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“Nothing new,” I said, “but something Phoenician*that has come into currency in
many places before now, since the poets assert it and have made people believe; but it
hasn’t come into currency in our time and I don’t know if it could—it would take a lot
of persuading.”
“You seem a lot like someone who’s reluctant to speak,” he said.
“And I’ll seem to you very appropriately reluctant,” I said, “when I do speak.”
“Speak,” he said. “Don’t be shy.”
“I’ll speak, then. And yet I don’t know how I’ll get up the nerve or find the words
to tell it. First I’ll try my hand at persuading the rulers themselves and the soldiers, and
then also the rest of the city, that, after all, the things we nurtured and educated them on
were like dreams; they seemed to be experiencing all those things that seemed to be
happening around them, but in truth they themselves were at the time under the soil
inside the earth being molded and cultivated, and their weapons and other gear were
being crafted, and when they were completely formed, the earth, that was their mother,
made them spring up. So now, as if the land they dwell in were a mother and nurse, it’s
up to them to deliberate over it, to defend it if anyone were to attack, and to take thought
on behalf of the rest of the citizens as their earthborn siblings.”
“It’s not without reason,” he said, “that you were ashamed for so long to tell the lie.”
“It was entirely reasonable,” I said. “But all the same, listen to the rest of the story
as well. What we’ll say in telling them the story is: ‘All of you in the city are brothers,
but the god, when he molded those of you who are competent to be rulers, mixed gold
into them at their formation—that’s why they’re the most honorable––but all the auxil-
iaries have silver in them, and there’s iron and bronze in the farmers and other skilled
workers. So since you’re all kin, for the most part you’ll produce children like your-
selves, but it’s possible for a silver offspring sometimes to be born from a gold parent,
and a gold from a silver, and all the others likewise from one another. So the god exhorts
the rulers first and foremost to be good guardians of their children, of nothing more dili-
gently than that, and to keep watch for nothing so diligently as for what they have inter-
mixed in their souls. And if a child of theirs is born with bronze or iron mixed in it,
they’ll by no means give way to pity, but paying it the honor appropriate to its nature,
they’ll drive it out among the craftsmen or farmers, and if in turn any children are born
from those parents with gold or silver mixed in them, they’ll honor them and take them
up, some to the guardian group, the others to the auxiliary, because there’s an oracle
foretelling that the city will be destroyed when an iron or bronze guardian has guardian-
ship over it.’ So do you have any contrivance to get them to believe this story?”
“There’s no way,” he said, “at least for these people themselves. There might be
one, though, for their sons and the next generation and the rest of humanity after that.”
“But even that,” I said, “would get things going well toward their being more pro-
tective of the city and of one another, because I understand pretty well what you mean.
And that’s that it will carry on the way an oral tradition leads it. But once we’ve armed
these offspring of the earth, let’s bring them forth with their rulers in the lead. And when
they’ve come, let them look for the most beautifully situated spot in the city to set up a
military camp, from which they could most effectively restrain the people in the city if*Cadmus, the legendary founder of the Greek city Thebes, came from Phoenicia (the region roughly
the same as modern Lebanon). To found the city he had to kill a dragon. A god told him to plant the dragon’s
teeth, and the first inhabitants of the city sprang up from those seeds. When Socrates says the story was current
in many places, he means there were other local legends of races sprung from the ground they now live on, all
originally brothers and sisters whose first mother is the land that feeds them and that they defend and love.de415a
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