All my difficulty lies here. For, whichever of them I approach, a man who stands at the beginning of each path at the entrance, a very trustworthy person, stretches out his hand, and urges me to go off along his road, and each one of them says that he alone knows the direct route and that the others are astray, since they have neither gone there themselves nor followed others able to lead them. If I go to his neighbour, he makes similar promises


 


about his own road and vilifies the others. The man next to him acts similarly, and so do they all in turn. The number of roads, then, and the differences between them, and especially the way the guides over-strain themselves, each sect praising its own, worries me immoderately and makes me uncertain. I don’t know which way to turn or which one to follow to reach the city.