[414e]
their weapons
and the rest of their equipment were being fashioned. And when they were
quite finished the earth as being their mother1 delivered them, and now as if
their land were their mother and their nurse they ought to take thought for
her and defend her against any attack and regard the other citizens as their
brothers and children of the self-same earth.” “It is
not for nothing,2” he said,
“that you were so bashful about coming out with your
lie.” “It was quite natural that I should be,”
1 The symbolism expresses the Athenian boast of autochthony and Plato's patriotic application of it, Menexenus 237 E-238 A. Cf. Burgess, “Epideictic Literature,”University of Chicago Studies in Classical Philology, vol. iii. pp. 153-154;Timaeus 24 C-D, Aeschylus Septem 17, Lucretius ii. 641 f., and Swineburne, “Erechtheus”: “All races but one are as aliens engrafted or sown,/ Strange children and changelings, but we, O our mother, thine own.”
2 οὐκ ἐτός is comic. Cf. 568 A, and Blaydes on Aristophanes Acharnians 411.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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