THE REPUBLIC

Socrates, Glaucon, Polemarchos, Thrasymachos, Adeimantos, Cephalos

SUMMARY

Book I. Polemarchos invites Socrates and Glaucon to visit his father Cephalos’ house. Various other friends are there as well. Cephalos talks about old age: eventually the conversation turns to the subject of justice. How do you define justice? asks Socrates. Polemarchos puts forward Simonides’ definition—to render what is due—but this on examination proves unsatisfactory. Here Thrasymachos breaks in, maintaining that the whole conversation so far has consisted of nothing but pious platitudes. Justice, he says, is whatever suits the strongest best. Might is right. A ruler is always just. Socrates suggests that even a ruler sometimes makes a mistake, and orders his subjects to do something which is really not to his advantage at all. Is he just when he does this? Thrasymachos answers that in so far as he is mistaken he is not a true ruler. Socrates then argues that a doctor is primarily concerned to heal the sick, and only incidentally to make money: similarly, medicine seeks not its own advantage but the advantage of the human body. By analogy a ruler seeks the advantage of his subjects, not of himself.

Thrasymachos then rushes off on a new tack. Injustice, he says, is virtuous, and justice is vicious. Justice is everywhere at the mercy of injustice, which is reviled not because men fear to do it but because they fear to suffer it. Socrates sets out to disprove this view, and establishes that justice is apparently wise and virtuous, and at the same time more profitable than injustice. But, he says, he is still without a definition of justice.

Book II. Glaucon and Adeimantos then develop further objections to Socrates’ conclusions. Is justice, says Glaucon, any more than society’s refuge from the consequences of the doctrine that true success depends on being as unjust as possible? Has it really a value for its own sake? Whereupon his brother Adeimantos adds that everybody is in fact as unjust as he can be without being found out; is there any value in justice itself, he asks, as distinct from a reputation for justice?

At this stage Socrates suggests that the nature of justice is more easily to be discovered in the macrocosm, the state, than in the microcosm, the individual. This is agreed and the discussion shifts to the origins and composition of a city-state. People associate for mutual support, because different men have different abilities. Society flourishes because it is efficient: it enables each person to devote himself to the task he is best fitted for, and saves him from dispersing his energies in other tasks he is not fitted for at all, and which he will therefore perform indifferently.

Socrates then describes the various classes of persons in a city, ending with the highest class, the rulers or guardians, who require the highest qualities. They must be both courageous and philosophical, both brave and wise. How are these qualities to be developed?

This leads to the subject of education, which, Socrates says, seems to consist of gymnastic for the body and music (in the broad sense of the arts) for the soul. He takes literature, a part of music, first of all, because education begins, he says, in the nursery, with fables and fairy stories. These must be very carefully censored to ensure a suitable moral tone; and in particular the gods must always appear in a virtuous light. God must be portrayed as the author of good only, not of evil, and as incapable of falsehood.

Book III. Literature, Socrates continues, must deal only with suitable subjects, and only in a suitable manner. He prescribes in some detail as to both subject and form: in effect, the poet may tell only plain stories of virtuous people. The same considerations apply to music, as we mean the word: none but the Dorian and Phrygian, the manly and sober modes, are to be allowed, and those rhythms expressive of an orderly and brave life. The practice in the other arts is to be similarly regulated; and in the result a noble art, purified of unwholesomeness and extravagance, will develop in the young the characteristics of nobility. By learning to appreciate the good and the beautiful in art, they will learn to love them in life.

In gymnastic, as in music, a wholesome simplicity is prescribed. There will be in the city little disease and few lawsuits. But care must be taken to hold the balance between music and gymnastic: excess in the former leads to effeminacy, and excess in the latter to harshness. It is a mistake to suppose that music trains the soul while gymnastic trains the body: gymnastic is as much a part of the soul’s education as music is, and the noblest natures, at once brave and wise, require a harmonious blend of the two.

From the noblest natures, Socrates goes on, the rulers of the city will be chosen—the best of the older men, selected for their devotion to the state by various tests and carefully groomed for office. They will be assisted by the lower class of guardians, the auxiliaries or soldiers. Their rule over the city will be supported by the mystical sanction of the myth of the three metals, gold, silver and iron. And they will not live the life of princes, but the simple life of soldiers, free from the distractions of wealth and luxury.

Book IV. Adeimantos remarks that the arrangements for the guardians do not sound very inviting. Socrates replies that this is not the point, even if it is a true criticism, which he doubts; he is concerned not with the happiness of parts but with one harmonious whole, the happy city. The unity of this city, he says, depends mainly on three principles—equal shares for all, so that there are no rich and no poor; a physical limit of size; and the recognition of merit regardless of birth. These precepts are to be safeguarded by the educational system previously laid down, and all else will then follow—a perfectly arranged city which will endure as long as the purity of the system itself is maintained.

If this is the perfect city it must contain justice, and besides, wisdom, courage and temperance. Wisdom, says Socrates, is to be found in the thinking element, the guardians, and it is the knowledge in the light of which they lead the city. Courage or spirit, the quality of the soldiers, is the preserver of the constitution from the twin dangers of war and sedition. Temperance is common to all three classes, and is the harmonious and beneficial relationship between them. Now for justice—which is the virtue that enables all the others to flourish, and is none other than the old principle put forward in Book II, by which each class does the work for which it is fitted without presuming upon the preserves of the others.

So much for the city. Applying this argument to the individual, Socrates finds that the three classes in the state are reflected in three elements in the soul, the reasoning, the spirited, and the desiring, corresponding to the counsellors, the assistants or soldiers, and the producers. Justice is therefore the due arrangement of these three elements in their proper stations in the soul, namely that the reasoning part rules, with its auxiliary the spirited part, over the desiring part.

Socrates then begins to discuss the nature of injustice, and the five types of political structure. One type, the only good one, has been dealt with; the other four are all more or less bad.

Book V. Socrates is here interrupted by Polemarchos, who asks him to fill in the outline of the perfect city in more detail, before going on to the degenerate ones. This leads to a long digression, the main theme being picked up again at the start of Book VIII.

After a little preliminary skirmishing Socrates deals with the position of women in the perfect city. Woman, he says, is the weaker sex; but there are no occupations for which a woman is unfitted merely because she is a woman. He then describes a society in which all institutions and relationships are ruthlessly subordinated to the preservation of the unity of the state, and private life as well as private property are rejected. The city-state thus becomes the smallest as well as the largest—in fact the only—unit of social life. Socrates is just starting to investigate the nature of wars, and the difference between civil war and foreign war, when Glaucon asks the fundamental question whether the perfect city, desirable as it may be, can ever possibly be achieved in fact. No, replies Socrates, unless there comes about a union of wisdom and power in the person of the philosopher-king.

In the rest of Book V Socrates defines what he means by philosopher, a lover of wisdom. True knowledge is concerned not with the physical world of the senses but with the qualities, the realities, that are inherent in the everyday world—with Beauty, not with beautiful sounds and colours. The changing world of the senses is the object of opinion, but the unchanging world of realities is the object of true knowledge or wisdom, and it is this wisdom that true philosophers love.

Book VI. The guardians of the city, then, are to be true philosophers in this strict sense. Socrates is describing their other good qualities when Adeimantos objects that in fact philosophers have a very different reputation—of being knaves or fools or both. Socrates explains the reasons for this. A philosopher will never be a popular hero, because he has no time to waste on mere party politics, and it is success in this lower sphere alone which earns the plaudits of the crowd. But he admits that a large number of professed philosophers are rascals. Once corruption sets in, the very excellence of the philosophic qualities leads to great temptation and great evildoing. In an unsympathetic, if not actively hostile, world only a few remain faithful to the principles of true philosophy. These few must be helped and encouraged by means of the educational system already described; but philosophy is not a subject which can be acquired at school or in the teens—it is a lifelong study, and extra facilities must be provided accordingly. In sum, says Socrates, his proposals are desirable if they can be realised, and their realisation is difficult but not impossible.

Socrates then reverts to his definition of justice in Book IV. This, he says, was a superficial treatment of the subject. Now he speaks of the highest truth of all, which underlies justice and all the other virtues. This, the Idea of the Good, the guiding star of the soul, is the end of the philosopher’s study. As the sun is to the world of sight, the Idea of the Good is to the world of mind. He goes on to the four divisions of the Divided Line, a refinement of the distinction between these two worlds, as already sketched in Book V. The physical world of the sun, the domain of opinion, contains in its lower class images, such as shadows and reflections, and in its higher class physical objects, such as animals and trees. The corresponding division in the world of mind, the domain of knowledge, is between, on the one hand, concepts of a mathematical type, which depend on given postulates, and, on the other hand, the eternal verities, the Ideas or Ideals, comprehended by dialectic in the light of the Idea of the Good. The four categories are the subjects of conjecture, belief, understanding, and the exercise of reason respectively, and partake in ascending order of clearness and truth.

Book VII. Socrates goes on to the story of the cave, which illustrates the escape of the philosopher from the fetters and darkness of the physical world of the senses to the freedom and dazzling radiance of the world of mind. But, he says, the philosopher must afterwards return to the cave to enlighten and set at liberty those still imprisoned there.

How is this escape made possible? By the study of a class of subjects which deal in abstractions: these are arithmetic, the study of numbers, and, of less importance, plane and solid geometry, astronomy so far as it concerns the principles of movement of solids, and harmonics, the study of sound. All these have a practical application, but their real value lies in their power to lead the soul out of the darkness of the changing world of the senses towards the light of the unchanging world of mind. Fortified by these exercises in abstract thought, the soul at last learns, through the study of dialectic, to comprehend the Idea of the Good.

