Minos

Soc. Law wishes none the less to be the discovery of what is; but 315b people who do not, as we think, always use the same laws are, it turns out, not always able to discover what law wishes, what is. For come, let us see if from here it may become quite clear to us whether we always use the same laws or different ones at different times, and whether all use the same, or different people different ones.

Comp. Why, that at least is not hard to know, Socrates: that the same people do not always use the same laws, and that different people use different ones. For instance, with us it is not law but unholy to sacrifice human beings, while the Carthaginians sacrifice them as something holy 315c and lawful for them, and some of them, what is more, even their own sons, to Cronus, as perhaps you too have heard.¹ And not only do barbarian peoples use laws other than ours, but those people in Lycaea too, and the descendants of Athamas: what sacrifices they make, though they are Greeks!² So too with ourselves: you know, I suppose, having heard it yourself too, what sort of laws we formerly used about the dead, slaughtering victims before the carrying out of the corpse and sending for the women who pour offerings;³ 315d and those still earlier than they even buried the dead there in the house; but we do none of these things. One could name countless such things; for there is plenty of room for proof that neither do we always accept things in the same way as ourselves, nor do people accept them in the same way as one another.

Soc. It is nothing to wonder at, my excellent friend, if you are speaking rightly and this has escaped me. But as long as you say by yourself, in a long speech, what seems so to you, and I in turn say what seems so to me, 315e we shall never come to terms, as I think; but if what is looked into is put in common, we might perhaps agree. So if you like,