YOUNG SOCRATES: I suppose you to mean the token of the birth of the golden
lamb.

STRANGER: No, not that; but another part of the story, which tells how the
sun and the stars once rose in the west, and set in the east, and that the
god reversed their motion, and gave them that which they now have as a
testimony to the right of Atreus.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; there is that legend also.

STRANGER: Again, we have been often told of the reign of Cronos.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, very often.

STRANGER: Did you ever hear that the men of former times were earth-born,
and not begotten of one another?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, that is another old tradition.

STRANGER: All these stories, and ten thousand others which are still more
wonderful, have a common origin; many of them have been lost in the lapse
of ages, or are repeated only in a disconnected form; but the origin of
them is what no one has told, and may as well be told now; for the tale is
suited to throw light on the nature of the king.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good; and I hope that you will give the whole story,
and leave out nothing.

STRANGER: Listen, then. There is a time when God himself guides and helps
to roll the world in its course; and there is a time, on the completion of