In the last part of Book VII Socrates describes in more detail the practical application of his curriculum. After the standard education in music and gymnastic the selected student passes on to the abstract subjects and thence to dialectic, with frequent tests on the way. The few who reach the summit, at about the age of fifty—and Socrates reminds his hearers that they may be men or women—divide the rest of their lives between philosophy and the affairs of state.

Finally, Socrates repeats that his proposals will only be realised by a philosopher-king, an unlikely combination perhaps, but not an impossible one.

Book VIII. The perfect city and the kingly or aristocratic character having now been fully described, Socrates reverts to the point reached at the end of Book IV, and proceeds to deal with the four degenerate forms of constitution and the four corresponding types of individual.

The aristocratic constitution degenerates into the timocratic (or honour-loving) when the warrior class prevails over the wisdom-loving class, and imposes a militant policy dictated by ambition and the love of glory. Similarly, in the soul of the timocratic man the spirited part gains precedence over the reasoning part, and the result is a valiant but contentious and ambitious nature.

The timocratic constitution degenerates into oligarchy (the rule of the few) when honour-loving turns to money-grubbing. The city is divided into rich rulers and poor subjects. In the soul of the oligarchic man, pleasure-loving but ungenerous, the desiring part prevails over the reasoning and spirited parts.

The oligarchic constitution degenerates into democracy (the rule of the people) when the poor in the oligarchic state revolt. All are then set free to do as they wish—and, says Socrates in effect, to go to the devil in their own way. Where the oligarchic man, thrifty at heart, gave way only to the moneymaking (or necessary) desires, the democratic man, casting off even this restraint, gives free rein to the spendthrift (or unnecessary) desires, and liberty is thus complete.

The democratic constitution degenerates into tyranny when men tire at last of the lawlessness of a liberty which has become licence. They appoint a strong man to restore order; he raises a bodyguard or private army to suppress the irresponsible elements in society; and, unperceived, tyranny is established in the city.

Book IX. The tyrannic man, continues Socrates, is ruled by the worst class of the unnecessary desires. To the lawlessness of the democratic man he adds the frenzy of lust; utterly without scruple, he is driven to boundless excess by passions he can never sate. The tyrannic man, like the tyrannic state, is slave to fear, want, every sort of misery and every sort of wickedness: he is last in happiness, below the kingly man, the oligarchic man and the democratic man in descending order.

This is Socrates’ first answer to Thrasymachos’ argument in Book I, that injustice is more profitable than justice. He continues with another. The three elements in the soul distinguished in Book IV lead the three classes of men in which they respectively rule in pursuit of wisdom, honour and pleasure. Each class will maintain its own aim to be the highest, but clearly the best opinion will be that of the wisdom-loving or philosophical man, because he will be the most experienced and the best equipped to judge. We must agree with him that wisdom-loving is superior to honour-loving and honour-loving to pleasure-loving.

Yet a third argument follows. Socrates analyses the kinds of pleasure enjoyed by the three classes: the philosopher’s pleasure in wisdom is best because it partakes most of the unchanging world of truth and real being; the pleasures of victory and honour come next; and last of all is the pleasure of gratified desire, which is no more than a fleeting shadow of true pleasure.

Finally Socrates deals with the question raised by Glaucon and Adeimantos in Book II, whether justice is valuable for its own sake. The three elements in the soul are likened to a man, a lion and a monster: in the soul of the just the man rules, in the soul of the unjust the monster rules. Clearly the first condition is intrinsically of more value than the second, and a spurious appearance of justice cannot make injustice any more praiseworthy.

Socrates ends Book IX by saying that whether or not the perfect city exists on earth, it is laid up in heaven as a pattern for mankind.

Book X. Socrates now returns to his criticism of the artist. He distinguishes three levels of reality, instancing the ideal bed, the bed you sleep on, and the image of a bed in a picture. The artist functions at the lowest level; he only portrays the actual, not the ideal bed: art is mere imitation of an appearance of reality. Now, imitation is essentially an activity inferior to doing or making; and moreover the artist will never even be able to imitate particularly well, because his knowledge of his subject is bound in every case to be inferior to a practical knowledge of it. However diverting, art cannot be a serious occupation.

Nevertheless, art does appeal to some element in the soul—not, says Socrates, the rational element, but the irrational. In literature, for example, the poet will not imitate the reasonable man but the foolish and unstable man, because the latter will, he thinks, give more scope for effect, and will also be a more congenial subject for the foolish and unstable part of the soul. The tendency of art to corrupt even the best of natures, by thus encouraging the lower element at the expense of the higher, is all the more dangerous because of art’s undoubted fascination; and the soul in pursuit of virtue must be ceaselessly on guard against it.

The last section of Book X follows the fortunes of the just and the unjust to the afterlife. Everything, says Socrates, has its own evil, tending to corrupt and destroy, and its own good, tending to preserve. The soul is corrupted by its evil, vice, but is not destroyed by vice; it is hardly likely, therefore, to be destroyed by the evil of the body, disease. In fact disease and death do not affect the soul at all—obviously they do not make it more unjust. The soul, therefore, does not perish with the body; in the afterlife, as on earth, it fares according to its deserts, the just soul being eternally rewarded and the unjust soul eternally punished. With the fable of Er, in which these conclusions of the argument are given mystical form, the Republic ends.

BOOK I

I went down to the Peiraeus yesterday with Glaucon, Ariston’s son, to pay my devoirs to the goddess,* and at the same time I wanted to see how they would manage the festival, as this was the first time they held it. A fine procession I thought it which our people made, but the Thracians’ seemed to be quite as good. We made our prayers then, and saw the show, and set off for the city.

Someone caught sight of us from a distance just as we had started for home, Polemarchos, Cephalos’ son, and he sent his boy after us to tell us to wait for him. The boy caught me from behind by the cloak, and said, “Polemarchos wants you to wait for him.”

I turned round and asked where the master was. “There he is,” he said, “coming behind; do wait!”

“Oh, we’ll wait,” said Glaucon.

In a little while Polemarchos came up, and Glaucon’s brother, Adeimantos, and Niceratos, Nicias’ son, and a few others, from the show it seemed. Polemarchos said,

“My dear Socrates, you seem to have just set out towards the city and to be going to leave us.”

“Not a bad guess,” I said.

“Well,” said he, “do you see how many we are?”

“Oh yes!”

“Very well, then,” he said, “either stay here, or fight for it.”

“Surely there’s a third choice,” I said, “if we can persuade you that you ought to let us go?”

“If you can!” said he. “Could you persuade us if we refused to listen?”

“Of course not,” said Glaucon.

“Then make up your minds that we shan’t be listening!”

And Adeimantos said, “Don’t you really know there’s to be torch on horseback this evening, for the goddess?”

“Horseback?” said I, “that’s something new! What do you mean? A relay race on horseback, handing the torches on?”

“That’s it,” said Polemarchos, “and they are going to have a night festival—worth seeing! We shall rise directly after dinner, and see this night show, and meet a lot of young fellows there, and have a good talk. Do stay, don’t say no!”

Glaucon said, “It seems we must stay.”

“Well, if you say so,” said I, “we must do so.”

Accordingly we went home with Polemarchos, and there we found Lysias and Euthydemos, his brothers, and, besides, Thrasymachos from Chalcedon, and Charmantides of the Paianian parish, and Cleitophon, Aristonymos’ son; Cephalos, the father of Polemarchos, was at home too. A very old man he seemed to be; it was long since I had seen him. He sat on a chair with a cushion; he had a garland on, for he had just sacrificed in the courtyard.

So we seated ourselves beside him, for there were chairs ready in a circle. As soon as he saw me, Cephalos greeted me, and said, “My dear Socrates, you don’t often come to see us in the Peiraeus; you really should! You know there would be no need for you to come here, if only I were strong enough to walk up to the city easily; I should go to see you. But now you really must come here oftener. My other pleasures are withering away now, my bodily pleasures, but just as fast grows my pleasure in talking, and my desire for that. So I do beg you to visit us regularly, and make yourself at home here as among friends, and be a companion to these young men.”

“Indeed, Cephalos,” I said, “what I enjoy most is talking with men who are really old. It seems right to enquire of them, as if they had traversed a long journey which we perhaps will have to traverse, to ask what the journey is like, rough and difficult, or easygoing and smooth. And so I would gladly enquire of you what you think about it, since you are now at that time of life which the poets call the threshold of old age. Is it a difficult time of life, or what do you say of it?”

“Well, my dear Socrates,” he said, “I will tell you how I feel. We often meet, a few of much the same age, like to like as the old proverb says. Most of us when we meet are full of lamentations; we miss the pleasures of youth, we talk of our old love affairs, and drinking and feasting, and other such things; and we regret them as if we had been robbed of great things, as if that were real life, and we were hardly alive now. Some even complain of mud-spatterings of old age by their nearest and dearest, and so they chant forever what evils old age has brought on them. But I think the blame does not lie there, Socrates; for if that were the reason, I too should have suffered the same for my old age, as the others who have come to my time of life. But in fact I have met others who don’t feel like that about it, Sophocles the poet, for instance. I was with him once, when somebody asked him, ‘What about love now, Sophocles? Are you still able to serve a woman?’ ‘Hush, man,’ he said,

‘I’ve escaped from all that, thank goodness. I feel as if I had escaped from a mad, cruel slave driver.’ I thought it was a good answer, and I think so still. Indeed, there is great and perfect peace from such things in old age. When desires go slack and no longer tighten the strings, it is exactly what Sophocles said; perfect riddance of frantic slave drivers, a whole horde of them. No, Socrates, both here and in family life there is only one reason for what happens; not old age, but the man’s character. For if they are decent, even-tempered people, old age is only moderately troublesome; if not, then youth is no less difficult than age is for such people.”

