YOUNG SOCRATES: How is that the cause?
STRANGER: Of all changes of the heavenly motions, we may consider this to
be the greatest and most complete.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I should imagine so.
STRANGER: And it may be supposed to result in the greatest changes to the
human beings who are the inhabitants of the world at the time.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Such changes would naturally occur.
STRANGER: And animals, as we know, survive with difficulty great and
serious changes of many different kinds when they come upon them at once.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: Hence there necessarily occurs a great destruction of them,
which extends also to the life of man; few survivors of the race are left,
and those who remain become the subjects of several novel and remarkable
phenomena, and of one in particular, which takes place at the time when the
transition is made to the cycle opposite to that in which we are now
living.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?
STRANGER: The life of all animals first came to a standstill, and the
mortal nature ceased to be or look older, and was then reversed and grew
young and delicate; the white locks of the aged darkened again, and the
cheeks the bearded man became smooth, and recovered their former bloom; the
bodies of youths in their prime grew softer and smaller, continually by day
and night returning and becoming assimilated to the nature of a newly-born
child in mind as well as body; in the succeeding stage they wasted away and
wholly disappeared.
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