remarked in discussing the Sophist, the dialectical method is no respecter
of persons. But we might have proceeded, as I was saying, by another and a
shorter road. In that case we should have begun by dividing land animals
into bipeds and quadrupeds, and bipeds into winged and wingless; we should
than have taken the Statesman and set him over the 'bipes implume,' and put
the reins of government into his hands.

Here let us sum up:--The science of pure knowledge had a part which was the
science of command, and this had a part which was a science of wholesale
command; and this was divided into the management of animals, and was again
parted off into the management of herds of animals, and again of land
animals, and these into hornless, and these into bipeds; and so at last we
arrived at man, and found the political and royal science. And yet we have
not clearly distinguished the political shepherd from his rivals. No one
would think of usurping the prerogatives of the ordinary shepherd, who on
all hands is admitted to be the trainer, matchmaker, doctor, musician of
his flock. But the royal shepherd has numberless competitors, from whom he
must be distinguished; there are merchants, husbandmen, physicians, who
will all dispute his right to manage the flock. I think that we can best
distinguish him by having recourse to a famous old tradition, which may
amuse as well as instruct us; the narrative is perfectly true, although the
scepticism of mankind is prone to doubt the tales of old. You have heard
what happened in the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes? 'You mean about the
golden lamb?' No, not that; but another part of the story, which tells how
the sun and stars once arose in the west and set in the east, and that the
god reversed their motion, as a witness to the right of Atreus. 'There is
such a story.' And no doubt you have heard of the empire of Cronos, and of
the earthborn men? The origin of these and the like stories is to be found
in the tale which I am about to narrate.