The Works of Plato

to recognize the gods, and began to erect altars and sacred images to them; and then, soon 64 he began, with art, to articulate the sounds of his voice, creating names 65, and also invented dwellings and clothing and footwear and bedding and means of nourishment from the earth 66. Having settled in this way, people initially lived in dispersal, and there were no cities;

B. and so they perished from wild beasts, as they were in every way weaker than them, and the one demiurgic art craftsmanship/creative art 67, although it was a sufficient aid to them for food, was nevertheless not enough for war against the beasts; since they did not yet possess political art, a part of which is the art of war 68. Thus, they tried to gather together and save themselves by building cities. But as soon as they gathered together—lacking political art—they mistreated one another, so that they again had to scatter and perish. And so Zeus, fearing for our race, lest it all perish, sends Hermes to introduce shame and justice to men, so that there might be kosmoi orderly arrangements in the cities and bonding ties of friendship 69. And so Hermes asks Zeus: how then

(through kinship with the god), as a clear gloss, which mistakenly ended up in the text. It has long troubled editors: C. F. Hermann excluded the words "of the god," Stallbaum made the correction "of the gods," and Schanz recognized all five words as an interpolation and enclosed them in brackets.

64 The words "then" and "soon," just like the previous "first of all," do not need to be understood as expressions of chronological order, especially in light of Protagoras’ own preliminary statement: "It seems to me more pleasant to tell you a myth."

65 "Then he quickly articulated the voice and names by art" literally means he articulated them by skill. This expression itself, of course, shows that the art of logical articulation of concepts was not established as early as the art of grammatical articulation of words.

66 "Nourishment from the earth" obviously means the products of agriculture here, as opposed to "herbs from the earth" (vegetables), as the natural food of animals (see above 321 B).

67 demiurgic art craftsmanship.

68 "For they did not yet possess political art, of which the art of war is a part." I translate politike techne here as "political art," not "civic," because in our language the latter word carries a shade of opposition to "military," which would be entirely inappropriate in this case.

69 "Hermes sends, leading to men shame and justice, so that they might be the kosmoi orderly arrangements of cities and binding ties of friendship." — literally: Hermes sends, leading shame and justice to men, so that they might be (it is understood...