I thought this admirable, and wanted to hear some more; so I stirred him on by saying, “My dear Cephalos, I don’t think most people would agree with you there. You bear old age easily, they think, not because of character, but because you have a large fortune; rich people have many consolations, they say.”

“Quite true,” said he, “they don’t believe it. Indeed there is something in what they say, though not so much as they think. No, Themistocles was right when that Seriphian told him off and said his fame came from Athens and not from himself; he answered, you know, ‘I should never have been famous if I were a Seriphian, nor would you if you were an Athenian.’ You could say the same of those who are not rich and bear old age badly. Even a reasonable man would not bear old age quite easily in poverty, but the unreasonable man, if he were rich, would not be at peace with himself.”

“What you have, Cephalos,” I asked then, “did you inherit most of it, or did you get it yourself?”

“What, get it?” he said. “I am somewhere between father and grandfather as a moneymaker. My grandfather, whose name was the same as mine, inherited about as much property as I now have, and made it many times as great; but my father Lysanias made it even less than it is now. I am content if I leave it to these lads not less than I inherited, but a trifle more.”

“What made me ask,” said I, “was that you seemed to me not to care much for money. Those who don’t are generally those who have not earned it; those who have welcome money twice as much as the others. They care for it as poets do for their poetry, and fathers for their children; in the same way, I suppose, those who have earned money take it seriously as their own work, not only for its use as the rest do. So they are difficult people to deal with, because they will praise nothing but money.”

“True,” he said.

“Yes indeed,” said I. “But one more question, please. What do you think the greatest good you have gained from getting great wealth?”

“Something,” he said, “which I could perhaps not make most people believe. Know well, Socrates,” said he, “that when a man faces the thought that he must die, he feels fear and anxiety about what did not trouble him before. Think of the tales they tell of the next world, how one that has done wrong here must have justice done him there—you may have laughed at them before, but then they begin to rack your soul. What if they are true! And the man himself, whether from the weakness of old age, or because he is nearer, has a better sight of them. Suspicion and fear fill him then, and he runs up his account, and looks to see whether he has wronged anyone. If he finds many wrongs in his life, he often starts up out of his sleep like a child, in terror, and lives with evil expectations; but one who has no wrong on his conscience has always Hope beside him, lovely and good, the old man’s nurse, as Pindar puts it. That is a charming bit of his—you know it, Socrates—where he says that when one has lived justly and piously,*

A lovely companion by his side cheers his heart,

The old man’s nurse, Hope, who chiefly guides

The wayward mind of mortals.

A noble saying that, very much so indeed. In this respect then, I put down possession of wealth as worth a great deal, not to every man, but to the decent man. Never to deceive anyone even unconsciously, never to be dishonest, nor to be debtor to any god for sacrifices or any man for money, and so go to that world in fear—to possess money contributes a great share in avoiding all this. It has other uses, many indeed; but setting one thing against another, I would put this as the chief thing for which wealth is most useful to a sensible man.”

“Excellently said, Cephalos,” I replied. “But this very thing justice—are we to say that it is just simply to pay back what one has received from anyone? Or is it true that this may be sometimes just and sometimes unjust? For example: Suppose you have received weapons from a friend when in his right mind, everyone would say that you should not give such things back if he were mad when he asked for them. Then it would not be right and just to give them back, or always to tell him the whole truth in such a condition.”

“You are right,” he said.

“Then this is not the definition of justice, to speak the truth, and to give back whatever one has received.”

“But indeed it is,” Polemarchos put in, “at least if we must believe Simonides.”

“Oh well,” said Cephalos, “I hand over the word to you people; it is high time now for me to see after the sacred rites.”

“Then,” said Polemarchos, “I, Polemarchos, am son and heir to what is yours?”

“Quite correct,” said Cephalos with a laugh, and at once went off to the sacrifice.

“Come along then,” I said, “Mr. Heir to the conversation, what’s that Simonides said about justice, and correctly, according to you?”

“He said,” was the reply, “that to give back what is owed to each is just; in saying that I think he was right.”

“Well in any case,” I said, “Simonides is not to be easily disbelieved. A wise man, a man inspired by God. But what does this mean? Perhaps you know, Polemarchos, but I don’t. For he certainly does not mean what we were speaking of just now, to give anything and everything back on demand when the depositor is not in his right mind; yet the deposit is a debt owed, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“But one must by no means give back on demand when the depositor is not in his right mind?”

“True,” said he.

“Then it seems Simonides means something else, something different from that, when he said it is just to give back what is owed.”

“No doubt of it,” said he, “for he believes that friends owe friends something good, not to do them harm.”

“I understand,” said I; “whoever gives back a sum of gold to the depositor does not give back what is owed, if the giving back and the taking do harm, and if the giver and the taker are friends. Is not that what Simonides means, according to you?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, and it should be given back to enemies, whatever the thing owing may be?”

“Certainly,” he said, “what is owing to them. And from enemy to enemy, that debt is surely something evil, as is right and proper.”

“It was a riddle, then, it seems,” I said, “when Simonides told us what justice was. He intended to say, as it appears, that justice is to give back what is proper to each, and this is what he called the thing owed.”

“Well, what do you think?” he asked.

“Oh, good heavens,” I said, “look here. Suppose the question were put to Simonides, ‘What does the art called medicine give as owing and proper to what?’ Say what you think he would answer.”

“Clearly,” he said, “it gives drugs and food and drinks to bodies.”

“And what does the art called cookery give to what, as owing and proper?”

“Flavourings to vittles.”

“Then what art, giving back what to what, should be called justice?”

“If we must follow these models, Socrates, the art which gives back benefits to friends and hurts to enemies.”

“Then to do well to friends and to do ill to enemies he calls justice?”

“I think so.”

“But who is best able to do well to sick friends and ill to sick enemies as regards disease and health?”

“The physician.”

“And who, when they are on board ship, as regards the dangers of the sea?”

“The pilot.”

“Now then, the just man; in what action and for what work is he best able to benefit friends and hurt enemies?”

“In war and alliance, I think.”

“Very good. If men are not sick, however, the physician is useless.”

“True.”

“And if not at sea, so is the pilot.”

“Yes.”

“Then is the just man useless if they are not at war?”

“Not at all, I don’t think that.”

“So justice is useful even in peace?”

“Yes, it is.”

“So is agriculture, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“For getting crops.”

“Yes.”

“And shoemaking too?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, for getting shoes, I think you would say.”

“Certainly.”

“Well, then, justice; for what use or getting would you say it is useful?”

“For contracts, Socrates.”

“By contracts you mean partnerships, or what?”

“Partnerships, of course.”

“In a game of checkers,* is the just man a good and useful partner, or the good checkers player?”

“The checkers player.”

“For laying bricks and stones, is the just man a better and more useful partner than the builder?”

“Not at all.”

“What partnership is the just man a better partner for than the builder or the harp-player, as the harp-player is better than the just man for playing music?”

“Money partnerships.”

“Except in using money, perhaps, Polemarchos, when, for instance, the partners must buy or sell a horse for money; then the man who knows about horses is better, eh?”

“So it appears.”

“Yes, and with a boat, the boatbuilder or the pilot.”

“It seems so.”

“Very well, when is the just man more useful than the others? To do what with gold or silver together?”

“In making a deposit, Socrates, and keeping it safe.”

“You mean when it is not to be used at all, but to be hoarded?”

“Exactly.”

“So when the money is useless, justice is useful about it?”

“It looks like that.”

“And when you want to take care of a pruning-knife, justice is useful both in partnership and in private; when you want to use it, you want the vine-dresser’s art?”

“So it seems.”

“And you will say that when you want to take care of a shield and a harp and not to use them, justice will be useful, but when you want to use them, the art of arms or music?”

“Necessarily.”

“So then in general, in the use of each justice is useless, but in their uselessness useful?”

“It looks like that.”

“Well then, my friend, justice is nothing very serious, if it really is useful only for useless things. Let us look at this in another way. Is not the best at attack in battle or boxing or anything else, also the best at defence?”

“Certainly.”

“Then in disease; he who is good at keeping it away, the same man is best at putting it in* without being found out?”

“It seems so to me.”

“And on a campaign: a good guardian is the one who can best steal the enemy’s plans for his various doings.”

“Certainly.”

“Then if a man is a good guardian of anything, he is also a good thief of the same thing?”

“It looks like it.”

“Then if the just man is good at guarding money, he is good at stealing it?”

“At least that is what the argument indicates!”

“So the just man has been shown to be a thief, as it seems! You must have learnt that from Homer. For Homer loves Autolycos, the grandfather of Odysseus on his mother’s side, and says he was ‘first of all the world in thievery and swearing his oath.’ So it seems, according to you, and according to Homer, and according to Simonides, that justice is a kind of thievery, for the benefit of friends, however, and the hurt of enemies. Didn’t you say that?”

“Upon my word and honour, I don’t know any longer what I did say! However, I still think justice is to help your friends and hurt your enemies.”

“Which do you call friends—those whom anyone thinks to be good, honest men, or those who really are, even if he thinks they are not, and the same with enemies?”

“It is natural to love those you think to be good, honest men, and to hate those you think bad.”

“Don’t people make mistakes about this? Don’t they think many to be honest men when they are not, and the opposite?”

“They do.”

“Then to these are good men enemies, and the bad men friends?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“But nevertheless it is just, then, for these to help the bad ones and to hurt the good?”

“It seems so.”

“Yet the good are just and not such as do wrong.”

“True.”

“Then by your reasoning it is just to do ill to those who are doing no injustice!”

“No, no, not that, Socrates; the reasoning seems to be bad.”

“Then,” said I, “it is just to harm the unjust, and to benefit the just.”

“That seems a better way of putting it.”

“Then see what will often happen, Polemarchos: when people have made mistakes in their men, it will be just both to hurt their friends—for they have bad ones, and also to benefit their enemies—for they have good ones. So we shall go clean contrary to what we said Simonides meant.”

“Well, really,” he said, “that is the result. But let us change a bit, for it looks as if we put the friend and enemy wrong.”

“How, Polemarchos?”

“That the one thought good and honest was the friend.”

“How should we change it now?” said I.

“The one,” said he, “who is both thought good and is good is the friend; but the one who is not good, but thought good, only seems a friend and is not; so also with the enemy.”

“Very well, as it seems by this reasoning, the good one will be a friend, and the bad one an enemy.”

“Yes.”

“We said first it was just to do well to the friend and to do ill to the enemy: now we must add something to this ‘just,’ and say it is just to do well to the friend if he is good, and to injure the enemy if he is bad?”

“Certainly,” he said. “That seems right to me now.”

“And yet,” said I, “is it right for the just man to injure any man at all?”

“Of course it is,” he said, “to injure bad men and enemies.”

“Take horses: When injured do they become better or worse?”

“Worse.”

“Worse in the virtue of a dog, or in the virtue of a horse?”

“Worse in the virtue of a horse.”

“And dogs being injured become worse in the virtue of a dog, not of a horse?”

“That is necessary.”

“And what about men, my friend? Are we not to say that they become worse in human virtue when they are injured?”

“Certainly.”

“Is not justice a human virtue?”

“That is necessary too.”

“Then, my friend, if men are injured, they must necessarily become more unjust.”

“So it seems.”

“Take music, now: Is it possible for the musical to make men unmusical by means of music?”

“No.”

“Or horsemen bad horsemen by horsemanship?”

“Impossible.”

“But can the just make men unjust by justice? Or in general, can the good make men bad by means of virtue—is that possible?”

“No, impossible.”

“For it is not the work of heat to make cold, but the opposite?”

“Yes.”

“And it is not the work of what is dry to make things wet, but the opposite?”

“Certainly.”

“Nor is it the work of the good to injure, but the opposite?”

“So it seems.”

“And the just man is good?”

“Certainly.”

“Then it is not the work of the just man to injure, Polemarchos, whether to injure a friend or anyone else,* anyone—but that is the work of the unjust man.”

“I think you are absolutely right, Socrates.”

“Then if one says it is right to give back what is owing to each, and means by this that injury is owing to his enemies from the just man and benefit to his friends, the one who said it was no wise man; for he did not speak the truth, since it has been shown that to injure anyone is never just anywhere.”

“I grant it,” said he.

“Then shall we fight him?” said I. “Shall we be partners, you and I, if anyone says that this has been laid down by Simonides, or Bias, or Pittacos,† or any other of the wise and blessed men?”

“I’m ready, at least,” he said, “to be your partner in the battle.”

“But do you know,” said I, “whose doctrine I think this to be, that it is just to benefit your friends and to injure your enemies?”

“Who said it?” he asked.

“I believe Periandros, or Perdiccas, or Xerxes,‡ or Ismenias the Theban, or someone else who thought no end of his power, some rich man.”

“Very true indeed,” he said.

“Very well, then,” said I, “since it has been shown that justice is no more this than what we thought at first, what else could we affirm it to be?”

While we were talking, Thrasymachos had often tried to break in and take a hand in the argument and he was prevented by the other sitters who wished to hear the talk. But when we paused after my last words, he kept quiet no longer; he gathered himself up, and leapt on us like a wild beast to tear us to pieces. Polemarchos and I were frightened out of our wits, as he roared out to the company, “What’s all this stuff and rubbish, Socrates! There are you two, bowing and scraping to each other all this time like a pair of simpletons! But if you really want to know what justice is, don’t go on like that, merely asking questions and trying to trip him up whatever he answers, which you think is a grand thing! You know quite well it’s easier to ask than to answer. Now answer yourself, and tell me what you think justice to be. Don’t say it is what is due, or useful, or profitable, or what pays and what benefits, tell me simply and clearly what you mean. I won’t accept it if you give me nonsense like that.”

I was confounded on hearing this, and frightened to look at him, and I really think I should have been struck dumb if I had not seen him before he saw me.* But when he began to go mad at our talk, I fixed my eyes on him first so that I was able to answer, and I said, trembling a little, “My dear Thrasymachos, don’t be cross with us. If we two have made mistakes in our discussion, we could not help it, I assure you. If we were prospecting for gold, we should not go bowing and scraping to each other in the search if we could help it; we should only lose our chance of finding it. We were prospecting for justice, a thing worth more than much gold—should we be such fools as to truckle to each other and not do our best to find it? Think so if you like, my friend; but I believe that find it we cannot. Pity is more natural for us to expect than anger from clever men like you.”

He gave a great guffaw, and, laughing bitterly, he said, “By Heracles, here’s the famous irony of Socrates! I knew it, and I told these gentlemen all along—you will never answer, only play simplicity and do anything rather than answer, if someone asks a question!”

“That’s because you are a wise man, Thrasymachos,” I said. “Suppose you asked someone, ‘How many are twelve?’—and suppose you said to him beforehand, ‘Don’t say twice six, man, or three times four, or six times two, or four times three; I won’t accept it if you give me nonsense like that.’ It’s plain, I think, that no one would answer such a question, and you know that quite well. But suppose he said to you, ‘What do you mean, Thrasymachos? I must not give any of those answers which you forbade? You surprise me! Not even if one of them is right? Must I answer something which is not true, or what do you mean?’ What would you say to that!”

“Pooh!” he said. “Much alike, aren’t they, this case and that!”

“There’s nothing to hinder their being so,” said I, “but even if they are not alike and if the man thinks they are, do you believe he will any the less answer what appears to him, whether we forbid him or not?”

“Is that what you are going to do, then?” he said.

“Will you give one of the answers I barred?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if I did,” was my reply, “if I thought so after consideration.”

“All right,” he said, “what if I show you another answer about justice, different from all those, and better? What punishment do you think you deserve?”

“Nothing,” said I, “except the proper punishment for one who does not know. I suppose that is to learn from one who does; and that is the punishment I think I deserve.”

“I like that!” he said. “But besides the learning, you must pay a fine.”

“When I’ve got it to pay,” I answered.

“Oh, the money’s here!” said Glaucon. “The money’s all right, Thrasymachos, you go on; we will all make a collection for Socrates.”

“Oh yes, of course,” he said, “so that Socrates may be up to his usual games, I suppose, answer nothing himself and only pick holes in what other people say.”

“My dear old fellow,” said I, “how could anyone answer if he doesn’t know in the first place, and doesn’t profess to know, and in the second place, if he is forbidden to give any notions he may have, and that by a man of reputation? But surely you ought to speak, that’s more reasonable; for you do profess to know, and to be able to tell us. Don’t refuse. Please answer, and I shall be grateful myself; and don’t grudge a lesson to Glaucon and the rest.”

When I said this, Glaucon and the others begged him to be kind. Thrasymachos plainly was eager to speak, because he thought he had a splendid answer, and expected to get glory by it; but he pretended to insist that I should be the answerer. At last he gave way, and then said, “There you have the wisdom of Socrates! Not to be willing to teach anything himself, but to go about learning from others and not even saying thank you!”

“I do learn from others,” I said, “that’s true, Thrasymachos; but when you say that I pay no thanks, that is false. I do pay, all I can; but I can only pay praises, for money I have none. How gladly I do that, if I think anyone speaks well, you shall see directly as soon as ever you answer, for I think you will speak well.”

“Then listen,” said he. “I declare justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger. Why don’t you applaud that? Because you won’t!”

“If I may learn first what you mean,” I said, “for I don’t know yet. The advantage of the stronger you say is just. And what do you really mean by that, Thrasymachos? It cannot be anything like this: If Pulydamas, the all-around athlete, is stronger than we are, and if a diet of beef is an advantage to his body, then this diet is an advantage, and just, for us the weaker.”

“Damn you, Socrates!” he said. “You take me just in the way to spoil the whole thing!”

“Not at all, my good sir,” I said, “only tell me more clearly what you mean.”

“Don’t you know then,” said he, “that some states are under despots, and some are governed by a democracy, and some by an aristocracy?”

“Of course.”

“Is not the strong power in each the ruling power? And each power lays down the laws so as to suit itself, a democracy democratic laws, and a despotism despotic laws, and so with the rest; and in laying them down, they make it clear that this is a just thing for their subjects, I mean their own advantage; one who transgresses these they chastise as a breaker of laws and a doer of injustice. Then this is what I mean, my good friend: that the same thing is just in all states, the advantage of the established government. This I suppose has the power, so if you reason correctly, it follows that everywhere the same thing is just, the advantage of the stronger.”

“Now I understand what you mean,” said I. “Whether it is true or not, I will try to find out. You have answered as we did, that justice is advantage, yet you forbade me to say that. It is true you have added something to it,

‘of the stronger.’”

“Only a small addition, perhaps,” he said.

“It is not clear yet whether it is small or great; but we must consider whether what you say is true, that’s clear. For I myself admit that justice is some advantage, and you add a bit, and say it is the advantage of the stronger. I don’t know, and so we must consider.”

“Consider away,” said he.

“So I will,” said I. “You say also, don’t you, that to obey rulers is just?”

“I do.”

“Are the rulers in each state infallible, or can they make a mistake?”

“Oh, they can certainly make mistakes,” he said.

“Then when they undertake to lay down laws, do they sometimes do the job well and sometimes not well?”

“I believe so.”

“To do it well is to lay down what has advantage for themselves, and not well, what is not to their advantage? What do you say about it?”

“I agree.”

“Whatever they lay down, their subjects must do, and this is justice?”

“Of course.”

“Then by your reasoning, it is not only just to do what is an advantage to the stronger, but also the opposite, what is not.”

“What’s that you are saying?” he replied.

“Only what you say, I think; but let us consider and put it better. Was it not agreed that the rulers, in telling their subjects what to do, sometimes make a mistake, and miss their own advantage, but whatever the rulers enjoin upon them it is just for their subjects to do? Was not this agreed?”

“I believe so,” he said.

“Then,” said I, “you will have to believe it is just to do what is not an advantage to the rulers, that is, the stronger, by your own admission, whenever the rulers unintentionally command things evil for themselves, and it is just, as you say, for the subjects to do what the rulers have commanded. Must it not then follow of necessity, most wise and sapient Thrasymachos, that in this case it is just to do exactly the opposite of what you say? For surely the weaker are commanded to do what is not to the advantage of the stronger.”

“Yes, upon my word, Socrates,” said Polemarchos,

“that’s as plain as can be.”

“Yes, if you are the witness,”* Cleitophon said, breaking in.

“And where’s the need of a witness?” he asked.

“Thrasymachos himself admits that sometimes the rulers command things evil for themselves, and it is just for the subjects to do them.”

“To be obedient to their rulers’ commands, Polemarchos, was what Thrasymachos affirmed to be just.”

“Yes, Cleitophon, but he also affirmed that the advantage of the stronger was just. And after affirming both these things, he admitted that sometimes the stronger commanded the weaker, their subjects, what was not to the stronger’s advantage. From these admissions, advantage of the stronger would be no more just than their disadvantage.”

“But,” said Cleitophon, “the advantage of the stronger he said was what the stronger believed to be his advantage; that was what the weaker had to do, and that he affirmed to be justice.”

“Well, he didn’t say so,” said Polemarchos.

“That doesn’t matter, Polemarchos,” I said, “but if Thrasymachos now says that, let us take it from him so.

“Tell me now, Thrasymachos. Was that what you wished to say justice was, that which the stronger thought to be his advantage, whether it is or not? Are we to say you meant that?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Why, do you believe that I call one who makes mistakes the stronger at the time when he is mistaken?”

“I did believe you meant that,” said I, “when you admitted that the rulers are not infallible but could make mistakes.”

“You are a quibbler, Socrates! Just take a doctor, for example. Would you call one who made mistakes about his patients a doctor in the very mistakes he makes? Or an arithmetician, when he makes mistakes in a sum, at the time when he makes his mistake and in the mistake he makes? I suppose we do say loosely that the doctor has made a mistake, or the arithmetician, or the scholar; but the truth is, that each of these as far as he is what he is called, never makes a mistake; so to speak exactly in your own exact style, no artist or craftsman ever makes a mistake. Knowledge fails, and the man makes a mistake, in so far as he is no craftsman; thus no craftsman, no wise man, no ruler, ever makes a mistake so long as he is a ruler, although everyone would say the doctor was wrong, or the ruler was wrong. That’s how you must take me to answer now; but the extreme exactitude is really that the ruler, as far as he is a ruler, makes no mistakes, and, making no mistakes, he lays down what is best for himself, and this the subject must do. So as I said from the first, I say now it is just to do what is the advantage of the stronger.”

“Oh, my dear Thrasymachos!” I said, “do you think I am quibbling?”

“Indeed I do,” he said.

“Then you think I did it on purpose to discredit you when I asked those questions?”

“I’m sure of it,” said he, “and you shall gain nothing by it, for you could not hide your wrecking scheme, and if you can’t hide it you could never force me by your talk.”

“But bless you,” I said, “I should never even try! However, I don’t want anything else of that sort to come between us; so please define your ruler and your stronger, as to whether you mean the so-called or the exactly so, to use your own phrase, whose advantage, as being stronger, it will be just for the weaker to provide.”

“I mean the ruler in the most exact sense of the word. Now wreck and quibble, if you can, I ask no mercy. But you will never be able to do it!”

“Do you believe I would be so mad,” I said, “as to try to beard a lion, or to quibble with Thrasymachos?”

“You at least did try just now,” he said, “feeble though you were at it!”

“Enough of these compliments!” I said. “Please tell me; what about the doctor in the most exact sense of the word, to use your phrase; is he a moneymaker or one who serves the sick? I mean the real healer.”

He replied, “One who serves the sick.”

“And the pilot—is the true pilot a sailor, or a ruler of sailors?”

“A ruler of sailors.”

“We need not take into account, I think, that he sails in a ship, nor must we call him a sailor; for he is named pilot not because he sails in a ship, but from his art and his rule over sailors.”

“True,” he said.

“Well, each of these persons has an advantage of his own?”

“Certainly.”

“Again, this art,” said I, “is to seek and provide the advantage for each, and that is why it exists.”

“That is why,” he said.

“Then has each of the arts any other advantage for itself than to be as perfect as possible?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“To take an example,” said I; “if you should ask me if it is enough for a body to be a body, or if it is in want of something more, I should say certainly, it does want more. That is why this art has now been invented, the healing art, because body is ill and it is not enough for it simply to be body; and so this art has been made to provide what is for its advantage. Do you think I am right in putting it so?”

“Quite right,” he said.

“Very well. Is this healing art itself ill? Or is there any other art which is in want of some virtue (as eyes want sight, and ears hearing, so that there is need for an art over these senses, to enquire and provide what is advantageous for them)? Is there some illness in art itself, and do we need for each art another art to enquire what it wants, and for the enquiring art another such, and so ad infinitum? Or shall the art enquire for itself as to the advantage it wants? Or on the contrary, does it need neither itself, nor any other art for any illness of its own, to enquire for its advantage, and is there no illness and no fault at all in any art at all; and is it improper for an art to seek advantage for anything except that of which it is the art, the art in itself being faultless and untainted and right so long as each art is what it is, exact and whole? Consider the matter in your exact way of speaking: Is it so, or not?”

“Apparently it is so,” said he.

“Then,” I said, “the art of healing seeks no advantage for the art of healing, but for a body.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Nor horsemanship for horsemanship, but for horses; and no other art for itself, since it needs nothing, but for that of which it is the art.”

“So it appears,” he said.

“Furthermore, Thrasymachos, the arts rule and have power over that of which they are arts.” He agreed to this, but very reluctantly. “Then no science seeks or commands the advantage of the stronger, but the advantage of the weaker, that which is subject to it.” He agreed to this also at last, but he tried to fight it; and when he agreed, I said, “Then is it not true that no doctor, so far as he is a doctor, seeks or commands the advantage of the doctor, but only the advantage of the patient? For we have agreed, haven’t we, that a doctor in the exact sense is a ruler and not a moneymaker.” He said yes. “And that a pilot in the exact sense is a ruler of sailors, and not a sailor?”

“Yes.”

“Then such a pilot and ruler will enquire and command not what is the advantage of the pilot, but the advantage of the sailor, his subject.” He agreed, reluctantly. “Then, Thrasymachos,” said I, “no one else in any place of rule at all, in so far as he is a ruler, enquires or commands what is his own advantage, but the advantage of his subjects and that of which he is craftsman; that only he keeps in view, and what is its advantage, and what is proper for that, while he says what he says and does what he does, always.”

When we had come so far in the discussion, and it was quite clear to all that the definition of justice had been turned upside down, Thrasymachos made no reply; but he asked instead, “Have you a nurse at home, Socrates? Tell me that.”

“Hullo,” said I, “ought not you to answer, instead of putting questions like that?”

“If you want to know,” he said, “I ask because she takes no notice when you are snuffling* and doesn’t wipe your nose though you ask for it, and she can’t get you to know the difference between shepherd and sheep.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“Because you think shepherds and oxherds look for the good of their sheep and cattle. Why do they fatten them and take care of them? Only because they look out for their own good and their masters’! Just so the rulers in states, those who really rule, are to their subjects what people are to sheep! Can you conceive of anything else? What do you think they look for night and day but how to get benefit for themselves! You are a long way out about justice and the just, injustice and the unjust, when you don’t know that justice and the just are really another man’s good, the advantage of the stronger, the ruler, but the private damage of the subject, the servant. Injustice is the opposite, and rules those who are really simple creatures and just ones; but the subjects do what is the advantage of the other who is stronger, and they make him happy by serving him, but themselves not at all. You must consider, my most simple Socrates, that a just man comes off worse than an unjust man everywhere. First of all in contracts with one another, wherever two such are in partnership, and the partnership is dissolved, you would never find the just man getting the better of the unjust, but he always gets the worst of it. Secondly, in public affairs, when there are taxes and contributions, the just man pays more and the unjust less from an equal estate; when there are distributions the one gains nothing and the other much. Again, when these two hold public office, the just man gets his private affairs, by neglecting them, into a bad state, if he has no other loss, and he has no profit from the treasury because he is just; besides, he is unpopular with friends and acquaintances if he will not serve them contrary to justice; but it is quite the opposite with the unjust man. I mean the man that I spoke of before, the one who can gain great profits. Consider him then, if you wish to decide how much greater advantage he finds it personally to be unjust rather than just. You will understand it most easily, if you come to the most perfect injustice, which makes the unjust man most happy, and makes those who are wronged and will not be unjust most miserable. That is a despotism, which takes away others’ property, not in little bits secretly and by force, but all in a lump, things sacred and things profane, things private and things public. In small parts of these, if a man is caught doing wrong, he is punished and has the greatest disgrace: in sacrilege and kidnapping and house-breaking, swindling and thievery, the piecemeal criminals have names from their crimes; but whenever someone not only takes people’s money but kidnaps and enslaves all the citizens of a city, instead of these ugly names he is called happy and blessed, both by the citizens themselves and by all who hear of the man who has committed the whole and perfect injustice. For those who call injustice a shame do so because they fear suffering the injustice, not doing it. So, my dear Socrates, injustice when it is grand enough is more mighty than justice, more generous, more masterly; and as I began by saying, the just really is the advantage of the stronger; but the unjust is to his own profit and advantage.”

When Thrasymachos had finished, he had it in mind to go away, after he had poured this flood of oratory over our ears like a bathman. But the company would not let him go; they forced him to stay and give an account of what he had said. I begged him urgently myself, and said, “What a speech to throw among us, my dear man! And now you want to go off without sufficient proof or disproof whether it is so or not! Do you believe this is a small thing you try to define? Is it not rather the whole conduct of living, how each one of us may live the most profitable life?”

“Well, could I possibly think otherwise?” said Thrasymachos.

“You appear to,” I said, “or else you have no thought for us, and don’t care a bit whether we shall live better or worse in our ignorance of what you say you know. Now be kind, there’s a good fellow, and prove it to us. If you do a good turn to all this company you will not find it a bad investment. I tell you for my own part at once; I am not convinced and I don’t believe that injustice is more profitable than justice, not even if you leave it free and let it do what it likes. Well then, my good friend, let there be an unjust man, and let him be able to do wrong either by keeping it unobserved or by forcing it through; all the same, he does not convince me that it is more profitable than justice. Perhaps I am not alone, but some other among us feels the same. Convince us then, be so kind, convince us that we are not right in valuing justice more highly than injustice.”

“And how can I convince you?” said he. “For if you are not convinced by what I have said, what more can I do? Am I to serve up my argument and feed it to your soul like tidbits?”

“Oh, please don’t,” I said. “But first of all, either stand by what you say, or if you vary it, vary openly and do not cheat us. Now you see, Thrasymachos—let us look at the earlier part again—see how you define the true man of healing; but afterwards you do not think it necessary to be so exactly careful with the shepherd—you think that he fattens the sheep, in so far as he is a shepherd, not with a view to what is best for the sheep, but with his eye on good fare, like some diner going to have a feast, or with a view to selling, like a moneymaker and no shepherd. But the art of shepherding, I take it, cares simply and solely for what it is set over, how to provide the best for that; since for itself all has been sufficiently provided, that it shall be at its best so long as it does not fall short of being the shepherd’s art. In the same way, I thought it now necessary for us to admit that every kind of rule, both public and private, so long as it is really rule, enquires only what is best for the ruled, that which is in its care. Do you believe that the rulers in cities, those who are truly rulers, rule willingly?”

“I don’t believe that,” said he. “I know it.”

“Why, Thrasymachos,” said I, “what of the other kinds of rule? Don’t you observe that no one chooses willingly to rule, but they all demand pay, thinking there will be no benefit for themselves from ruling, but only for the subjects? Look here, tell me this: When we speak of a number of different arts, is not the difference that each has a different power? Pray don’t answer contrary to your opinion, my dear fellow, or we shall never get on.”

“Yes,” he said, “that is the difference.”

“And each offers us its own benefit, not all the same; thus the medical art gives health, the pilot’s art a safe voyage, and so forth?”

“Certainly.”

“Then the wage-earning art gives a wage?—for this is its power. Unless you call medicine and piloting the same art! Suppose a pilot finds sailing on the sea to be an advantage, and becomes healthy in consequence, you would not call his art medical any more for that reason, if you wish to define exactly, as you proposed to do.”

“Certainly not,” he said.

“Nor, I suppose, would you call the wage-earning art medical, if someone becomes healthy by earning a wage.”

“Certainly not.”

“Well, would you call the healing art moneymaking, if one makes money by healing?” He said no. “Well, we agreed that the benefit from each art is peculiar to itself?”

“So be it,” he said.

“Any benefit then, which all craftsmen gain in common, they gain from something else which they all use in common besides their art.”

“It seems so,” he said.

“Very well; we say that the benefit craftsmen receive by earning a wage comes to them from their using the wage-earning art in addition to their own.” He agreed, reluctantly.

“Then this benefit, the receipt of the wage, does not come to each from his own art; but to put it exactly, the medical art makes health and the wage-earning art makes the wage; the builder’s art makes a house, and the wage-earning art, going with it, makes the wage; and so with all the others, each works out its own work, and benefits that which is in its care. But if a wage is not added, does the craftsman get any benefit from his art?”

“It seems not,” said he.

“But does he confer no benefit, then, supposing he works for nothing?”

“I think he does, indeed!”

“Surely then, Thrasymachos, it is clear by this time that no art or rule provides what is a benefit to itself, but as we have said all along, it both provides and commands the benefit of the subject, and looks for the advantage of that, being weaker, and not the advantage of the stronger. This is the reason, my dear friend Thrasymachos, why I have said all along that no one chooses to rule, and take other people’s troubles in hand to set them right, willingly, but he asks a wage; because one who means to practise his art properly never does what is best for himself, nor commands it when he commands according to his art, but what is best for the subject; and therefore pay must be found for those who shall be willing to rule, either money, or honour, or a penalty if he will not rule.”

Glaucon now asked, “What do you mean by that, Socrates? The two wages I understand; but the penalty which you call a kind of wage, I do not understand.”

“Then you don’t understand the wage of the best men, for which the most distinguished rule, when they are willing to rule. Don’t you know that place-hunting and greed are reputed to be a disgrace, and are a disgrace?”

“Yes,” he said.

“For this reason, then,” I said, “good men are not willing to rule either for money or for honour. They do not wish to exact pay openly for their rule, and to be called hirelings, and they do not wish to take it themselves from their rule secretly, and be called thieves; nor again for honour, for they are not place-hunters. Therefore constraint must be put upon them, and a penalty if they are to become willing to rule,* and that is really why it has come to be thought an ugly thing to present yourself willingly for office and not to wait for constraint. But the greatest penalty is to be ruled by a worse man, if one is not oneself willing to rule. This I think distinguished men fear when they do accept office; and then they enter upon their office, not as coming into something good, or expecting to enjoy it, but as a grim necessity, being unable to entrust it to men better than themselves, or as good. For in fact if a city of good men could be, they would fight to avoid ruling, just as they fight now to rule; and then it would become quite manifest that indeed a true ruler’s nature is to look for the subject’s advantage, not his own. So every man who knows what is what would choose rather to have benefit from another than to benefit another and have no end of trouble. This therefore I in no way concede to Thrasymachos, that justice is the advantage of the stronger. But we will leave that question for another time; what he says now seems to me something bigger, when he declares the life of the unjust man is better than the life of the just man. Then which way do you choose, Glaucon? Which seems to you more true?”

“I choose,” he said, “that the just man’s life is more profitable.”

“You heard,” I said, “all the good things which Thrasymachos just now described and gave to the unjust man?”

“I heard,” said he, “but I do not believe.”

“Shall we try to persuade him then, if we can find any way, that he does not speak the truth?”

“That’s what I wish, of course,” said he.

“If, then, we give him speech for speech,” said I, “and recount all the good things which the just man has, and let him make another speech, and then make another speech ourselves, we shall have to count the good things, and measure them, in each of the speeches, and then we shall need judges to decide; but if as before we come to some agreement between ourselves, we shall be ourselves both pleaders and judges.”

“By all means,” he said.

“It shall be as you please,” I said.

“That pleases me,” said he.

“Very well,” said I. “Now, Thrasymachos, begin once again, and answer us. Do you say that perfect injustice is more profitable than perfect justice?”

“Assuredly I do,” said Thrasymachos, “and I have told you why.”

“Very well, here is something general to consider; tell us what you say. I suppose you call one of these things virtue, and the other vice?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Justice virtue, and injustice, vice?”

“What delightful innocence! That’s likely, isn’t it, when I say injustice is profitable, and justice unprofitable!”

“Well, what then?”

“The opposite,” said he.

“Do you mean that justice is vice?”

“No, but a generous simplicity.”

“Then you call injustice a bad disposition?”

“No, good prudence.”

“Sensible and good, then, Thrasymachos, is what you think the unjust are.”

“Yes, those capable of doing injustice to perfection, able to put cities and nations of men under their power. But you perhaps think I mean a lot of cutpurses; there is profit even in that sort of thing,” he said, “I grant it, if they are not caught; but such things are not worth mentioning, only what I was speaking of just now.”

“I understand quite well,” said I, “what you mean; but I was surprised if you placed injustice in the class of virtue and wisdom, and justice in the opposite class.”

“That is certainly what I do.”

“That’s firmer footing for you, my friend,” I said,

“and it is not easy now to find what to say. If you had affirmed that injustice was profitable, but admitted that it was vice or something ugly, like other people, we should have something to say on accepted principles; but as it is you clearly mean to say it is beautiful, and strong, and you will add to it all the other descriptions which we used to give to the just, since you have been so bold as to class it with virtue and wisdom.”

“You are among the truest prophets!” he said.

“Now, I take it,” said I, “you are giving your real opinion, and so long as that is so, I must not shrink from following up your lead. For I believe you are really not jesting now, Thrasymachos, but saying what you really think.”

“What’s the difference to you,” he said, “whether I think so or not? Why don’t you tackle me?”

“Oh, it’s all the same,” said I. “Please try to answer one more question: Do you think the just man would wish to get the better of the just?”

“Not a bit,” he said, “or he would not be the nice, simple creature he is.”

“Or of the just action?”

“Nor of the just action,” said he.

“But get the better of the unjust man—would he claim to do that, and think that just, or would he not think it just?”

“Think so, and claim it, yes,” he said, “but he couldn’t do it.”

“But that is not what I ask,” said I; “is this what you say—the just man does not claim or wish to get the better of the just, but he does of the unjust?”

“That’s how it is,” he said.

“Well, what of the unjust? Does he claim to get the better of the just man and the just action?”

“Of course, since he claims to get the better of all.”

“Then the unjust man will get the better of the unjust man and action also, and he will strive to get most of all?”

“That is correct.”

“Well,” I said, “let us put it in this way: The just man does not get the better of his like, but his unlike, and the unjust man of both.”

“Excellent,” he said.

“And further,” I said, “the unjust is sensible and good, the just neither.”

“That’s good, too,” said he.

“Then,” said I, “the unjust is like the prudent and good, but the just is not?”

“Well, if he is so-and-so,” he said, “of course he will be like so-and-so, and the other unlike.”

“Good. Then each of them is such as he is like.”

“What else do you expect?” he said.

“Very well, Thrasymachos. Again: You say one man is musical, and another unmusical?”

“Yes.”

“Which is sensible and which insensible?”

“The musical I take to be sensible, and the unmusical insensible.”

“Then he is good where he is sensible, and bad where he is insensible?”

“Yes.”

“The same with the medical?”

“The same.”

“Suppose that a musical man, my good friend, is tuning a harp, does he wish to get the better of another musical man in tightening and loosening the strings, and want to overreach him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But he does wish to get the better of an unmusical man?”

“Necessarily.”

“And the medical man; in diet or drink would he wish to get the better of another medical man or action?”

“Surely not.”

“But of one not medical?”

“Yes.”

“In every form of knowledge and ignorance, do you think anyone who knows would want to choose to do or say more than another who knows would do or say, and not the very same as his like would do in the same action?”

“Well,” said he, “perhaps it is necessary that he would do the same in such cases.”

“And what of one who does not know? Would he not try to get the better both of his like and his unlike?”

“Perhaps.”

“But the one who knows is wise?”

“I say so.”

“And the wise, good?”

“I say so.”

“Then the good and wise will not wish to get the better of his like, but of his unlike and opposite?”

“So it seems,” he said.

“But the bad and ignorant, both of like and unlike?”

“It appears so.”

“Then, Thrasymachos,” I said, “our unjust man gets the better of both unlike and like—you said that, didn’t you?”

“I did,” he said.

“But the just man will not get the better of his like, but only of his unlike?”

“Yes.”

“Then,” said I, “the just man is like the wise and good, the unjust like the ignorant and bad.”

“That seems to follow.”

“But, further, we agreed that each is such as he is like.”

“We did indeed.”

“Then our just man has been shown to be good and wise, and the unjust ignorant and bad.”

Thrasymachos made all these admissions not easily, as I now record them, but dragged with difficulty, and with any amount of sweat, it being high summer. And then I saw something which I never saw before, Thrasymachos blushing. At last, after we had agreed that justice was virtue and wisdom, and injustice vice and ignorance, I went on.

“Very well, we have settled that. But I think we said injustice was also strong; don’t you remember, Thrasymachos?”

“I remember,” said he, “but I don’t approve of what you say now, either, and I have something to say about it. But if I should make a speech, I am sure you would call it mob oratory. Then either let me say all that I wish, or ask away if you wish me to answer questions, and I will merely say, ‘Just so!’ and nod my head or shake my head, as we do to old wives when they tell a story.”

“Please don’t,” I said, “if it is not your opinion.”

“Just to please you,” he said, “since you won’t let me make a speech. Why, what else do you want?”

“Nothing else, I declare,” said I, “but since you are ready to do this, do it, and I’ll ask my questions.”

“Ask away,” said he.

“Then I ask you,” said I, “the same as before, that we may examine the reasoning step by step, and find out what justice is as compared with injustice. I think it was said that injustice was both stronger and more powerful than justice; but now,” I said, “since justice is a kind of wisdom and virtue, it will easily be shown, I believe, that it is stronger than injustice, since injustice is ignorance. No one could fail to see that any longer. But I do not wish simply to put it so, Thrasymachos; let us try another way. You would say that it is unjust for a city to try to enslave other cities unjustly, or to have done it already, and to keep many enslaved under itself?”

“Of course,” he said, “and this the best city will do most, the city most perfectly unjust.”

“I understand,” said I, “that that is what you affirmed, but there is something else I am asking about it, whether the city becoming stronger than another city will have this power without justice, or must it necessarily be combined with justice?”

“If it is true,” he said, “as you said just now, that justice is wisdom, it must be combined with justice; but if true as I said, with injustice.”

“I admire you, Thrasymachos,” said I, “you don’t only nod your head and shake your head, but you answer very nicely.”

“To please you,” he said.

“I’m much obliged,” said I, “but do please me once more, and tell me: Do you think a city, or an army, or a gang of robbers or thieves, or any other body of men that set out for some unjust purpose in common would be able to achieve their object if they dealt unjustly with each other?”

“Not at all,” he said.

“They would do it better if they were not unjust?”

“Certainly.”

“For factions and hates and battles among themselves are what injustice gives them, I suppose, Thrasymachos, but justice gives friendship and a single mind; doesn’t it?”

“Let it be so,” he said, “I don’t want to quarrel with you.”

“Many thanks, my good friend. Tell me this again: If the work of injustice is to implant hatred wherever it is, then where it is found, whether among slaves or free men, it will make them hate one another, and form factions, and they will be unable to act together in common?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, if it is found in two, won’t they quarrel and be enemies both to each other and to the just?”

“They will,” he said.

“Well then, suppose injustice be in one, my clever friend, surely it will not lose its special power. Will it not keep it just the same?”

“Granted, it certainly keeps it,” he said.

“Then this seems to be the kind of power it has: Wherever it is, city or nation or army or anything else, first it makes it unable to act with itself because of factions and quarrels, next it is an enemy both to itself and to every adversary and to the just. Is that correct?”

“Quite.”

“Then in one person, I think, it will work all which its nature is to do; first it will make him unable to act, because he is in rebellion within and not of one mind with himself; next, it will make him an enemy both to himself and to the just, isn’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“And the gods also are just, my friend?”

“If you like.”

“Then the unjust man is an enemy of the gods also, Thrasymachos, and the just man a friend.”

“Enjoy your feast of reason,” he said; “don’t be afraid, I am not going to oppose you, or I shall annoy these people.”

“Then please serve me up in full the rest of the feast, and go on answering as you are doing. Now when we say that the just are shown to be wiser and better and more able to act effectively, and the unjust to be incapable of accomplishing anything together, and when on the other hand we add that in fact those who do accomplish something with strong united action are yet sometimes unjust people—then we are not saying what is wholly true; for they could not have kept their hands off each other if they were absolutely unjust; it is clear that some justice was in them, which kept them from wronging each other as well as those they attacked, and by this justice they accomplished as much as they did. They set out on their unjust way only demidevils in wickedness, since whole villains, and men perfectly unjust, are perfectly unable to act effectively. That I understand to be the truth of the matter, not what you supposed at first.

“We now come to the second question which we proposed. Have the just a better life of it than the unjust? Are they happier? Indeed they appear to be so already, as I think, from what we have said, but let us examine still more carefully. The matter is no chance trifle, but how we ought to live.”

“Examine away,” said he.

“Here goes then,” said I. “Kindly tell me—do you think a horse has his work?”

“I do.”

“Then would you put down as the work of a horse, or anything else, that which you could do only with the thing, or best with it?”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Look here, now: Could you see with anything but eyes?”

“No.”

“Well, could you hear with anything but ears?”

“No.”

“Then we say rightly that sight and hearing are the works of eyes and ears.”

“Certainly.”

“Again: You could cut a vine twig with a sheath-knife, or chisel, or many other things?”

“Of course.”

“But with nothing so well, I think, as a pruning-knife, which is made for the purpose.”

“True.”

“Then shall we not put this down as the pruning-knife’s work?”

“We will, by all means.”

“Now then, I think, you could understand better what I meant by asking if the work of each thing is what the thing alone could do, or better than anything else could.”

“Oh,” he said, “I understand now, and I agree that this is the work of each thing.”

“Very good,” said I. “Do you think there is a virtue in each thing which has a work appointed for it? Let us run over the same things. Eyes, we say, have a work?”

“They have.”

“Then have eyes a virtue too?”

“They have a virtue too.”

“Well, the ears have a work?”

“Yes.”

“And a virtue too?”

“True.”

“But what about all the other things? Does not the same hold good?”

“It does.”

“One moment, now. Could the eyes do their work well if they had not their own proper virtue, but instead of the virtue a vice?”

“How could they?” he said—“I suppose you mean blindness instead of sight.”

“Which is their virtue,” I said, “but I do not ask that yet; I ask if their proper virtue makes them do well the work which they do, and vice makes them do it badly?”

“That is true so far,” he said.

“Then ears also, deprived of their own virtue, will do their work badly.”

“Certainly.”

“Do we say the same of all the other things?”

“I think so.”

“Consider the next point, then. Soul has a work, which you could not do with anything else? Something of this sort; to care, to rule, to plan, and all things like that. Is there anything but soul to which we could rightly entrust them and say they are its own?”

“Nothing else.”

“What, again, of life? Shall we say it is a work of soul?”

“Most certainly,” said he.

“And do we not say that soul has a virtue also?”

“Yes.”

“Then will soul ever do its work well, Thrasymachos, deprived of its proper virtue? Is that not impossible?”

“Impossible.”

“A bad soul then must needs rule and care badly, but a good soul must needs do all these things well.”

“It must needs be so.”

“Now did we not agree that soul’s virtue was justice, and soul’s vice injustice?”

“We did.”

“Then the just soul and the just man will live well, and the unjust man badly.”

“So it appears by your reasoning.”

“But, further, he who lives well is blessed and happy,* he that does not is the opposite.”

“Of course.”

“The just man then is happy,† and the unjust miserable.”

“Let it be so,” he said.

“But to be miserable is not profitable, to be happy, is.”

“Of course.”

“Then, O Thrasymachos, blessed among men! injustice is never more profitable than justice!”

“Here endeth your banquet, Socrates, at the Feast‡ of Bendis!”

“I have to thank you for the banquet, Thrasymachos,” I said, “because you have become gracious to me and you are angry no longer. But I have not had a good dinner—my own fault, not yours. Greedy people—how they grab at every dish that is brought in, and take a taste, before they have decently enjoyed the one before! I think I am like that. Before we had found what we first looked for, what justice is, I let that go and dashed at questions about it—whether it is vice and ignorance, or wisdom and virtue; then comes another story tumbling on the top of us, that injustice is more profitable than justice, and I left the first and hunted this—I simply couldn’t help it. So the upshot of our talk is now that I know nothing at all! When I don’t even know what justice is, I shall hardly know whether it is really a virtue or not, and whether one who has it is happy or not happy.”

BOOK II

When I said this, I thought I had done with talk, but after all, this was only the prelude. For Glaucon is always the bravest of the brave, and he showed it then. He would not accept Thrasymachos’ great renunciation, but said, “Socrates, do you want really and truly to persuade us that in every way it is better to be just than unjust, or only to seem to have persuaded us?”

“Really and truly,” I said, “is what I would choose, if the choice were with me.”

“Then,” he said, “you are not doing what you wish. For tell me—do you think that there is a kind of good which we should be glad to have for its own sake alone, not because we desire what comes from it? Like joy, and those pleasures which are harmless, and afterwards nothing happens because of them except that you keep on being happy.”

“Yes,” I said, “I think there is something like that.”

“And again one kind that we love both for its own sake and for what comes from it? For example, to have good sense, and to see, and to be healthy; such things I suppose we welcome for both reasons.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And do you see a third kind of good which athletic sports belong to, and to be cured by treatment when sick, and the art of healing, and the other ways of making money? These are laborious, you might say, but they give us benefit; we should not care to have them alone for their own sakes, but for the sake of the wages and the other things which come from them.”

“Yes, true,” I said, “there is also this third kind. But what then?”

“Where do you put justice?” he said. “In which class?”

“My own opinion is,” I said, “that it belongs to the noblest class, which is to be loved both for its own sake, and for what comes from it, if you mean to be perfectly happy.”

“Well,” said he, “that’s not what the many think. They put it in the laborious class, which has to be practised both for its wages and the praises of public opinion, but for its own sake is to be avoided as hard.”

“I know,” said I, “that they think so, and I know that is just why Thrasymachos has been finding fault with it all this while, and praising injustice. But I am a bad pupil, I fear.”

“Do let me speak too,” he said, “and see if you agree with me. I think Thrasymachos has let himself be charmed by you like a charmed snake sooner than he ought; but I am not yet satisfied with the proof offered about justice or injustice. For I desire to hear both what each is, and what power each has in itself, when it is in the soul, and to leave aside the wages and what comes from each. That’s what I will do, then, if you please. I will run over Thrasymachos’ account once more; first I will say what most people think justice is and whence it comes; secondly, that all who practise it practise unwillingly, as a necessary thing but not as a good; thirdly, that they have some reason in that; for to hear them talk it does seem that the life of the unjust is much better than the life of the just. I don’t think so myself, Socrates, please understand me, but I am puzzled when this is dinned into my ears; this is what I hear from Thrasymachos and countless others, but I have never heard any account of justice such as I want, to show it is better than injustice, and I want to hear it commended for its own sake. And I think I am most likely to hear that from you. Therefore I will strain every nerve to praise the unjust life, and in speaking I will show how I wish to hear you speak, when you dispraise injustice and praise justice. Does that meet your wishes?”

“Most assuredly,” said I, “what else could please me so much to speak and hear about often?”

“Quite right,” said he, “and first hear what I have to say, as I promised, on what justice is, and whence it comes.

“They say, then, that to be unjust is good, and to suffer injustice is bad, and the excess of evil in suffering injustice is greater than the excess of good in being unjust; so that when people do and suffer injustice in dealing with one another, and taste both, those who cannot both escape the one and take the other think it profitable to make an agreement neither to do nor to suffer injustice; from this they begin to make laws and compacts among themselves, and they name the injunction of the law lawful and just. This, they say, is the origin and nature of justice, which is something between the best, namely to do wrong and not to pay for it, and the worst, to suffer wrong and not to be able to get vengeance. Justice, they say, is between these two, and they are content with it not as a good, but as honoured in the weakness of injustice; since one who was able to do injustice, if he were truly a man, would never make an agreement with anyone neither to wrong nor to be wronged—he would be mad to do so. Then this and such is the nature of justice, Socrates, and such is its origin, as they say.

“But we could perceive most clearly that those who practise justice do so unwillingly and because they cannot do injustice, if we should put a case in imagination; let us grant licence to each, both just and unjust, to do whatever he wishes, and let us follow this up by seeing where his desire will lead each. Then we should catch the just man in the act; he would go the same way as the unjust through self-seeking, the way which every creature naturally follows as a good, only the law leads him forcibly astray to honour fair dealing. This licence I speak of would be very much the same as the power which Gyges had, the ancestor of Gyges the Lydian. They say he was a shepherd serving the then ruler of Lydia. A great storm came and an earthquake; and there was a split in the earth, and a chasm opened in the place where he kept his flocks; he saw it, and wondered, and went down. There he saw many wonderful things which the story tells, and in particular a brazen horse, hollow, with windows in the side; he peeped in and saw a dead body, as it appeared, larger than human, with nothing on but a golden ring on the hand, which he took off and came out again. It was the custom among the shepherds to hold a monthly meeting, and then report to the king all about the flocks; this meeting he attended wearing the ring. As he sat with the others, he happened to turn the collet of the ring round towards himself to the inside of his hand. As soon as this was done he became invisible to the company, and they spoke of him as if he had left the place. He was surprised, and fingered the ring again, turning the collet outwards, and when he turned it he became visible. Noticing that, he made trial of the ring, to see if it had that power; and he found that whenever he turned the collet inside, he was invisible, when he turned it outside, visible. After he found this out he managed to be appointed one of the messengers to the king; when he got there, he seduced the king’s wife, and with her set upon the king, and killed him, and seized the empire. Then if there could be two such rings, and if the just man put on one and the unjust the other, no one, as it would be thought, would be so adamantine as to abide in the practise of justice, no one could endure to hold back from another’s goods and not to touch, when it was in his power to take what he would even out of the market without fear, and to go into any house and lie with anyone he wished, and to kill or set free from prison those he might wish, and to do anything else in the world like a very god. And in doing so he would do just the same as the other; both would go the same way. Surely one would call this a strong proof that no one is just willingly but only under compulsion, believing that it is not a good to him personally; since wherever each thinks he will be able to do injustice, he does injustice. There is more personal profit, as everyone clearly believes, from injustice than from justice, and he is right in his belief, as those will say who give this account of the matter; since if anyone had this licence and yet would do no injustice or touch other men’s property, he would be thought a miserable fool by any who perceived it. But they would praise him to each other, deceiving each other for fear of suffering injustice themselves. So much then for that.

“We shall be able to judge rightly between those two lives only if we confront the superlatively just and the superlatively unjust, and not otherwise. How do we set them out clearly against each other? Thus: Let us take nothing of injustice from the unjust, and nothing of justice from the just, but suppose each of them perfect in his own practice.

“First of all, then, the unjust man: Let him act as expert craftsmen do. The tiptop pilot, for example, or physician, distinguishes what is possible and what is impossible in his art. He undertakes the one and not the other; besides, if he happens to make any slip, he is able to recover. Just so the unjust man will undertake his injustices in the right way, and then he must not be found out if he is to be great in wrongdoing; one who is caught must be considered a bad workman, for the extreme injustice is to be thought just when one is not. So we must grant to the perfectly unjust perfect injustice and take nothing away; but we must allow the one who does the greatest wrongs to get the greatest fame for justice, and to recover if he does make a slip. He must be able to persuade if he is denounced for his wrongdoings; and to compel whenever force is needed, because of his courage and strength and because of his store of wealth and friends.

“Having set up this unjust man as having these qualities, let us in our theory set against him the just; a man simple and generous, one who wishes not to seem good, but to be good, as Aeschylus says. So we must take away the seeming. For if he is to be thought just, honour and gifts will be his because he is thought just, and then it would not be clear whether he were such because of his justice or because of the gifts and honours. He must be stripped naked of all but justice, and made the opposite of the former; doing no wrong, let him have the greatest possible repute of injustice, that he may be tested for justice through not being softened by infamy and all that comes of it. So let him go on his way unchanging until death, believed to be unjust all through life while he is just; that both may go to the extreme, one of justice and one of injustice, and it may be judged which of them is happier and more fortunate.”

“Lord bless us, my dear Glaucon!” I said. “How forcibly you do carve them out and polish them up, like a pair of statues for a competition!”

“I do my best,” he said. “There they both are; and, as I think, it is no longer difficult to discuss what kind of life awaits each. So now I must go on; and if my words are rather rough, don’t suppose me to be speaking, Socrates, but those who praise injustice above justice. This is what they will say: The just man in those circumstances will be scourged, racked, chained, have his eyes burnt out; at last, after every kind of misery, he will be set up on a pole;* and he will know that one ought to wish not to be just, but to seem just. And the words of Aeschylus† were, then, much more rightly applicable to the unjust. For they will say that really the unjust man practises a thing which clings close to truth, and he does not live for opinion—he wishes not to seem but to be unjust,