Today's Stichomancy for Edward Norton

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator:

ignorance, for instance, be useful for knowledge, or disease for health, or vice for virtue?

CRITIAS: Never.

SOCRATES: And yet we have already agreed--have we not?--that there can be no knowledge where there has not previously been ignorance, nor health where there has not been disease, nor virtue where there has not been vice?

CRITIAS: I think that we have.

SOCRATES: But then it would seem that the antecedents without which a thing cannot exist are not necessarily useful to it. Otherwise ignorance would appear useful for knowledge, disease for health, and vice for virtue.

Critias still showed great reluctance to accept any argument which went to

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes:

dare say it was a dream." "Now you are coming to me with lies. I hear you calmly lying to me. But if you do not tell me the truth now, you will come to repent of it later." "Sire, since you torment me thus, I will tell you the whole truth, and keep nothing back. But I am afraid that you will not like it. In this land they all say--the dark, the fair, and the ruddy--that it is a great pity that you should renounce your arms; your reputation has suffered from it. Every one used to say not long ago that in all the world there was known no better or more gallant knight. Now they all go about making game of you--old and young, little and great--calling you a recreant. Do you

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon:

turn from the better to the worse, and if he does so turn, when he has no leisure, he does but ill in that.

[10] See above, I. ii. 57; and in ref. to these definitions, K. Joel, op. cit. p. 347 foll.

[11] For "dice-playing" see Becker, "Charicl." 354 (Engl. trans.); for "buffoonery," ib. 98; "Symp."

(To pass to another definition.) They are not kings or rulers (he said) who hold the sceptre merely, or are chosen by fellows out of the street,[12] or are appointed by lot, or have stepped into office by violence or by fraud; but those who have the special knowledge[13] how to rule. Thus having won the admission that it is the function of a

The Memorabilia

The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato:

intended to rival that great work. If genuine, the proper place of the Menexenus would be at the end of the Phaedrus. The satirical opening and the concluding words bear a great resemblance to the earlier dialogues; the oration itself is professedly a mimetic work, like the speeches in the Phaedrus, and cannot therefore be tested by a comparison of the other writings of Plato. The funeral oration of Pericles is expressly mentioned in the Phaedrus, and this may have suggested the subject, in the same manner that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested by the slight mention of Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus in the Republic; and the Theages by the mention of Theages in the Apology and Republic; or as the Second Alcibiades seems to be founded upon the text of Xenophon, Mem. A