Animal lover!

SOCRATES

Acastos, did I hear you say you thought the festival was fun, and then you felt you had to say it was ‘a solemn occasion’.

TIMONAX

Off we go!

SOCRATES

Did you mean to contradict yourself? Ought we all to have had long faces?

ACASTOS tense

No. Yes. Perhaps we should. People were laughing and playing about.

TIMONAX

Including you.

ANTAGORAS

Horse play. Our people have no dignity.

TIMONAX

It was a holiday!

SOCRATES to Acastos

You disapprove?

ACASTOS

I think I disapprove. I mean, it’s not just a holiday, we’re supposed to be honouring the gods.

ANTAGORAS

You don’t believe in the gods.

ACASTOS

Well – yes, I do –

TIMONAX

Come off it, Acastos!

ACASTOS

In a way – sort of – I believe in religion.

SOCRATES

Can we distinguish religion from belief in gods?

Enter Plato. He clicks his heels and bows to Socrates.

ACASTOS

Oh, Plato, hello. Here – [ indicating a place beside him ]

TIMONAX

Do you believe in the gods, Plato?

Plato ignores him, sits beside Acastos.

Plato’s garland’s full of fleas. Why don’t you wash sometimes?

ACASTOS

They all are!

Plato, irritated, unamused, removes his garland and tosses it away.

TIMONAX

Plato –

ANTAGORAS

Shut up.

SOCRATES to Antagoras

May I suggest we celebrate this holy day by talking about religion? [ Antagoras bows assent. ] When I was young I was privileged to hear Zeno and Parmenides discussing religion –

ANTAGORAS

Those were godlike men!

SOCRATES

I was struck by their humility in the face of this awesome subject. So let us lesser beings be humble too. Suppose we start from a personal confession, that seems right when we speak of what is supposed to concern the individual soul. Tell me, Antagoras, do you believe in the gods?

ANTAGORAS

No, of course not! That’s all fable, superstitious belief in the supernatural, mythology, suitable for childish primitives.

SOCRATES

Quite a lot of educated people believe in gods.

ANTAGORAS

Yes, but fewer and fewer, it’s all going out. This is a time of transition. Our civilisation is growing up, we’re scientific and factual, we can analyse the old superstitions and see how they arose. God is not the measure of all things, man is the measure of all things, we invented the gods.

SOCRATES

Why? Why did we invent the gods?

ANTAGORAS

Well, originally out of fear of nature, fear of thunder for instance, people thought it was Zeus being angry. Religion is essentially magic, a desire for power over hostile forces. ‘Religious experience’ is just a comfortable feeling that the gods know all about us, there’s a higher sense to it all, the gods have fixed the meaning of everything, so nothing is really dreadful or accidental or –

SOCRATES

You don’t believe in divine spiritual beings?

ANTAGORAS