Then, after a pause, in which he seemed to be lost in the contemplation
of something great, he said: Tell me, Socrates, have you an ancestral
Zeus? Here, anticipating the final move, like a person caught in a
net, who gives a desperate twist that he may get away, I said: No,
Dionysodorus, I have not.
What a miserable man you must be then, he said; you are not an Athenian
at all if you have no ancestral gods or temples, or any other mark of
gentility.
Nay, Dionysodorus, I said, do not be rough; good words, if you
please; in the way of religion I have altars and temples, domestic and
ancestral, and all that other Athenians have.
And have not other Athenians, he said, an ancestral Zeus?
That name, I said, is not to be found among the Ionians, whether
colonists or citizens of Athens; an ancestral Apollo there is, who
is the father of Ion, and a family Zeus, and a Zeus guardian of
the phratry, and an Athene guardian of the phratry. But the name of
ancestral Zeus is unknown to us.
No matter, said Dionysodorus, for you admit that you have Apollo, Zeus,
and Athene.
Certainly, I said.
And they are your gods, he said.
Yes, I said, my lords and ancestors.
At any rate they are yours, he said, did you not admit that?