, sweet Air!"
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