SOCRATES

Name some.

DEXIMENES

Who are our great literary heroes? Crooks to a man. Achilles, the biggest egoist ever. Odysseus, a swindler and a liar. The whole cast of the stupid pointless Trojan war are one lot of ruthless thugs against another lot.

ACASTOS

Hector.

DEXIMENES

Proves my point, a nonentity. Who doesn’t side with Achilles?

ACASTOS

I don’t.

CALLISTOS

My dear, Achilles is a Greek!

DEXIMENES

Agamemnon, a power–crazy general, Clytemnestra, a murderer, Antigone, a selfish opinionated trouble–maker. And some of the greatest crooks of all are the gods. No wonder no one believes in them any more.

ACASTOS

I believe in the gods.

CALLISTOS

So does Socrates.

DEXIMENES

No, the religious era is over. Who’s going to believe those stories now? Who really thinks that Zeus is an old man with a beard somewhere up there?

CALLISTOS softly

Zeus, whoever he may be –

ACASTOS

Some people say the myths are true but sort of symbolic. What do you think, Socrates?

SOCRATES

I think that religion will always be with us, and we shall continually remake it into something we can believe. You see, we want to be certain that goodness rests upon reality. And as this desire will never go away, we shall always be searching for the gods. We want to love what is pure and holy, and to know that it is safe.

ACASTOS

Safe?

SOCRATES

Inviolable, indestructible, real.

CALLISTOS

But do the gods exist?

SOCRATES

Here we reach the end of what words can do. The gods concern the inmost heart of each man – and about this he can only speak to himself – and to them.

ACASTOS

Can’t we always invent language, like poets do?

SOCRATES

There is a very great distance between the human and the divine. We must hope the gods will come to us. Perhaps there is something in us which belongs to them and which they will claim – in their own way. A man should follow virtue and look toward the good – and be content to know what he cannot say.

ACASTOS

But – does goodness rest upon reality?

SOCRATES just for Acastos
Yes, my dear.

MANTIAS

No sensible politician wants to destroy religion. Religion is an image of authority. People must take the exercise of authority for granted. That is the mystery of government, that men will obey other men, and that many men will obey few men. Nothing could be more disastrous for a state than the disappearance of a generally accepted religion. As soon as the myth of government is challenged the state descends into anarchy.

ACASTOS

You call it a myth.

MANTIAS

It’s the most important myth of all. Obedience.

ACASTOS

You talk as if ordinary people were stupid or semi–criminal.

MANTIAS

Any practical politician assumes that! Of course the state must control art. If it doesn’t it is wasting a precious source of power. All that emotion in the theatre today, wasted, just rising up uselessly into the sky! What an energy loss!