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[960c] the whole of our creation is incomplete.

Clinias
You say well, Stranger; but explain to us yet more clearly the purport of your last observation.

Athenian
O Clinias, many of the sayings of old time have been nobly uttered, and of these not the least, I may say, are the titles given to the Fates.

Clinias
What titles, pray?

Athenian
That the first of them is Lachesis, the second Clotho, and Atropos the savior-third 1—she that bestows on the dooms ratified by Clotho the quality of irreversibility.

1 Cp. Plat. Rep. 620e. Atropos is called “the savior-third” (cp.τὸ τρίτον τῷ Σωτῆρι) because she completes the work of the other Fates by making the thread of life (doom) spun by them irreversible. (ἄ-τροπος="unturnable.”)

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    • Plato, Republic, 620e
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