Note 50 — Chapter XXXVIII · TIMÆUS AND KRITIAS.

M. Martin supposes Plato to speak ironically, or with a prudent reserve, Études sur le Timée, ii. p. 146.

What Plato says here about the Gods who bore personal names, and were believed in by the contemporary public — is substantially equivalent to the well-known profession of ignorance enunciated by the Sophist Protagoras, introduced by him at the beginning of one of his treatises. Περὶ δὲ θεῶν οὔτε εἰ εἰσίν, οὔθ’ ὁποῖοί τινές εἰσι, δύναμαι λέγειν· πολλὰ γάρ ἐστι τὰ κωλύοντά με (Sextus Emp. adv. Mathem. ix. 56); a declaration which, circumspect as it was (see the remark of the sillographer Timon in Sextus), drew upon him the displeasure of the Athenians, so that his books were burnt, and himself forced to leave the city.