My dear Antagoras, please don’t be cross with me. You imagine I am up to all kinds of trickery, I assure you I am not. I am simply trying to hold onto the strands of what has already become quite a complicated argument. Do you mind if we now let Timonax join in? He has been bursting to for some time.

ANTAGORAS

He won’t be happy until he’s attacking me, he’s such a pugnacious boy. But he won’t agree with you either.

TIMONAX incoherent with annoyance and conviction, to Antagoras

It’s nothing to do with you, it isn’t personal, it’s a matter of truth and – and how things are – you deny morality –

ANTAGORAS cooler

I don’t, I just define it in a modest manner.

TIMONAX

But you take a high moral line when it suits you! Socrates seems to want religion to go on as virtue or something –

ACASTOS

Socrates hasn’t said –

TIMONAX

And you want it to go on as a drug to stop people from resisting tyranny –

ANTAGORAS

No, I don’t –

SOCRATES

Stop, let him talk.

TIMONAX very fast

Of course the old stories are lies, but they’re lies that have got to be destroyed. Religion is immoral, it stops people from thinking about how to change society. Yes, we are at the end of our childhood, and we must get rid of that old primitive past and kick it to pieces. I think men should be gods, not the state. I happen to believe in democracy and that means making everybody capable of thinking and distinguishing true and false. I believe in brotherhood and equality and all those things which modern science makes possible at last. Religion has always been a reactionary force, it makes people lazy and stupid, it consoles them for their rotten lives, they can think about heaven and not care about changing the world –

ANTAGORAS

I’m all for changing the world, I just think it can’t be done in ten days!

TIMONAX

You’re a cynic!

ANTAGORAS

I’m a pragmatist.

TIMONAX

Your pragmatism leads straight into tyranny, you say religiosity is in bad taste, you say morality is a matter of style –

ANTAGORAS under Timonax’s flow

I don’t–

TIMONAX