He was a good genealogist who made Iris the daughter of Thaumas.

- Socrates

I

'Wonder is the only beginning of philosophy', Plato has Socrates say at 155d of the Theaetetus. And at 982b of the Metaphysics Aristotle says, 'it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophise'.

'Wonder', thaumazein, is one of those wonderful words that face in opposite directions at one and the same time, like Janus and the androgynous creature of whom Aristophanes tells in the Symposium. It seems possible to use it in opposite senses at once; thaumazein both opens our eyes wide and plunges us into the dark. It is both startled start and flinching in bewilderment. Reflection on it might well have made Theaetetus's head swim as much as do the aporias Socrates leads him into in the pages culminating at 155 in Theaetetus's exclamation: 'By the gods, Socrates, I am lost in wonder (thaumazô) when I think of all these things. It sometimes makes me quite dizzy'. His condition would be well described by analogy with the stunning effect of the sting-ray to which Meno likens the effect Socrates has on those he approaches. Theaetetus and Meno - and, according to the response he makes to Meno's comparison, Socrates himself - are perplexed by aporias. Theaetetus, for example, is puzzled at the suggestion that six dice can be both fewer than twelve and more than four. And Meno is paralysed by the less readily solved problem of