Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
'That is excellent, Critias, and very appropriate to a Panathenaic festival; the truth of the story is a great advantage. Then now let me explain to you the order of our entertainment; first, Timaeus, who is a natural philosopher, will speak of the origin of the world, going down to the creation of man, and then I shall receive the men whom he has created, and some of whom will have been educated by you, and introduce them to you as the lost Athenian citizens of whom the Egyptian record spoke.
It is not probable that the poet entered into any formal conspiracy against him, but found him a good subject of raillery and mockery, since Socrates was then very unpopular, aside from his moral teachings, for being declared by the oracle of Delphi the wisest man in the world, and for having been intimate with the two men whom the Athenians above all men justly execrated, Critias, the chief of the Thirty Tyrants whom Lysander had imposed, or at least consented to, after the Peloponnesian war; and Alcibiades, whose evil counsels had led to an unfortunate expedition, and who in addition had proved himself a traitor to his country.
I have found, so far, only one credible hypothesis: it might have been discovered in Africa by the traveller, de Behagle, a member of the Roger-Ducos Society, who studied at the college of Dax, and later, on several occasions, visited the town. "This inestimable document contained numerous quotations from the Critias.
His rebukes of the shallow and the self-seeking had stung them, and had made him many enemies. Such men as Alcibiades and Critias, who had been among his hearers, but for whose misconduct he was really not in the least responsible, added to his unpopularity. The Apology, as given by Plato, contains the substance of his most impressive defense before his judges.
The narrative related to ancient famous actions of the Athenian people, and to one especially, which I will rehearse in honour of you and of the goddess. Critias when he told this tale of the olden time, was ninety years old, I being not more than ten. The occasion of the rehearsal was the day of the Apaturia called the Registration of Youth, at which our parents gave prizes for recitation.
There is your father's house, which is descended from Critias the son of Dropidas, whose family has been commemorated in the panegyrical verses of Anacreon, Solon, and many other poets, as famous for beauty and virtue and all other high fortune: and your mother's house is equally distinguished; for your maternal uncle, Pyrilampes, is reputed never to have found his equal, in Persia at the court of the great king, or on the continent of Asia, in all the places to which he went as ambassador, for stature and beauty; that whole family is not a whit inferior to the other.
SOCRATES: And what other, Critias, can we find that will be better than this, which is natural and suitable to the festival of the goddess, and has the very great advantage of being a fact and not a fiction? How or where shall we find another if we abandon this?
In the above-cited passage referring to the decline of the popular faith in the Hellenistic period, Polybius also gives his own theory of the origin of men’s notions regarding the gods. It is not new. It is the theory known from the Critias fragment, what may be called the political theory.
This infamously unjust proceeding took place in a time of disorder and under the seditious government of the thirty tyrants. The occasion of it was as follows: Critias, the most powerful of these thirty tyrants, had formerly, as well as Alcibiades, been a disciple of Socrates.
And I as well as Critias would beg you, Protagoras and Socrates, to grant our request, which is, that you will argue with one another and not wrangle; for friends argue with friends out of good-will, but only adversaries and enemies wrangle.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking