The Complete Works of Plato

0018

0018f

The Complete Works of Plato

Part 1    Part 2    Part 3    Part 4    Part 5    Part 6    Part 7

The Dialogues of Plato
Translated into English with Analyses and Introductions
by
B. Jowett, M.A.
Master of Balliol College Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford
Doctor in Theology of the University of Leyden




 
gb `l Ybe`Xe
chc\_f


|Ç UtÄÄ|ÉÄ VÉÄÄxzx tÇw |Ç à{x hÇ|äxÜá|àç Éy
båyÉÜw ã{É wâÜ|Çz y|yàç çxtÜá {täx uxxÇ à{x uxáà
Éy yÜ|xÇwá àÉ Åx à{xáx äÉÄâÅxá tÜx |ÇávÜ|uxw |Ç
zÜtàxyâÄ ÜxvÉzÇ|à|ÉÇ Éy à{x|Ü ÇxäxÜ yt|Ä|Çz
tààtv{ÅxÇàA 


The additions and alterations which have been made, both in the Introductions and in
the Text of this Edition, affect at least a third of the work.
Having regard to the extent of these alterations, and to the annoyance which is naturally
felt by the owner of a book at the possession of it in an inferior form, and still more
keenly by the writer himself, who must always desire to be read as he is at his best, I
have thought that the possessor of either of the former Editions (1870 and 1876) might
wish to exchange it for the present one. I have therefore arranged that those who would
like to make this exchange, on depositing a perfect and undamaged copy of the first or
second Edition with any agent of the Clarendon Press, shall be entitled to receive a copy
of a new Edition at half-price.




 
Preface to the First Edition.
The Text which has been mostly followed in this Translation of Plato is the latest 8vo.
edition of Stallbaum; the principal deviations are noted at the bottom of the page.
I have to acknowledge many obligations to old friends and pupils. These are:—Mr. John
Purves, Fellow of Balliol College, with whom I have revised about half of the entire
Translation; the Rev. Professor Campbell, of St. Andrews, who has helped me in the
revision of several parts of the work, especially of the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Politicus;
Mr. Robinson Ellis, Fellow of Trinity College, and Mr. Alfred Robinson, Fellow of New
College, who read with me the Cratylus and the Gorgias; Mr. Paravicini, Student of
Christ Church, who assisted me in the Symposium; Mr. Raper, Fellow of Queen’s
College, Mr. Monro, Fellow of Oriel College, and Mr. Shadwell, Student of Christ
Church, who gave me similar assistance in the Laws. Dr. Greenhill, of Hastings, has also
kindly sent me remarks on the physiological part of the Timaeus, which I have inserted
as corrections under the head of errata at the end of the Introduction. The degree of
accuracy which I have been enabled to attain is in great measure due to these
gentlemen, and I heartily thank them for the pains and time which they have bestowed
on my work.
I have further to explain how far I have received help from other labourers in the same
field. The books which I have found of most use are Steinhart and Muller’s German
Translation of Plato with Introductions; Zeller’s ‘Philosophie der Griechen,’ and
‘Platonische Studien;’ Susemihl’s ‘Genetische Entwickelung der Paltonischen
Philosophie;’ Hermann’s ‘Geschichte der Platonischen Philosophie;’ Bonitz, ‘Platonische
Studien;’ Stallbaum’s Notes and Introductions; Professor Campbell’s editions of the
‘Theaetetus,’ the ‘Sophist,’ and the ‘Politicus;’ Professor Thompson’s ‘Phaedrus;’ Th.
Martin’s ‘Etudes sur le Timee;’ Mr. Poste’s edition and translation of the ‘Philebus;’ the
Translation of the ‘Republic,’ by Messrs. Davies and Vaughan, and the Translation of the
‘Gorgias,’ by Mr. Cope.
I have also derived much assistance from the great work of Mr. Grote, which contains
excellent analyses of the Dialogues, and is rich in original thoughts and observations. I
agree with him in rejecting as futile the attempt of Schleiermacher and others to arrange
the Dialogues of Plato into a harmonious whole. Any such arrangement appears to me 
not only to be unsupported by evidence, but to involve an anachronism in the history of
philosophy. There is a common spirit in the writings of Plato, but not a unity of design
in the whole, nor perhaps a perfect unity in any single Dialogue. The hypothesis of a
general plan which is worked out in the successive Dialogues is an after-thought of the
critics who have attributed a system to writings belonging to an age when system had
not as yet taken possession of philosophy.
If Mr. Grote should do me the honour to read any portion of this work he will probably
remark that I have endeavoured to approach Plato from a point of view which is
opposed to his own. The aim of the Introductions in these volumes has been to
represent Plato as the father of Idealism, who is not to be measured by the standard of
utilitarianism or any other modern philosophical system. He is the poet or maker of
ideas, satisfying the wants of his own age, providing the instruments of thought for
future generations. He is no dreamer, but a great philosophical genius struggling with
the unequal conditions of light and knowledge under which he is living. He may be
illustrated by the writings of moderns, but he must be interpreted by his own, and by his
place in the history of philosophy. We are not concerned to determine what is the
residuum of truth which remains for ourselves. His truth may not be our truth, and
nevertheless may have an extraordinary value and interest for us.
I cannot agree with Mr. Grote in admitting as genuine all the writings commonly
attributed to Plato in antiquity, any more than with Schaarschmidt and some other
German critics who reject nearly half of them. The German critics, to whom I refer,
proceed chiefly on grounds of internal evidence; they appear to me to lay too much
stress on the variety of doctrine and style, which must be equally acknowledged as a fact,
even in the Dialogues regarded by Schaarschmidt as genuine, e.g. in the Phaedrus, or
Symposium, when compared with the Laws. He who admits works so different in style
and matter to have been the composition of the same author, need have no difficulty in
admitting the Sophist or the Politicus. (The negative argument adduced by the same
school of critics, which is based on the silence of Aristotle, is not worthy of much
consideration. For why should Aristotle, because he has quoted several Dialogues of
Plato, have quoted them all? Something must be allowed to chance, and to the nature of
the subjects treated of in them.) On the other hand, Mr. Grote trusts mainly to the
Alexandrian Canon. But I hardly think that we are justified in attributing much weight 
to the authority of the Alexandrian librarians in an age when there was no regular
publication of books, and every temptation to forge them; and in which the writings of a
school were naturally attributed to the founder of the school. And even without
intentional fraud, there was an inclination to believe rather than to enquire. Would Mr.
Grote accept as genuine all the writings which he finds in the lists of learned ancients
attributed to Hippocrates, to Xenophon, to Aristotle? The Alexandrian Canon of the
Platonic writings is deprived of credit by the admission of the Epistles, which are not
only unworthy of Plato, and in several passages plagiarized from him, but flagrantly at
variance with historical fact. It will be seen also that I do not agree with Mr. Grote’s
views about the Sophists; nor with the low estimate which he has formed of Plato’s
Laws; nor with his opinion respecting Plato’s doctrine of the rotation of the earth. But I
‘am not going to lay hands on my father Parmenides’ (Soph.), who will, I hope, forgive
me for differing from him on these points. I cannot close this Preface without expressing
my deep respect for his noble and gentle character, and the great services which he has
rendered to Greek Literature.
Balliol College, January, 1871. 
Preface to the Second and Third Editions.
In publishing a Second Edition (1875) of the Dialogues of Plato in English, I had to
acknowledge the assistance of several friends: of the Rev. G.G. Bradley, Master of
University College, now Dean of Westminster, who sent me some valuable remarks on
the Phaedo; of Dr. Greenhill, who had again revised a portion of the Timaeus; of Mr.
R.L. Nettleship, Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, to whom I was indebted for an
excellent criticism of the Parmenides; and, above all, of the Rev. Professor Campbell of
St. Andrews, and Mr. Paravicini, late Student of Christ Church and Tutor of Balliol
College, with whom I had read over the greater part of the translation. I was also
indebted to Mr. Evelyn Abbott, Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, for a complete and
accurate index.
In this, the Third Edition, I am under very great obligations to Mr. Matthew Knight, who
has not only favoured me with valuable suggestions throughout the work, but has largely
extended the Index (from 61 to 175 pages) and translated the Eryxias and Second
Alcibiades; and to Mr Frank Fletcher, of Balliol College, my Secretary. I am also
considerably indebted to Mr. J.W. Mackail, late Fellow of Balliol College, who read over
the Republic in the Second Edition and noted several inaccuracies.
In both editions the Introductions to the Dialogues have been enlarged, and essays on
subjects having an affinity to the Platonic Dialogues have been introduced into several of
them. The analyses have been corrected, and innumerable alterations have been made
in the Text. There have been added also, in the Third Edition, headings to the pages and
a marginal analysis to the text of each dialogue.
At the end of a long task, the translator may without impropriety point out the
difficulties which he has had to encounter. These have been far greater than he would
have anticipated; nor is he at all sanguine that he has succeeded in overcoming them.
Experience has made him feel that a translation, like a picture, is dependent for its effect
on very minute touches; and that it is a work of infinite pains, to be returned to in many
moods and viewed in different lights.
I. An English translation ought to be idiomatic and interesting, not only to the scholar,
but to the unlearned reader. Its object should not simply be to render the words of one 
language into the words of another or to preserve the construction and order of the
original;—this is the ambition of a schoolboy, who wishes to show that he has made a
good use of his Dictionary and Grammar; but is quite unworthy of the translator, who
seeks to produce on his reader an impression similar or nearly similar to that produced
by the original. To him the feeling should be more important than the exact word. He
should remember Dryden’s quaint admonition not to ‘lacquey by the side of his author,
but to mount up behind him.’ (Dedication to the Aeneis.) He must carry in his mind a
comprehensive view of the whole work, of what has preceded and of what is to follow,—
as well as of the meaning of particular passages. His version should be based, in the first
instance, on an intimate knowledge of the text; but the precise order and arrangement of
the words may be left to fade out of sight, when the translation begins to take shape. He
must form a general idea of the two languages, and reduce the one to the terms of the
other. His work should be rhythmical and varied, the right admixture of words and
syllables, and even of letters, should be carefully attended to; above all, it should be
equable in style. There must also be quantity, which is necessary in prose as well as in
verse: clauses, sentences, paragraphs, must be in due proportion. Metre and even rhyme
may be rarely admitted; though neither is a legitimate element of prose writing, they
may help to lighten a cumbrous expression (Symp.). The translation should retain as far
as possible the characteristic qualities of the ancient writer—his freedom, grace,
simplicity, stateliness, weight, precision; or the best part of him will be lost to the
English reader. It should read as an original work, and should also be the most faithful
transcript which can be made of the language from which the translation is taken,
consistently with the first requirement of all, that it be English. Further, the translation
being English, it should also be perfectly intelligible in itself without reference to the
Greek, the English being really the more lucid and exact of the two languages. In some
respects it may be maintained that ordinary English writing, such as the newspaper
article, is superior to Plato: at any rate it is couched in language which is very rarely
obscure. On the other hand, the greatest writers of Greece, Thucydides, Plato,
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Demosthenes, are generally those which are found to be
most difficult and to diverge most widely from the English idiom. The translator will
often have to convert the more abstract Greek into the more concrete English, or vice
versa, and he ought not to force upon one language the character of another. In some
cases, where the order is confused, the expression feeble, the emphasis misplaced, or the
sense somewhat faulty, he will not strive in his rendering to reproduce these 
characteristics, but will re-write the passage as his author would have written it at first,
had he not been ‘nodding’; and he will not hesitate to supply anything which, owing to
the genius of the language or some accident of composition, is omitted in the Greek, but
is necessary to make the English clear and consecutive.
It is difficult to harmonize all these conflicting elements. In a translation of Plato what
may be termed the interests of the Greek and English are often at war with one another.
In framing the English sentence we are insensibly diverted from the exact meaning of
the Greek; when we return to the Greek we are apt to cramp and overlay the English. We
substitute, we compromise, we give and take, we add a little here and leave out a little
there. The translator may sometimes be allowed to sacrifice minute accuracy for the
sake of clearness and sense. But he is not therefore at liberty to omit words and turns of
expression which the English language is quite capable of supplying. He must be patient
and self-controlled; he must not be easily run away with. Let him never allow the
attraction of a favourite expression, or a sonorous cadence, to overpower his better
judgment, or think much of an ornament which is out of keeping with the general
character of his work. He must ever be casting his eyes upwards from the copy to the
original, and down again from the original to the copy (Rep.). His calling is not held in
much honour by the world of scholars; yet he himself may be excused for thinking it a
kind of glory to have lived so many years in the companionship of one of the greatest of
human intelligences, and in some degree, more perhaps than others, to have had the
privilege of understanding him (Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Lectures: Disc. xv.).
There are fundamental differences in Greek and English, of which some may be
managed while others remain intractable. (1). The structure of the Greek language is
partly adversative and alternative, and partly inferential; that is to say, the members of a
sentence are either opposed to one another, or one of them expresses the cause or effect
or condition or reason of another. The two tendencies may be called the horizontal and
perpendicular lines of the language; and the opposition or inference is often much more
one of words than of ideas. But modern languages have rubbed off this adversative and
inferential form: they have fewer links of connection, there is less mortar in the
interstices, and they are content to place sentences side by side, leaving their relation to
one another to be gathered from their position or from the context. The difficulty of
preserving the effect of the Greek is increased by the want of adversative and inferential 
particles in English, and by the nice sense of tautology which characterizes all modern
languages. We cannot have two ‘buts’ or two ‘fors’ in the same sentence where the Greek
repeats (Greek). There is a similar want of particles expressing the various gradations of
objective and subjective thought—(Greek) and the like, which are so thickly scattered
over the Greek page. Further, we can only realize to a very imperfect degree the common
distinction between (Greek), and the combination of the two suggests a subtle shade of
negation which cannot be expressed in English. And while English is more dependent
than Greek upon the apposition of clauses and sentences, yet there is a difficulty in
using this form of construction owing to the want of case endings. For the same reason
there cannot be an equal variety in the order of words or an equal nicety of emphasis in
English as in Greek.
(2) The formation of the sentence and of the paragraph greatly differs in Greek and
English. The lines by which they are divided are generally much more marked in
modern languages than in ancient. Both sentences and paragraphs are more precise and
definite—they do not run into one another. They are also more regularly developed from
within. The sentence marks another step in an argument or a narrative or a statement;
in reading a paragraph we silently turn over the page and arrive at some new view or
aspect of the subject. Whereas in Plato we are not always certain where a sentence
begins and ends; and paragraphs are few and far between. The language is distributed in
a different way, and less articulated than in English. For it was long before the true use
of the period was attained by the classical writers both in poetry or prose; it was (Greek).
The balance of sentences and the introduction of paragraphs at suitable intervals must
not be neglected if the harmony of the English language is to be preserved. And still a
caution has to be added on the other side, that we must avoid giving it a numerical or
mechanical character.
(3) This, however, is not one of the greatest difficulties of the translator; much greater is
that which arises from the restriction of the use of the genders. Men and women in
English are masculine and feminine, and there is a similar distinction of sex in the
words denoting animals; but all things else, whether outward objects or abstract ideas,
are relegated to the class of neuters. Hardly in some flight of poetry do we ever endue
any of them with the characteristics of a sentient being, and then only by speaking of
them in the feminine gender. The virtues may be pictured in female forms, but they are 
not so described in language; a ship is humorously supposed to be the sailor’s bride;
more doubtful are the personifications of church and country as females. Now the
genius of the Greek language is the opposite of this. The same tendency to
personification which is seen in the Greek mythology is common also in the language;
and genders are attributed to things as well as persons according to their various
degrees of strength and weakness; or from fanciful resemblances to the male or female
form, or some analogy too subtle to be discovered. When the gender of any object was
once fixed, a similar gender was naturally assigned to similar objects, or to words of
similar formation. This use of genders in the denotation of objects or ideas not only
affects the words to which genders are attributed, but the words with which they are
construed or connected, and passes into the general character of the style. Hence arises
a difficulty in translating Greek into English which cannot altogether be overcome. Shall
we speak of the soul and its qualities, of virtue, power, wisdom, and the like, as feminine
or neuter? The usage of the English language does not admit of the former, and yet the
life and beauty of the style are impaired by the latter. Often the translator will have
recourse to the repetition of the word, or to the ambiguous ‘they,’ ‘their,’ etc.; for fear of
spoiling the effect of the sentence by introducing ‘it.’ Collective nouns in Greek and
English create a similar but lesser awkwardness.
(4) To use of relation is far more extended in Greek than in English. Partly the greater
variety of genders and cases makes the connexion of relative and antecedent less
ambiguous: partly also the greater number of demonstrative and relative pronouns, and
the use of the article, make the correlation of ideas simpler and more natural. The Greek
appears to have had an ear or intelligence for a long and complicated sentence which is
rarely to be found in modern nations; and in order to bring the Greek down to the level
of the modern, we must break up the long sentence into two or more short ones. Neither
is the same precision required in Greek as in Latin or English, nor in earlier Greek as in
later; there was nothing shocking to the contemporary of Thucydides and Plato in
anacolutha and repetitions. In such cases the genius of the English language requires
that the translation should be more intelligible than the Greek. The want of more
distinctions between the demonstrative pronouns is also greatly felt. Two genitives
dependent on one another, unless familiarised by idiom, have an awkward effect in
English. Frequently the noun has to take the place of the pronoun. ‘This’ and ‘that’ are
found repeating themselves to weariness in the rough draft of a translation. As in the 
previous case, while the feeling of the modern language is more opposed to tautology,
there is also a greater difficulty in avoiding it.
(5) Though no precise rule can be laid down about the repetition of words, there seems
to be a kind of impertinence in presenting to the reader the same thought in the same
words, repeated twice over in the same passage without any new aspect or modification
of it. And the evasion of tautology—that is, the substitution of one word of precisely the
same meaning for another—is resented by us equally with the repetition of words. Yet
on the other hand the least difference of meaning or the least change of form from a
substantive to an adjective, or from a participle to a verb, will often remedy the
unpleasant effect. Rarely and only for the sake of emphasis or clearness can we allow an
important word to be used twice over in two successive sentences or even in the same
paragraph. The particles and pronouns, as they are of most frequent occurrence, are also
the most troublesome. Strictly speaking, except a few of the commonest of them, ‘and,’
‘the,’ etc., they ought not to occur twice in the same sentence. But the Greek has no such
precise rules; and hence any literal translation of a Greek author is full of tautology. The
tendency of modern languages is to become more correct as well as more perspicuous
than ancient. And, therefore, while the English translator is limited in the power of
expressing relation or connexion, by the law of his own language increased precision
and also increased clearness are required of him. The familiar use of logic, and the
progress of science, have in these two respects raised the standard. But modern
languages, while they have become more exacting in their demands, are in many ways
not so well furnished with powers of expression as the ancient classical ones.
Such are a few of the difficulties which have to be overcome in the work of translation;
and we are far from having exhausted the list. (6) The excellence of a translation will
consist, not merely in the faithful rendering of words, or in the composition of a
sentence only, or yet of a single paragraph, but in the colour and style of the whole work.
Equability of tone is best attained by the exclusive use of familiar and idiomatic words.
But great care must be taken; for an idiomatic phrase, if an exception to the general
style, is of itself a disturbing element. No word, however expressive and exact, should be
employed, which makes the reader stop to think, or unduly attracts attention by
difficulty and peculiarity, or disturbs the effect of the surrounding language. In general
the style of one author is not appropriate to another; as in society, so in letters, we 
expect every man to have ‘a good coat of his own,’ and not to dress himself out in the
rags of another. (a) Archaic expressions are therefore to be avoided. Equivalents may be
occasionally drawn from Shakspere, who is the common property of us all; but they
must be used sparingly. For, like some other men of genius of the Elizabethan and
Jacobean age, he outdid the capabilities of the language, and many of the expressions
which he introduced have been laid aside and have dropped out of use. (b) A similar
principle should be observed in the employment of Scripture. Having a greater force and
beauty than other language, and a religious association, it disturbs the even flow of the
style. It may be used to reproduce in the translation the quaint effect of some antique
phrase in the original, but rarely; and when adopted, it should have a certain freshness
and a suitable ‘entourage.’ It is strange to observe that the most effective use of Scripture
phraseology arises out of the application of it in a sense not intended by the author. (c)
Another caution: metaphors differ in different languages, and the translator will often
be compelled to substitute one for another, or to paraphrase them, not giving word for
word, but diffusing over several words the more concentrated thought of the original.
The Greek of Plato often goes beyond the English in its imagery: compare Laws,
(Greek); Rep.; etc. Or again the modern word, which in substance is the nearest
equivalent to the Greek, may be found to include associations alien to Greek life: e.g.
(Greek), ‘jurymen,’ (Greek), ‘the bourgeoisie.’ (d) The translator has also to provide
expressions for philosophical terms of very indefinite meaning in the more definite
language of modern philosophy. And he must not allow discordant elements to enter
into the work. For example, in translating Plato, it would equally be an anachronism to
intrude on him the feeling and spirit of the Jewish or Christian Scriptures or the
technical terms of the Hegelian or Darwinian philosophy.
(7) As no two words are precise equivalents (just as no two leaves of the forest are
exactly similar), it is a mistaken attempt at precision always to translate the same Greek
word by the same English word. There is no reason why in the New Testament (Greek)
should always be rendered ‘righteousness,’ or (Greek) ‘covenant.’ In such cases the
translator may be allowed to employ two words—sometimes when the two meanings
occur in the same passage, varying them by an ‘or’—e.g. (Greek), ‘science’ or
‘knowledge,’ (Greek), ‘idea’ or ‘class,’ (Greek), ‘temperance’ or ‘prudence,’—at the point
where the change of meaning occurs. If translations are intended not for the Greek 
scholar but for the general reader, their worst fault will be that they sacrifice the general
effect and meaning to the over-precise rendering of words and forms of speech.
(8) There is no kind of literature in English which corresponds to the Greek Dialogue;
nor is the English language easily adapted to it. The rapidity and abruptness of question
and answer, the constant repetition of (Greek), etc., which Cicero avoided in Latin (de
Amicit), the frequent occurrence of expletives, would, if reproduced in a translation, give
offence to the reader. Greek has a freer and more frequent use of the Interrogative, and
is of a more passionate and emotional character, and therefore lends itself with greater
readiness to the dialogue form. Most of the so-called English Dialogues are but poor
imitations of Plato, which fall very far short of the original. The breath of conversation,
the subtle adjustment of question and answer, the lively play of fancy, the power of
drawing characters, are wanting in them. But the Platonic dialogue is a drama as well as
a dialogue, of which Socrates is the central figure, and there are lesser performers as
well:—the insolence of Thrasymachus, the anger of Callicles and Anytus, the patronizing
style of Protagoras, the self-consciousness of Prodicus and Hippias, are all part of the
entertainment. To reproduce this living image the same sort of effort is required as in
translating poetry. The language, too, is of a finer quality; the mere prose English is slow
in lending itself to the form of question and answer, and so the ease of conversation is
lost, and at the same time the dialectical precision with which the steps of the argument
are drawn out is apt to be impaired.
II. In the Introductions to the Dialogues there have been added some essays on modern
philosophy, and on political and social life. The chief subjects discussed in these are
Utility, Communism, the Kantian and Hegelian philosophies, Psychology, and the
Origin of Language. (There have been added also in the Third Edition remarks on other
subjects. A list of the most important of these additions is given at the end of this
Preface.)
Ancient and modern philosophy throw a light upon one another: but they should be
compared, not confounded. Although the connexion between them is sometimes
accidental, it is often real. The same questions are discussed by them under different
conditions of language and civilization; but in some cases a mere word has survived,
while nothing or hardly anything of the pre-Socratic, Platonic, or Aristotelian meaning is
retained. There are other questions familiar to the moderns, which have no place in 
ancient philosophy. The world has grown older in two thousand years, and has enlarged
its stock of ideas and methods of reasoning. Yet the germ of modern thought is found in
ancient, and we may claim to have inherited, notwithstanding many accidents of time
and place, the spirit of Greek philosophy. There is, however, no continuous growth of
the one into the other, but a new beginning, partly artificial, partly arising out of the
questionings of the mind itself, and also receiving a stimulus from the study of ancient
writings.
Considering the great and fundamental differences which exist in ancient and modern
philosophy, it seems best that we should at first study them separately, and seek for the
interpretation of either, especially of the ancient, from itself only, comparing the same
author with himself and with his contemporaries, and with the general state of thought
and feeling prevalent in his age. Afterwards comes the remoter light which they cast on
one another. We begin to feel that the ancients had the same thoughts as ourselves, the
same difficulties which characterize all periods of transition, almost the same opposition
between science and religion. Although we cannot maintain that ancient and modern
philosophy are one and continuous (as has been affirmed with more truth respecting
ancient and modern history), for they are separated by an interval of a thousand years,
yet they seem to recur in a sort of cycle, and we are surprised to find that the new is ever
old, and that the teaching of the past has still a meaning for us.
III. In the preface to the first edition I expressed a strong opinion at variance with Mr.
Grote’s, that the so-called Epistles of Plato were spurious. His friend and editor,
Professor Bain, thinks that I ought to give the reasons why I differ from so eminent an
authority. Reserving the fuller discussion of the question for another place, I will shortly
defend my opinion by the following arguments:—
(a) Because almost all epistles purporting to be of the classical age of Greek literature
are forgeries. (Compare Bentley’s Works (Dyce’s Edition).) Of all documents this class
are the least likely to be preserved and the most likely to be invented. The ancient world
swarmed with them; the great libraries stimulated the demand for them; and at a time
when there was no regular publication of books, they easily crept into the world.
(b) When one epistle out of a number is spurious, the remainder of the series cannot be
admitted to be genuine, unless there be some independent ground for thinking them so: 
when all but one are spurious, overwhelming evidence is required of the genuineness of
the one: when they are all similar in style or motive, like witnesses who agree in the
same tale, they stand or fall together. But no one, not even Mr. Grote, would maintain
that all the Epistles of Plato are genuine, and very few critics think that more than one of
them is so. And they are clearly all written from the same motive, whether serious or
only literary. Nor is there an example in Greek antiquity of a series of Epistles,
continuous and yet coinciding with a succession of events extending over a great
number of years.
The external probability therefore against them is enormous, and the internal
probability is not less: for they are trivial and unmeaning, devoid of delicacy and
subtlety, wanting in a single fine expression. And even if this be matter of dispute, there
can be no dispute that there are found in them many plagiarisms, inappropriately
borrowed, which is a common note of forgery. They imitate Plato, who never imitates
either himself or any one else; reminiscences of the Republic and the Laws are
continually recurring in them; they are too like him and also too unlike him, to be
genuine (see especially Karsten, Commentio Critica de Platonis quae feruntur Epistolis).
They are full of egotism, self-assertion, affectation, faults which of all writers Plato was
most careful to avoid, and into which he was least likely to fall. They abound in
obscurities, irrelevancies, solecisms, pleonasms, inconsistencies, awkwardnesses of
construction, wrong uses of words. They also contain historical blunders, such as the
statement respecting Hipparinus and Nysaeus, the nephews of Dion, who are said to
‘have been well inclined to philosophy, and well able to dispose the mind of their brother
Dionysius in the same course,’ at a time when they could not have been more than six or
seven years of age— also foolish allusions, such as the comparison of the Athenian
empire to the empire of Darius, which show a spirit very different from that of Plato;
and mistakes of fact, as e.g. about the Thirty Tyrants, whom the writer of the letters
seems to have confused with certain inferior magistrates, making them in all fifty-one.
These palpable errors and absurdities are absolutely irreconcileable with their
genuineness. And as they appear to have a common parentage, the more they are
studied, the more they will be found to furnish evidence against themselves. The
Seventh, which is thought to be the most important of these Epistles, has affinities with
the Third and the Eighth, and is quite as impossible and inconsistent as the rest. It is
therefore involved in the same condemnation.—The final conclusion is that neither the 
Seventh nor any other of them, when carefully analyzed, can be imagined to have
proceeded from the hand or mind of Plato. The other testimonies to the voyages of Plato
to Sicily and the court of Dionysius are all of them later by several centuries than the
events to which they refer. No extant writer mentions them older than Cicero and
Cornelius Nepos. It does not seem impossible that so attractive a theme as the meeting
of a philosopher and a tyrant, once imagined by the genius of a Sophist, may have
passed into a romance which became famous in Hellas and the world. It may have
created one of the mists of history, like the Trojan war or the legend of Arthur, which we
are unable to penetrate. In the age of Cicero, and still more in that of Diogenes Laertius
and Appuleius, many other legends had gathered around the personality of Plato,—more
voyages, more journeys to visit tyrants and Pythagorean philosophers. But if, as we
agree with Karsten in supposing, they are the forgery of some rhetorician or sophist, we
cannot agree with him in also supposing that they are of any historical value, the rather
as there is no early independent testimony by which they are supported or with which
they can be compared.
IV. There is another subject to which I must briefly call attention, lest I should seem to
have overlooked it. Dr. Henry Jackson, of Trinity College, Cambridge, in a series of
articles which he has contributed to the Journal of Philology, has put forward an entirely
new explanation of the Platonic ‘Ideas.’ He supposes that in the mind of Plato they took,
at different times in his life, two essentially different forms:—an earlier one which is
found chiefly in the Republic and the Phaedo, and a later, which appears in the
Theaetetus, Philebus, Sophist, Politicus, Parmenides, Timaeus. In the first stage of his
philosophy Plato attributed Ideas to all things, at any rate to all things which have
classes or common notions: these he supposed to exist only by participation in them. In
the later Dialogues he no longer included in them manufactured articles and ideas of
relation, but restricted them to ‘types of nature,’ and having become convinced that the
many cannot be parts of the one, for the idea of participation in them he substituted
imitation of them. To quote Dr. Jackson’s own expressions,—‘whereas in the period of
the Republic and the Phaedo, it was proposed to pass through ontology to the sciences,
in the period of the Parmenides and the Philebus, it is proposed to pass through the
sciences to ontology’: or, as he repeats in nearly the same words,— ‘whereas in the
Republic and in the Phaedo he had dreamt of passing through ontology to the sciences,
he is now content to pass through the sciences to ontology.’ 
This theory is supposed to be based on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, a passage containing an
account of the ideas, which hitherto scholars have found impossible to reconcile with the
statements of Plato himself. The preparations for the new departure are discovered in
the Parmenides and in the Theaetetus; and it is said to be expressed under a different
form by the (Greek) and the (Greek) of the Philebus. The (Greek) of the Philebus is the
principle which gives form and measure to the (Greek); and in the ‘Later Theory’ is held
to be the (Greek) or (Greek) which converts the Infinite or Indefinite into ideas. They
are neither (Greek) nor (Greek), but belong to the (Greek) which partakes of both.
With great respect for the learning and ability of Dr. Jackson, I find myself unable to
agree in this newly fashioned doctrine of the Ideas, which he ascribes to Plato. I have not
the space to go into the question fully; but I will briefly state some objections which are,
I think, fatal to it.
(1) First, the foundation of his argument is laid in the Metaphysics of Aristotle. But we
cannot argue, either from the Metaphysics, or from any other of the philosophical
treatises of Aristotle, to the dialogues of Plato until we have ascertained the relation in
which his so-called works stand to the philosopher himself. There is of course no doubt
of the great influence exercised upon Greece and upon the world by Aristotle and his
philosophy. But on the other hand almost every one who is capable of understanding the
subject acknowledges that his writings have not come down to us in an authentic form
like most of the dialogues of Plato. How much of them is to be ascribed to Aristotle’s
own hand, how much is due to his successors in the Peripatetic School, is a question
which has never been determined, and probably never can be, because the solution of it
depends upon internal evidence only. To ‘the height of this great argument’ I do not
propose to ascend. But one little fact, not irrelevant to the present discussion, will show
how hopeless is the attempt to explain Plato out of the writings of Aristotle. In the
chapter of the Metaphysics quoted by Dr. Jackson, about two octavo pages in length,
there occur no less than seven or eight references to Plato, although nothing really
corresponding to them can be found in his extant writings:—a small matter truly; but
what a light does it throw on the character of the entire book in which they occur! We
can hardly escape from the conclusion that they are not statements of Aristotle
respecting Plato, but of a later generation of Aristotelians respecting a later generation
of Platonists. (Compare the striking remark of the great Scaliger respecting the Magna 
Moralia:—Haec non sunt Aristotelis, tamen utitur auctor Aristotelis nomine tanquam
suo.)
(2) There is no hint in Plato’s own writings that he was conscious of having made any
change in the Doctrine of Ideas such as Dr. Jackson attributes to him, although in the
Republic the platonic Socrates speaks of ‘a longer and a shorter way’, and of a way in
which his disciple Glaucon ‘will be unable to follow him’; also of a way of Ideas, to which
he still holds fast, although it has often deserted him (Philebus, Phaedo), and although
in the later dialogues and in the Laws the reference to Ideas disappears, and Mind
claims her own (Phil.; Laws). No hint is given of what Plato meant by the ‘longer way’
(Rep.), or ‘the way in which Glaucon was unable to follow’; or of the relation of Mind to
the Ideas. It might be said with truth that the conception of the Idea predominates in
the first half of the Dialogues, which, according to the order adopted in this work, ends
with the Republic, the ‘conception of Mind’ and a way of speaking more in agreement
with modern terminology, in the latter half. But there is no reason to suppose that
Plato’s theory, or, rather, his various theories, of the Ideas underwent any definite
change during his period of authorship. They are substantially the same in the twelfth
Book of the Laws as in the Meno and Phaedo; and since the Laws were written in the last
decade of his life, there is no time to which this change of opinions can be ascribed. It is
true that the theory of Ideas takes several different forms, not merely an earlier and a
later one, in the various Dialogues. They are personal and impersonal, ideals and ideas,
existing by participation or by imitation, one and many, in different parts of his writings
or even in the same passage. They are the universal definitions of Socrates, and at the
same time ‘of more than mortal knowledge’ (Rep.). But they are always the negations of
sense, of matter, of generation, of the particular: they are always the subjects of
knowledge and not of opinion; and they tend, not to diversity, but to unity. Other
entities or intelligences are akin to them, but not the same with them, such as mind,
measure, limit, eternity, essence (Philebus; Timaeus): these and similar terms appear to
express the same truths from a different point of view, and to belong to the same sphere
with them. But we are not justified, therefore, in attempting to identify them, any more
than in wholly opposing them. The great oppositions of the sensible and intellectual, the
unchangeable and the transient, in whatever form of words expressed, are always
maintained in Plato. But the lesser logical distinctions, as we should call them, whether
of ontology or predication, which troubled the pre-Socratic philosophy and came to the 
front in Aristotle, are variously discussed and explained. Thus far we admit
inconsistency in Plato, but no further. He lived in an age before logic and system had
wholly permeated language, and therefore we must not always expect to find in him
systematic arrangement or logical precision:—‘poema magis putandum.’ But he is
always true to his own context, the careful study of which is of more value to the
interpreter than all the commentators and scholiasts put together.
(3) The conclusions at which Dr. Jackson has arrived are such as might be expected to
follow from his method of procedure. For he takes words without regard to their
connection, and pieces together different parts of dialogues in a purely arbitrary
manner, although there is no indication that the author intended the two passages to be
so combined, or that when he appears to be experimenting on the different points of
view from which a subject of philosophy may be regarded, he is secretly elaborating a
system. By such a use of language any premises may be made to lead to any conclusion. I
am not one of those who believe Plato to have been a mystic or to have had hidden
meanings; nor do I agree with Dr. Jackson in thinking that ‘when he is precise and
dogmatic, he generally contrives to introduce an element of obscurity into the expostion’
(J. of Philol.). The great master of language wrote as clearly as he could in an age when
the minds of men were clouded by controversy, and philosophical terms had not yet
acquired a fixed meaning. I have just said that Plato is to be interpreted by his context;
and I do not deny that in some passages, especially in the Republic and Laws, the
context is at a greater distance than would be allowable in a modern writer. But we are
not therefore justified in connecting passages from different parts of his writings, or
even from the same work, which he has not himself joined. We cannot argue from the
Parmenides to the Philebus, or from either to the Sophist, or assume that the
Parmenides, the Philebus, and the Timaeus were ‘written simultaneously,’ or ‘were
intended to be studied in the order in which they are here named (J. of Philol.) We have
no right to connect statements which are only accidentally similar. Nor is it safe for the
author of a theory about ancient philosophy to argue from what will happen if his
statements are rejected. For those consequences may never have entered into the mind
of the ancient writer himself; and they are very likely to be modern consequences which
would not have been understood by him. ‘I cannot think,’ says Dr. Jackson, ‘that Plato
would have changed his opinions, but have nowhere explained the nature of the change.’
But is it not much more improbable that he should have changed his opinions, and not 
stated in an unmistakable manner that the most essential principle of his philosophy
had been reversed? It is true that a few of the dialogues, such as the Republic and the
Timaeus, or the Theaetetus and the Sophist, or the Meno and the Apology, contain
allusions to one another. But these allusions are superficial and, except in the case of the
Republic and the Laws, have no philosophical importance. They do not affect the
substance of the work. It may be remarked further that several of the dialogues, such as
the Phaedrus, the Sophist, and the Parmenides, have more than one subject. But it does
not therefore follow that Plato intended one dialogue to succeed another, or that he
begins anew in one dialogue a subject which he has left unfinished in another, or that
even in the same dialogue he always intended the two parts to be connected with each
other. We cannot argue from a casual statement found in the Parmenides to other
statements which occur in the Philebus. Much more truly is his own manner described
by himself when he says that ‘words are more plastic than wax’ (Rep.), and ‘whither the
wind blows, the argument follows’. The dialogues of Plato are like poems, isolated and
separate works, except where they are indicated by the author himself to have an
intentional sequence.
It is this method of taking passages out of their context and placing them in a new
connexion when they seem to confirm a preconceived theory, which is the defect of Dr.
Jackson’s procedure. It may be compared, though not wholly the same with it, to that
method which the Fathers practised, sometimes called ‘the mystical interpretation of
Scripture,’ in which isolated words are separated from their context, and receive any
sense which the fancy of the interpreter may suggest. It is akin to the method employed
by Schleiermacher of arranging the dialogues of Plato in chronological order according
to what he deems the true arrangement of the ideas contained in them. (Dr. Jackson is
also inclined, having constructed a theory, to make the chronology of Plato’s writings
dependent upon it (See J. of Philol.and elsewhere.).) It may likewise be illustrated by the
ingenuity of those who employ symbols to find in Shakespeare a hidden meaning. In the
three cases the error is nearly the same:—words are taken out of their natural context,
and thus become destitute of any real meaning.
(4) According to Dr. Jackson’s ‘Later Theory,’ Plato’s Ideas, which were once regarded as
the summa genera of all things, are now to be explained as Forms or Types of some
things only,—that is to say, of natural objects: these we conceive imperfectly, but are 
always seeking in vain to have a more perfect notion of them. He says (J. of Philol.) that
‘Plato hoped by the study of a series of hypothetical or provisional classifications to
arrive at one in which nature’s distribution of kinds is approximately represented, and
so to attain approximately to the knowledge of the ideas. But whereas in the Republic,
and even in the Phaedo, though less hopefully, he had sought to convert his provisional
definitions into final ones by tracing their connexion with the summum genus, the
(Greek), in the Parmenides his aspirations are less ambitious,’ and so on. But where
does Dr. Jackson find any such notion as this in Plato or anywhere in ancient
philosophy? Is it not an anachronism, gracious to the modern physical philosopher, and
the more acceptable because it seems to form a link between ancient and modern
philosophy, and between physical and metaphysical science; but really unmeaning?
(5) To this ‘Later Theory’ of Plato’s Ideas I oppose the authority of Professor Zeller, who
affirms that none of the passages to which Dr. Jackson appeals (Theaet.; Phil.; Tim.;
Parm.) ‘in the smallest degree prove his point’; and that in the second class of dialogues,
in which the ‘Later Theory of Ideas’ is supposed to be found, quite as clearly as in the
first, are admitted Ideas, not only of natural objects, but of properties, relations, works
of art, negative notions (Theaet.; Parm.; Soph.); and that what Dr. Jackson distinguishes
as the first class of dialogues from the second equally assert or imply that the relation of
things to the Ideas, is one of participation in them as well as of imitation of them (Prof.
Zeller’s summary of his own review of Dr. Jackson, Archiv fur Geschichte der
Philosophie.)
In conclusion I may remark that in Plato’s writings there is both unity, and also growth
and development; but that we must not intrude upon him either a system or a technical
language.
Balliol College, October, 1891. 
NOTE
The chief additions to the Introductions in the Third Edition consist of Essays on the
following subjects:—
1. Language.
2. The decline of Greek Literature.
3. The ‘Ideas’ of Plato and Modern Philosophy.
4. The myths of Plato.
5. The relation of the Republic, Statesman and Laws.
6. The legend of Atlantis.
7. Psychology.
8. Comparison of the Laws of Plato with Spartan and Athenian Laws and Institutions.





 


The Apology
by
Plato
Translated with an
introduction by
Benjamin Jowett
 
Introduction.
In what relation the Apology of Plato stands to the real defence of Socrates, there are no
means of determining. It certainly agrees in tone and character with the description of
Xenophon, who says in the Memorabilia that Socrates might have been acquitted ‘if in
any moderate degree he would have conciliated the favour of the dicasts;’ and who
informs us in another passage, on the testimony of Hermogenes, the friend of Socrates,
that he had no wish to live; and that the divine sign refused to allow him to prepare a
defence, and also that Socrates himself declared this to be unnecessary, on the ground
that all his life long he had been preparing against that hour. For the speech breathes
throughout a spirit of defiance, (ut non supplex aut reus sed magister aut dominus
videretur esse judicum’ (Cic. de Orat.); and the loose and desultory style is an imitation
of the ‘accustomed manner’ in which Socrates spoke in ‘the agora and among the tables
of the money-changers.’ The allusion in the Crito may, perhaps, be adduced as a further
evidence of the literal accuracy of some parts. But in the main it must be regarded as the
ideal of Socrates, according to Plato’s conception of him, appearing in the greatest and
most public scene of his life, and in the height of his triumph, when he is weakest, and
yet his mastery over mankind is greatest, and his habitual irony acquires a new meaning
and a sort of tragic pathos in the face of death. The facts of his life are summed up, and
the features of his character are brought out as if by accident in the course of the
defence. The conversational manner, the seeming want of arrangement, the ironical
simplicity, are found to result in a perfect work of art, which is the portrait of Socrates.
Yet some of the topics may have been actually used by Socrates; and the recollection of
his very words may have rung in the ears of his disciple. The Apology of Plato may be
compared generally with those speeches of Thucydides in which he has embodied his
conception of the lofty character and policy of the great Pericles, and which at the same
time furnish a commentary on the situation of affairs from the point of view of the
historian. So in the Apology there is an ideal rather than a literal truth; much is said
which was not said, and is only Plato’s view of the situation. Plato was not, like
Xenophon, a chronicler of facts; he does not appear in any of his writings to have aimed
at literal accuracy. He is not therefore to be supplemented from the Memorabilia and
Symposium of Xenophon, who belongs to an entirely different class of writers. The
Apology of Plato is not the report of what Socrates said, but an elaborate composition, 
quite as much so in fact as one of the Dialogues. And we may perhaps even indulge in
the fancy that the actual defence of Socrates was as much greater than the Platonic
defence as the master was greater than the disciple. But in any case, some of the words
used by him must have been remembered, and some of the facts recorded must have
actually occurred. It is significant that Plato is said to have been present at the defence
(Apol.), as he is also said to have been absent at the last scene in the Phaedo. Is it
fanciful to suppose that he meant to give the stamp of authenticity to the one and not to
the other?—especially when we consider that these two passages are the only ones in
which Plato makes mention of himself. The circumstance that Plato was to be one of his
sureties for the payment of the fine which he proposed has the appearance of truth.
More suspicious is the statement that Socrates received the first impulse to his favourite
calling of cross-examining the world from the Oracle of Delphi; for he must already have
been famous before Chaerephon went to consult the Oracle (Riddell), and the story is of
a kind which is very likely to have been invented. On the whole we arrive at the
conclusion that the Apology is true to the character of Socrates, but we cannot show that
any single sentence in it was actually spoken by him. It breathes the spirit of Socrates,
but has been cast anew in the mould of Plato.
There is not much in the other Dialogues which can be compared with the Apology. The
same recollection of his master may have been present to the mind of Plato when
depicting the sufferings of the Just in the Republic. The Crito may also be regarded as a
sort of appendage to the Apology, in which Socrates, who has defied the judges, is
nevertheless represented as scrupulously obedient to the laws. The idealization of the
sufferer is carried still further in the Gorgias, in which the thesis is maintained, that ‘to
suffer is better than to do evil;’ and the art of rhetoric is described as only useful for the
purpose of self-accusation. The parallelisms which occur in the so-called Apology of
Xenophon are not worth noticing, because the writing in which they are contained is
manifestly spurious. The statements of the Memorabilia respecting the trial and death of
Socrates agree generally with Plato; but they have lost the flavour of Socratic irony in the
narrative of Xenophon.
The Apology or Platonic defence of Socrates is divided into three parts: 1st. The defence
properly so called; 2nd. The shorter address in mitigation of the penalty; 3rd. The last
words of prophetic rebuke and exhortation. 
The first part commences with an apology for his colloquial style; he is, as he has always
been, the enemy of rhetoric, and knows of no rhetoric but truth; he will not falsify his
character by making a speech. Then he proceeds to divide his accusers into two classes;
first, there is the nameless accuser—public opinion. All the world from their earliest
years had heard that he was a corrupter of youth, and had seen him caricatured in the
Clouds of Aristophanes. Secondly, there are the professed accusers, who are but the
mouth-piece of the others. The accusations of both might be summed up in a formula.
The first say, ‘Socrates is an evil-doer and a curious person, searching into things under
the earth and above the heaven; and making the worse appear the better cause, and
teaching all this to others.’ The second, ‘Socrates is an evil-doer and corrupter of the
youth, who does not receive the gods whom the state receives, but introduces other new
divinities.’ These last words appear to have been the actual indictment (compare Xen.
Mem.); and the previous formula, which is a summary of public opinion, assumes the
same legal style.
The answer begins by clearing up a confusion. In the representations of the Comic poets,
and in the opinion of the multitude, he had been identified with the teachers of physical
science and with the Sophists. But this was an error. For both of them he professes a
respect in the open court, which contrasts with his manner of speaking about them in
other places. (Compare for Anaxagoras, Phaedo, Laws; for the Sophists, Meno, Republic,
Tim., Theaet., Soph., etc.) But at the same time he shows that he is not one of them. Of
natural philosophy he knows nothing; not that he despises such pursuits, but the fact is
that he is ignorant of them, and never says a word about them. Nor is he paid for giving
instruction—that is another mistaken notion:—he has nothing to teach. But he
commends Evenus for teaching virtue at such a ‘moderate’ rate as five minae. Something
of the ‘accustomed irony,’ which may perhaps be expected to sleep in the ear of the
multitude, is lurking here.
He then goes on to explain the reason why he is in such an evil name. That had arisen
out of a peculiar mission which he had taken upon himself. The enthusiastic
Chaerephon (probably in anticipation of the answer which he received) had gone to
Delphi and asked the oracle if there was any man wiser than Socrates; and the answer
was, that there was no man wiser. What could be the meaning of this—that he who knew
nothing, and knew that he knew nothing, should be declared by the oracle to be the 
wisest of men? Reflecting upon the answer, he determined to refute it by finding ‘a
wiser;’ and first he went to the politicians, and then to the poets, and then to the
craftsmen, but always with the same result—he found that they knew nothing, or hardly
anything more than himself; and that the little advantage which in some cases they
possessed was more than counter-balanced by their conceit of knowledge. He knew
nothing, and knew that he knew nothing: they knew little or nothing, and imagined that
they knew all things. Thus he had passed his life as a sort of missionary in detecting the
pretended wisdom of mankind; and this occupation had quite absorbed him and taken
him away both from public and private affairs. Young men of the richer sort had made a
pastime of the same pursuit, ‘which was not unamusing.’ And hence bitter enmities had
arisen; the professors of knowledge had revenged themselves by calling him a villainous
corrupter of youth, and by repeating the commonplaces about atheism and materialism
and sophistry, which are the stock-accusations against all philosophers when there is
nothing else to be said of them.
The second accusation he meets by interrogating Meletus, who is present and can be
interrogated. ‘If he is the corrupter, who is the improver of the citizens?’ (Compare
Meno.) ‘All men everywhere.’ But how absurd, how contrary to analogy is this! How
inconceivable too, that he should make the citizens worse when he has to live with them.
This surely cannot be intentional; and if unintentional, he ought to have been instructed
by Meletus, and not accused in the court.
But there is another part of the indictment which says that he teaches men not to receive
the gods whom the city receives, and has other new gods. ‘Is that the way in which he is
supposed to corrupt the youth?’ ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘Has he only new gods, or none at all?’ ‘None
at all.’ ‘What, not even the sun and moon?’ ‘No; why, he says that the sun is a stone, and
the moon earth.’ That, replies Socrates, is the old confusion about Anaxagoras; the
Athenian people are not so ignorant as to attribute to the influence of Socrates notions
which have found their way into the drama, and may be learned at the theatre. Socrates
undertakes to show that Meletus (rather unjustifiably) has been compounding a riddle
in this part of the indictment: ‘There are no gods, but Socrates believes in the existence
of the sons of gods, which is absurd.’
Leaving Meletus, who has had enough words spent upon him, he returns to the original
accusation. The question may be asked, Why will he persist in following a profession 
which leads him to death? Why?—because he must remain at his post where the god has
placed him, as he remained at Potidaea, and Amphipolis, and Delium, where the
generals placed him. Besides, he is not so overwise as to imagine that he knows whether
death is a good or an evil; and he is certain that desertion of his duty is an evil. Anytus is
quite right in saying that they should never have indicted him if they meant to let him
go. For he will certainly obey God rather than man; and will continue to preach to all
men of all ages the necessity of virtue and improvement; and if they refuse to listen to
him he will still persevere and reprove them. This is his way of corrupting the youth,
which he will not cease to follow in obedience to the god, even if a thousand deaths
await him.
He is desirous that they should let him live—not for his own sake, but for theirs; because
he is their heaven-sent friend (and they will never have such another), or, as he may be
ludicrously described, he is the gadfly who stirs the generous steed into motion. Why
then has he never taken part in public affairs? Because the familiar divine voice has
hindered him; if he had been a public man, and had fought for the right, as he would
certainly have fought against the many, he would not have lived, and could therefore
have done no good. Twice in public matters he has risked his life for the sake of justice—
once at the trial of the generals; and again in resistance to the tyrannical commands of
the Thirty.
But, though not a public man, he has passed his days in instructing the citizens without
fee or reward—this was his mission. Whether his disciples have turned out well or ill, he
cannot justly be charged with the result, for he never promised to teach them anything.
They might come if they liked, and they might stay away if they liked: and they did
come, because they found an amusement in hearing the pretenders to wisdom detected.
If they have been corrupted, their elder relatives (if not themselves) might surely come
into court and witness against him, and there is an opportunity still for them to appear.
But their fathers and brothers all appear in court (including ‘this’ Plato), to witness on
his behalf; and if their relatives are corrupted, at least they are uncorrupted; ‘and they
are my witnesses. For they know that I am speaking the truth, and that Meletus is lying.’
This is about all that he has to say. He will not entreat the judges to spare his life;
neither will he present a spectacle of weeping children, although he, too, is not made of
‘rock or oak.’ Some of the judges themselves may have complied with this practice on 
similar occasions, and he trusts that they will not be angry with him for not following
their example. But he feels that such conduct brings discredit on the name of Athens: he
feels too, that the judge has sworn not to give away justice; and he cannot be guilty of
the impiety of asking the judge to break his oath, when he is himself being tried for
impiety.
As he expected, and probably intended, he is convicted. And now the tone of the speech,
instead of being more conciliatory, becomes more lofty and commanding. Anytus
proposes death as the penalty: and what counter-proposition shall he make? He, the
benefactor of the Athenian people, whose whole life has been spent in doing them good,
should at least have the Olympic victor’s reward of maintenance in the Prytaneum. Or
why should he propose any counter-penalty when he does not know whether death,
which Anytus proposes, is a good or an evil? And he is certain that imprisonment is an
evil, exile is an evil. Loss of money might be an evil, but then he has none to give;
perhaps he can make up a mina. Let that be the penalty, or, if his friends wish, thirty
minae; for which they will be excellent securities.
(He is condemned to death.)
He is an old man already, and the Athenians will gain nothing but disgrace by depriving
him of a few years of life. Perhaps he could have escaped, if he had chosen to throw
down his arms and entreat for his life. But he does not at all repent of the manner of his
defence; he would rather die in his own fashion than live in theirs. For the penalty of
unrighteousness is swifter than death; that penalty has already overtaken his accusers as
death will soon overtake him.
And now, as one who is about to die, he will prophesy to them. They have put him to
death in order to escape the necessity of giving an account of their lives. But his death
‘will be the seed’ of many disciples who will convince them of their evil ways, and will
come forth to reprove them in harsher terms, because they are younger and more
inconsiderate.
He would like to say a few words, while there is time, to those who would have acquitted
him. He wishes them to know that the divine sign never interrupted him in the course of
his defence; the reason of which, as he conjectures, is that the death to which he is going 
is a good and not an evil. For either death is a long sleep, the best of sleeps, or a journey
to another world in which the souls of the dead are gathered together, and in which
there may be a hope of seeing the heroes of old—in which, too, there are just judges; and
as all are immortal, there can be no fear of any one suffering death for his opinions.
Nothing evil can happen to the good man either in life or death, and his own death has
been permitted by the gods, because it was better for him to depart; and therefore he
forgives his judges because they have done him no harm, although they never meant to
do him any good.
He has a last request to make to them—that they will trouble his sons as he has troubled
them, if they appear to prefer riches to virtue, or to think themselves something when
they are nothing.
...
‘Few persons will be found to wish that Socrates should have defended himself
otherwise,’—if, as we must add, his defence was that with which Plato has provided him.
But leaving this question, which does not admit of a precise solution, we may go on to
ask what was the impression which Plato in the Apology intended to give of the
character and conduct of his master in the last great scene? Did he intend to represent
him (1) as employing sophistries; (2) as designedly irritating the judges? Or are these
sophistries to be regarded as belonging to the age in which he lived and to his personal
character, and this apparent haughtiness as flowing from the natural elevation of his
position?
For example, when he says that it is absurd to suppose that one man is the corrupter
and all the rest of the world the improvers of the youth; or, when he argues that he never
could have corrupted the men with whom he had to live; or, when he proves his belief in
the gods because he believes in the sons of gods, is he serious or jesting? It may be
observed that these sophisms all occur in his cross-examination of Meletus, who is easily
foiled and mastered in the hands of the great dialectician. Perhaps he regarded these
answers as good enough for his accuser, of whom he makes very light. Also there is a
touch of irony in them, which takes them out of the category of sophistry. (Compare
Euthyph.) 
That the manner in which he defends himself about the lives of his disciples is not
satisfactory, can hardly be denied. Fresh in the memory of the Athenians, and detestable
as they deserved to be to the newly restored democracy, were the names of Alcibiades,
Critias, Charmides. It is obviously not a sufficient answer that Socrates had never
professed to teach them anything, and is therefore not justly chargeable with their
crimes. Yet the defence, when taken out of this ironical form, is doubtless sound: that
his teaching had nothing to do with their evil lives. Here, then, the sophistry is rather in
form than in substance, though we might desire that to such a serious charge Socrates
had given a more serious answer.
Truly characteristic of Socrates is another point in his answer, which may also be
regarded as sophistical. He says that ‘if he has corrupted the youth, he must have
corrupted them involuntarily.’ But if, as Socrates argues, all evil is involuntary, then all
criminals ought to be admonished and not punished. In these words the Socratic
doctrine of the involuntariness of evil is clearly intended to be conveyed. Here again, as
in the former instance, the defence of Socrates is untrue practically, but may be true in
some ideal or transcendental sense. The commonplace reply, that if he had been guilty
of corrupting the youth their relations would surely have witnessed against him, with
which he concludes this part of his defence, is more satisfactory.
Again, when Socrates argues that he must believe in the gods because he believes in the
sons of gods, we must remember that this is a refutation not of the original indictment,
which is consistent enough—‘Socrates does not receive the gods whom the city receives,
and has other new divinities’ —but of the interpretation put upon the words by Meletus,
who has affirmed that he is a downright atheist. To this Socrates fairly answers, in
accordance with the ideas of the time, that a downright atheist cannot believe in the
sons of gods or in divine things. The notion that demons or lesser divinities are the sons
of gods is not to be regarded as ironical or sceptical. He is arguing ‘ad hominem’
according to the notions of mythology current in his age. Yet he abstains from saying
that he believed in the gods whom the State approved. He does not defend himself, as
Xenophon has defended him, by appealing to his practice of religion. Probably he
neither wholly believed, nor disbelieved, in the existence of the popular gods; he had no
means of knowing about them. According to Plato (compare Phaedo; Symp.), as well as
Xenophon (Memor.), he was punctual in the performance of the least religious duties; 
and he must have believed in his own oracular sign, of which he seemed to have an
internal witness. But the existence of Apollo or Zeus, or the other gods whom the State
approves, would have appeared to him both uncertain and unimportant in comparison
of the duty of self-examination, and of those principles of truth and right which he
deemed to be the foundation of religion. (Compare Phaedr.; Euthyph.; Republic.)
The second question, whether Plato meant to represent Socrates as braving or irritating
his judges, must also be answered in the negative. His irony, his superiority, his
audacity, ‘regarding not the person of man,’ necessarily flow out of the loftiness of his
situation. He is not acting a part upon a great occasion, but he is what he has been all his
life long, ‘a king of men.’ He would rather not appear insolent, if he could avoid it (ouch
os authadizomenos touto lego). Neither is he desirous of hastening his own end, for life
and death are simply indifferent to him. But such a defence as would be acceptable to
his judges and might procure an acquittal, it is not in his nature to make. He will not say
or do anything that might pervert the course of justice; he cannot have his tongue bound
even ‘in the throat of death.’ With his accusers he will only fence and play, as he had
fenced with other ‘improvers of youth,’ answering the Sophist according to his sophistry
all his life long. He is serious when he is speaking of his own mission, which seems to
distinguish him from all other reformers of mankind, and originates in an accident. The
dedication of himself to the improvement of his fellow-citizens is not so remarkable as
the ironical spirit in which he goes about doing good only in vindication of the credit of
the oracle, and in the vain hope of finding a wiser man than himself. Yet this singular
and almost accidental character of his mission agrees with the divine sign which,
according to our notions, is equally accidental and irrational, and is nevertheless
accepted by him as the guiding principle of his life. Socrates is nowhere represented to
us as a freethinker or sceptic. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity when he
speculates on the possibility of seeing and knowing the heroes of the Trojan war in
another world. On the other hand, his hope of immortality is uncertain;—he also
conceives of death as a long sleep (in this respect differing from the Phaedo), and at last
falls back on resignation to the divine will, and the certainty that no evil can happen to
the good man either in life or death. His absolute truthfulness seems to hinder him from
asserting positively more than this; and he makes no attempt to veil his ignorance in
mythology and figures of speech. The gentleness of the first part of the speech contrasts
with the aggravated, almost threatening, tone of the conclusion. He characteristically 
remarks that he will not speak as a rhetorician, that is to say, he will not make a regular
defence such as Lysias or one of the orators might have composed for him, or, according
to some accounts, did compose for him. But he first procures himself a hearing by
conciliatory words. He does not attack the Sophists; for they were open to the same
charges as himself; they were equally ridiculed by the Comic poets, and almost equally
hateful to Anytus and Meletus. Yet incidentally the antagonism between Socrates and
the Sophists is allowed to appear. He is poor and they are rich; his profession that he
teaches nothing is opposed to their readiness to teach all things; his talking in the
marketplace to their private instructions; his tarry-at-home life to their wandering from
city to city. The tone which he assumes towards them is one of real friendliness, but also
of concealed irony. Towards Anaxagoras, who had disappointed him in his hopes of
learning about mind and nature, he shows a less kindly feeling, which is also the feeling
of Plato in other passages (Laws). But Anaxagoras had been dead thirty years, and was
beyond the reach of persecution.
It has been remarked that the prophecy of a new generation of teachers who would
rebuke and exhort the Athenian people in harsher and more violent terms was, as far as
we know, never fulfilled. No inference can be drawn from this circumstance as to the
probability of the words attributed to him having been actually uttered. They express the
aspiration of the first martyr of philosophy, that he would leave behind him many
followers, accompanied by the not unnatural feeling that they would be fiercer and more
inconsiderate in their words when emancipated from his control.
The above remarks must be understood as applying with any degree of certainty to the
Platonic Socrates only. For, although these or similar words may have been spoken by
Socrates himself, we cannot exclude the possibility, that like so much else, e.g. the
wisdom of Critias, the poem of Solon, the virtues of Charmides, they may have been due
only to the imagination of Plato. The arguments of those who maintain that the Apology
was composed during the process, resting on no evidence, do not require a serious
refutation. Nor are the reasonings of Schleiermacher, who argues that the Platonic
defence is an exact or nearly exact reproduction of the words of Socrates, partly because
Plato would not have been guilty of the impiety of altering them, and also because many
points of the defence might have been improved and strengthened, at all more
conclusive. (See English Translation.) What effect the death of Socrates produced on the 
mind of Plato, we cannot certainly determine; nor can we say how he would or must
have written under the circumstances. We observe that the enmity of Aristophanes to
Socrates does not prevent Plato from introducing them together in the Symposium
engaged in friendly intercourse. Nor is there any trace in the Dialogues of an attempt to
make Anytus or Meletus personally odious in the eyes of the Athenian public. 
THE APOLOGY
How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that
they almost made me forget who I was—so persuasively did they speak; and yet they
have hardly uttered a word of truth. But of the many falsehoods told by them, there was
one which quite amazed me;—I mean when they said that you should be upon your
guard and not allow yourselves to be deceived by the force of my eloquence. To say this,
when they were certain to be detected as soon as I opened my lips and proved myself to
be anything but a great speaker, did indeed appear to me most shameless—unless by the
force of eloquence they mean the force of truth; for is such is their meaning, I admit that
I am eloquent. But in how different a way from theirs! Well, as I was saying, they have
scarcely spoken the truth at all; but from me you shall hear the whole truth: not,
however, delivered after their manner in a set oration duly ornamented with words and
phrases. No, by heaven! but I shall use the words and arguments which occur to me at
the moment; for I am confident in the justice of my cause (Or, I am certain that I am
right in taking this course.): at my time of life I ought not to be appearing before you, O
men of Athens, in the character of a juvenile orator—let no one expect it of me. And I
must beg of you to grant me a favour:—If I defend myself in my accustomed manner,
and you hear me using the words which I have been in the habit of using in the agora, at
the tables of the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be surprised,
and not to interrupt me on this account. For I am more than seventy years of age, and
appearing now for the first time in a court of law, I am quite a stranger to the language
of the place; and therefore I would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger,
whom you would excuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his
country:—Am I making an unfair request of you? Never mind the manner, which may or
may not be good; but think only of the truth of my words, and give heed to that: let the
speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.
And first, I have to reply to the older charges and to my first accusers, and then I will go
on to the later ones. For of old I have had many accusers, who have accused me falsely to
you during many years; and I am more afraid of them than of Anytus and his associates, 
who are dangerous, too, in their own way. But far more dangerous are the others, who
began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods,
telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and
searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause. The
disseminators of this tale are the accusers whom I dread; for their hearers are apt to
fancy that such enquirers do not believe in the existence of the gods. And they are many,
and their charges against me are of ancient date, and they were made by them in the
days when you were more impressible than you are now—in childhood, or it may have
been in youth—and the cause when heard went by default, for there was none to answer.
And hardest of all, I do not know and cannot tell the names of my accusers; unless in the
chance case of a Comic poet. All who from envy and malice have persuaded you—some
of them having first convinced themselves—all this class of men are most difficult to
deal with; for I cannot have them up here, and cross-examine them, and therefore I
must simply fight with shadows in my own defence, and argue when there is no one who
answers. I will ask you then to assume with me, as I was saying, that my opponents are
of two kinds; one recent, the other ancient: and I hope that you will see the propriety of
my answering the latter first, for these accusations you heard long before the others, and
much oftener.
Well, then, I must make my defence, and endeavour to clear away in a short time, a
slander which has lasted a long time. May I succeed, if to succeed be for my good and
yours, or likely to avail me in my cause! The task is not an easy one; I quite understand
the nature of it. And so leaving the event with God, in obedience to the law I will now
make my defence.
I will begin at the beginning, and ask what is the accusation which has given rise to the
slander of me, and in fact has encouraged Meletus to proof this charge against me. Well,
what do the slanderers say? They shall be my prosecutors, and I will sum up their words
in an affidavit: ‘Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things
under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause; and he
teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others.’ Such is the nature of the accusation: it is just
what you have yourselves seen in the comedy of Aristophanes (Aristoph., Clouds.), who
has introduced a man whom he calls Socrates, going about and saying that he walks in
air, and talking a deal of nonsense concerning matters of which I do not pretend to know 
either much or little—not that I mean to speak disparagingly of any one who is a student
of natural philosophy. I should be very sorry if Meletus could bring so grave a charge
against me. But the simple truth is, O Athenians, that I have nothing to do with physical
speculations. Very many of those here present are witnesses to the truth of this, and to
them I appeal. Speak then, you who have heard me, and tell your neighbours whether
any of you have ever known me hold forth in few words or in many upon such
matters...You hear their answer. And from what they say of this part of the charge you
will be able to judge of the truth of the rest.
As little foundation is there for the report that I am a teacher, and take money; this
accusation has no more truth in it than the other. Although, if a man were really able to
instruct mankind, to receive money for giving instruction would, in my opinion, be an
honour to him. There is Gorgias of Leontium, and Prodicus of Ceos, and Hippias of Elis,
who go the round of the cities, and are able to persuade the young men to leave their
own citizens by whom they might be taught for nothing, and come to them whom they
not only pay, but are thankful if they may be allowed to pay them. There is at this time a
Parian philosopher residing in Athens, of whom I have heard; and I came to hear of him
in this way:—I came across a man who has spent a world of money on the Sophists,
Callias, the son of Hipponicus, and knowing that he had sons, I asked him: ‘Callias,’ I
said, ‘if your two sons were foals or calves, there would be no difficulty in finding some
one to put over them; we should hire a trainer of horses, or a farmer probably, who
would improve and perfect them in their own proper virtue and excellence; but as they
are human beings, whom are you thinking of placing over them? Is there any one who
understands human and political virtue? You must have thought about the matter, for
you have sons; is there any one?’ ‘There is,’ he said. ‘Who is he?’ said I; ‘and of what
country? and what does he charge?’ ‘Evenus the Parian,’ he replied; ‘he is the man, and
his charge is five minae.’ Happy is Evenus, I said to myself, if he really has this wisdom,
and teaches at such a moderate charge. Had I the same, I should have been very proud
and conceited; but the truth is that I have no knowledge of the kind.
I dare say, Athenians, that some one among you will reply, ‘Yes, Socrates, but what is the
origin of these accusations which are brought against you; there must have been
something strange which you have been doing? All these rumours and this talk about
you would never have arisen if you had been like other men: tell us, then, what is the 
cause of them, for we should be sorry to judge hastily of you.’ Now I regard this as a fair
challenge, and I will endeavour to explain to you the reason why I am called wise and
have such an evil fame. Please to attend then. And although some of you may think that
I am joking, I declare that I will tell you the entire truth. Men of Athens, this reputation
of mine has come of a certain sort of wisdom which I possess. If you ask me what kind of
wisdom, I reply, wisdom such as may perhaps be attained by man, for to that extent I
am inclined to believe that I am wise; whereas the persons of whom I was speaking have
a superhuman wisdom which I may fail to describe, because I have it not myself; and he
who says that I have, speaks falsely, and is taking away my character. And here, O men
of Athens, I must beg you not to interrupt me, even if I seem to say something
extravagant. For the word which I will speak is not mine. I will refer you to a witness
who is worthy of credit; that witness shall be the God of Delphi—he will tell you about
my wisdom, if I have any, and of what sort it is. You must have known Chaerephon; he
was early a friend of mine, and also a friend of yours, for he shared in the recent exile of
the people, and returned with you. Well, Chaerephon, as you know, was very impetuous
in all his doings, and he went to Delphi and boldly asked the oracle to tell him whether—
as I was saying, I must beg you not to interrupt—he asked the oracle to tell him whether
anyone was wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess answered, that there was no
man wiser. Chaerephon is dead himself; but his brother, who is in court, will confirm
the truth of what I am saying.
Why do I mention this? Because I am going to explain to you why I have such an evil
name. When I heard the answer, I said to myself, What can the god mean? and what is
the interpretation of his riddle? for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What
then can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of men? And yet he is a god, and
cannot lie; that would be against his nature. After long consideration, I thought of a
method of trying the question. I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than
myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in my hand. I should say to him,
‘Here is a man who is wiser than I am; but you said that I was the wisest.’ Accordingly I
went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed him—his name I need not
mention; he was a politician whom I selected for examination—and the result was as
follows: When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really
wise, although he was thought wise by many, and still wiser by himself; and thereupon I
tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the 
consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were
present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I
do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better
off than he is,— for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor
think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of
him. Then I went to another who had still higher pretensions to wisdom, and my
conclusion was exactly the same. Whereupon I made another enemy of him, and of
many others besides him.
Then I went to one man after another, being not unconscious of the enmity which I
provoked, and I lamented and feared this: but necessity was laid upon me,—the word of
God, I thought, ought to be considered first. And I said to myself, Go I must to all who
appear to know, and find out the meaning of the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians,
by the dog I swear! —for I must tell you the truth—the result of my mission was just this:
I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that others less
esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of
the ‘Herculean’ labours, as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the
oracle irrefutable. After the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all
sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be instantly detected; now you will find out
that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most
elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of them—
thinking that they would teach me something. Will you believe me? I am almost
ashamed to confess the truth, but I must say that there is hardly a person present who
would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. Then I knew
that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they
are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand
the meaning of them. The poets appeared to me to be much in the same case; and I
further observed that upon the strength of their poetry they believed themselves to be
the wisest of men in other things in which they were not wise. So I departed, conceiving
myself to be superior to them for the same reason that I was superior to the politicians.
At last I went to the artisans. I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say,
and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and here I was not mistaken, for they
did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser 
than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the
poets;—because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of
high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom; and therefore I asked
myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their
knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself and to
the oracle that I was better off as I was.
This inquisition has led to my having many enemies of the worst and most dangerous
kind, and has given occasion also to many calumnies. And I am called wise, for my
hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others:
but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to
show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates,
he is only using my name by way of illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest,
who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing. And so I go about
the world, obedient to the god, and search and make enquiry into the wisdom of any
one, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise; and if he is not wise, then in
vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and my occupation quite
absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any
concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god.
There is another thing:—young men of the richer classes, who have not much to do,
come about me of their own accord; they like to hear the pretenders examined, and they
often imitate me, and proceed to examine others; there are plenty of persons, as they
quickly discover, who think that they know something, but really know little or nothing;
and then those who are examined by them instead of being angry with themselves are
angry with me: This confounded Socrates, they say; this villainous misleader of youth!—
and then if somebody asks them, Why, what evil does he practise or teach? they do not
know, and cannot tell; but in order that they may not appear to be at a loss, they repeat
the ready-made charges which are used against all philosophers about teaching things
up in the clouds and under the earth, and having no gods, and making the worse appear
the better cause; for they do not like to confess that their pretence of knowledge has
been detected— which is the truth; and as they are numerous and ambitious and
energetic, and are drawn up in battle array and have persuasive tongues, they have filled
your ears with their loud and inveterate calumnies. And this is the reason why my three 
accusers, Meletus and Anytus and Lycon, have set upon me; Meletus, who has a quarrel
with me on behalf of the poets; Anytus, on behalf of the craftsmen and politicians;
Lycon, on behalf of the rhetoricians: and as I said at the beginning, I cannot expect to
get rid of such a mass of calumny all in a moment. And this, O men of Athens, is the
truth and the whole truth; I have concealed nothing, I have dissembled nothing. And
yet, I know that my plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred
but a proof that I am speaking the truth?—Hence has arisen the prejudice against me;
and this is the reason of it, as you will find out either in this or in any future enquiry.
I have said enough in my defence against the first class of my accusers; I turn to the
second class. They are headed by Meletus, that good man and true lover of his country,
as he calls himself. Against these, too, I must try to make a defence:—Let their affidavit
be read: it contains something of this kind: It says that Socrates is a doer of evil, who
corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in the gods of the state, but has other new
divinities of his own. Such is the charge; and now let us examine the particular counts.
He says that I am a doer of evil, and corrupt the youth; but I say, O men of Athens, that
Meletus is a doer of evil, in that he pretends to be in earnest when he is only in jest, and
is so eager to bring men to trial from a pretended zeal and interest about matters in
which he really never had the smallest interest. And the truth of this I will endeavour to
prove to you.
Come hither, Meletus, and let me ask a question of you. You think a great deal about the
improvement of youth?
Yes, I do.
Tell the judges, then, who is their improver; for you must know, as you have taken the
pains to discover their corrupter, and are citing and accusing me before them. Speak,
then, and tell the judges who their improver is.—Observe, Meletus, that you are silent,
and have nothing to say. But is not this rather disgraceful, and a very considerable proof
of what I was saying, that you have no interest in the matter? Speak up, friend, and tell
us who their improver is.
The laws. 
But that, my good sir, is not my meaning. I want to know who the person is, who, in the
first place, knows the laws.
The judges, Socrates, who are present in court.
What, do you mean to say, Meletus, that they are able to instruct and improve youth?
Certainly they are.
What, all of them, or some only and not others?
All of them.
By the goddess Here, that is good news! There are plenty of improvers, then. And what
do you say of the audience,—do they improve them?
Yes, they do.
And the senators?
Yes, the senators improve them.
But perhaps the members of the assembly corrupt them?—or do they too improve them?
They improve them.
Then every Athenian improves and elevates them; all with the exception of myself; and I
alone am their corrupter? Is that what you affirm?
That is what I stoutly affirm.
I am very unfortunate if you are right. But suppose I ask you a question: How about
horses? Does one man do them harm and all the world good? Is not the exact opposite
the truth? One man is able to do them good, or at least not many;—the trainer of horses,
that is to say, does them good, and others who have to do with them rather injure them?
Is not that true, Meletus, of horses, or of any other animals? Most assuredly it is;
whether you and Anytus say yes or no. Happy indeed would be the condition of youth if 
they had one corrupter only, and all the rest of the world were their improvers. But you,
Meletus, have sufficiently shown that you never had a thought about the young: your
carelessness is seen in your not caring about the very things which you bring against me.
And now, Meletus, I will ask you another question—by Zeus I will: Which is better, to
live among bad citizens, or among good ones? Answer, friend, I say; the question is one
which may be easily answered. Do not the good do their neighbours good, and the bad
do them evil?
Certainly.
And is there anyone who would rather be injured than benefited by those who live with
him? Answer, my good friend, the law requires you to answer— does any one like to be
injured?
Certainly not.
And when you accuse me of corrupting and deteriorating the youth, do you allege that I
corrupt them intentionally or unintentionally?
Intentionally, I say.
But you have just admitted that the good do their neighbours good, and the evil do them
evil. Now, is that a truth which your superior wisdom has recognized thus early in life,
and am I, at my age, in such darkness and ignorance as not to know that if a man with
whom I have to live is corrupted by me, I am very likely to be harmed by him; and yet I
corrupt him, and intentionally, too—so you say, although neither I nor any other human
being is ever likely to be convinced by you. But either I do not corrupt them, or I corrupt
them unintentionally; and on either view of the case you lie. If my offence is
unintentional, the law has no cognizance of unintentional offences: you ought to have
taken me privately, and warned and admonished me; for if I had been better advised, I
should have left off doing what I only did unintentionally—no doubt I should; but you
would have nothing to say to me and refused to teach me. And now you bring me up in
this court, which is a place not of instruction, but of punishment. 
It will be very clear to you, Athenians, as I was saying, that Meletus has no care at all,
great or small, about the matter. But still I should like to know, Meletus, in what I am
affirmed to corrupt the young. I suppose you mean, as I infer from your indictment, that
I teach them not to acknowledge the gods which the state acknowledges, but some other
new divinities or spiritual agencies in their stead. These are the lessons by which I
corrupt the youth, as you say.
Yes, that I say emphatically.
Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we are speaking, tell me and the court, in
somewhat plainer terms, what you mean! for I do not as yet understand whether you
affirm that I teach other men to acknowledge some gods, and therefore that I do believe
in gods, and am not an entire atheist—this you do not lay to my charge,—but only you
say that they are not the same gods which the city recognizes—the charge is that they are
different gods. Or, do you mean that I am an atheist simply, and a teacher of atheism?
I mean the latter—that you are a complete atheist.
What an extraordinary statement! Why do you think so, Meletus? Do you mean that I do
not believe in the godhead of the sun or moon, like other men?
I assure you, judges, that he does not: for he says that the sun is stone, and the moon
earth.
Friend Meletus, you think that you are accusing Anaxagoras: and you have but a bad
opinion of the judges, if you fancy them illiterate to such a degree as not to know that
these doctrines are found in the books of Anaxagoras the Clazomenian, which are full of
them. And so, forsooth, the youth are said to be taught them by Socrates, when there are
not unfrequently exhibitions of them at the theatre (Probably in allusion to
Aristophanes who caricatured, and to Euripides who borrowed the notions of
Anaxagoras, as well as to other dramatic poets.) (price of admission one drachma at the
most); and they might pay their money, and laugh at Socrates if he pretends to father
these extraordinary views. And so, Meletus, you really think that I do not believe in any
god?
I swear by Zeus that you believe absolutely in none at all. 
Nobody will believe you, Meletus, and I am pretty sure that you do not believe yourself. I
cannot help thinking, men of Athens, that Meletus is reckless and impudent, and that he
has written this indictment in a spirit of mere wantonness and youthful bravado. Has he
not compounded a riddle, thinking to try me? He said to himself:—I shall see whether
the wise Socrates will discover my facetious contradiction, or whether I shall be able to
deceive him and the rest of them. For he certainly does appear to me to contradict
himself in the indictment as much as if he said that Socrates is guilty of not believing in
the gods, and yet of believing in them—but this is not like a person who is in earnest.
I should like you, O men of Athens, to join me in examining what I conceive to be his
inconsistency; and do you, Meletus, answer. And I must remind the audience of my
request that they would not make a disturbance if I speak in my accustomed manner:
Did ever man, Meletus, believe in the existence of human things, and not of human
beings?...I wish, men of Athens, that he would answer, and not be always trying to get
up an interruption. Did ever any man believe in horsemanship, and not in horses? or in
flute-playing, and not in flute-players? No, my friend; I will answer to you and to the
court, as you refuse to answer for yourself. There is no man who ever did. But now
please to answer the next question: Can a man believe in spiritual and divine agencies,
and not in spirits or demigods?
He cannot.
How lucky I am to have extracted that answer, by the assistance of the court! But then
you swear in the indictment that I teach and believe in divine or spiritual agencies (new
or old, no matter for that); at any rate, I believe in spiritual agencies,—so you say and
swear in the affidavit; and yet if I believe in divine beings, how can I help believing in
spirits or demigods;—must I not? To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that
your silence gives consent. Now what are spirits or demigods? Are they not either gods
or the sons of gods?
Certainly they are.
But this is what I call the facetious riddle invented by you: the demigods or spirits are
gods, and you say first that I do not believe in gods, and then again that I do believe in 
gods; that is, if I believe in demigods. For if the demigods are the illegitimate sons of
gods, whether by the nymphs or by any other mothers, of whom they are said to be the
sons—what human being will ever believe that there are no gods if they are the sons of
gods? You might as well affirm the existence of mules, and deny that of horses and
asses. Such nonsense, Meletus, could only have been intended by you to make trial of
me. You have put this into the indictment because you had nothing real of which to
accuse me. But no one who has a particle of understanding will ever be convinced by you
that the same men can believe in divine and superhuman things, and yet not believe that
there are gods and demigods and heroes.
I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus: any elaborate defence is
unnecessary, but I know only too well how many are the enmities which I have incurred,
and this is what will be my destruction if I am destroyed;—not Meletus, nor yet Anytus,
but the envy and detraction of the world, which has been the death of many good men,
and will probably be the death of many more; there is no danger of my being the last of
them.
Some one will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely
to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a
man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he
ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong—acting the
part of a good man or of a bad. Whereas, upon your view, the heroes who fell at Troy
were not good for much, and the son of Thetis above all, who altogether despised danger
in comparison with disgrace; and when he was so eager to slay Hector, his goddess
mother said to him, that if he avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he
would die himself—‘Fate,’ she said, in these or the like words, ‘waits for you next after
Hector;’ he, receiving this warning, utterly despised danger and death, and instead of
fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonour, and not to avenge his friend. ‘Let me die
forthwith,’ he replies, ‘and be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the
beaked ships, a laughing-stock and a burden of the earth.’ Had Achilles any thought of
death and danger? For wherever a man’s place is, whether the place which he has
chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain
in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything but of disgrace. And
this, O men of Athens, is a true saying. 
Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered
by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and
Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing death—if now,
when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philosopher’s mission of
searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or
any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for
denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death,
fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For the fear of death is indeed the
pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing the unknown;
and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest
evil, may not be the greatest good. Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the
ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows what he does not know? And in this
respect only I believe myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim to be
wiser than they are:—that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose
that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or
man, is evil and dishonourable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than
a certain evil. And therefore if you let me go now, and are not convinced by Anytus, who
said that since I had been prosecuted I must be put to death; (or if not that I ought never
to have been prosecuted at all); and that if I escape now, your sons will all be utterly
ruined by listening to my words—if you say to me, Socrates, this time we will not mind
Anytus, and you shall be let off, but upon one condition, that you are not to enquire and
speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing so again you shall die;—
if this was the condition on which you let me go, I should reply: Men of Athens, I honour
and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I
shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom
I meet and saying to him after my manner: You, my friend,—a citizen of the great and
mighty and wise city of Athens,—are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest
amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and
truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?
And if the person with whom I am arguing, says: Yes, but I do care; then I do not leave
him or let him go at once; but I proceed to interrogate and examine and cross-examine
him, and if I think that he has no virtue in him, but only says that he has, I reproach him
with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less. And I shall repeat the same
words to every one whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the 
citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For know that this is the command of God;
and I believe that no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the
God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take
thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the
greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that
from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is
my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous
person. But if any one says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth.
Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and
either acquit me or not; but whichever you do, understand that I shall never alter my
ways, not even if I have to die many times.
Men of Athens, do not interrupt, but hear me; there was an understanding between us
that you should hear me to the end: I have something more to say, at which you may be
inclined to cry out; but I believe that to hear me will be good for you, and therefore I beg
that you will not cry out. I would have you know, that if you kill such an one as I am, you
will injure yourselves more than you will injure me. Nothing will injure me, not Meletus
nor yet Anytus—they cannot, for a bad man is not permitted to injure a better than
himself. I do not deny that Anytus may, perhaps, kill him, or drive him into exile, or
deprive him of civil rights; and he may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is
inflicting a great injury upon him: but there I do not agree. For the evil of doing as he is
doing—the evil of unjustly taking away the life of another—is greater far.
And now, Athenians, I am not going to argue for my own sake, as you may think, but for
yours, that you may not sin against the God by condemning me, who am his gift to you.
For if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to me, who, if I may use such a
ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is
a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires
to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day
long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and
reproaching you. You will not easily find another like me, and therefore I would advise
you to spare me. I dare say that you may feel out of temper (like a person who is
suddenly awakened from sleep), and you think that you might easily strike me dead as
Anytus advises, and then you would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless God 
in his care of you sent you another gadfly. When I say that I am given to you by God, the
proof of my mission is this:—if I had been like other men, I should not have neglected all
my own concerns or patiently seen the neglect of them during all these years, and have
been doing yours, coming to you individually like a father or elder brother, exhorting
you to regard virtue; such conduct, I say, would be unlike human nature. If I had gained
anything, or if my exhortations had been paid, there would have been some sense in my
doing so; but now, as you will perceive, not even the impudence of my accusers dares to
say that I have ever exacted or sought pay of any one; of that they have no witness. And I
have a sufficient witness to the truth of what I say—my poverty.
Some one may wonder why I go about in private giving advice and busying myself with
the concerns of others, but do not venture to come forward in public and advise the
state. I will tell you why. You have heard me speak at sundry times and in divers places
of an oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the
indictment. This sign, which is a kind of voice, first began to come to me when I was a
child; it always forbids but never commands me to do anything which I am going to do.
This is what deters me from being a politician. And rightly, as I think. For I am certain,
O men of Athens, that if I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago, and
done no good either to you or to myself. And do not be offended at my telling you the
truth: for the truth is, that no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude,
honestly striving against the many lawless and unrighteous deeds which are done in a
state, will save his life; he who will fight for the right, if he would live even for a brief
space, must have a private station and not a public one.
I can give you convincing evidence of what I say, not words only, but what you value far
more—actions. Let me relate to you a passage of my own life which will prove to you that
I should never have yielded to injustice from any fear of death, and that ‘as I should have
refused to yield’ I must have died at once. I will tell you a tale of the courts, not very
interesting perhaps, but nevertheless true. The only office of state which I ever held, O
men of Athens, was that of senator: the tribe Antiochis, which is my tribe, had the
presidency at the trial of the generals who had not taken up the bodies of the slain after
the battle of Arginusae; and you proposed to try them in a body, contrary to law, as you
all thought afterwards; but at the time I was the only one of the Prytanes who was
opposed to the illegality, and I gave my vote against you; and when the orators 
threatened to impeach and arrest me, and you called and shouted, I made up my mind
that I would run the risk, having law and justice with me, rather than take part in your
injustice because I feared imprisonment and death. This happened in the days of the
democracy. But when the oligarchy of the Thirty was in power, they sent for me and four
others into the rotunda, and bade us bring Leon the Salaminian from Salamis, as they
wanted to put him to death. This was a specimen of the sort of commands which they
were always giving with the view of implicating as many as possible in their crimes; and
then I showed, not in word only but in deed, that, if I may be allowed to use such an
expression, I cared not a straw for death, and that my great and only care was lest I
should do an unrighteous or unholy thing. For the strong arm of that oppressive power
did not frighten me into doing wrong; and when we came out of the rotunda the other
four went to Salamis and fetched Leon, but I went quietly home. For which I might have
lost my life, had not the power of the Thirty shortly afterwards come to an end. And
many will witness to my words.
Now do you really imagine that I could have survived all these years, if I had led a public
life, supposing that like a good man I had always maintained the right and had made
justice, as I ought, the first thing? No indeed, men of Athens, neither I nor any other
man. But I have been always the same in all my actions, public as well as private, and
never have I yielded any base compliance to those who are slanderously termed my
disciples, or to any other. Not that I have any regular disciples. But if any one likes to
come and hear me while I am pursuing my mission, whether he be young or old, he is
not excluded. Nor do I converse only with those who pay; but any one, whether he be
rich or poor, may ask and answer me and listen to my words; and whether he turns out
to be a bad man or a good one, neither result can be justly imputed to me; for I never
taught or professed to teach him anything. And if any one says that he has ever learned
or heard anything from me in private which all the world has not heard, let me tell you
that he is lying.
But I shall be asked, Why do people delight in continually conversing with you? I have
told you already, Athenians, the whole truth about this matter: they like to hear the
cross-examination of the pretenders to wisdom; there is amusement in it. Now this duty
of cross-examining other men has been imposed upon me by God; and has been
signified to me by oracles, visions, and in every way in which the will of divine power 
was ever intimated to any one. This is true, O Athenians, or, if not true, would be soon
refuted. If I am or have been corrupting the youth, those of them who are now grown up
and have become sensible that I gave them bad advice in the days of their youth should
come forward as accusers, and take their revenge; or if they do not like to come
themselves, some of their relatives, fathers, brothers, or other kinsmen, should say what
evil their families have suffered at my hands. Now is their time. Many of them I see in
the court. There is Crito, who is of the same age and of the same deme with myself, and
there is Critobulus his son, whom I also see. Then again there is Lysanias of Sphettus,
who is the father of Aeschines—he is present; and also there is Antiphon of Cephisus,
who is the father of Epigenes; and there are the brothers of several who have associated
with me. There is Nicostratus the son of Theosdotides, and the brother of Theodotus
(now Theodotus himself is dead, and therefore he, at any rate, will not seek to stop him);
and there is Paralus the son of Demodocus, who had a brother Theages; and
Adeimantus the son of Ariston, whose brother Plato is present; and Aeantodorus, who is
the brother of Apollodorus, whom I also see. I might mention a great many others, some
of whom Meletus should have produced as witnesses in the course of his speech; and let
him still produce them, if he has forgotten—I will make way for him. And let him say, if
he has any testimony of the sort which he can produce. Nay, Athenians, the very
opposite is the truth. For all these are ready to witness on behalf of the corrupter, of the
injurer of their kindred, as Meletus and Anytus call me; not the corrupted youth only—
there might have been a motive for that—but their uncorrupted elder relatives. Why
should they too support me with their testimony? Why, indeed, except for the sake of
truth and justice, and because they know that I am speaking the truth, and that Meletus
is a liar.
Well, Athenians, this and the like of this is all the defence which I have to offer. Yet a
word more. Perhaps there may be some one who is offended at me, when he calls to
mind how he himself on a similar, or even a less serious occasion, prayed and entreated
the judges with many tears, and how he produced his children in court, which was a
moving spectacle, together with a host of relations and friends; whereas I, who am
probably in danger of my life, will do none of these things. The contrast may occur to his
mind, and he may be set against me, and vote in anger because he is displeased at me on
this account. Now if there be such a person among you,—mind, I do not say that there
is,—to him I may fairly reply: My friend, I am a man, and like other men, a creature of 
flesh and blood, and not ‘of wood or stone,’ as Homer says; and I have a family, yes, and
sons, O Athenians, three in number, one almost a man, and two others who are still
young; and yet I will not bring any of them hither in order to petition you for an
acquittal. And why not? Not from any self-assertion or want of respect for you. Whether
I am or am not afraid of death is another question, of which I will not now speak. But,
having regard to public opinion, I feel that such conduct would be discreditable to
myself, and to you, and to the whole state. One who has reached my years, and who has
a name for wisdom, ought not to demean himself. Whether this opinion of me be
deserved or not, at any rate the world has decided that Socrates is in some way superior
to other men. And if those among you who are said to be superior in wisdom and
courage, and any other virtue, demean themselves in this way, how shameful is their
conduct! I have seen men of reputation, when they have been condemned, behaving in
the strangest manner: they seemed to fancy that they were going to suffer something
dreadful if they died, and that they could be immortal if you only allowed them to live;
and I think that such are a dishonour to the state, and that any stranger coming in
would have said of them that the most eminent men of Athens, to whom the Athenians
themselves give honour and command, are no better than women. And I say that these
things ought not to be done by those of us who have a reputation; and if they are done,
you ought not to permit them; you ought rather to show that you are far more disposed
to condemn the man who gets up a doleful scene and makes the city ridiculous, than
him who holds his peace.
But, setting aside the question of public opinion, there seems to be something wrong in
asking a favour of a judge, and thus procuring an acquittal, instead of informing and
convincing him. For his duty is, not to make a present of justice, but to give judgment;
and he has sworn that he will judge according to the laws, and not according to his own
good pleasure; and we ought not to encourage you, nor should you allow yourselves to
be encouraged, in this habit of perjury—there can be no piety in that. Do not then
require me to do what I consider dishonourable and impious and wrong, especially now,
when I am being tried for impiety on the indictment of Meletus. For if, O men of Athens,
by force of persuasion and entreaty I could overpower your oaths, then I should be
teaching you to believe that there are no gods, and in defending should simply convict
myself of the charge of not believing in them. But that is not so—far otherwise. For I do
believe that there are gods, and in a sense higher than that in which any of my accusers 
believe in them. And to you and to God I commit my cause, to be determined by you as
is best for you and me.
...
There are many reasons why I am not grieved, O men of Athens, at the vote of
condemnation. I expected it, and am only surprised that the votes are so nearly equal;
for I had thought that the majority against me would have been far larger; but now, had
thirty votes gone over to the other side, I should have been acquitted. And I may say, I
think, that I have escaped Meletus. I may say more; for without the assistance of Anytus
and Lycon, any one may see that he would not have had a fifth part of the votes, as the
law requires, in which case he would have incurred a fine of a thousand drachmae.
And so he proposes death as the penalty. And what shall I propose on my part, O men of
Athens? Clearly that which is my due. And what is my due? What return shall be made
to the man who has never had the wit to be idle during his whole life; but has been
careless of what the many care for— wealth, and family interests, and military offices,
and speaking in the assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting that I
was really too honest a man to be a politician and live, I did not go where I could do no
good to you or to myself; but where I could do the greatest good privately to every one of
you, thither I went, and sought to persuade every man among you that he must look to
himself, and seek virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look to
the state before he looks to the interests of the state; and that this should be the order
which he observes in all his actions. What shall be done to such an one? Doubtless some
good thing, O men of Athens, if he has his reward; and the good should be of a kind
suitable to him. What would be a reward suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor,
and who desires leisure that he may instruct you? There can be no reward so fitting as
maintenance in the Prytaneum, O men of Athens, a reward which he deserves far more
than the citizen who has won the prize at Olympia in the horse or chariot race, whether
the chariots were drawn by two horses or by many. For I am in want, and he has
enough; and he only gives you the appearance of happiness, and I give you the reality.
And if I am to estimate the penalty fairly, I should say that maintenance in the
Prytaneum is the just return. 
Perhaps you think that I am braving you in what I am saying now, as in what I said
before about the tears and prayers. But this is not so. I speak rather because I am
convinced that I never intentionally wronged any one, although I cannot convince you—
the time has been too short; if there were a law at Athens, as there is in other cities, that
a capital cause should not be decided in one day, then I believe that I should have
convinced you. But I cannot in a moment refute great slanders; and, as I am convinced
that I never wronged another, I will assuredly not wrong myself. I will not say of myself
that I deserve any evil, or propose any penalty. Why should I? because I am afraid of the
penalty of death which Meletus proposes? When I do not know whether death is a good
or an evil, why should I propose a penalty which would certainly be an evil? Shall I say
imprisonment? And why should I live in prison, and be the slave of the magistrates of
the year—of the Eleven? Or shall the penalty be a fine, and imprisonment until the fine
is paid? There is the same objection. I should have to lie in prison, for money I have
none, and cannot pay. And if I say exile (and this may possibly be the penalty which you
will affix), I must indeed be blinded by the love of life, if I am so irrational as to expect
that when you, who are my own citizens, cannot endure my discourses and words, and
have found them so grievous and odious that you will have no more of them, others are
likely to endure me. No indeed, men of Athens, that is not very likely. And what a life
should I lead, at my age, wandering from city to city, ever changing my place of exile,
and always being driven out! For I am quite sure that wherever I go, there, as here, the
young men will flock to me; and if I drive them away, their elders will drive me out at
their request; and if I let them come, their fathers and friends will drive me out for their
sakes.
Some one will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go
into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in
making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that to do as you say would be
a disobedience to the God, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not
believe that I am serious; and if I say again that daily to discourse about virtue, and of
those other things about which you hear me examining myself and others, is the greatest
good of man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you are still less likely to
believe me. Yet I say what is true, although a thing of which it is hard for me to persuade
you. Also, I have never been accustomed to think that I deserve to suffer any harm. Had
I money I might have estimated the offence at what I was able to pay, and not have been 
much the worse. But I have none, and therefore I must ask you to proportion the fine to
my means. Well, perhaps I could afford a mina, and therefore I propose that penalty:
Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, my friends here, bid me say thirty minae, and
they will be the sureties. Let thirty minae be the penalty; for which sum they will be
ample security to you.
...
Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name which you will
get from the detractors of the city, who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man; for
they will call me wise, even although I am not wise, when they want to reproach you. If
you had waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of
nature. For I am far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death. I
am speaking now not to all of you, but only to those who have condemned me to death.
And I have another thing to say to them: you think that I was convicted because I had no
words of the sort which would have procured my acquittal—I mean, if I had thought fit
to leave nothing undone or unsaid. Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction
was not of words— certainly not. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination
to address you as you would have liked me to do, weeping and wailing and lamenting,
and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from
others, and which, as I maintain, are unworthy of me. I thought at the time that I ought
not to do anything common or mean when in danger: nor do I now repent of the style of
my defence; I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your
manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought I or any man to use every way
of escaping death. Often in battle there can be no doubt that if a man will throw away his
arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other
dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do
anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness;
for that runs faster than death. I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has
overtaken me, and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster runner, who is
unrighteousness, has overtaken them. And now I depart hence condemned by you to
suffer the penalty of death,—they too go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the
penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by my award—let them abide by theirs. I
suppose that these things may be regarded as fated,—and I think that they are well. 
And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy to you; for I am about
to die, and in the hour of death men are gifted with prophetic power. And I prophesy to
you who are my murderers, that immediately after my departure punishment far heavier
than you have inflicted on me will surely await you. Me you have killed because you
wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. But that will not
be as you suppose: far otherwise. For I say that there will be more accusers of you than
there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained: and as they are younger they
will be more inconsiderate with you, and you will be more offended at them. If you think
that by killing men you can prevent some one from censuring your evil lives, you are
mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest
and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves. This is
the prophecy which I utter before my departure to the judges who have condemned me.
Friends, who would have acquitted me, I would like also to talk with you about the thing
which has come to pass, while the magistrates are busy, and before I go to the place at
which I must die. Stay then a little, for we may as well talk with one another while there
is time. You are my friends, and I should like to show you the meaning of this event
which has happened to me. O my judges—for you I may truly call judges—I should like
to tell you of a wonderful circumstance. Hitherto the divine faculty of which the internal
oracle is the source has constantly been in the habit of opposing me even about trifles, if
I was going to make a slip or error in any matter; and now as you see there has come
upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and worst
evil. But the oracle made no sign of opposition, either when I was leaving my house in
the morning, or when I was on my way to the court, or while I was speaking, at anything
which I was going to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a speech,
but now in nothing I either said or did touching the matter in hand has the oracle
opposed me. What do I take to be the explanation of this silence? I will tell you. It is an
intimation that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of us who think that
death is an evil are in error. For the customary sign would surely have opposed me had I
been going to evil and not to good.
Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that
death is a good; for one of two things—either death is a state of nothingness and utter
unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this 
world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the
sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For
if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams,
and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell
us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more
pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the
great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now
if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single
night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead
abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the
pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this
world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and
Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous
in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he
might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true,
let me die again and again. I myself, too, shall have a wonderful interest in there
meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other
ancient hero who has suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no
small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall
then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so
also in the next; and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is
not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great
Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too!
What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them
questions! In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions:
assuredly not. For besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if what is
said is true.
Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil
can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by
the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly
that the time had arrived when it was better for me to die and be released from trouble;
wherefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am not angry with my 
condemners, or with my accusers; they have done me no harm, although they did not
mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.
Still I have a favour to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my
friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if
they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to
be something when they are really nothing,—then reprove them, as I have reproved you,
for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are
something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will have
received justice at your hands.
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which
is better God only knows. 


Crito
by
Plato
Translated with an
introduction by
Benjamin Jowett 
INTRODUCTION.
The Crito seems intended to exhibit the character of Socrates in one light only, not as
the philosopher, fulfilling a divine mission and trusting in the will of heaven, but simply
as the good citizen, who having been unjustly condemned is willing to give up his life in
obedience to the laws of the state...
The days of Socrates are drawing to a close; the fatal ship has been seen off Sunium, as
he is informed by his aged friend and contemporary Crito, who visits him before the
dawn has broken; he himself has been warned in a dream that on the third day he must
depart. Time is precious, and Crito has come early in order to gain his consent to a plan
of escape. This can be easily accomplished by his friends, who will incur no danger in
making the attempt to save him, but will be disgraced for ever if they allow him to
perish. He should think of his duty to his children, and not play into the hands of his
enemies. Money is already provided by Crito as well as by Simmias and others, and he
will have no difficulty in finding friends in Thessaly and other places.
Socrates is afraid that Crito is but pressing upon him the opinions of the many: whereas,
all his life long he has followed the dictates of reason only and the opinion of the one
wise or skilled man. There was a time when Crito himself had allowed the propriety of
this. And although some one will say ‘the many can kill us,’ that makes no difference;
but a good life, in other words, a just and honourable life, is alone to be valued. All
considerations of loss of reputation or injury to his children should be dismissed: the
only question is whether he would be right in attempting to escape. Crito, who is a
disinterested person not having the fear of death before his eyes, shall answer this for
him. Before he was condemned they had often held discussions, in which they agreed
that no man should either do evil, or return evil for evil, or betray the right. Are these
principles to be altered because the circumstances of Socrates are altered? Crito admits 
that they remain the same. Then is his escape consistent with the maintenance of them?
To this Crito is unable or unwilling to reply.
Socrates proceeds:—Suppose the Laws of Athens to come and remonstrate with him:
they will ask ‘Why does he seek to overturn them?’ and if he replies, ‘they have injured
him,’ will not the Laws answer, ‘Yes, but was that the agreement? Has he any objection
to make to them which would justify him in overturning them? Was he not brought into
the world and educated by their help, and are they not his parents? He might have left
Athens and gone where he pleased, but he has lived there for seventy years more
constantly than any other citizen.’ Thus he has clearly shown that he acknowledged the
agreement, which he cannot now break without dishonour to himself and danger to his
friends. Even in the course of the trial he might have proposed exile as the penalty, but
then he declared that he preferred death to exile. And whither will he direct his
footsteps? In any well-ordered state the Laws will consider him as an enemy. Possibly in
a land of misrule like Thessaly he may be welcomed at first, and the unseemly narrative
of his escape will be regarded by the inhabitants as an amusing tale. But if he offends
them he will have to learn another sort of lesson. Will he continue to give lectures in
virtue? That would hardly be decent. And how will his children be the gainers if he takes
them into Thessaly, and deprives them of Athenian citizenship? Or if he leaves them
behind, does he expect that they will be better taken care of by his friends because he is
in Thessaly? Will not true friends care for them equally whether he is alive or dead?
Finally, they exhort him to think of justice first, and of life and children afterwards. He
may now depart in peace and innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil. But if he
breaks agreements, and returns evil for evil, they will be angry with him while he lives;
and their brethren the Laws of the world below will receive him as an enemy. Such is the
mystic voice which is always murmuring in his ears.
That Socrates was not a good citizen was a charge made against him during his lifetime,
which has been often repeated in later ages. The crimes of Alcibiades, Critias, and
Charmides, who had been his pupils, were still recent in the memory of the now restored
democracy. The fact that he had been neutral in the death-struggle of Athens was not
likely to conciliate popular good-will. Plato, writing probably in the next generation,
undertakes the defence of his friend and master in this particular, not to the Athenians
of his day, but to posterity and the world at large. 
Whether such an incident ever really occurred as the visit of Crito and the proposal of
escape is uncertain: Plato could easily have invented far more than that (Phaedr.); and
in the selection of Crito, the aged friend, as the fittest person to make the proposal to
Socrates, we seem to recognize the hand of the artist. Whether any one who has been
subjected by the laws of his country to an unjust judgment is right in attempting to
escape, is a thesis about which casuists might disagree. Shelley (Prose Works) is of
opinion that Socrates ‘did well to die,’ but not for the ‘sophistical’ reasons which Plato
has put into his mouth. And there would be no difficulty in arguing that Socrates should
have lived and preferred to a glorious death the good which he might still be able to
perform. ‘A rhetorician would have had much to say upon that point.’ It may be
observed however that Plato never intended to answer the question of casuistry, but
only to exhibit the ideal of patient virtue which refuses to do the least evil in order to
avoid the greatest, and to show his master maintaining in death the opinions which he
had professed in his life. Not ‘the world,’ but the ‘one wise man,’ is still the paradox of
Socrates in his last hours. He must be guided by reason, although her conclusions may
be fatal to him. The remarkable sentiment that the wicked can do neither good nor evil
is true, if taken in the sense, which he means, of moral evil; in his own words, ‘they
cannot make a man wise or foolish.’
This little dialogue is a perfect piece of dialectic, in which granting the ‘common
principle,’ there is no escaping from the conclusion. It is anticipated at the beginning by
the dream of Socrates and the parody of Homer. The personification of the Laws, and of
their brethren the Laws in the world below, is one of the noblest and boldest figures of
speech which occur in Plato.
CRITO
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Crito.
SCENE: The Prison of Socrates.
SOCRATES: Why have you come at this hour, Crito? it must be quite early. 
CRITO: Yes, certainly.
SOCRATES: What is the exact time?
CRITO: The dawn is breaking.
SOCRATES: I wonder that the keeper of the prison would let you in.
CRITO: He knows me because I often come, Socrates; moreover. I have done him a
kindness.
SOCRATES: And are you only just arrived?
CRITO: No, I came some time ago.
SOCRATES: Then why did you sit and say nothing, instead of at once awakening me?
CRITO: I should not have liked myself, Socrates, to be in such great trouble and unrest
as you are—indeed I should not: I have been watching with amazement your peaceful
slumbers; and for that reason I did not awake you, because I wished to minimize the
pain. I have always thought you to be of a happy disposition; but never did I see
anything like the easy, tranquil manner in which you bear this calamity.
SOCRATES: Why, Crito, when a man has reached my age he ought not to be repining at
the approach of death.
CRITO: And yet other old men find themselves in similar misfortunes, and age does not
prevent them from repining.
SOCRATES: That is true. But you have not told me why you come at this early hour.
CRITO: I come to bring you a message which is sad and painful; not, as I believe, to
yourself, but to all of us who are your friends, and saddest of all to me.
SOCRATES: What? Has the ship come from Delos, on the arrival of which I am to die? 
CRITO: No, the ship has not actually arrived, but she will probably be here to-day, as
persons who have come from Sunium tell me that they have left her there; and therefore
to-morrow, Socrates, will be the last day of your life.
SOCRATES: Very well, Crito; if such is the will of God, I am willing; but my belief is that
there will be a delay of a day.
CRITO: Why do you think so?
SOCRATES: I will tell you. I am to die on the day after the arrival of the ship?
CRITO: Yes; that is what the authorities say.
SOCRATES: But I do not think that the ship will be here until to-morrow; this I infer
from a vision which I had last night, or rather only just now, when you fortunately
allowed me to sleep.
CRITO: And what was the nature of the vision?
SOCRATES: There appeared to me the likeness of a woman, fair and comely, clothed in
bright raiment, who called to me and said: O Socrates,
‘The third day hence to fertile Phthia shalt thou go.’ (Homer, Il.)
CRITO: What a singular dream, Socrates!
SOCRATES: There can be no doubt about the meaning, Crito, I think.
CRITO: Yes; the meaning is only too clear. But, oh! my beloved Socrates, let me entreat
you once more to take my advice and escape. For if you die I shall not only lose a friend
who can never be replaced, but there is another evil: people who do not know you and
me will believe that I might have saved you if I had been willing to give money, but that I
did not care. Now, can there be a worse disgrace than this—that I should be thought to
value money more than the life of a friend? For the many will not be persuaded that I
wanted you to escape, and that you refused. 
SOCRATES: But why, my dear Crito, should we care about the opinion of the many?
Good men, and they are the only persons who are worth considering, will think of these
things truly as they occurred.
CRITO: But you see, Socrates, that the opinion of the many must be regarded, for what
is now happening shows that they can do the greatest evil to any one who has lost their
good opinion.
SOCRATES: I only wish it were so, Crito; and that the many could do the greatest evil;
for then they would also be able to do the greatest good— and what a fine thing this
would be! But in reality they can do neither; for they cannot make a man either wise or
foolish; and whatever they do is the result of chance.
CRITO: Well, I will not dispute with you; but please to tell me, Socrates, whether you are
not acting out of regard to me and your other friends: are you not afraid that if you
escape from prison we may get into trouble with the informers for having stolen you
away, and lose either the whole or a great part of our property; or that even a worse evil
may happen to us? Now, if you fear on our account, be at ease; for in order to save you,
we ought surely to run this, or even a greater risk; be persuaded, then, and do as I say.
SOCRATES: Yes, Crito, that is one fear which you mention, but by no means the only
one.
CRITO: Fear not—there are persons who are willing to get you out of prison at no great
cost; and as for the informers they are far from being exorbitant in their demands—a
little money will satisfy them. My means, which are certainly ample, are at your service,
and if you have a scruple about spending all mine, here are strangers who will give you
the use of theirs; and one of them, Simmias the Theban, has brought a large sum of
money for this very purpose; and Cebes and many others are prepared to spend their
money in helping you to escape. I say, therefore, do not hesitate on our account, and do
not say, as you did in the court (compare Apol.), that you will have a difficulty in
knowing what to do with yourself anywhere else. For men will love you in other places to
which you may go, and not in Athens only; there are friends of mine in Thessaly, if you
like to go to them, who will value and protect you, and no Thessalian will give you any
trouble. Nor can I think that you are at all justified, Socrates, in betraying your own life 
when you might be saved; in acting thus you are playing into the hands of your enemies,
who are hurrying on your destruction. And further I should say that you are deserting
your own children; for you might bring them up and educate them; instead of which you
go away and leave them, and they will have to take their chance; and if they do not meet
with the usual fate of orphans, there will be small thanks to you. No man should bring
children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nurture and
education. But you appear to be choosing the easier part, not the better and manlier,
which would have been more becoming in one who professes to care for virtue in all his
actions, like yourself. And indeed, I am ashamed not only of you, but of us who are your
friends, when I reflect that the whole business will be attributed entirely to our want of
courage. The trial need never have come on, or might have been managed differently;
and this last act, or crowning folly, will seem to have occurred through our negligence
and cowardice, who might have saved you, if we had been good for anything; and you
might have saved yourself, for there was no difficulty at all. See now, Socrates, how sad
and discreditable are the consequences, both to us and you. Make up your mind then, or
rather have your mind already made up, for the time of deliberation is over, and there is
only one thing to be done, which must be done this very night, and if we delay at all will
be no longer practicable or possible; I beseech you therefore, Socrates, be persuaded by
me, and do as I say.
SOCRATES: Dear Crito, your zeal is invaluable, if a right one; but if wrong, the greater
the zeal the greater the danger; and therefore we ought to consider whether I shall or
shall not do as you say. For I am and always have been one of those natures who must be
guided by reason, whatever the reason may be which upon reflection appears to me to
be the best; and now that this chance has befallen me, I cannot repudiate my own
words: the principles which I have hitherto honoured and revered I still honour, and
unless we can at once find other and better principles, I am certain not to agree with
you; no, not even if the power of the multitude could inflict many more imprisonments,
confiscations, deaths, frightening us like children with hobgoblin terrors (compare
Apol.). What will be the fairest way of considering the question? Shall I return to your
old argument about the opinions of men?—we were saying that some of them are to be
regarded, and others not. Now were we right in maintaining this before I was
condemned? And has the argument which was once good now proved to be talk for the
sake of talking—mere childish nonsense? That is what I want to consider with your help, 
Crito:—whether, under my present circumstances, the argument appears to be in any
way different or not; and is to be allowed by me or disallowed. That argument, which, as
I believe, is maintained by many persons of authority, was to the effect, as I was saying,
that the opinions of some men are to be regarded, and of other men not to be regarded.
Now you, Crito, are not going to die to-morrow—at least, there is no human probability
of this, and therefore you are disinterested and not liable to be deceived by the
circumstances in which you are placed. Tell me then, whether I am right in saying that
some opinions, and the opinions of some men only, are to be valued, and that other
opinions, and the opinions of other men, are not to be valued. I ask you whether I was
right in maintaining this?
CRITO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: The good are to be regarded, and not the bad?
CRITO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the opinions of the wise are good, and the opinions of the unwise are
evil?
CRITO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And what was said about another matter? Is the pupil who devotes himself
to the practice of gymnastics supposed to attend to the praise and blame and opinion of
every man, or of one man only—his physician or trainer, whoever he may be?
CRITO: Of one man only.
SOCRATES: And he ought to fear the censure and welcome the praise of that one only,
and not of the many?
CRITO: Clearly so.
SOCRATES: And he ought to act and train, and eat and drink in the way which seems
good to his single master who has understanding, rather than according to the opinion
of all other men put together? 
CRITO: True.
SOCRATES: And if he disobeys and disregards the opinion and approval of the one, and
regards the opinion of the many who have no understanding, will he not suffer evil?
CRITO: Certainly he will.
SOCRATES: And what will the evil be, whither tending and what affecting, in the
disobedient person?
CRITO: Clearly, affecting the body; that is what is destroyed by the evil.
SOCRATES: Very good; and is not this true, Crito, of other things which we need not
separately enumerate? In questions of just and unjust, fair and foul, good and evil,
which are the subjects of our present consultation, ought we to follow the opinion of the
many and to fear them; or the opinion of the one man who has understanding? ought we
not to fear and reverence him more than all the rest of the world: and if we desert him
shall we not destroy and injure that principle in us which may be assumed to be
improved by justice and deteriorated by injustice;—there is such a principle?
CRITO: Certainly there is, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Take a parallel instance:—if, acting under the advice of those who have no
understanding, we destroy that which is improved by health and is deteriorated by
disease, would life be worth having? And that which has been destroyed is—the body?
CRITO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Could we live, having an evil and corrupted body?
CRITO: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be destroyed,
which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice? Do we suppose that principle,
whatever it may be in man, which has to do with justice and injustice, to be inferior to
the body? 
CRITO: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: More honourable than the body?
CRITO: Far more.
SOCRATES: Then, my friend, we must not regard what the many say of us: but what he,
the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will
say. And therefore you begin in error when you advise that we should regard the opinion
of the many about just and unjust, good and evil, honorable and dishonorable.—‘Well,’
some one will say, ‘but the many can kill us.’
CRITO: Yes, Socrates; that will clearly be the answer.
SOCRATES: And it is true; but still I find with surprise that the old argument is
unshaken as ever. And I should like to know whether I may say the same of another
proposition—that not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued?
CRITO: Yes, that also remains unshaken.
SOCRATES: And a good life is equivalent to a just and honorable one—that holds also?
CRITO: Yes, it does.
SOCRATES: From these premisses I proceed to argue the question whether I ought or
ought not to try and escape without the consent of the Athenians: and if I am clearly
right in escaping, then I will make the attempt; but if not, I will abstain. The other
considerations which you mention, of money and loss of character and the duty of
educating one’s children, are, I fear, only the doctrines of the multitude, who would be
as ready to restore people to life, if they were able, as they are to put them to death—and
with as little reason. But now, since the argument has thus far prevailed, the only
question which remains to be considered is, whether we shall do rightly either in
escaping or in suffering others to aid in our escape and paying them in money and
thanks, or whether in reality we shall not do rightly; and if the latter, then death or any
other calamity which may ensue on my remaining here must not be allowed to enter into
the calculation. 
CRITO: I think that you are right, Socrates; how then shall we proceed?
SOCRATES: Let us consider the matter together, and do you either refute me if you can,
and I will be convinced; or else cease, my dear friend, from repeating to me that I ought
to escape against the wishes of the Athenians: for I highly value your attempts to
persuade me to do so, but I may not be persuaded against my own better judgment. And
now please to consider my first position, and try how you can best answer me.
CRITO: I will.
SOCRATES: Are we to say that we are never intentionally to do wrong, or that in one
way we ought and in another way we ought not to do wrong, or is doing wrong always
evil and dishonorable, as I was just now saying, and as has been already acknowledged
by us? Are all our former admissions which were made within a few days to be thrown
away? And have we, at our age, been earnestly discoursing with one another all our life
long only to discover that we are no better than children? Or, in spite of the opinion of
the many, and in spite of consequences whether better or worse, shall we insist on the
truth of what was then said, that injustice is always an evil and dishonour to him who
acts unjustly? Shall we say so or not?
CRITO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then we must do no wrong?
CRITO: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Nor when injured injure in return, as the many imagine; for we must injure
no one at all? (E.g. compare Rep.)
CRITO: Clearly not.
SOCRATES: Again, Crito, may we do evil?
CRITO: Surely not, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And what of doing evil in return for evil, which is the morality of the
many—is that just or not? 
CRITO: Not just.
SOCRATES: For doing evil to another is the same as injuring him?
CRITO: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to any one, whatever
evil we may have suffered from him. But I would have you consider, Crito, whether you
really mean what you are saying. For this opinion has never been held, and never will be
held, by any considerable number of persons; and those who are agreed and those who
are not agreed upon this point have no common ground, and can only despise one
another when they see how widely they differ. Tell me, then, whether you agree with and
assent to my first principle, that neither injury nor retaliation nor warding off evil by evil
is ever right. And shall that be the premiss of our argument? Or do you decline and
dissent from this? For so I have ever thought, and continue to think; but, if you are of
another opinion, let me hear what you have to say. If, however, you remain of the same
mind as formerly, I will proceed to the next step.
CRITO: You may proceed, for I have not changed my mind.
SOCRATES: Then I will go on to the next point, which may be put in the form of a
question:—Ought a man to do what he admits to be right, or ought he to betray the
right?
CRITO: He ought to do what he thinks right.
SOCRATES: But if this is true, what is the application? In leaving the prison against the
will of the Athenians, do I wrong any? or rather do I not wrong those whom I ought least
to wrong? Do I not desert the principles which were acknowledged by us to be just—
what do you say?
CRITO: I cannot tell, Socrates, for I do not know.
SOCRATES: Then consider the matter in this way:—Imagine that I am about to play
truant (you may call the proceeding by any name which you like), and the laws and the
government come and interrogate me: ‘Tell us, Socrates,’ they say; ‘what are you about? 
are you not going by an act of yours to overturn us—the laws, and the whole state, as far
as in you lies? Do you imagine that a state can subsist and not be overthrown, in which
the decisions of law have no power, but are set aside and trampled upon by individuals?’
What will be our answer, Crito, to these and the like words? Any one, and especially a
rhetorician, will have a good deal to say on behalf of the law which requires a sentence to
be carried out. He will argue that this law should not be set aside; and shall we reply,
‘Yes; but the state has injured us and given an unjust sentence.’ Suppose I say that?
CRITO: Very good, Socrates.
SOCRATES: ‘And was that our agreement with you?’ the law would answer; ‘or were you
to abide by the sentence of the state?’ And if I were to express my astonishment at their
words, the law would probably add: ‘Answer, Socrates, instead of opening your eyes—
you are in the habit of asking and answering questions. Tell us,—What complaint have
you to make against us which justifies you in attempting to destroy us and the state? In
the first place did we not bring you into existence? Your father married your mother by
our aid and begat you. Say whether you have any objection to urge against those of us
who regulate marriage?’ None, I should reply. ‘Or against those of us who after birth
regulate the nurture and education of children, in which you also were trained? Were
not the laws, which have the charge of education, right in commanding your father to
train you in music and gymnastic?’ Right, I should reply. ‘Well then, since you were
brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us, can you deny in the first place
that you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before you? And if this is true you
are not on equal terms with us; nor can you think that you have a right to do to us what
we are doing to you. Would you have any right to strike or revile or do any other evil to
your father or your master, if you had one, because you have been struck or reviled by
him, or received some other evil at his hands?—you would not say this? And because we
think right to destroy you, do you think that you have any right to destroy us in return,
and your country as far as in you lies? Will you, O professor of true virtue, pretend that
you are justified in this? Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is
more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and
more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding? also to be
soothed, and gently and reverently entreated when angry, even more than a father, and
either to be persuaded, or if not persuaded, to be obeyed? And when we are punished by 
her, whether with imprisonment or stripes, the punishment is to be endured in silence;
and if she lead us to wounds or death in battle, thither we follow as is right; neither may
any one yield or retreat or leave his rank, but whether in battle or in a court of law, or in
any other place, he must do what his city and his country order him; or he must change
their view of what is just: and if he may do no violence to his father or mother, much less
may he do violence to his country.’ What answer shall we make to this, Crito? Do the
laws speak truly, or do they not?
CRITO: I think that they do.
SOCRATES: Then the laws will say: ‘Consider, Socrates, if we are speaking truly that in
your present attempt you are going to do us an injury. For, having brought you into the
world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you and every other citizen a share in
every good which we had to give, we further proclaim to any Athenian by the liberty
which we allow him, that if he does not like us when he has become of age and has seen
the ways of the city, and made our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take
his goods with him. None of us laws will forbid him or interfere with him. Any one who
does not like us and the city, and who wants to emigrate to a colony or to any other city,
may go where he likes, retaining his property. But he who has experience of the manner
in which we order justice and administer the state, and still remains, has entered into an
implied contract that he will do as we command him. And he who disobeys us is, as we
maintain, thrice wrong: first, because in disobeying us he is disobeying his parents;
secondly, because we are the authors of his education; thirdly, because he has made an
agreement with us that he will duly obey our commands; and he neither obeys them nor
convinces us that our commands are unjust; and we do not rudely impose them, but give
him the alternative of obeying or convincing us;—that is what we offer, and he does
neither.
‘These are the sort of accusations to which, as we were saying, you, Socrates, will be
exposed if you accomplish your intentions; you, above all other Athenians.’ Suppose
now I ask, why I rather than anybody else? they will justly retort upon me that I above
all other men have acknowledged the agreement. ‘There is clear proof,’ they will say,
‘Socrates, that we and the city were not displeasing to you. Of all Athenians you have
been the most constant resident in the city, which, as you never leave, you may be
supposed to love (compare Phaedr.). For you never went out of the city either to see the 
games, except once when you went to the Isthmus, or to any other place unless when
you were on military service; nor did you travel as other men do. Nor had you any
curiosity to know other states or their laws: your affections did not go beyond us and our
state; we were your especial favourites, and you acquiesced in our government of you;
and here in this city you begat your children, which is a proof of your satisfaction.
Moreover, you might in the course of the trial, if you had liked, have fixed the penalty at
banishment; the state which refuses to let you go now would have let you go then. But
you pretended that you preferred death to exile (compare Apol.), and that you were not
unwilling to die. And now you have forgotten these fine sentiments, and pay no respect
to us the laws, of whom you are the destroyer; and are doing what only a miserable slave
would do, running away and turning your back upon the compacts and agreements
which you made as a citizen. And first of all answer this very question: Are we right in
saying that you agreed to be governed according to us in deed, and not in word only? Is
that true or not?’ How shall we answer, Crito? Must we not assent?
CRITO: We cannot help it, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then will they not say: ‘You, Socrates, are breaking the covenants and
agreements which you made with us at your leisure, not in any haste or under any
compulsion or deception, but after you have had seventy years to think of them, during
which time you were at liberty to leave the city, if we were not to your mind, or if our
covenants appeared to you to be unfair. You had your choice, and might have gone
either to Lacedaemon or Crete, both which states are often praised by you for their good
government, or to some other Hellenic or foreign state. Whereas you, above all other
Athenians, seemed to be so fond of the state, or, in other words, of us her laws (and who
would care about a state which has no laws?), that you never stirred out of her; the halt,
the blind, the maimed, were not more stationary in her than you were. And now you run
away and forsake your agreements. Not so, Socrates, if you will take our advice; do not
make yourself ridiculous by escaping out of the city.
‘For just consider, if you transgress and err in this sort of way, what good will you do
either to yourself or to your friends? That your friends will be driven into exile and
deprived of citizenship, or will lose their property, is tolerably certain; and you yourself,
if you fly to one of the neighbouring cities, as, for example, Thebes or Megara, both of
which are well governed, will come to them as an enemy, Socrates, and their 
government will be against you, and all patriotic citizens will cast an evil eye upon you as
a subverter of the laws, and you will confirm in the minds of the judges the justice of
their own condemnation of you. For he who is a corrupter of the laws is more than likely
to be a corrupter of the young and foolish portion of mankind. Will you then flee from
well-ordered cities and virtuous men? and is existence worth having on these terms? Or
will you go to them without shame, and talk to them, Socrates? And what will you say to
them? What you say here about virtue and justice and institutions and laws being the
best things among men? Would that be decent of you? Surely not. But if you go away
from well-governed states to Crito’s friends in Thessaly, where there is great disorder
and licence, they will be charmed to hear the tale of your escape from prison, set off with
ludicrous particulars of the manner in which you were wrapped in a goatskin or some
other disguise, and metamorphosed as the manner is of runaways; but will there be no
one to remind you that in your old age you were not ashamed to violate the most sacred
laws from a miserable desire of a little more life? Perhaps not, if you keep them in a
good temper; but if they are out of temper you will hear many degrading things; you will
live, but how?—as the flatterer of all men, and the servant of all men; and doing what?—
eating and drinking in Thessaly, having gone abroad in order that you may get a dinner.
And where will be your fine sentiments about justice and virtue? Say that you wish to
live for the sake of your children—you want to bring them up and educate them—will
you take them into Thessaly and deprive them of Athenian citizenship? Is this the
benefit which you will confer upon them? Or are you under the impression that they will
be better cared for and educated here if you are still alive, although absent from them;
for your friends will take care of them? Do you fancy that if you are an inhabitant of
Thessaly they will take care of them, and if you are an inhabitant of the other world that
they will not take care of them? Nay; but if they who call themselves friends are good for
anything, they will—to be sure they will.
‘Listen, then, Socrates, to us who have brought you up. Think not of life and children
first, and of justice afterwards, but of justice first, that you may be justified before the
princes of the world below. For neither will you nor any that belong to you be happier or
holier or juster in this life, or happier in another, if you do as Crito bids. Now you depart
in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil; a victim, not of the laws, but of men. But
if you go forth, returning evil for evil, and injury for injury, breaking the covenants and
agreements which you have made with us, and wronging those whom you ought least of 
all to wrong, that is to say, yourself, your friends, your country, and us, we shall be angry
with you while you live, and our brethren, the laws in the world below, will receive you
as an enemy; for they will know that you have done your best to destroy us. Listen, then,
to us and not to Crito.’
This, dear Crito, is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound
of the flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and
prevents me from hearing any other. And I know that anything more which you may say
will be vain. Yet speak, if you have anything to say.
CRITO: I have nothing to say, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Leave me then, Crito, to fulfil the will of God, and to follow whither he
leads.

 
 Charmides
or
Temperance
by
Plato

 

INTRODUCTION.
The subject of the Charmides is Temperance or (Greek), a peculiarly Greek notion,
which may also be rendered Moderation (Compare Cic. Tusc. ‘(Greek), quam soleo
equidem tum temperantiam, tum moderationem appellare, nonnunquam etiam
modestiam.’), Modesty, Discretion, Wisdom, without completely exhausting by all these
terms the various associations of the word. It may be described as ‘mens sana in corpore
sano,’ the harmony or due proportion of the higher and lower elements of human nature
which ‘makes a man his own master,’ according to the definition of the Republic. In the
accompanying translation the word has been rendered in different places either
Temperance or Wisdom, as the connection seemed to require: for in the philosophy of
Plato (Greek) still retains an intellectual element (as Socrates is also said to have
identified (Greek) with (Greek): Xen. Mem.) and is not yet relegated to the sphere of
moral virtue, as in the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle.
The beautiful youth, Charmides, who is also the most temperate of human beings, is
asked by Socrates, ‘What is Temperance?’ He answers characteristically, (1) ‘Quietness.’
‘But Temperance is a fine and noble thing; and quietness in many or most cases is not so
fine a thing as quickness.’ He tries again and says (2) that temperance is modesty. But
this again is set aside by a sophistical application of Homer: for temperance is good as
well as noble, and Homer has declared that ‘modesty is not good for a needy man.’ (3)
Once more Charmides makes the attempt. This time he gives a definition which he has
heard, and of which Socrates conjectures that Critias must be the author: ‘Temperance
is doing one’s own business.’ But the artisan who makes another man’s shoes may be
temperate, and yet he is not doing his own business; and temperance defined thus
would be opposed to the division of labour which exists in every temperate or wellordered
state. How is this riddle to be explained?
Critias, who takes the place of Charmides, distinguishes in his answer between ‘making’
and ‘doing,’ and with the help of a misapplied quotation from Hesiod assigns to the
words ‘doing’ and ‘work’ an exclusively good sense: Temperance is doing one’s own
business;—(4) is doing good. 
Still an element of knowledge is wanting which Critias is readily induced to admit at the
suggestion of Socrates; and, in the spirit of Socrates and of Greek life generally,
proposes as a fifth definition, (5) Temperance is self-knowledge. But all sciences have a
subject: number is the subject of arithmetic, health of medicine—what is the subject of
temperance or wisdom? The answer is that (6) Temperance is the knowledge of what a
man knows and of what he does not know. But this is contrary to analogy; there is no
vision of vision, but only of visible things; no love of loves, but only of beautiful things;
how then can there be a knowledge of knowledge? That which is older, heavier, lighter,
is older, heavier, and lighter than something else, not than itself, and this seems to be
true of all relative notions—the object of relation is outside of them; at any rate they can
only have relation to themselves in the form of that object. Whether there are any such
cases of reflex relation or not, and whether that sort of knowledge which we term
Temperance is of this reflex nature, has yet to be determined by the great
metaphysician. But even if knowledge can know itself, how does the knowledge of what
we know imply the knowledge of what we do not know? Besides, knowledge is an
abstraction only, and will not inform us of any particular subject, such as medicine,
building, and the like. It may tell us that we or other men know something, but can
never tell us what we know.
Admitting that there is a knowledge of what we know and of what we do not know,
which would supply a rule and measure of all things, still there would be no good in this;
and the knowledge which temperance gives must be of a kind which will do us good; for
temperance is a good. But this universal knowledge does not tend to our happiness and
good: the only kind of knowledge which brings happiness is the knowledge of good and
evil. To this Critias replies that the science or knowledge of good and evil, and all the
other sciences, are regulated by the higher science or knowledge of knowledge. Socrates
replies by again dividing the abstract from the concrete, and asks how this knowledge
conduces to happiness in the same definite way in which medicine conduces to health.
And now, after making all these concessions, which are really inadmissible, we are still
as far as ever from ascertaining the nature of temperance, which Charmides has already
discovered, and had therefore better rest in the knowledge that the more temperate he is
the happier he will be, and not trouble himself with the speculations of Socrates. 
In this Dialogue may be noted (1) The Greek ideal of beauty and goodness, the vision of
the fair soul in the fair body, realised in the beautiful Charmides; (2) The true
conception of medicine as a science of the whole as well as the parts, and of the mind as
well as the body, which is playfully intimated in the story of the Thracian; (3) The
tendency of the age to verbal distinctions, which here, as in the Protagoras and Cratylus,
are ascribed to the ingenuity of Prodicus; and to interpretations or rather parodies of
Homer or Hesiod, which are eminently characteristic of Plato and his contemporaries;
(4) The germ of an ethical principle contained in the notion that temperance is ‘doing
one’s own business,’ which in the Republic (such is the shifting character of the Platonic
philosophy) is given as the definition, not of temperance, but of justice; (5) The
impatience which is exhibited by Socrates of any definition of temperance in which an
element of science or knowledge is not included; (6) The beginning of metaphysics and
logic implied in the two questions: whether there can be a science of science, and
whether the knowledge of what you know is the same as the knowledge of what you do
not know; and also in the distinction between ‘what you know’ and ‘that you know,’
(Greek;) here too is the first conception of an absolute self-determined science (the
claims of which, however, are disputed by Socrates, who asks cui bono?) as well as the
first suggestion of the difficulty of the abstract and concrete, and one of the earliest
anticipations of the relation of subject and object, and of the subjective element in
knowledge—a ‘rich banquet’ of metaphysical questions in which we ‘taste of many
things.’ (7) And still the mind of Plato, having snatched for a moment at these shadows
of the future, quickly rejects them: thus early has he reached the conclusion that there
can be no science which is a ‘science of nothing’ (Parmen.). (8) The conception of a
science of good and evil also first occurs here, an anticipation of the Philebus and
Republic as well as of moral philosophy in later ages.
The dramatic interest of the Dialogue chiefly centres in the youth Charmides, with
whom Socrates talks in the kindly spirit of an elder. His childlike simplicity and
ingenuousness are contrasted with the dialectical and rhetorical arts of Critias, who is
the grown-up man of the world, having a tincture of philosophy. No hint is given, either
here or in the Timaeus, of the infamy which attaches to the name of the latter in
Athenian history. He is simply a cultivated person who, like his kinsman Plato, is
ennobled by the connection of his family with Solon (Tim.), and had been the follower, if
not the disciple, both of Socrates and of the Sophists. In the argument he is not unfair, if 
allowance is made for a slight rhetorical tendency, and for a natural desire to save his
reputation with the company; he is sometimes nearer the truth than Socrates. Nothing
in his language or behaviour is unbecoming the guardian of the beautiful Charmides.
His love of reputation is characteristically Greek, and contrasts with the humility of
Socrates. Nor in Charmides himself do we find any resemblance to the Charmides of
history, except, perhaps, the modest and retiring nature which, according to Xenophon,
at one time of his life prevented him from speaking in the Assembly (Mem.); and we are
surprised to hear that, like Critias, he afterwards became one of the thirty tyrants. In the
Dialogue he is a pattern of virtue, and is therefore in no need of the charm which
Socrates is unable to apply. With youthful naivete, keeping his secret and entering into
the spirit of Socrates, he enjoys the detection of his elder and guardian Critias, who is
easily seen to be the author of the definition which he has so great an interest in
maintaining. The preceding definition, ‘Temperance is doing one’s own business,’ is
assumed to have been borrowed by Charmides from another; and when the enquiry
becomes more abstract he is superseded by Critias (Theaet.; Euthyd.). Socrates
preserves his accustomed irony to the end; he is in the neighbourhood of several great
truths, which he views in various lights, but always either by bringing them to the test of
common sense, or by demanding too great exactness in the use of words, turns aside
from them and comes at last to no conclusion.
The definitions of temperance proceed in regular order from the popular to the
philosophical. The first two are simple enough and partially true, like the first thoughts
of an intelligent youth; the third, which is a real contribution to ethical philosophy, is
perverted by the ingenuity of Socrates, and hardly rescued by an equal perversion on the
part of Critias. The remaining definitions have a higher aim, which is to introduce the
element of knowledge, and at last to unite good and truth in a single science. But the
time has not yet arrived for the realization of this vision of metaphysical philosophy; and
such a science when brought nearer to us in the Philebus and the Republic will not be
called by the name of (Greek). Hence we see with surprise that Plato, who in his other
writings identifies good and knowledge, here opposes them, and asks, almost in the
spirit of Aristotle, how can there be a knowledge of knowledge, and even if attainable,
how can such a knowledge be of any use? 
The difficulty of the Charmides arises chiefly from the two senses of the word (Greek), or
temperance. From the ethical notion of temperance, which is variously defined to be
quietness, modesty, doing our own business, the doing of good actions, the dialogue
passes onto the intellectual conception of (Greek), which is declared also to be the
science of self-knowledge, or of the knowledge of what we know and do not know, or of
the knowledge of good and evil. The dialogue represents a stage in the history of
philosophy in which knowledge and action were not yet distinguished. Hence the
confusion between them, and the easy transition from one to the other. The definitions
which are offered are all rejected, but it is to be observed that they all tend to throw a
light on the nature of temperance, and that, unlike the distinction of Critias between
(Greek), none of them are merely verbal quibbles, it is implied that this question,
although it has not yet received a solution in theory, has been already answered by
Charmides himself, who has learned to practise the virtue of self-knowledge which
philosophers are vainly trying to define in words. In a similar spirit we might say to a
young man who is disturbed by theological difficulties, ‘Do not trouble yourself about
such matters, but only lead a good life;’ and yet in either case it is not to be denied that
right ideas of truth may contribute greatly to the improvement of character.
The reasons why the Charmides, Lysis, Laches have been placed together and first in the
series of Platonic dialogues, are: (i) Their shortness and simplicity. The Charmides and
the Lysis, if not the Laches, are of the same ‘quality’ as the Phaedrus and Symposium:
and it is probable, though far from certain, that the slighter effort preceded the greater
one. (ii) Their eristic, or rather Socratic character; they belong to the class called
dialogues of search (Greek), which have no conclusion. (iii) The absence in them of
certain favourite notions of Plato, such as the doctrine of recollection and of the Platonic
ideas; the questions, whether virtue can be taught; whether the virtues are one or many.
(iv) They have a want of depth, when compared with the dialogues of the middle and
later period; and a youthful beauty and grace which is wanting in the later ones. (v)
Their resemblance to one another; in all the three boyhood has a great part. These
reasons have various degrees of weight in determining their place in the catalogue of the
Platonic writings, though they are not conclusive. No arrangement of the Platonic
dialogues can be strictly chronological. The order which has been adopted is intended
mainly for the convenience of the reader; at the same time, indications of the date
supplied either by Plato himself or allusions found in the dialogues have not been lost 
sight of. Much may be said about this subject, but the results can only be probable; there
are no materials which would enable us to attain to anything like certainty.
The relations of knowledge and virtue are again brought forward in the companion
dialogues of the Lysis and Laches; and also in the Protagoras and Euthydemus. The
opposition of abstract and particular knowledge in this dialogue may be compared with
a similar opposition of ideas and phenomena which occurs in the Prologues to the
Parmenides, but seems rather to belong to a later stage of the philosophy of Plato.








 

CHARMIDES, OR TEMPERANCE
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, who is the narrator, Charmides, Chaerephon,
Critias.
SCENE: The Palaestra of Taureas, which is near the Porch of the King Archon.
Yesterday evening I returned from the army at Potidaea, and having been a good while
away, I thought that I should like to go and look at my old haunts. So I went into the
palaestra of Taureas, which is over against the temple adjoining the porch of the King
Archon, and there I found a number of persons, most of whom I knew, but not all. My
visit was unexpected, and no sooner did they see me entering than they saluted me from
afar on all sides; and Chaerephon, who is a kind of madman, started up and ran to me,
seizing my hand, and saying, How did you escape, Socrates?—(I should explain that an
engagement had taken place at Potidaea not long before we came away, of which the
news had only just reached Athens.)
You see, I replied, that here I am.
There was a report, he said, that the engagement was very severe, and that many of our
acquaintance had fallen.
That, I replied, was not far from the truth.
I suppose, he said, that you were present.
I was.
Then sit down, and tell us the whole story, which as yet we have only heard imperfectly.
I took the place which he assigned to me, by the side of Critias the son of Callaeschrus,
and when I had saluted him and the rest of the company, I told them the news from the
army, and answered their several enquiries. 
Then, when there had been enough of this, I, in my turn, began to make enquiries about
matters at home—about the present state of philosophy, and about the youth. I asked
whether any of them were remarkable for wisdom or beauty, or both. Critias, glancing at
the door, invited my attention to some youths who were coming in, and talking noisily to
one another, followed by a crowd. Of the beauties, Socrates, he said, I fancy that you will
soon be able to form a judgment. For those who are just entering are the advanced guard
of the great beauty, as he is thought to be, of the day, and he is likely to be not far off
himself.
Who is he, I said; and who is his father?
Charmides, he replied, is his name; he is my cousin, and the son of my uncle Glaucon: I
rather think that you know him too, although he was not grown up at the time of your
departure.
Certainly, I know him, I said, for he was remarkable even then when he was still a child,
and I should imagine that by this time he must be almost a young man.
You will see, he said, in a moment what progress he has made and what he is like. He
had scarcely said the word, when Charmides entered.
Now you know, my friend, that I cannot measure anything, and of the beautiful, I am
simply such a measure as a white line is of chalk; for almost all young persons appear to
be beautiful in my eyes. But at that moment, when I saw him coming in, I confess that I
was quite astonished at his beauty and stature; all the world seemed to be enamoured of
him; amazement and confusion reigned when he entered; and a troop of lovers followed
him. That grown-up men like ourselves should have been affected in this way was not
surprising, but I observed that there was the same feeling among the boys; all of them,
down to the very least child, turned and looked at him, as if he had been a statue.
Chaerephon called me and said: What do you think of him, Socrates? Has he not a
beautiful face?
Most beautiful, I said. 
But you would think nothing of his face, he replied, if you could see his naked form: he is
absolutely perfect.
And to this they all agreed.
By Heracles, I said, there never was such a paragon, if he has only one other slight
addition.
What is that? said Critias.
If he has a noble soul; and being of your house, Critias, he may be expected to have this.
He is as fair and good within, as he is without, replied Critias.
Then, before we see his body, should we not ask him to show us his soul, naked and
undisguised? he is just of an age at which he will like to talk.
That he will, said Critias, and I can tell you that he is a philosopher already, and also a
considerable poet, not in his own opinion only, but in that of others.
That, my dear Critias, I replied, is a distinction which has long been in your family, and
is inherited by you from Solon. But why do you not call him, and show him to us? for
even if he were younger than he is, there could be no impropriety in his talking to us in
the presence of you, who are his guardian and cousin.
Very well, he said; then I will call him; and turning to the attendant, he said, Call
Charmides, and tell him that I want him to come and see a physician about the illness of
which he spoke to me the day before yesterday. Then again addressing me, he added: He
has been complaining lately of having a headache when he rises in the morning: now
why should you not make him believe that you know a cure for the headache?
Why not, I said; but will he come?
He will be sure to come, he replied.
He came as he was bidden, and sat down between Critias and me. Great amusement was
occasioned by every one pushing with might and main at his neighbour in order to make 
a place for him next to themselves, until at the two ends of the row one had to get up and
the other was rolled over sideways. Now I, my friend, was beginning to feel awkward;
my former bold belief in my powers of conversing with him had vanished. And when
Critias told him that I was the person who had the cure, he looked at me in such an
indescribable manner, and was just going to ask a question. And at that moment all the
people in the palaestra crowded about us, and, O rare! I caught a sight of the inwards of
his garment, and took the flame. Then I could no longer contain myself. I thought how
well Cydias understood the nature of love, when, in speaking of a fair youth, he warns
some one ‘not to bring the fawn in the sight of the lion to be devoured by him,’ for I felt
that I had been overcome by a sort of wild-beast appetite. But I controlled myself, and
when he asked me if I knew the cure of the headache, I answered, but with an effort, that
I did know.
And what is it? he said.
I replied that it was a kind of leaf, which required to be accompanied by a charm, and if
a person would repeat the charm at the same time that he used the cure, he would be
made whole; but that without the charm the leaf would be of no avail.
Then I will write out the charm from your dictation, he said.
With my consent? I said, or without my consent?
With your consent, Socrates, he said, laughing.
Very good, I said; and are you quite sure that you know my name?
I ought to know you, he replied, for there is a great deal said about you among my
companions; and I remember when I was a child seeing you in company with my cousin
Critias.
I am glad to find that you remember me, I said; for I shall now be more at home with
you and shall be better able to explain the nature of the charm, about which I felt a
difficulty before. For the charm will do more, Charmides, than only cure the headache. I
dare say that you have heard eminent physicians say to a patient who comes to them
with bad eyes, that they cannot cure his eyes by themselves, but that if his eyes are to be 
cured, his head must be treated; and then again they say that to think of curing the head
alone, and not the rest of the body also, is the height of folly. And arguing in this way
they apply their methods to the whole body, and try to treat and heal the whole and the
part together. Did you ever observe that this is what they say?
Yes, he said.
And they are right, and you would agree with them?
Yes, he said, certainly I should.
His approving answers reassured me, and I began by degrees to regain confidence, and
the vital heat returned. Such, Charmides, I said, is the nature of the charm, which I
learned when serving with the army from one of the physicians of the Thracian king
Zamolxis, who are said to be so skilful that they can even give immortality. This
Thracian told me that in these notions of theirs, which I was just now mentioning, the
Greek physicians are quite right as far as they go; but Zamolxis, he added, our king, who
is also a god, says further, ‘that as you ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the
head, or the head without the body, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body
without the soul; and this,’ he said, ‘is the reason why the cure of many diseases is
unknown to the physicians of Hellas, because they are ignorant of the whole, which
ought to be studied also; for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.’ For all
good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates, as he declared, in the
soul, and overflows from thence, as if from the head into the eyes. And therefore if the
head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul; that is the first thing.
And the cure, my dear youth, has to be effected by the use of certain charms, and these
charms are fair words; and by them temperance is implanted in the soul, and where
temperance is, there health is speedily imparted, not only to the head, but to the whole
body. And he who taught me the cure and the charm at the same time added a special
direction: ‘Let no one,’ he said, ‘persuade you to cure the head, until he has first given
you his soul to be cured by the charm. For this,’ he said, ‘is the great error of our day in
the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body.’ And
he added with emphasis, at the same time making me swear to his words, ‘Let no one,
however rich, or noble, or fair, persuade you to give him the cure, without the charm.’
Now I have sworn, and I must keep my oath, and therefore if you will allow me to apply 
the Thracian charm first to your soul, as the stranger directed, I will afterwards proceed
to apply the cure to your head. But if not, I do not know what I am to do with you, my
dear Charmides.
Critias, when he heard this, said: The headache will be an unexpected gain to my young
relation, if the pain in his head compels him to improve his mind: and I can tell you,
Socrates, that Charmides is not only pre-eminent in beauty among his equals, but also in
that quality which is given by the charm; and this, as you say, is temperance?
Yes, I said.
Then let me tell you that he is the most temperate of human beings, and for his age
inferior to none in any quality.
Yes, I said, Charmides; and indeed I think that you ought to excel others in all good
qualities; for if I am not mistaken there is no one present who could easily point out two
Athenian houses, whose union would be likely to produce a better or nobler scion than
the two from which you are sprung. There is your father’s house, which is descended
from Critias the son of Dropidas, whose family has been commemorated in the
panegyrical verses of Anacreon, Solon, and many other poets, as famous for beauty and
virtue and all other high fortune: and your mother’s house is equally distinguished; for
your maternal uncle, Pyrilampes, is reputed never to have found his equal, in Persia at
the court of the great king, or on the continent of Asia, in all the places to which he went
as ambassador, for stature and beauty; that whole family is not a whit inferior to the
other. Having such ancestors you ought to be first in all things, and, sweet son of
Glaucon, your outward form is no dishonour to any of them. If to beauty you add
temperance, and if in other respects you are what Critias declares you to be, then, dear
Charmides, blessed art thou, in being the son of thy mother. And here lies the point; for
if, as he declares, you have this gift of temperance already, and are temperate enough, in
that case you have no need of any charms, whether of Zamolxis or of Abaris the
Hyperborean, and I may as well let you have the cure of the head at once; but if you have
not yet acquired this quality, I must use the charm before I give you the medicine.
Please, therefore, to inform me whether you admit the truth of what Critias has been
saying;—have you or have you not this quality of temperance? 
Charmides blushed, and the blush heightened his beauty, for modesty is becoming in
youth; he then said very ingenuously, that he really could not at once answer, either yes,
or no, to the question which I had asked: For, said he, if I affirm that I am not
temperate, that would be a strange thing for me to say of myself, and also I should give
the lie to Critias, and many others who think as he tells you, that I am temperate: but, on
the other hand, if I say that I am, I shall have to praise myself, which would be ill
manners; and therefore I do not know how to answer you.
I said to him: That is a natural reply, Charmides, and I think that you and I ought
together to enquire whether you have this quality about which I am asking or not; and
then you will not be compelled to say what you do not like; neither shall I be a rash
practitioner of medicine: therefore, if you please, I will share the enquiry with you, but I
will not press you if you would rather not.
There is nothing which I should like better, he said; and as far as I am concerned you
may proceed in the way which you think best.
I think, I said, that I had better begin by asking you a question; for if temperance abides
in you, you must have an opinion about her; she must give some intimation of her
nature and qualities, which may enable you to form a notion of her. Is not that true?
Yes, he said, that I think is true.
You know your native language, I said, and therefore you must be able to tell what you
feel about this.
Certainly, he said.
In order, then, that I may form a conjecture whether you have temperance abiding in
you or not, tell me, I said, what, in your opinion, is Temperance?
At first he hesitated, and was very unwilling to answer: then he said that he thought
temperance was doing things orderly and quietly, such things for example as walking in
the streets, and talking, or anything else of that nature. In a word, he said, I should
answer that, in my opinion, temperance is quietness. 
Are you right, Charmides? I said. No doubt some would affirm that the quiet are the
temperate; but let us see whether these words have any meaning; and first tell me
whether you would not acknowledge temperance to be of the class of the noble and
good?
Yes.
But which is best when you are at the writing-master’s, to write the same letters quickly
or quietly?
Quickly.
And to read quickly or slowly?
Quickly again.
And in playing the lyre, or wrestling, quickness or sharpness are far better than
quietness and slowness?
Yes.
And the same holds in boxing and in the pancratium?
Certainly.
And in leaping and running and in bodily exercises generally, quickness and agility are
good; slowness, and inactivity, and quietness, are bad?
That is evident.
Then, I said, in all bodily actions, not quietness, but the greatest agility and quickness, is
noblest and best?
Yes, certainly.
And is temperance a good?
Yes. 
Then, in reference to the body, not quietness, but quickness will be the higher degree of
temperance, if temperance is a good?
True, he said.
And which, I said, is better—facility in learning, or difficulty in learning?
Facility.
Yes, I said; and facility in learning is learning quickly, and difficulty in learning is
learning quietly and slowly?
True.
And is it not better to teach another quickly and energetically, rather than quietly and
slowly?
Yes.
And which is better, to call to mind, and to remember, quickly and readily, or quietly
and slowly?
The former.
And is not shrewdness a quickness or cleverness of the soul, and not a quietness?
True.
And is it not best to understand what is said, whether at the writing-master’s or the
music-master’s, or anywhere else, not as quietly as possible, but as quickly as possible?
Yes.
And in the searchings or deliberations of the soul, not the quietest, as I imagine, and he
who with difficulty deliberates and discovers, is thought worthy of praise, but he who
does so most easily and quickly?
Quite true, he said. 
And in all that concerns either body or soul, swiftness and activity are clearly better than
slowness and quietness?
Clearly they are.
Then temperance is not quietness, nor is the temperate life quiet,— certainly not upon
this view; for the life which is temperate is supposed to be the good. And of two things,
one is true,—either never, or very seldom, do the quiet actions in life appear to be better
than the quick and energetic ones; or supposing that of the nobler actions, there are as
many quiet, as quick and vehement: still, even if we grant this, temperance will not be
acting quietly any more than acting quickly and energetically, either in walking or
talking or in anything else; nor will the quiet life be more temperate than the unquiet,
seeing that temperance is admitted by us to be a good and noble thing, and the quick
have been shown to be as good as the quiet.
I think, he said, Socrates, that you are right.
Then once more, Charmides, I said, fix your attention, and look within; consider the
effect which temperance has upon yourself, and the nature of that which has the effect.
Think over all this, and, like a brave youth, tell me—What is temperance?
After a moment’s pause, in which he made a real manly effort to think, he said: My
opinion is, Socrates, that temperance makes a man ashamed or modest, and that
temperance is the same as modesty.
Very good, I said; and did you not admit, just now, that temperance is noble?
Yes, certainly, he said.
And the temperate are also good?
Yes.
And can that be good which does not make men good?
Certainly not. 
And you would infer that temperance is not only noble, but also good?
That is my opinion.
Well, I said; but surely you would agree with Homer when he says,
‘Modesty is not good for a needy man’?
Yes, he said; I agree.
Then I suppose that modesty is and is not good?
Clearly.
But temperance, whose presence makes men only good, and not bad, is always good?
That appears to me to be as you say.
And the inference is that temperance cannot be modesty—if temperance is a good, and if
modesty is as much an evil as a good?
All that, Socrates, appears to me to be true; but I should like to know what you think
about another definition of temperance, which I just now remember to have heard from
some one, who said, ‘That temperance is doing our own business.’ Was he right who
affirmed that?
You monster! I said; this is what Critias, or some philosopher has told you.
Some one else, then, said Critias; for certainly I have not.
But what matter, said Charmides, from whom I heard this?
No matter at all, I replied; for the point is not who said the words, but whether they are
true or not.
There you are in the right, Socrates, he replied. 
To be sure, I said; yet I doubt whether we shall ever be able to discover their truth or
falsehood; for they are a kind of riddle.
What makes you think so? he said.
Because, I said, he who uttered them seems to me to have meant one thing, and said
another. Is the scribe, for example, to be regarded as doing nothing when he reads or
writes?
I should rather think that he was doing something.
And does the scribe write or read, or teach you boys to write or read, your own names
only, or did you write your enemies’ names as well as your own and your friends’?
As much one as the other.
And was there anything meddling or intemperate in this?
Certainly not.
And yet if reading and writing are the same as doing, you were doing what was not your
own business?
But they are the same as doing.
And the healing art, my friend, and building, and weaving, and doing anything whatever
which is done by art,—these all clearly come under the head of doing?
Certainly.
And do you think that a state would be well ordered by a law which compelled every
man to weave and wash his own coat, and make his own shoes, and his own flask and
strigil, and other implements, on this principle of every one doing and performing his
own, and abstaining from what is not his own?
I think not, he said. 
But, I said, a temperate state will be a well-ordered state.
Of course, he replied.
Then temperance, I said, will not be doing one’s own business; not at least in this way,
or doing things of this sort?
Clearly not.
Then, as I was just now saying, he who declared that temperance is a man doing his own
business had another and a hidden meaning; for I do not think that he could have been
such a fool as to mean this. Was he a fool who told you, Charmides?
Nay, he replied, I certainly thought him a very wise man.
Then I am quite certain that he put forth his definition as a riddle, thinking that no one
would know the meaning of the words ‘doing his own business.’
I dare say, he replied.
And what is the meaning of a man doing his own business? Can you tell me?
Indeed, I cannot; and I should not wonder if the man himself who used this phrase did
not understand what he was saying. Whereupon he laughed slyly, and looked at Critias.
Critias had long been showing uneasiness, for he felt that he had a reputation to
maintain with Charmides and the rest of the company. He had, however, hitherto
managed to restrain himself; but now he could no longer forbear, and I am convinced of
the truth of the suspicion which I entertained at the time, that Charmides had heard this
answer about temperance from Critias. And Charmides, who did not want to answer
himself, but to make Critias answer, tried to stir him up. He went on pointing out that
he had been refuted, at which Critias grew angry, and appeared, as I thought, inclined to
quarrel with him; just as a poet might quarrel with an actor who spoiled his poems in
repeating them; so he looked hard at him and said—
Do you imagine, Charmides, that the author of this definition of temperance did not
understand the meaning of his own words, because you do not understand them? 
Why, at his age, I said, most excellent Critias, he can hardly be expected to understand;
but you, who are older, and have studied, may well be assumed to know the meaning of
them; and therefore, if you agree with him, and accept his definition of temperance, I
would much rather argue with you than with him about the truth or falsehood of the
definition.
I entirely agree, said Critias, and accept the definition.
Very good, I said; and now let me repeat my question—Do you admit, as I was just now
saying, that all craftsmen make or do something?
I do.
And do they make or do their own business only, or that of others also?
They make or do that of others also.
And are they temperate, seeing that they make not for themselves or their own business
only?
Why not? he said.
No objection on my part, I said, but there may be a difficulty on his who proposes as a
definition of temperance, ‘doing one’s own business,’ and then says that there is no
reason why those who do the business of others should not be temperate.
Nay (The English reader has to observe that the word ‘make’ (Greek), in Greek, has also
the sense of ‘do’ (Greek).), said he; did I ever acknowledge that those who do the
business of others are temperate? I said, those who make, not those who do.
What! I asked; do you mean to say that doing and making are not the same?
No more, he replied, than making or working are the same; thus much I have learned
from Hesiod, who says that ‘work is no disgrace.’ Now do you imagine that if he had
meant by working and doing such things as you were describing, he would have said
that there was no disgrace in them—for example, in the manufacture of shoes, or in
selling pickles, or sitting for hire in a house of ill-fame? That, Socrates, is not to be 
supposed: but I conceive him to have distinguished making from doing and work; and,
while admitting that the making anything might sometimes become a disgrace, when
the employment was not honourable, to have thought that work was never any disgrace
at all. For things nobly and usefully made he called works; and such makings he called
workings, and doings; and he must be supposed to have called such things only man’s
proper business, and what is hurtful, not his business: and in that sense Hesiod, and any
other wise man, may be reasonably supposed to call him wise who does his own work.
O Critias, I said, no sooner had you opened your mouth, than I pretty well knew that you
would call that which is proper to a man, and that which is his own, good; and that the
makings (Greek) of the good you would call doings (Greek), for I am no stranger to the
endless distinctions which Prodicus draws about names. Now I have no objection to
your giving names any signification which you please, if you will only tell me what you
mean by them. Please then to begin again, and be a little plainer. Do you mean that this
doing or making, or whatever is the word which you would use, of good actions, is
temperance?
I do, he said.
Then not he who does evil, but he who does good, is temperate?
Yes, he said; and you, friend, would agree.
No matter whether I should or not; just now, not what I think, but what you are saying,
is the point at issue.
Well, he answered; I mean to say, that he who does evil, and not good, is not temperate;
and that he is temperate who does good, and not evil: for temperance I define in plain
words to be the doing of good actions.
And you may be very likely right in what you are saying; but I am curious to know
whether you imagine that temperate men are ignorant of their own temperance?
I do not think so, he said. 
And yet were you not saying, just now, that craftsmen might be temperate in doing
another’s work, as well as in doing their own?
I was, he replied; but what is your drift?
I have no particular drift, but I wish that you would tell me whether a physician who
cures a patient may do good to himself and good to another also?
I think that he may.
And he who does so does his duty?
Yes.
And does not he who does his duty act temperately or wisely?
Yes, he acts wisely.
But must the physician necessarily know when his treatment is likely to prove beneficial,
and when not? or must the craftsman necessarily know when he is likely to be benefited,
and when not to be benefited, by the work which he is doing?
I suppose not.
Then, I said, he may sometimes do good or harm, and not know what he is himself
doing, and yet, in doing good, as you say, he has done temperately or wisely. Was not
that your statement?
Yes.
Then, as would seem, in doing good, he may act wisely or temperately, and be wise or
temperate, but not know his own wisdom or temperance?
But that, Socrates, he said, is impossible; and therefore if this is, as you imply, the
necessary consequence of any of my previous admissions, I will withdraw them, rather
than admit that a man can be temperate or wise who does not know himself; and I am
not ashamed to confess that I was in error. For self-knowledge would certainly be 
maintained by me to be the very essence of knowledge, and in this I agree with him who
dedicated the inscription, ‘Know thyself!’ at Delphi. That word, if I am not mistaken, is
put there as a sort of salutation which the god addresses to those who enter the temple;
as much as to say that the ordinary salutation of ‘Hail!’ is not right, and that the
exhortation ‘Be temperate!’ would be a far better way of saluting one another. The
notion of him who dedicated the inscription was, as I believe, that the god speaks to
those who enter his temple, not as men speak; but, when a worshipper enters, the first
word which he hears is ‘Be temperate!’ This, however, like a prophet he expresses in a
sort of riddle, for ‘Know thyself!’ and ‘Be temperate!’ are the same, as I maintain, and as
the letters imply (Greek), and yet they may be easily misunderstood; and succeeding
sages who added ‘Never too much,’ or, ‘Give a pledge, and evil is nigh at hand,’ would
appear to have so misunderstood them; for they imagined that ‘Know thyself!’ was a
piece of advice which the god gave, and not his salutation of the worshippers at their
first coming in; and they dedicated their own inscription under the idea that they too
would give equally useful pieces of advice. Shall I tell you, Socrates, why I say all this?
My object is to leave the previous discussion (in which I know not whether you or I are
more right, but, at any rate, no clear result was attained), and to raise a new one in
which I will attempt to prove, if you deny, that temperance is self-knowledge.
Yes, I said, Critias; but you come to me as though I professed to know about the
questions which I ask, and as though I could, if I only would, agree with you. Whereas
the fact is that I enquire with you into the truth of that which is advanced from time to
time, just because I do not know; and when I have enquired, I will say whether I agree
with you or not. Please then to allow me time to reflect.
Reflect, he said.
I am reflecting, I replied, and discover that temperance, or wisdom, if implying a
knowledge of anything, must be a science, and a science of something.
Yes, he said; the science of itself.
Is not medicine, I said, the science of health?
True. 
And suppose, I said, that I were asked by you what is the use or effect of medicine, which
is this science of health, I should answer that medicine is of very great use in producing
health, which, as you will admit, is an excellent effect.
Granted.
And if you were to ask me, what is the result or effect of architecture, which is the
science of building, I should say houses, and so of other arts, which all have their
different results. Now I want you, Critias, to answer a similar question about
temperance, or wisdom, which, according to you, is the science of itself. Admitting this
view, I ask of you, what good work, worthy of the name wise, does temperance or
wisdom, which is the science of itself, effect? Answer me.
That is not the true way of pursuing the enquiry, Socrates, he said; for wisdom is not like
the other sciences, any more than they are like one another: but you proceed as if they
were alike. For tell me, he said, what result is there of computation or geometry, in the
same sense as a house is the result of building, or a garment of weaving, or any other
work of any other art? Can you show me any such result of them? You cannot.
That is true, I said; but still each of these sciences has a subject which is different from
the science. I can show you that the art of computation has to do with odd and even
numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other. Is not that true?
Yes, he said.
And the odd and even numbers are not the same with the art of computation?
They are not.
The art of weighing, again, has to do with lighter and heavier; but the art of weighing is
one thing, and the heavy and the light another. Do you admit that?
Yes.
Now, I want to know, what is that which is not wisdom, and of which wisdom is the
science? 
You are just falling into the old error, Socrates, he said. You come asking in what
wisdom or temperance differs from the other sciences, and then you try to discover
some respect in which they are alike; but they are not, for all the other sciences are of
something else, and not of themselves; wisdom alone is a science of other sciences, and
of itself. And of this, as I believe, you are very well aware: and that you are only doing
what you denied that you were doing just now, trying to refute me, instead of pursuing
the argument.
And what if I am? How can you think that I have any other motive in refuting you but
what I should have in examining into myself? which motive would be just a fear of my
unconsciously fancying that I knew something of which I was ignorant. And at this
moment I pursue the argument chiefly for my own sake, and perhaps in some degree
also for the sake of my other friends. For is not the discovery of things as they truly are,
a good common to all mankind?
Yes, certainly, Socrates, he said.
Then, I said, be cheerful, sweet sir, and give your opinion in answer to the question
which I asked, never minding whether Critias or Socrates is the person refuted; attend
only to the argument, and see what will come of the refutation.
I think that you are right, he replied; and I will do as you say.
Tell me, then, I said, what you mean to affirm about wisdom.
I mean to say that wisdom is the only science which is the science of itself as well as of
the other sciences.
But the science of science, I said, will also be the science of the absence of science.
Very true, he said.
Then the wise or temperate man, and he only, will know himself, and be able to examine
what he knows or does not know, and to see what others know and think that they know
and do really know; and what they do not know, and fancy that they know, when they do
not. No other person will be able to do this. And this is wisdom and temperance and 
self-knowledge—for a man to know what he knows, and what he does not know. That is
your meaning?
Yes, he said.
Now then, I said, making an offering of the third or last argument to Zeus the Saviour,
let us begin again, and ask, in the first place, whether it is or is not possible for a person
to know that he knows and does not know what he knows and does not know; and in the
second place, whether, if perfectly possible, such knowledge is of any use.
That is what we have to consider, he said.
And here, Critias, I said, I hope that you will find a way out of a difficulty into which I
have got myself. Shall I tell you the nature of the difficulty?
By all means, he replied.
Does not what you have been saying, if true, amount to this: that there must be a single
science which is wholly a science of itself and of other sciences, and that the same is also
the science of the absence of science?
Yes.
But consider how monstrous this proposition is, my friend: in any parallel case, the
impossibility will be transparent to you.
How is that? and in what cases do you mean?
In such cases as this: Suppose that there is a kind of vision which is not like ordinary
vision, but a vision of itself and of other sorts of vision, and of the defect of them, which
in seeing sees no colour, but only itself and other sorts of vision: Do you think that there
is such a kind of vision?
Certainly not.
Or is there a kind of hearing which hears no sound at all, but only itself and other sorts
of hearing, or the defects of them? 
There is not.
Or take all the senses: can you imagine that there is any sense of itself and of other
senses, but which is incapable of perceiving the objects of the senses?
I think not.
Could there be any desire which is not the desire of any pleasure, but of itself, and of all
other desires?
Certainly not.
Or can you imagine a wish which wishes for no good, but only for itself and all other
wishes?
I should answer, No.
Or would you say that there is a love which is not the love of beauty, but of itself and of
other loves?
I should not.
Or did you ever know of a fear which fears itself or other fears, but has no object of fear?
I never did, he said.
Or of an opinion which is an opinion of itself and of other opinions, and which has no
opinion on the subjects of opinion in general?
Certainly not.
But surely we are assuming a science of this kind, which, having no subject-matter, is a
science of itself and of the other sciences?
Yes, that is what is affirmed.
But how strange is this, if it be indeed true: we must not however as yet absolutely deny
the possibility of such a science; let us rather consider the matter. 
You are quite right.
Well then, this science of which we are speaking is a science of something, and is of a
nature to be a science of something?
Yes.
Just as that which is greater is of a nature to be greater than something else? (Socrates is
intending to show that science differs from the object of science, as any other relative
differs from the object of relation. But where there is comparison—greater, less, heavier,
lighter, and the like—a relation to self as well as to other things involves an absolute
contradiction; and in other cases, as in the case of the senses, is hardly conceivable. The
use of the genitive after the comparative in Greek, (Greek), creates an unavoidable
obscurity in the translation.)
Yes.
Which is less, if the other is conceived to be greater?
To be sure.
And if we could find something which is at once greater than itself, and greater than
other great things, but not greater than those things in comparison of which the others
are greater, then that thing would have the property of being greater and also less than
itself?
That, Socrates, he said, is the inevitable inference.
Or if there be a double which is double of itself and of other doubles, these will be
halves; for the double is relative to the half?
That is true.
And that which is greater than itself will also be less, and that which is heavier will also
be lighter, and that which is older will also be younger: and the same of other things;
that which has a nature relative to self will retain also the nature of its object: I mean to
say, for example, that hearing is, as we say, of sound or voice. Is that true? 
Yes.
Then if hearing hears itself, it must hear a voice; for there is no other way of hearing.
Certainly.
And sight also, my excellent friend, if it sees itself must see a colour, for sight cannot see
that which has no colour.
No.
Do you remark, Critias, that in several of the examples which have been recited the
notion of a relation to self is altogether inadmissible, and in other cases hardly
credible—inadmissible, for example, in the case of magnitudes, numbers, and the like?
Very true.
But in the case of hearing and sight, or in the power of self-motion, and the power of
heat to burn, this relation to self will be regarded as incredible by some, but perhaps not
by others. And some great man, my friend, is wanted, who will satisfactorily determine
for us, whether there is nothing which has an inherent property of relation to self, or
some things only and not others; and whether in this class of self-related things, if there
be such a class, that science which is called wisdom or temperance is included. I
altogether distrust my own power of determining these matters: I am not certain
whether there is such a science of science at all; and even if there be, I should not
acknowledge this to be wisdom or temperance, until I can also see whether such a
science would or would not do us any good; for I have an impression that temperance is
a benefit and a good. And therefore, O son of Callaeschrus, as you maintain that
temperance or wisdom is a science of science, and also of the absence of science, I will
request you to show in the first place, as I was saying before, the possibility, and in the
second place, the advantage, of such a science; and then perhaps you may satisfy me
that you are right in your view of temperance.
Critias heard me say this, and saw that I was in a difficulty; and as one person when
another yawns in his presence catches the infection of yawning from him, so did he
seem to be driven into a difficulty by my difficulty. But as he had a reputation to 
maintain, he was ashamed to admit before the company that he could not answer my
challenge or determine the question at issue; and he made an unintelligible attempt to
hide his perplexity. In order that the argument might proceed, I said to him, Well then
Critias, if you like, let us assume that there is this science of science; whether the
assumption is right or wrong may hereafter be investigated. Admitting the existence of
it, will you tell me how such a science enables us to distinguish what we know or do not
know, which, as we were saying, is self-knowledge or wisdom: so we were saying?
Yes, Socrates, he said; and that I think is certainly true: for he who has this science or
knowledge which knows itself will become like the knowledge which he has, in the same
way that he who has swiftness will be swift, and he who has beauty will be beautiful, and
he who has knowledge will know. In the same way he who has that knowledge which is
self-knowing, will know himself.
I do not doubt, I said, that a man will know himself, when he possesses that which has
self-knowledge: but what necessity is there that, having this, he should know what he
knows and what he does not know?
Because, Socrates, they are the same.
Very likely, I said; but I remain as stupid as ever; for still I fail to comprehend how this
knowing what you know and do not know is the same as the knowledge of self.
What do you mean? he said.
This is what I mean, I replied: I will admit that there is a science of science;—can this do
more than determine that of two things one is and the other is not science or
knowledge?
No, just that.
But is knowledge or want of knowledge of health the same as knowledge or want of
knowledge of justice?
Certainly not. 
The one is medicine, and the other is politics; whereas that of which we are speaking is
knowledge pure and simple.
Very true.
And if a man knows only, and has only knowledge of knowledge, and has no further
knowledge of health and justice, the probability is that he will only know that he knows
something, and has a certain knowledge, whether concerning himself or other men.
True.
Then how will this knowledge or science teach him to know what he knows? Say that he
knows health;—not wisdom or temperance, but the art of medicine has taught it to
him;—and he has learned harmony from the art of music, and building from the art of
building,—neither, from wisdom or temperance: and the same of other things.
That is evident.
How will wisdom, regarded only as a knowledge of knowledge or science of science, ever
teach him that he knows health, or that he knows building?
It is impossible.
Then he who is ignorant of these things will only know that he knows, but not what he
knows?
True.
Then wisdom or being wise appears to be not the knowledge of the things which we do
or do not know, but only the knowledge that we know or do not know?
That is the inference.
Then he who has this knowledge will not be able to examine whether a pretender knows
or does not know that which he says that he knows: he will only know that he has a
knowledge of some kind; but wisdom will not show him of what the knowledge is? 
Plainly not.
Neither will he be able to distinguish the pretender in medicine from the true physician,
nor between any other true and false professor of knowledge. Let us consider the matter
in this way: If the wise man or any other man wants to distinguish the true physician
from the false, how will he proceed? He will not talk to him about medicine; and that, as
we were saying, is the only thing which the physician understands.
True.
And, on the other hand, the physician knows nothing of science, for this has been
assumed to be the province of wisdom.
True.
And further, since medicine is science, we must infer that he does not know anything of
medicine.
Exactly.
Then the wise man may indeed know that the physician has some kind of science or
knowledge; but when he wants to discover the nature of this he will ask, What is the
subject-matter? For the several sciences are distinguished not by the mere fact that they
are sciences, but by the nature of their subjects. Is not that true?
Quite true.
And medicine is distinguished from other sciences as having the subject-matter of
health and disease?
Yes.
And he who would enquire into the nature of medicine must pursue the enquiry into
health and disease, and not into what is extraneous?
True. 
And he who judges rightly will judge of the physician as a physician in what relates to
these?
He will.
He will consider whether what he says is true, and whether what he does is right, in
relation to health and disease?
He will.
But can any one attain the knowledge of either unless he have a knowledge of medicine?
He cannot.
No one at all, it would seem, except the physician can have this knowledge; and
therefore not the wise man; he would have to be a physician as well as a wise man.
Very true.
Then, assuredly, wisdom or temperance, if only a science of science, and of the absence
of science or knowledge, will not be able to distinguish the physician who knows from
one who does not know but pretends or thinks that he knows, or any other professor of
anything at all; like any other artist, he will only know his fellow in art or wisdom, and
no one else.
That is evident, he said.
But then what profit, Critias, I said, is there any longer in wisdom or temperance which
yet remains, if this is wisdom? If, indeed, as we were supposing at first, the wise man
had been able to distinguish what he knew and did not know, and that he knew the one
and did not know the other, and to recognize a similar faculty of discernment in others,
there would certainly have been a great advantage in being wise; for then we should
never have made a mistake, but have passed through life the unerring guides of
ourselves and of those who are under us; and we should not have attempted to do what
we did not know, but we should have found out those who knew, and have handed the
business over to them and trusted in them; nor should we have allowed those who were 
under us to do anything which they were not likely to do well; and they would be likely
to do well just that of which they had knowledge; and the house or state which was
ordered or administered under the guidance of wisdom, and everything else of which
wisdom was the lord, would have been well ordered; for truth guiding, and error having
been eliminated, in all their doings, men would have done well, and would have been
happy. Was not this, Critias, what we spoke of as the great advantage of wisdom—to
know what is known and what is unknown to us?
Very true, he said.
And now you perceive, I said, that no such science is to be found anywhere.
I perceive, he said.
May we assume then, I said, that wisdom, viewed in this new light merely as a
knowledge of knowledge and ignorance, has this advantage:—that he who possesses
such knowledge will more easily learn anything which he learns; and that everything will
be clearer to him, because, in addition to the knowledge of individuals, he sees the
science, and this also will better enable him to test the knowledge which others have of
what he knows himself; whereas the enquirer who is without this knowledge may be
supposed to have a feebler and weaker insight? Are not these, my friend, the real
advantages which are to be gained from wisdom? And are not we looking and seeking
after something more than is to be found in her?
That is very likely, he said.
That is very likely, I said; and very likely, too, we have been enquiring to no purpose; as I
am led to infer, because I observe that if this is wisdom, some strange consequences
would follow. Let us, if you please, assume the possibility of this science of sciences, and
further admit and allow, as was originally suggested, that wisdom is the knowledge of
what we know and do not know. Assuming all this, still, upon further consideration, I
am doubtful, Critias, whether wisdom, such as this, would do us much good. For we
were wrong, I think, in supposing, as we were saying just now, that such wisdom
ordering the government of house or state would be a great benefit.
How so? he said. 
Why, I said, we were far too ready to admit the great benefits which mankind would
obtain from their severally doing the things which they knew, and committing the things
of which they are ignorant to those who were better acquainted with them.
Were we not right in making that admission?
I think not.
How very strange, Socrates!
By the dog of Egypt, I said, there I agree with you; and I was thinking as much just now
when I said that strange consequences would follow, and that I was afraid we were on
the wrong track; for however ready we may be to admit that this is wisdom, I certainly
cannot make out what good this sort of thing does to us.
What do you mean? he said; I wish that you could make me understand what you mean.
I dare say that what I am saying is nonsense, I replied; and yet if a man has any feeling
of what is due to himself, he cannot let the thought which comes into his mind pass
away unheeded and unexamined.
I like that, he said.
Hear, then, I said, my own dream; whether coming through the horn or the ivory gate, I
cannot tell. The dream is this: Let us suppose that wisdom is such as we are now
defining, and that she has absolute sway over us; then each action will be done
according to the arts or sciences, and no one professing to be a pilot when he is not, or
any physician or general, or any one else pretending to know matters of which he is
ignorant, will deceive or elude us; our health will be improved; our safety at sea, and
also in battle, will be assured; our coats and shoes, and all other instruments and
implements will be skilfully made, because the workmen will be good and true. Aye, and
if you please, you may suppose that prophecy, which is the knowledge of the future, will
be under the control of wisdom, and that she will deter deceivers and set up the true
prophets in their place as the revealers of the future. Now I quite agree that mankind,
thus provided, would live and act according to knowledge, for wisdom would watch and
prevent ignorance from intruding on us. But whether by acting according to knowledge 
we shall act well and be happy, my dear Critias,— this is a point which we have not yet
been able to determine.
Yet I think, he replied, that if you discard knowledge, you will hardly find the crown of
happiness in anything else.
But of what is this knowledge? I said. Just answer me that small question. Do you mean
a knowledge of shoemaking?
God forbid.
Or of working in brass?
Certainly not.
Or in wool, or wood, or anything of that sort?
No, I do not.
Then, I said, we are giving up the doctrine that he who lives according to knowledge is
happy, for these live according to knowledge, and yet they are not allowed by you to be
happy; but I think that you mean to confine happiness to particular individuals who live
according to knowledge, such for example as the prophet, who, as I was saying, knows
the future. Is it of him you are speaking or of some one else?
Yes, I mean him, but there are others as well.
Yes, I said, some one who knows the past and present as well as the future, and is
ignorant of nothing. Let us suppose that there is such a person, and if there is, you will
allow that he is the most knowing of all living men.
Certainly he is.
Yet I should like to know one thing more: which of the different kinds of knowledge
makes him happy? or do all equally make him happy?
Not all equally, he replied. 
But which most tends to make him happy? the knowledge of what past, present, or
future thing? May I infer this to be the knowledge of the game of draughts?
Nonsense about the game of draughts.
Or of computation?
No.
Or of health?
That is nearer the truth, he said.
And that knowledge which is nearest of all, I said, is the knowledge of what?
The knowledge with which he discerns good and evil.
Monster! I said; you have been carrying me round in a circle, and all this time hiding
from me the fact that the life according to knowledge is not that which makes men act
rightly and be happy, not even if knowledge include all the sciences, but one science
only, that of good and evil. For, let me ask you, Critias, whether, if you take away this,
medicine will not equally give health, and shoemaking equally produce shoes, and the
art of the weaver clothes?—whether the art of the pilot will not equally save our lives at
sea, and the art of the general in war?
Quite so.
And yet, my dear Critias, none of these things will be well or beneficially done, if the
science of the good be wanting.
True.
But that science is not wisdom or temperance, but a science of human advantage; not a
science of other sciences, or of ignorance, but of good and evil: and if this be of use, then
wisdom or temperance will not be of use. 
And why, he replied, will not wisdom be of use? For, however much we assume that
wisdom is a science of sciences, and has a sway over other sciences, surely she will have
this particular science of the good under her control, and in this way will benefit us.
And will wisdom give health? I said; is not this rather the effect of medicine? Or does
wisdom do the work of any of the other arts,—do they not each of them do their own
work? Have we not long ago asseverated that wisdom is only the knowledge of
knowledge and of ignorance, and of nothing else?
That is obvious.
Then wisdom will not be the producer of health.
Certainly not.
The art of health is different.
Yes, different.
Nor does wisdom give advantage, my good friend; for that again we have just now been
attributing to another art.
Very true.
How then can wisdom be advantageous, when giving no advantage?
That, Socrates, is certainly inconceivable.
You see then, Critias, that I was not far wrong in fearing that I could have no sound
notion about wisdom; I was quite right in depreciating myself; for that which is
admitted to be the best of all things would never have seemed to us useless, if I had been
good for anything at an enquiry. But now I have been utterly defeated, and have failed to
discover what that is to which the imposer of names gave this name of temperance or
wisdom. And yet many more admissions were made by us than could be fairly granted;
for we admitted that there was a science of science, although the argument said No, and
protested against us; and we admitted further, that this science knew the works of the
other sciences (although this too was denied by the argument), because we wanted to 
show that the wise man had knowledge of what he knew and did not know; also we
nobly disregarded, and never even considered, the impossibility of a man knowing in a
sort of way that which he does not know at all; for our assumption was, that he knows
that which he does not know; than which nothing, as I think, can be more irrational.
And yet, after finding us so easy and good-natured, the enquiry is still unable to discover
the truth; but mocks us to a degree, and has gone out of its way to prove the inutility of
that which we admitted only by a sort of supposition and fiction to be the true definition
of temperance or wisdom: which result, as far as I am concerned, is not so much to be
lamented, I said. But for your sake, Charmides, I am very sorry—that you, having such
beauty and such wisdom and temperance of soul, should have no profit or good in life
from your wisdom and temperance. And still more am I grieved about the charm which
I learned with so much pain, and to so little profit, from the Thracian, for the sake of a
thing which is nothing worth. I think indeed that there is a mistake, and that I must be a
bad enquirer, for wisdom or temperance I believe to be really a great good; and happy
are you, Charmides, if you certainly possess it. Wherefore examine yourself, and see
whether you have this gift and can do without the charm; for if you can, I would rather
advise you to regard me simply as a fool who is never able to reason out anything; and to
rest assured that the more wise and temperate you are, the happier you will be.
Charmides said: I am sure that I do not know, Socrates, whether I have or have not this
gift of wisdom and temperance; for how can I know whether I have a thing, of which
even you and Critias are, as you say, unable to discover the nature?—(not that I believe
you.) And further, I am sure, Socrates, that I do need the charm, and as far as I am
concerned, I shall be willing to be charmed by you daily, until you say that I have had
enough.
Very good, Charmides, said Critias; if you do this I shall have a proof of your
temperance, that is, if you allow yourself to be charmed by Socrates, and never desert
him at all.
You may depend on my following and not deserting him, said Charmides: if you who are
my guardian command me, I should be very wrong not to obey you.
And I do command you, he said. 
Then I will do as you say, and begin this very day.
You sirs, I said, what are you conspiring about?
We are not conspiring, said Charmides, we have conspired already.
And are you about to use violence, without even going through the forms of justice?
Yes, I shall use violence, he replied, since he orders me; and therefore you had better
consider well.
But the time for consideration has passed, I said, when violence is employed; and you,
when you are determined on anything, and in the mood of violence, are irresistible.
Do not you resist me then, he said.
I will not resist you, I replied. 




Laches, or Courage
by
Plato 
Introduction
Lysimachus, the son of Aristides the Just, and Melesias, the son of the elder Thucydides,
two aged men who live together, are desirous of educating their sons in the best manner.
Their own education, as often happens with the sons of great men, has been neglected;
and they are resolved that their children shall have more care taken of them, than they
received themselves at the hands of their fathers.
At their request, Nicias and Laches have accompanied them to see a man named
Stesilaus fighting in heavy armour. The two fathers ask the two generals what they think
of this exhibition, and whether they would advise that their sons should acquire the
accomplishment. Nicias and Laches are quite willing to give their opinion; but they
suggest that Socrates should be invited to take part in the consultation. He is a stranger
to Lysimachus, but is afterwards recognised as the son of his old friend Sophroniscus,
with whom he never had a difference to the hour of his death. Socrates is also known to
Nicias, to whom he had introduced the excellent Damon, musician and sophist, as a
tutor for his son, and to Laches, who had witnessed his heroic behaviour at the battle of
Delium (compare Symp.).
Socrates, as he is younger than either Nicias or Laches, prefers to wait until they have
delivered their opinions, which they give in a characteristic manner. Nicias, the
tactician, is very much in favour of the new art, which he describes as the gymnastics of
war—useful when the ranks are formed, and still more useful when they are broken;
creating a general interest in military studies, and greatly adding to the appearance of
the soldier in the field. Laches, the blunt warrior, is of opinion that such an art is not
knowledge, and cannot be of any value, because the Lacedaemonians, those great
masters of arms, neglect it. His own experience in actual service has taught him that
these pretenders are useless and ridiculous. This man Stesilaus has been seen by him on
board ship making a very sorry exhibition of himself. The possession of the art will make
the coward rash, and subject the courageous, if he chance to make a slip, to invidious
remarks. And now let Socrates be taken into counsel. As they differ he must decide.
Socrates would rather not decide the question by a plurality of votes: in such a serious
matter as the education of a friend’s children, he would consult the one skilled person
who has had masters, and has works to show as evidences of his skill. This is not 
himself; for he has never been able to pay the sophists for instructing him, and has
never had the wit to do or discover anything. But Nicias and Laches are older and richer
than he is: they have had teachers, and perhaps have made discoveries; and he would
have trusted them entirely, if they had not been diametrically opposed.
Lysimachus here proposes to resign the argument into the hands of the younger part of
the company, as he is old, and has a bad memory. He earnestly requests Socrates to
remain;—in this showing, as Nicias says, how little he knows the man, who will certainly
not go away until he has cross-examined the company about their past lives. Nicias has
often submitted to this process; and Laches is quite willing to learn from Socrates,
because his actions, in the true Dorian mode, correspond to his words.
Socrates proceeds: We might ask who are our teachers? But a better and more thorough
way of examining the question will be to ask, ‘What is Virtue?’—or rather, to restrict the
enquiry to that part of virtue which is concerned with the use of weapons—‘What is
Courage?’ Laches thinks that he knows this: (1) ‘He is courageous who remains at his
post.’ But some nations fight flying, after the manner of Aeneas in Homer; or as the
heavy-armed Spartans also did at the battle of Plataea. (2) Socrates wants a more
general definition, not only of military courage, but of courage of all sorts, tried both
amid pleasures and pains. Laches replies that this universal courage is endurance. But
courage is a good thing, and mere endurance may be hurtful and injurious. Therefore
(3) the element of intelligence must be added. But then again unintelligent endurance
may often be more courageous than the intelligent, the bad than the good. How is this
contradiction to be solved? Socrates and Laches are not set ‘to the Dorian mode’ of
words and actions; for their words are all confusion, although their actions are
courageous. Still they must ‘endure’ in an argument about endurance. Laches is very
willing, and is quite sure that he knows what courage is, if he could only tell.
Nicias is now appealed to; and in reply he offers a definition which he has heard from
Socrates himself, to the effect that (1) ‘Courage is intelligence.’ Laches derides this; and
Socrates enquires, ‘What sort of intelligence?’ to which Nicias replies, ‘Intelligence of
things terrible.’ ‘But every man knows the things to be dreaded in his own art.’ ‘No they
do not. They may predict results, but cannot tell whether they are really terrible; only
the courageous man can tell that.’ Laches draws the inference that the courageous man
is either a soothsayer or a god. 
Again, (2) in Nicias’ way of speaking, the term ‘courageous’ must be denied to animals
or children, because they do not know the danger. Against this inversion of the ordinary
use of language Laches reclaims, but is in some degree mollified by a compliment to his
own courage. Still, he does not like to see an Athenian statesman and general
descending to sophistries of this sort. Socrates resumes the argument. Courage has been
defined to be intelligence or knowledge of the terrible; and courage is not all virtue, but
only one of the virtues. The terrible is in the future, and therefore the knowledge of the
terrible is a knowledge of the future. But there can be no knowledge of future good or
evil separated from a knowledge of the good and evil of the past or present; that is to
say, of all good and evil. Courage, therefore, is the knowledge of good and evil generally.
But he who has the knowledge of good and evil generally, must not only have courage,
but also temperance, justice, and every other virtue. Thus, a single virtue would be the
same as all virtues (compare Protagoras). And after all the two generals, and Socrates,
the hero of Delium, are still in ignorance of the nature of courage. They must go to
school again, boys, old men and all.
Some points of resemblance, and some points of difference, appear in the Laches when
compared with the Charmides and Lysis. There is less of poetical and simple beauty, and
more of dramatic interest and power. They are richer in the externals of the scene; the
Laches has more play and development of character. In the Lysis and Charmides the
youths are the central figures, and frequent allusions are made to the place of meeting,
which is a palaestra. Here the place of meeting, which is also a palaestra, is quite
forgotten, and the boys play a subordinate part. The seance is of old and elder men, of
whom Socrates is the youngest.
First is the aged Lysimachus, who may be compared with Cephalus in the Republic, and,
like him, withdraws from the argument. Melesias, who is only his shadow, also subsides
into silence. Both of them, by their own confession, have been ill-educated, as is further
shown by the circumstance that Lysimachus, the friend of Sophroniscus, has never
heard of the fame of Socrates, his son; they belong to different circles. In the Meno their
want of education in all but the arts of riding and wrestling is adduced as a proof that
virtue cannot be taught. The recognition of Socrates by Lysimachus is extremely
graceful; and his military exploits naturally connect him with the two generals, of whom
one has witnessed them. The characters of Nicias and Laches are indicated by their 
opinions on the exhibition of the man fighting in heavy armour. The more enlightened
Nicias is quite ready to accept the new art, which Laches treats with ridicule, seeming to
think that this, or any other military question, may be settled by asking, ‘What do the
Lacedaemonians say?’ The one is the thoughtful general, willing to avail himself of any
discovery in the art of war (Aristoph. Aves); the other is the practical man, who relies on
his own experience, and is the enemy of innovation; he can act but cannot speak, and is
apt to lose his temper. It is to be noted that one of them is supposed to be a hearer of
Socrates; the other is only acquainted with his actions. Laches is the admirer of the
Dorian mode; and into his mouth the remark is put that there are some persons who,
having never been taught, are better than those who have. Like a novice in the art of
disputation, he is delighted with the hits of Socrates; and is disposed to be angry with
the refinements of Nicias.
In the discussion of the main thesis of the Dialogue—‘What is Courage?’ the antagonism
of the two characters is still more clearly brought out; and in this, as in the preliminary
question, the truth is parted between them. Gradually, and not without difficulty, Laches
is made to pass on from the more popular to the more philosophical; it has never
occurred to him that there was any other courage than that of the soldier; and only by an
effort of the mind can he frame a general notion at all. No sooner has this general notion
been formed than it evanesces before the dialectic of Socrates; and Nicias appears from
the other side with the Socratic doctrine, that courage is knowledge. This is explained to
mean knowledge of things terrible in the future. But Socrates denies that the knowledge
of the future is separable from that of the past and present; in other words, true
knowledge is not that of the soothsayer but of the philosopher. And all knowledge will
thus be equivalent to all virtue—a position which elsewhere Socrates is not unwilling to
admit, but which will not assist us in distinguishing the nature of courage. In this part of
the Dialogue the contrast between the mode of cross-examination which is practised by
Laches and by Socrates, and also the manner in which the definition of Laches is made
to approximate to that of Nicias, are worthy of attention.
Thus, with some intimation of the connexion and unity of virtue and knowledge, we
arrive at no distinct result. The two aspects of courage are never harmonized. The
knowledge which in the Protagoras is explained as the faculty of estimating pleasures
and pains is here lost in an unmeaning and transcendental conception. Yet several true 
intimations of the nature of courage are allowed to appear: (1) That courage is moral as
well as physical: (2) That true courage is inseparable from knowledge, and yet (3) is
based on a natural instinct. Laches exhibits one aspect of courage; Nicias the other. The
perfect image and harmony of both is only realized in Socrates himself.
The Dialogue offers one among many examples of the freedom with which Plato treats
facts. For the scene must be supposed to have occurred between B.C. 424, the year of the
battle of Delium, and B.C. 418, the year of the battle of Mantinea, at which Laches fell.
But if Socrates was more than seventy years of age at his trial in 399 (see Apology), he
could not have been a young man at any time after the battle of Delium.
Laches, or Courage 
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Lysimachus, son of Aristides. Melesias, son of
Thucydides. Their sons. Nicias, Laches, Socrates.
LYSIMACHUS: You have seen the exhibition of the man fighting in armour, Nicias and
Laches, but we did not tell you at the time the reason why my friend Melesias and I
asked you to go with us and see him. I think that we may as well confess what this was,
for we certainly ought not to have any reserve with you. The reason was, that we were
intending to ask your advice. Some laugh at the very notion of advising others, and when
they are asked will not say what they think. They guess at the wishes of the person who
asks them, and answer according to his, and not according to their own, opinion. But as
we know that you are good judges, and will say exactly what you think, we have taken
you into our counsels. The matter about which I am making all this preface is as follows:
Melesias and I have two sons; that is his son, and he is named Thucydides, after his
grandfather; and this is mine, who is also called after his grandfather, Aristides. Now,
we are resolved to take the greatest care of the youths, and not to let them run about as
they like, which is too often the way with the young, when they are no longer children,
but to begin at once and do the utmost that we can for them. And knowing you to have
sons of your own, we thought that you were most likely to have attended to their
training and improvement, and, if perchance you have not attended to them, we may
remind you that you ought to have done so, and would invite you to assist us in the
fulfilment of a common duty. I will tell you, Nicias and Laches, even at the risk of being
tedious, how we came to think of this. Melesias and I live together, and our sons live
with us; and now, as I was saying at first, we are going to confess to you. Both of us often
talk to the lads about the many noble deeds which our own fathers did in war and
peace—in the management of the allies, and in the administration of the city; but
neither of us has any deeds of his own which he can show. The truth is that we are
ashamed of this contrast being seen by them, and we blame our fathers for letting us be
spoiled in the days of our youth, while they were occupied with the concerns of others;
and we urge all this upon the lads, pointing out to them that they will not grow up to
honour if they are rebellious and take no pains about themselves; but that if they take
pains they may, perhaps, become worthy of the names which they bear. They, on their
part, promise to comply with our wishes; and our care is to discover what studies or
pursuits are likely to be most improving to them. Some one commended to us the art of
fighting in armour, which he thought an excellent accomplishment for a young man to 
learn; and he praised the man whose exhibition you have seen, and told us to go and see
him. And we determined that we would go, and get you to accompany us; and we were
intending at the same time, if you did not object, to take counsel with you about the
education of our sons. That is the matter which we wanted to talk over with you; and we
hope that you will give us your opinion about this art of fighting in armour, and about
any other studies or pursuits which may or may not be desirable for a young man to
learn. Please to say whether you agree to our proposal.
NICIAS: As far as I am concerned, Lysimachus and Melesias, I applaud your purpose,
and will gladly assist you; and I believe that you, Laches, will be equally glad.
LACHES: Certainly, Nicias; and I quite approve of the remark which Lysimachus made
about his own father and the father of Melesias, and which is applicable, not only to
them, but to us, and to every one who is occupied with public affairs. As he says, such
persons are too apt to be negligent and careless of their own children and their private
concerns. There is much truth in that remark of yours, Lysimachus. But why, instead of
consulting us, do you not consult our friend Socrates about the education of the youths?
He is of the same deme with you, and is always passing his time in places where the
youth have any noble study or pursuit, such as you are enquiring after.
LYSIMACHUS: Why, Laches, has Socrates ever attended to matters of this sort?
LACHES: Certainly, Lysimachus.
NICIAS: That I have the means of knowing as well as Laches; for quite lately he supplied
me with a teacher of music for my sons,—Damon, the disciple of Agathocles, who is a
most accomplished man in every way, as well as a musician, and a companion of
inestimable value for young men at their age.
LYSIMACHUS: Those who have reached my time of life, Socrates and Nicias and
Laches, fall out of acquaintance with the young, because they are generally detained at
home by old age; but you, O son of Sophroniscus, should let your fellow demesman have
the benefit of any advice which you are able to give. Moreover I have a claim upon you as
an old friend of your father; for I and he were always companions and friends, and to the
hour of his death there never was a difference between us; and now it comes back to me, 
at the mention of your name, that I have heard these lads talking to one another at
home, and often speaking of Socrates in terms of the highest praise; but I have never
thought to ask them whether the son of Sophroniscus was the person whom they meant.
Tell me, my boys, whether this is the Socrates of whom you have often spoken?
SON: Certainly, father, this is he.
LYSIMACHUS: I am delighted to hear, Socrates, that you maintain the name of your
father, who was a most excellent man; and I further rejoice at the prospect of our family
ties being renewed.
LACHES: Indeed, Lysimachus, you ought not to give him up; for I can assure you that I
have seen him maintaining, not only his father’s, but also his country’s name. He was
my companion in the retreat from Delium, and I can tell you that if others had only been
like him, the honour of our country would have been upheld, and the great defeat would
never have occurred.
LYSIMACHUS: That is very high praise which is accorded to you, Socrates, by faithful
witnesses and for actions like those which they praise. Let me tell you the pleasure
which I feel in hearing of your fame; and I hope that you will regard me as one of your
warmest friends. You ought to have visited us long ago, and made yourself at home with
us; but now, from this day forward, as we have at last found one another out, do as I
say—come and make acquaintance with me, and with these young men, that I may
continue your friend, as I was your father’s. I shall expect you to do so, and shall venture
at some future time to remind you of your duty. But what say you of the matter of which
we were beginning to speak—the art of fighting in armour? Is that a practice in which
the lads may be advantageously instructed?
SOCRATES: I will endeavour to advise you, Lysimachus, as far as I can in this matter,
and also in every way will comply with your wishes; but as I am younger and not so
experienced, I think that I ought certainly to hear first what my elders have to say, and
to learn of them, and if I have anything to add, then I may venture to give my opinion to
them as well as to you. Suppose, Nicias, that one or other of you begin. 
NICIAS: I have no objection, Socrates; and my opinion is that the acquirement of this
art is in many ways useful to young men. It is an advantage to them that among the
favourite amusements of their leisure hours they should have one which tends to
improve and not to injure their bodily health. No gymnastics could be better or harder
exercise; and this, and the art of riding, are of all arts most befitting to a freeman; for
they only who are thus trained in the use of arms are the athletes of our military
profession, trained in that on which the conflict turns. Moreover in actual battle, when
you have to fight in a line with a number of others, such an acquirement will be of some
use, and will be of the greatest whenever the ranks are broken and you have to fight
singly, either in pursuit, when you are attacking some one who is defending himself, or
in flight, when you have to defend yourself against an assailant. Certainly he who
possessed the art could not meet with any harm at the hands of a single person, or
perhaps of several; and in any case he would have a great advantage. Further, this sort of
skill inclines a man to the love of other noble lessons; for every man who has learned
how to fight in armour will desire to learn the proper arrangement of an army, which is
the sequel of the lesson: and when he has learned this, and his ambition is once fired, he
will go on to learn the complete art of the general. There is no difficulty in seeing that
the knowledge and practice of other military arts will be honourable and valuable to a
man; and this lesson may be the beginning of them. Let me add a further advantage,
which is by no means a slight one,—that this science will make any man a great deal
more valiant and self-possessed in the field. And I will not disdain to mention, what by
some may be thought to be a small matter;—he will make a better appearance at the
right time; that is to say, at the time when his appearance will strike terror into his
enemies. My opinion then, Lysimachus, is, as I say, that the youths should be instructed
in this art, and for the reasons which I have given. But Laches may take a different view;
and I shall be very glad to hear what he has to say.
LACHES: I should not like to maintain, Nicias, that any kind of knowledge is not to be
learned; for all knowledge appears to be a good: and if, as Nicias and as the teachers of
the art affirm, this use of arms is really a species of knowledge, then it ought to be
learned; but if not, and if those who profess to teach it are deceivers only; or if it be
knowledge, but not of a valuable sort, then what is the use of learning it? I say this,
because I think that if it had been really valuable, the Lacedaemonians, whose whole life
is passed in finding out and practising the arts which give them an advantage over other 
nations in war, would have discovered this one. And even if they had not, still these
professors of the art would certainly not have failed to discover that of all the Hellenes
the Lacedaemonians have the greatest interest in such matters, and that a master of the
art who was honoured among them would be sure to make his fortune among other
nations, just as a tragic poet would who is honoured among ourselves; which is the
reason why he who fancies that he can write a tragedy does not go about itinerating in
the neighbouring states, but rushes hither straight, and exhibits at Athens; and this is
natural. Whereas I perceive that these fighters in armour regard Lacedaemon as a
sacred inviolable territory, which they do not touch with the point of their foot; but they
make a circuit of the neighbouring states, and would rather exhibit to any others than to
the Spartans; and particularly to those who would themselves acknowledge that they are
by no means firstrate in the arts of war. Further, Lysimachus, I have encountered a good
many of these gentlemen in actual service, and have taken their measure, which I can
give you at once; for none of these masters of fence have ever been distinguished in
war,—there has been a sort of fatality about them; while in all other arts the men of note
have been always those who have practised the art, they appear to be a most unfortunate
exception. For example, this very Stesilaus, whom you and I have just witnessed
exhibiting in all that crowd and making such great professions of his powers, I have seen
at another time making, in sober truth, an involuntary exhibition of himself, which was
a far better spectacle. He was a marine on board a ship which struck a transport vessel,
and was armed with a weapon, half spear, half scythe; the singularity of this weapon was
worthy of the singularity of the man. To make a long story short, I will only tell you what
happened to this notable invention of the scythe spear. He was fighting, and the scythe
was caught in the rigging of the other ship, and stuck fast; and he tugged, but was
unable to get his weapon free. The two ships were passing one another. He first ran
along his own ship holding on to the spear; but as the other ship passed by and drew
him after as he was holding on, he let the spear slip through his hand until he retained
only the end of the handle. The people in the transport clapped their hands, and laughed
at his ridiculous figure; and when some one threw a stone, which fell on the deck at his
feet, and he quitted his hold of the scythe-spear, the crew of his own trireme also burst
out laughing; they could not refrain when they beheld the weapon waving in the air,
suspended from the transport. Now I do not deny that there may be something in such
an art, as Nicias asserts, but I tell you my experience; and, as I said at first, whether this
be an art of which the advantage is so slight, or not an art at all, but only an imposition, 
in either case such an acquirement is not worth having. For my opinion is, that if the
professor of this art be a coward, he will be likely to become rash, and his character will
be only more notorious; or if he be brave, and fail ever so little, other men will be on the
watch, and he will be greatly traduced; for there is a jealousy of such pretenders; and
unless a man be pre-eminent in valour, he cannot help being ridiculous, if he says that
he has this sort of skill. Such is my judgment, Lysimachus, of the desirableness of this
art; but, as I said at first, ask Socrates, and do not let him go until he has given you his
opinion of the matter.
LYSIMACHUS: I am going to ask this favour of you, Socrates; as is the more necessary
because the two councillors disagree, and some one is in a manner still needed who will
decide between them. Had they agreed, no arbiter would have been required. But as
Laches has voted one way and Nicias another, I should like to hear with which of our
two friends you agree.
SOCRATES: What, Lysimachus, are you going to accept the opinion of the majority?
LYSIMACHUS: Why, yes, Socrates; what else am I to do?
SOCRATES: And would you do so too, Melesias? If you were deliberating about the
gymnastic training of your son, would you follow the advice of the majority of us, or the
opinion of the one who had been trained and exercised under a skilful master?
MELESIAS: The latter, Socrates; as would surely be reasonable.
SOCRATES: His one vote would be worth more than the vote of all us four?
MELESIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And for this reason, as I imagine,—because a good decision is based on
knowledge and not on numbers?
MELESIAS: To be sure.
SOCRATES: Must we not then first of all ask, whether there is any one of us who has
knowledge of that about which we are deliberating? If there is, let us take his advice, 
though he be one only, and not mind the rest; if there is not, let us seek further counsel.
Is this a slight matter about which you and Lysimachus are deliberating? Are you not
risking the greatest of your possessions? For children are your riches; and upon their
turning out well or ill depends the whole order of their father’s house.
MELESIAS: That is true.
SOCRATES: Great care, then, is required in this matter?
MELESIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Suppose, as I was just now saying, that we were considering, or wanting to
consider, who was the best trainer. Should we not select him who knew and had
practised the art, and had the best teachers?
MELESIAS: I think that we should.
SOCRATES: But would there not arise a prior question about the nature of the art of
which we want to find the masters?
MELESIAS: I do not understand.
SOCRATES: Let me try to make my meaning plainer then. I do not think that we have as
yet decided what that is about which we are consulting, when we ask which of us is or is
not skilled in the art, and has or has not had a teacher of the art.
NICIAS: Why, Socrates, is not the question whether young men ought or ought not to
learn the art of fighting in armour?
SOCRATES: Yes, Nicias; but there is also a prior question, which I may illustrate in this
way: When a person considers about applying a medicine to the eyes, would you say that
he is consulting about the medicine or about the eyes?
NICIAS: About the eyes.
SOCRATES: And when he considers whether he shall set a bridle on a horse and at what
time, he is thinking of the horse and not of the bridle? 
NICIAS: True.
SOCRATES: And in a word, when he considers anything for the sake of another thing,
he thinks of the end and not of the means?
NICIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And when you call in an adviser, you should see whether he too is skilful in
the accomplishment of the end which you have in view?
NICIAS: Most true.
SOCRATES: And at present we have in view some knowledge, of which the end is the
soul of youth?
NICIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And we are enquiring, Which of us is skilful or successful in the treatment
of the soul, and which of us has had good teachers?
LACHES: Well but, Socrates; did you never observe that some persons, who have had no
teachers, are more skilful than those who have, in some things?
SOCRATES: Yes, Laches, I have observed that; but you would not be very willing to trust
them if they only professed to be masters of their art, unless they could show some proof
of their skill or excellence in one or more works.
LACHES: That is true.
SOCRATES: And therefore, Laches and Nicias, as Lysimachus and Melesias, in their
anxiety to improve the minds of their sons, have asked our advice about them, we too
should tell them who our teachers were, if we say that we have had any, and prove them
to be in the first place men of merit and experienced trainers of the minds of youth and
also to have been really our teachers. Or if any of us says that he has no teacher, but that
he has works of his own to show; then he should point out to them what Athenians or
strangers, bond or free, he is generally acknowledged to have improved. But if he can
show neither teachers nor works, then he should tell them to look out for others; and 
not run the risk of spoiling the children of friends, and thereby incurring the most
formidable accusation which can be brought against any one by those nearest to him. As
for myself, Lysimachus and Melesias, I am the first to confess that I have never had a
teacher of the art of virtue; although I have always from my earliest youth desired to
have one. But I am too poor to give money to the Sophists, who are the only professors
of moral improvement; and to this day I have never been able to discover the art myself,
though I should not be surprised if Nicias or Laches may have discovered or learned it;
for they are far wealthier than I am, and may therefore have learnt of others. And they
are older too; so that they have had more time to make the discovery. And I really
believe that they are able to educate a man; for unless they had been confident in their
own knowledge, they would never have spoken thus decidedly of the pursuits which are
advantageous or hurtful to a young man. I repose confidence in both of them; but I am
surprised to find that they differ from one another. And therefore, Lysimachus, as
Laches suggested that you should detain me, and not let me go until I answered, I in
turn earnestly beseech and advise you to detain Laches and Nicias, and question them. I
would have you say to them: Socrates avers that he has no knowledge of the matter—he
is unable to decide which of you speaks truly; neither discoverer nor student is he of
anything of the kind. But you, Laches and Nicias, should each of you tell us who is the
most skilful educator whom you have ever known; and whether you invented the art
yourselves, or learned of another; and if you learned, who were your respective teachers,
and who were their brothers in the art; and then, if you are too much occupied in
politics to teach us yourselves, let us go to them, and present them with gifts, or make
interest with them, or both, in the hope that they may be induced to take charge of our
children and of yours; and then they will not grow up inferior, and disgrace their
ancestors. But if you are yourselves original discoverers in that field, give us some proof
of your skill. Who are they who, having been inferior persons, have become under your
care good and noble? For if this is your first attempt at education, there is a danger that
you may be trying the experiment, not on the ‘vile corpus’ of a Carian slave, but on your
own sons, or the sons of your friend, and, as the proverb says, ‘break the large vessel in
learning to make pots.’ Tell us then, what qualities you claim or do not claim. Make
them tell you that, Lysimachus, and do not let them off.
LYSIMACHUS: I very much approve of the words of Socrates, my friends; but you,
Nicias and Laches, must determine whether you will be questioned, and give an 
explanation about matters of this sort. Assuredly, I and Melesias would be greatly
pleased to hear you answer the questions which Socrates asks, if you will: for I began by
saying that we took you into our counsels because we thought that you would have
attended to the subject, especially as you have children who, like our own, are nearly of
an age to be educated. Well, then, if you have no objection, suppose that you take
Socrates into partnership; and do you and he ask and answer one another’s questions:
for, as he has well said, we are deliberating about the most important of our concerns. I
hope that you will see fit to comply with our request.
NICIAS: I see very clearly, Lysimachus, that you have only known Socrates’ father, and
have no acquaintance with Socrates himself: at least, you can only have known him
when he was a child, and may have met him among his fellow-wardsmen, in company
with his father, at a sacrifice, or at some other gathering. You clearly show that you have
never known him since he arrived at manhood.
LYSIMACHUS: Why do you say that, Nicias?
NICIAS: Because you seem not to be aware that any one who has an intellectual affinity
to Socrates and enters into conversation with him is liable to be drawn into an
argument; and whatever subject he may start, he will be continually carried round and
round by him, until at last he finds that he has to give an account both of his present and
past life; and when he is once entangled, Socrates will not let him go until he has
completely and thoroughly sifted him. Now I am used to his ways; and I know that he
will certainly do as I say, and also that I myself shall be the sufferer; for I am fond of his
conversation, Lysimachus. And I think that there is no harm in being reminded of any
wrong thing which we are, or have been, doing: he who does not fly from reproof will be
sure to take more heed of his after-life; as Solon says, he will wish and desire to be
learning so long as he lives, and will not think that old age of itself brings wisdom. To
me, to be cross-examined by Socrates is neither unusual nor unpleasant; indeed, I knew
all along that where Socrates was, the argument would soon pass from our sons to
ourselves; and therefore, I say that for my part, I am quite willing to discourse with
Socrates in his own manner; but you had better ask our friend Laches what his feeling
may be. 
LACHES: I have but one feeling, Nicias, or (shall I say?) two feelings, about discussions.
Some would think that I am a lover, and to others I may seem to be a hater of discourse;
for when I hear a man discoursing of virtue, or of any sort of wisdom, who is a true man
and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure: and I compare the man and
his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such an one I deem
to be the true musician, attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre, or any
pleasant instrument of music; for truly he has in his own life a harmony of words and
deeds arranged, not in the Ionian, or in the Phrygian mode, nor yet in the Lydian, but in
the true Hellenic mode, which is the Dorian, and no other. Such an one makes me merry
with the sound of his voice; and when I hear him I am thought to be a lover of discourse;
so eager am I in drinking in his words. But a man whose actions do not agree with his
words is an annoyance to me; and the better he speaks the more I hate him, and then I
seem to be a hater of discourse. As to Socrates, I have no knowledge of his words, but of
old, as would seem, I have had experience of his deeds; and his deeds show that free and
noble sentiments are natural to him. And if his words accord, then I am of one mind
with him, and shall be delighted to be interrogated by a man such as he is, and shall not
be annoyed at having to learn of him: for I too agree with Solon, ‘that I would fain grow
old, learning many things.’ But I must be allowed to add ‘of the good only.’ Socrates
must be willing to allow that he is a good teacher, or I shall be a dull and uncongenial
pupil: but that the teacher is younger, or not as yet in repute—anything of that sort is of
no account with me. And therefore, Socrates, I give you notice that you may teach and
confute me as much as ever you like, and also learn of me anything which I know. So
high is the opinion which I have entertained of you ever since the day on which you were
my companion in danger, and gave a proof of your valour such as only the man of merit
can give. Therefore, say whatever you like, and do not mind about the difference of our
ages.
SOCRATES: I cannot say that either of you show any reluctance to take counsel and
advise with me.
LYSIMACHUS: But this is our proper business; and yours as well as ours, for I reckon
you as one of us. Please then to take my place, and find out from Nicias and Laches what
we want to know, for the sake of the youths, and talk and consult with them: for I am
old, and my memory is bad; and I do not remember the questions which I am going to 
ask, or the answers to them; and if there is any interruption I am quite lost. I will
therefore beg of you to carry on the proposed discussion by your selves; and I will listen,
and Melesias and I will act upon your conclusions.
SOCRATES: Let us, Nicias and Laches, comply with the request of Lysimachus and
Melesias. There will be no harm in asking ourselves the question which was first
proposed to us: ‘Who have been our own instructors in this sort of training, and whom
have we made better?’ But the other mode of carrying on the enquiry will bring us
equally to the same point, and will be more like proceeding from first principles. For if
we knew that the addition of something would improve some other thing, and were able
to make the addition, then, clearly, we must know how that about which we are advising
may be best and most easily attained. Perhaps you do not understand what I mean.
Then let me make my meaning plainer in this way. Suppose we knew that the addition of
sight makes better the eyes which possess this gift, and also were able to impart sight to
the eyes, then, clearly, we should know the nature of sight, and should be able to advise
how this gift of sight may be best and most easily attained; but if we knew neither what
sight is, nor what hearing is, we should not be very good medical advisers about the eyes
or the ears, or about the best mode of giving sight and hearing to them.
LACHES: That is true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And are not our two friends, Laches, at this very moment inviting us to
consider in what way the gift of virtue may be imparted to their sons for the
improvement of their minds?
LACHES: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then must we not first know the nature of virtue? For how can we advise
any one about the best mode of attaining something of which we are wholly ignorant?
LACHES: I do not think that we can, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then, Laches, we may presume that we know the nature of virtue?
LACHES: Yes. 
SOCRATES: And that which we know we must surely be able to tell?
LACHES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: I would not have us begin, my friend, with enquiring about the whole of
virtue; for that may be more than we can accomplish; let us first consider whether we
have a sufficient knowledge of a part; the enquiry will thus probably be made easier to
us.
LACHES: Let us do as you say, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then which of the parts of virtue shall we select? Must we not select that to
which the art of fighting in armour is supposed to conduce? And is not that generally
thought to be courage?
LACHES: Yes, certainly.
SOCRATES: Then, Laches, suppose that we first set about determining the nature of
courage, and in the second place proceed to enquire how the young men may attain this
quality by the help of studies and pursuits. Tell me, if you can, what is courage.
LACHES: Indeed, Socrates, I see no difficulty in answering; he is a man of courage who
does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy; there can be no
mistake about that.
SOCRATES: Very good, Laches; and yet I fear that I did not express myself clearly; and
therefore you have answered not the question which I intended to ask, but another.
LACHES: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I will endeavour to explain; you would call a man courageous who remains
at his post, and fights with the enemy?
LACHES: Certainly I should.
SOCRATES: And so should I; but what would you say of another man, who fights flying,
instead of remaining? 
LACHES: How flying?
SOCRATES: Why, as the Scythians are said to fight, flying as well as pursuing; and as
Homer says in praise of the horses of Aeneas, that they knew ‘how to pursue, and fly
quickly hither and thither’; and he passes an encomium on Aeneas himself, as having a
knowledge of fear or flight, and calls him ‘an author of fear or flight.’
LACHES: Yes, Socrates, and there Homer is right: for he was speaking of chariots, as
you were speaking of the Scythian cavalry, who have that way of fighting; but the heavyarmed
Greek fights, as I say, remaining in his rank.
SOCRATES: And yet, Laches, you must except the Lacedaemonians at Plataea, who,
when they came upon the light shields of the Persians, are said not to have been willing
to stand and fight, and to have fled; but when the ranks of the Persians were broken,
they turned upon them like cavalry, and won the battle of Plataea.
LACHES: That is true.
SOCRATES: That was my meaning when I said that I was to blame in having put my
question badly, and that this was the reason of your answering badly. For I meant to ask
you not only about the courage of heavy-armed soldiers, but about the courage of
cavalry and every other style of soldier; and not only who are courageous in war, but
who are courageous in perils by sea, and who in disease, or in poverty, or again in
politics, are courageous; and not only who are courageous against pain or fear, but
mighty to contend against desires and pleasures, either fixed in their rank or turning
upon their enemy. There is this sort of courage—is there not, Laches?
LACHES: Certainly, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And all these are courageous, but some have courage in pleasures, and
some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the
same conditions, as I should imagine.
LACHES: Very true. 
SOCRATES: Now I was asking about courage and cowardice in general. And I will begin
with courage, and once more ask, What is that common quality, which is the same in all
these cases, and which is called courage? Do you now understand what I mean?
LACHES: Not over well.
SOCRATES: I mean this: As I might ask what is that quality which is called quickness,
and which is found in running, in playing the lyre, in speaking, in learning, and in many
other similar actions, or rather which we possess in nearly every action that is worth
mentioning of arms, legs, mouth, voice, mind;—would you not apply the term quickness
to all of them?
LACHES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: And suppose I were to be asked by some one: What is that common quality,
Socrates, which, in all these uses of the word, you call quickness? I should say the
quality which accomplishes much in a little time—whether in running, speaking, or in
any other sort of action.
LACHES: You would be quite correct.
SOCRATES: And now, Laches, do you try and tell me in like manner, What is that
common quality which is called courage, and which includes all the various uses of the
term when applied both to pleasure and pain, and in all the cases to which I was just
now referring?
LACHES: I should say that courage is a sort of endurance of the soul, if I am to speak of
the universal nature which pervades them all.
SOCRATES: But that is what we must do if we are to answer the question. And yet I
cannot say that every kind of endurance is, in my opinion, to be deemed courage. Hear
my reason: I am sure, Laches, that you would consider courage to be a very noble
quality.
LACHES: Most noble, certainly. 
SOCRATES: And you would say that a wise endurance is also good and noble?
LACHES: Very noble.
SOCRATES: But what would you say of a foolish endurance? Is not that, on the other
hand, to be regarded as evil and hurtful?
LACHES: True.
SOCRATES: And is anything noble which is evil and hurtful?
LACHES: I ought not to say that, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then you would not admit that sort of endurance to be courage— for it is
not noble, but courage is noble?
LACHES: You are right.
SOCRATES: Then, according to you, only the wise endurance is courage?
LACHES: True.
SOCRATES: But as to the epithet ‘wise,’—wise in what? In all things small as well as
great? For example, if a man shows the quality of endurance in spending his money
wisely, knowing that by spending he will acquire more in the end, do you call him
courageous?
LACHES: Assuredly not.
SOCRATES: Or, for example, if a man is a physician, and his son, or some patient of his,
has inflammation of the lungs, and begs that he may be allowed to eat or drink
something, and the other is firm and refuses; is that courage?
LACHES: No; that is not courage at all, any more than the last.
SOCRATES: Again, take the case of one who endures in war, and is willing to fight, and
wisely calculates and knows that others will help him, and that there will be fewer and 
inferior men against him than there are with him; and suppose that he has also
advantages of position; would you say of such a one who endures with all this wisdom
and preparation, that he, or some man in the opposing army who is in the opposite
circumstances to these and yet endures and remains at his post, is the braver?
LACHES: I should say that the latter, Socrates, was the braver.
SOCRATES: But, surely, this is a foolish endurance in comparison with the other?
LACHES: That is true.
SOCRATES: Then you would say that he who in an engagement of cavalry endures,
having the knowledge of horsemanship, is not so courageous as he who endures, having
no such knowledge?
LACHES: So I should say.
SOCRATES: And he who endures, having a knowledge of the use of the sling, or the
bow, or of any other art, is not so courageous as he who endures, not having such a
knowledge?
LACHES: True.
SOCRATES: And he who descends into a well, and dives, and holds out in this or any
similar action, having no knowledge of diving, or the like, is, as you would say, more
courageous than those who have this knowledge?
LACHES: Why, Socrates, what else can a man say?
SOCRATES: Nothing, if that be what he thinks.
LACHES: But that is what I do think.
SOCRATES: And yet men who thus run risks and endure are foolish, Laches, in
comparison of those who do the same things, having the skill to do them.
LACHES: That is true. 
SOCRATES: But foolish boldness and endurance appeared before to be base and hurtful
to us.
LACHES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: Whereas courage was acknowledged to be a noble quality.
LACHES: True.
SOCRATES: And now on the contrary we are saying that the foolish endurance, which
was before held in dishonour, is courage.
LACHES: Very true.
SOCRATES: And are we right in saying so?
LACHES: Indeed, Socrates, I am sure that we are not right.
SOCRATES: Then according to your statement, you and I, Laches, are not attuned to the
Dorian mode, which is a harmony of words and deeds; for our deeds are not in
accordance with our words. Any one would say that we had courage who saw us in
action, but not, I imagine, he who heard us talking about courage just now.
LACHES: That is most true.
SOCRATES: And is this condition of ours satisfactory?
LACHES: Quite the reverse.
SOCRATES: Suppose, however, that we admit the principle of which we are speaking to
a certain extent.
LACHES: To what extent and what principle do you mean?
SOCRATES: The principle of endurance. We too must endure and persevere in the
enquiry, and then courage will not laugh at our faint-heartedness in searching for
courage; which after all may, very likely, be endurance. 
LACHES: I am ready to go on, Socrates; and yet I am unused to investigations of this
sort. But the spirit of controversy has been aroused in me by what has been said; and I
am really grieved at being thus unable to express my meaning. For I fancy that I do
know the nature of courage; but, somehow or other, she has slipped away from me, and
I cannot get hold of her and tell her nature.
SOCRATES: But, my dear friend, should not the good sportsman follow the track, and
not be lazy?
LACHES: Certainly, he should.
SOCRATES: And shall we invite Nicias to join us? he may be better at the sport than we
are. What do you say?
LACHES: I should like that.
SOCRATES: Come then, Nicias, and do what you can to help your friends, who are
tossing on the waves of argument, and at the last gasp: you see our extremity, and may
save us and also settle your own opinion, if you will tell us what you think about
courage.
NICIAS: I have been thinking, Socrates, that you and Laches are not defining courage in
the right way; for you have forgotten an excellent saying which I have heard from your
own lips.
SOCRATES: What is it, Nicias?
NICIAS: I have often heard you say that ‘Every man is good in that in which he is wise,
and bad in that in which he is unwise.’
SOCRATES: That is certainly true, Nicias.
NICIAS: And therefore if the brave man is good, he is also wise.
SOCRATES: Do you hear him, Laches?
LACHES: Yes, I hear him, but I do not very well understand him. 
SOCRATES: I think that I understand him; and he appears to me to mean that courage
is a sort of wisdom.
LACHES: What can he possibly mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: That is a question which you must ask of himself.
LACHES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Tell him then, Nicias, what you mean by this wisdom; for you surely do not
mean the wisdom which plays the flute?
NICIAS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Nor the wisdom which plays the lyre?
NICIAS: No.
SOCRATES: But what is this knowledge then, and of what?
LACHES: I think that you put the question to him very well, Socrates; and I would like
him to say what is the nature of this knowledge or wisdom.
NICIAS: I mean to say, Laches, that courage is the knowledge of that which inspires fear
or confidence in war, or in anything.
LACHES: How strangely he is talking, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Why do you say so, Laches?
LACHES: Why, surely courage is one thing, and wisdom another.
SOCRATES: That is just what Nicias denies.
LACHES: Yes, that is what he denies; but he is so silly.
SOCRATES: Suppose that we instruct instead of abusing him? 
NICIAS: Laches does not want to instruct me, Socrates; but having been proved to be
talking nonsense himself, he wants to prove that I have been doing the same.
LACHES: Very true, Nicias; and you are talking nonsense, as I shall endeavour to show.
Let me ask you a question: Do not physicians know the dangers of disease? or do the
courageous know them? or are the physicians the same as the courageous?
NICIAS: Not at all.
LACHES: No more than the husbandmen who know the dangers of husbandry, or than
other craftsmen, who have a knowledge of that which inspires them with fear or
confidence in their own arts, and yet they are not courageous a whit the more for that.
SOCRATES: What is Laches saying, Nicias? He appears to be saying something of
importance.
NICIAS: Yes, he is saying something, but it is not true.
SOCRATES: How so?
NICIAS: Why, because he does not see that the physician’s knowledge only extends to
the nature of health and disease: he can tell the sick man no more than this. Do you
imagine, Laches, that the physician knows whether health or disease is the more terrible
to a man? Had not many a man better never get up from a sick bed? I should like to
know whether you think that life is always better than death. May not death often be the
better of the two?
LACHES: Yes certainly so in my opinion.
NICIAS: And do you think that the same things are terrible to those who had better die,
and to those who had better live?
LACHES: Certainly not.
NICIAS: And do you suppose that the physician or any other artist knows this, or any
one indeed, except he who is skilled in the grounds of fear and hope? And him I call the
courageous. 
SOCRATES: Do you understand his meaning, Laches?
LACHES: Yes; I suppose that, in his way of speaking, the soothsayers are courageous.
For who but one of them can know to whom to die or to live is better? And yet Nicias,
would you allow that you are yourself a soothsayer, or are you neither a soothsayer nor
courageous?
NICIAS: What! do you mean to say that the soothsayer ought to know the grounds of
hope or fear?
LACHES: Indeed I do: who but he?
NICIAS: Much rather I should say he of whom I speak; for the soothsayer ought to know
only the signs of things that are about to come to pass, whether death or disease, or loss
of property, or victory, or defeat in war, or in any sort of contest; but to whom the
suffering or not suffering of these things will be for the best, can no more be decided by
the soothsayer than by one who is no soothsayer.
LACHES: I cannot understand what Nicias would be at, Socrates; for he represents the
courageous man as neither a soothsayer, nor a physician, nor in any other character,
unless he means to say that he is a god. My opinion is that he does not like honestly to
confess that he is talking nonsense, but that he shuffles up and down in order to conceal
the difficulty into which he has got himself. You and I, Socrates, might have practised a
similar shuffle just now, if we had only wanted to avoid the appearance of inconsistency.
And if we had been arguing in a court of law there might have been reason in so doing;
but why should a man deck himself out with vain words at a meeting of friends such as
this?
SOCRATES: I quite agree with you, Laches, that he should not. But perhaps Nicias is
serious, and not merely talking for the sake of talking. Let us ask him just to explain
what he means, and if he has reason on his side we will agree with him; if not, we will
instruct him.
LACHES: Do you, Socrates, if you like, ask him: I think that I have asked enough.
SOCRATES: I do not see why I should not; and my question will do for both of us. 
LACHES: Very good.
SOCRATES: Then tell me, Nicias, or rather tell us, for Laches and I are partners in the
argument: Do you mean to affirm that courage is the knowledge of the grounds of hope
and fear?
NICIAS: I do.
SOCRATES: And not every man has this knowledge; the physician and the soothsayer
have it not; and they will not be courageous unless they acquire it—that is what you were
saying?
NICIAS: I was.
SOCRATES: Then this is certainly not a thing which every pig would know, as the
proverb says, and therefore he could not be courageous.
NICIAS: I think not.
SOCRATES: Clearly not, Nicias; not even such a big pig as the Crommyonian sow would
be called by you courageous. And this I say not as a joke, but because I think that he who
assents to your doctrine, that courage is the knowledge of the grounds of fear and hope,
cannot allow that any wild beast is courageous, unless he admits that a lion, or a
leopard, or perhaps a boar, or any other animal, has such a degree of wisdom that he
knows things which but a few human beings ever know by reason of their difficulty. He
who takes your view of courage must affirm that a lion, and a stag, and a bull, and a
monkey, have equally little pretensions to courage.
LACHES: Capital, Socrates; by the gods, that is truly good. And I hope, Nicias, that you
will tell us whether these animals, which we all admit to be courageous, are really wiser
than mankind; or whether you will have the boldness, in the face of universal opinion, to
deny their courage.
NICIAS: Why, Laches, I do not call animals or any other things which have no fear of
dangers, because they are ignorant of them, courageous, but only fearless and senseless.
Do you imagine that I should call little children courageous, which fear no dangers 
because they know none? There is a difference, to my way of thinking, between
fearlessness and courage. I am of opinion that thoughtful courage is a quality possessed
by very few, but that rashness and boldness, and fearlessness, which has no forethought,
are very common qualities possessed by many men, many women, many children, many
animals. And you, and men in general, call by the term ‘courageous’ actions which I call
rash;—my courageous actions are wise actions.
LACHES: Behold, Socrates, how admirably, as he thinks, he dresses himself out in
words, while seeking to deprive of the honour of courage those whom all the world
acknowledges to be courageous.
NICIAS: Not so, Laches, but do not be alarmed; for I am quite willing to say of you and
also of Lamachus, and of many other Athenians, that you are courageous and therefore
wise.
LACHES: I could answer that; but I would not have you cast in my teeth that I am a
haughty Aexonian.
SOCRATES: Do not answer him, Laches; I rather fancy that you are not aware of the
source from which his wisdom is derived. He has got all this from my friend Damon, and
Damon is always with Prodicus, who, of all the Sophists, is considered to be the best
puller to pieces of words of this sort.
LACHES: Yes, Socrates; and the examination of such niceties is a much more suitable
employment for a Sophist than for a great statesman whom the city chooses to preside
over her.
SOCRATES: Yes, my sweet friend, but a great statesman is likely to have a great
intelligence. And I think that the view which is implied in Nicias’ definition of courage is
worthy of examination.
LACHES: Then examine for yourself, Socrates.
SOCRATES: That is what I am going to do, my dear friend. Do not, however, suppose I
shall let you out of the partnership; for I shall expect you to apply your mind, and join
with me in the consideration of the question. 
LACHES: I will if you think that I ought.
SOCRATES: Yes, I do; but I must beg of you, Nicias, to begin again. You remember that
we originally considered courage to be a part of virtue.
NICIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And you yourself said that it was a part; and there were many other parts,
all of which taken together are called virtue.
NICIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Do you agree with me about the parts? For I say that justice, temperance,
and the like, are all of them parts of virtue as well as courage. Would you not say the
same?
NICIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Well then, so far we are agreed. And now let us proceed a step, and try to
arrive at a similar agreement about the fearful and the hopeful: I do not want you to be
thinking one thing and myself another. Let me then tell you my own opinion, and if I am
wrong you shall set me right: in my opinion the terrible and the hopeful are the things
which do or do not create fear, and fear is not of the present, nor of the past, but is of
future and expected evil. Do you not agree to that, Laches?
LACHES: Yes, Socrates, entirely.
SOCRATES: That is my view, Nicias; the terrible things, as I should say, are the evils
which are future; and the hopeful are the good or not evil things which are future. Do
you or do you not agree with me?
NICIAS: I agree.
SOCRATES: And the knowledge of these things you call courage?
NICIAS: Precisely. 
SOCRATES: And now let me see whether you agree with Laches and myself as to a third
point.
NICIAS: What is that?
SOCRATES: I will tell you. He and I have a notion that there is not one knowledge or
science of the past, another of the present, a third of what is likely to be best and what
will be best in the future; but that of all three there is one science only: for example,
there is one science of medicine which is concerned with the inspection of health equally
in all times, present, past, and future; and one science of husbandry in like manner,
which is concerned with the productions of the earth in all times. As to the art of the
general, you yourselves will be my witnesses that he has an excellent foreknowledge of
the future, and that he claims to be the master and not the servant of the soothsayer,
because he knows better what is happening or is likely to happen in war: and
accordingly the law places the soothsayer under the general, and not the general under
the soothsayer. Am I not correct in saying so, Laches?
LACHES: Quite correct.
SOCRATES: And do you, Nicias, also acknowledge that the same science has
understanding of the same things, whether future, present, or past?
NICIAS: Yes, indeed Socrates; that is my opinion.
SOCRATES: And courage, my friend, is, as you say, a knowledge of the fearful and of the
hopeful?
NICIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the fearful, and the hopeful, are admitted to be future goods and future
evils?
NICIAS: True.
SOCRATES: And the same science has to do with the same things in the future or at any
time? 
NICIAS: That is true.
SOCRATES: Then courage is not the science which is concerned with the fearful and
hopeful, for they are future only; courage, like the other sciences, is concerned not only
with good and evil of the future, but of the present and past, and of any time?
NICIAS: That, as I suppose, is true.
SOCRATES: Then the answer which you have given, Nicias, includes only a third part of
courage; but our question extended to the whole nature of courage: and according to
your view, that is, according to your present view, courage is not only the knowledge of
the hopeful and the fearful, but seems to include nearly every good and evil without
reference to time. What do you say to that alteration in your statement?
NICIAS: I agree, Socrates.
SOCRATES: But then, my dear friend, if a man knew all good and evil, and how they are,
and have been, and will be produced, would he not be perfect, and wanting in no virtue,
whether justice, or temperance, or holiness? He would possess them all, and he would
know which were dangers and which were not, and guard against them whether they
were supernatural or natural; and he would provide the good, as he would know how to
deal both with gods or men.
NICIAS: I think, Socrates, that there is a great deal of truth in what you say.
SOCRATES: But then, Nicias, courage, according to this new definition of yours, instead
of being a part of virtue only, will be all virtue?
NICIAS: It would seem so.
SOCRATES: But we were saying that courage is one of the parts of virtue?
NICIAS: Yes, that was what we were saying.
SOCRATES: And that is in contradiction with our present view?
NICIAS: That appears to be the case. 
SOCRATES: Then, Nicias, we have not discovered what courage is.
NICIAS: We have not.
LACHES: And yet, friend Nicias, I imagined that you would have made the discovery,
when you were so contemptuous of the answers which I made to Socrates. I had very
great hopes that you would have been enlightened by the wisdom of Damon.
NICIAS: I perceive, Laches, that you think nothing of having displayed your ignorance
of the nature of courage, but you look only to see whether I have not made a similar
display; and if we are both equally ignorant of the things which a man who is good for
anything should know, that, I suppose, will be of no consequence. You certainly appear
to me very like the rest of the world, looking at your neighbour and not at yourself. I am
of opinion that enough has been said on the subject which we have been discussing; and
if anything has been imperfectly said, that may be hereafter corrected by the help of
Damon, whom you think to laugh down, although you have never seen him, and with
the help of others. And when I am satisfied myself, I will freely impart my satisfaction to
you, for I think that you are very much in want of knowledge.
LACHES: You are a philosopher, Nicias; of that I am aware: nevertheless I would
recommend Lysimachus and Melesias not to take you and me as advisers about the
education of their children; but, as I said at first, they should ask Socrates and not let
him off; if my own sons were old enough, I would have asked him myself.
NICIAS: To that I quite agree, if Socrates is willing to take them under his charge. I
should not wish for any one else to be the tutor of Niceratus. But I observe that when I
mention the matter to him he recommends to me some other tutor and refuses himself.
Perhaps he may be more ready to listen to you, Lysimachus.
LYSIMACHUS: He ought, Nicias: for certainly I would do things for him which I would
not do for many others. What do you say, Socrates—will you comply? And are you ready
to give assistance in the improvement of the youths?
SOCRATES: Indeed, Lysimachus, I should be very wrong in refusing to aid in the
improvement of anybody. And if I had shown in this conversation that I had a
knowledge which Nicias and Laches have not, then I admit that you would be right in 
inviting me to perform this duty; but as we are all in the same perplexity, why should
one of us be preferred to another? I certainly think that no one should; and under these
circumstances, let me offer you a piece of advice (and this need not go further than
ourselves). I maintain, my friends, that every one of us should seek out the best teacher
whom he can find, first for ourselves, who are greatly in need of one, and then for the
youth, regardless of expense or anything. But I cannot advise that we remain as we are.
And if any one laughs at us for going to school at our age, I would quote to them the
authority of Homer, who says, that
‘Modesty is not good for a needy man.’
Let us then, regardless of what may be said of us, make the education of the youths our
own education.
LYSIMACHUS: I like your proposal, Socrates; and as I am the oldest, I am also the most
eager to go to school with the boys. Let me beg a favour of you: Come to my house tomorrow
at dawn, and we will advise about these matters. For the present, let us make an
end of the conversation.
SOCRATES: I will come to you to-morrow, Lysimachus, as you propose, God willing. 



Lysis; or Friendship
by
Plato 
Introduction
No answer is given in the Lysis to the question, ‘What is Friendship?’ any more than in
the Charmides to the question, ‘What is Temperance?’ There are several resemblances in
the two Dialogues: the same youthfulness and sense of beauty pervades both of them;
they are alike rich in the description of Greek life. The question is again raised of the
relation of knowledge to virtue and good, which also recurs in the Laches; and Socrates
appears again as the elder friend of the two boys, Lysis and Menexenus. In the
Charmides, as also in the Laches, he is described as middleaged; in the Lysis he is
advanced in years.
The Dialogue consists of two scenes or conversations which seem to have no relation to
each other. The first is a conversation between Socrates and Lysis, who, like Charmides,
is an Athenian youth of noble descent and of great beauty, goodness, and intelligence:
this is carried on in the absence of Menexenus, who is called away to take part in a
sacrifice. Socrates asks Lysis whether his father and mother do not love him very much?
‘To be sure they do.’ ‘Then of course they allow him to do exactly as he likes.’ ‘Of course
not: the very slaves have more liberty than he has.’ ‘But how is this?’ ‘The reason is that
he is not old enough.’ ‘No; the real reason is that he is not wise enough: for are there not
some things which he is allowed to do, although he is not allowed to do others?’ ‘Yes,
because he knows them, and does not know the others.’ This leads to the conclusion that
all men everywhere will trust him in what he knows, but not in what he does not know;
for in such matters he will be unprofitable to them, and do them no good. And no one
will love him, if he does them no good; and he can only do them good by knowledge; and
as he is still without knowledge, he can have as yet no conceit of knowledge. In this
manner Socrates reads a lesson to Hippothales, the foolish lover of Lysis, respecting the
style of conversation which he should address to his beloved.
After the return of Menexenus, Socrates, at the request of Lysis, asks him a new
question: ‘What is friendship? You, Menexenus, who have a friend already, can tell me,
who am always longing to find one, what is the secret of this great blessing.’
When one man loves another, which is the friend—he who loves, or he who is loved? Or
are both friends? From the first of these suppositions they are driven to the second; and
from the second to the third; and neither the two boys nor Socrates are satisfied with 
any of the three or with all of them. Socrates turns to the poets, who affirm that God
brings like to like (Homer), and to philosophers (Empedocles), who also assert that like
is the friend of like. But the bad are not friends, for they are not even like themselves,
and still less are they like one another. And the good have no need of one another, and
therefore do not care about one another. Moreover there are others who say that
likeness is a cause of aversion, and unlikeness of love and friendship; and they too
adduce the authority of poets and philosophers in support of their doctrines; for Hesiod
says that ‘potter is jealous of potter, bard of bard;’ and subtle doctors tell us that ‘moist
is the friend of dry, hot of cold,’ and the like. But neither can their doctrine be
maintained; for then the just would be the friend of the unjust, good of evil.
Thus we arrive at the conclusion that like is not the friend of like, nor unlike of unlike;
and therefore good is not the friend of good, nor evil of evil, nor good of evil, nor evil of
good. What remains but that the indifferent, which is neither good nor evil, should be
the friend (not of the indifferent, for that would be ‘like the friend of like,’ but) of the
good, or rather of the beautiful?
But why should the indifferent have this attachment to the beautiful or good? There are
circumstances under which such an attachment would be natural. Suppose the
indifferent, say the human body, to be desirous of getting rid of some evil, such as
disease, which is not essential but only accidental to it (for if the evil were essential the
body would cease to be indifferent, and would become evil)—in such a case the
indifferent becomes a friend of the good for the sake of getting rid of the evil. In this
intermediate ‘indifferent’ position the philosopher or lover of wisdom stands: he is not
wise, and yet not unwise, but he has ignorance accidentally clinging to him, and he
yearns for wisdom as the cure of the evil. (Symp.)
After this explanation has been received with triumphant accord, a fresh dissatisfaction
begins to steal over the mind of Socrates: Must not friendship be for the sake of some
ulterior end? and what can that final cause or end of friendship be, other than the good?
But the good is desired by us only as the cure of evil; and therefore if there were no evil
there would be no friendship. Some other explanation then has to be devised. May not
desire be the source of friendship? And desire is of what a man wants and of what is
congenial to him. But then the congenial cannot be the same as the like; for like, as has
been already shown, cannot be the friend of like. Nor can the congenial be the good; for 
good is not the friend of good, as has been also shown. The problem is unsolved, and the
three friends, Socrates, Lysis, and Menexenus, are still unable to find out what a friend
is.
Thus, as in the Charmides and Laches, and several of the other Dialogues of Plato
(compare especially the Protagoras and Theaetetus), no conclusion is arrived at.
Socrates maintains his character of a ‘know nothing;’ but the boys have already learned
the lesson which he is unable to teach them, and they are free from the conceit of
knowledge. (Compare Chrm.) The dialogue is what would be called in the language of
Thrasyllus tentative or inquisitive. The subject is continued in the Phaedrus and
Symposium, and treated, with a manifest reference to the Lysis, in the eighth and ninth
books of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. As in other writings of Plato (for example,
the Republic), there is a progress from unconscious morality, illustrated by the
friendship of the two youths, and also by the sayings of the poets (‘who are our fathers in
wisdom,’ and yet only tell us half the truth, and in this particular instance are not much
improved upon by the philosophers), to a more comprehensive notion of friendship.
This, however, is far from being cleared of its perplexity. Two notions appear to be
struggling or balancing in the mind of Socrates:—First, the sense that friendship arises
out of human needs and wants; Secondly, that the higher form or ideal of friendship
exists only for the sake of the good. That friends are not necessarily either like or unlike,
is also a truth confirmed by experience. But the use of the terms ‘like’ or ‘good’ is too
strictly limited; Socrates has allowed himself to be carried away by a sort of eristic or
illogical logic against which no definition of friendship would be able to stand. In the
course of the argument he makes a distinction between property and accident which is a
real contribution to the science of logic. Some higher truths appear through the mist.
The manner in which the field of argument is widened, as in the Charmides and Laches
by the introduction of the idea of knowledge, so here by the introduction of the good, is
deserving of attention. The sense of the inter-dependence of good and evil, and the
allusion to the possibility of the non-existence of evil, are also very remarkable.
The dialectical interest is fully sustained by the dramatic accompaniments. Observe,
first, the scene, which is a Greek Palaestra, at a time when a sacrifice is going on, and the
Hermaea are in course of celebration; secondly, the ‘accustomed irony’ of Socrates, who
declares, as in the Symposium, that he is ignorant of all other things, but claims to have 
a knowledge of the mysteries of love. There are likewise several contrasts of character;
first of the dry, caustic Ctesippus, of whom Socrates professes a humorous sort of fear,
and Hippothales the flighty lover, who murders sleep by bawling out the name of his
beloved; there is also a contrast between the false, exaggerated, sentimental love of
Hippothales towards Lysis, and the childlike and innocent friendship of the boys with
one another. Some difference appears to be intended between the characters of the more
talkative Menexenus and the reserved and simple Lysis. Socrates draws out the latter by
a new sort of irony, which is sometimes adopted in talking to children, and consists in
asking a leading question which can only be answered in a sense contrary to the
intention of the question: ‘Your father and mother of course allow you to drive the
chariot?’ ‘No they do not.’ When Menexenus returns, the serious dialectic begins. He is
described as ‘very pugnacious,’ and we are thus prepared for the part which a mere
youth takes in a difficult argument. But Plato has not forgotten dramatic propriety, and
Socrates proposes at last to refer the question to some older person.
SOME QUESTIONS RELATING TO FRIENDSHIP.
The subject of friendship has a lower place in the modern than in the ancient world,
partly because a higher place is assigned by us to love and marriage. The very meaning
of the word has become slighter and more superficial; it seems almost to be borrowed
from the ancients, and has nearly disappeared in modern treatises on Moral Philosophy.
The received examples of friendship are to be found chiefly among the Greeks and
Romans. Hence the casuistical or other questions which arise out of the relations of
friends have not often been considered seriously in modern times. Many of them will be
found to be the same which are discussed in the Lysis. We may ask with Socrates, 1)
whether friendship is ‘of similars or dissimilars,’ or of both; 2) whether such a tie exists
between the good only and for the sake of the good; or 3) whether there may not be
some peculiar attraction, which draws together ‘the neither good nor evil’ for the sake of
the good and because of the evil; 4) whether friendship is always mutual,—may there
not be a one-sided and unrequited friendship? This question, which, like many others, is
only one of a laxer or stricter use of words, seems to have greatly exercised the minds
both of Aristotle and Plato.
5) Can we expect friendship to be permanent, or must we acknowledge with Cicero,
‘Nihil difficilius quam amicitiam usque ad extremum vitae permanere’? Is not 
friendship, even more than love, liable to be swayed by the caprices of fancy? The person
who pleased us most at first sight or upon a slight acquaintance, when we have seen him
again, and under different circumstances, may make a much less favourable impression
on our minds. Young people swear ‘eternal friendships,’ but at these innocent perjuries
their elders laugh. No one forms a friendship with the intention of renouncing it; yet in
the course of a varied life it is practically certain that many changes will occur of feeling,
opinion, locality, occupation, fortune, which will divide us from some persons and unite
us to others. 6) There is an ancient saying, Qui amicos amicum non habet. But is not
some less exclusive form of friendship better suited to the condition and nature of man?
And in those especially who have no family ties, may not the feeling pass beyond one or
a few, and embrace all with whom we come into contact, and, perhaps in a few
passionate and exalted natures, all men everywhere? 7) The ancients had their three
kinds of friendship, ‘for the sake of the pleasant, the useful, and the good:’ is the last to
be resolved into the two first; or are the two first to be included in the last? The subject
was puzzling to them: they could not say that friendship was only a quality, or a relation,
or a virtue, or a kind of virtue; and they had not in the age of Plato reached the point of
regarding it, like justice, as a form or attribute of virtue. They had another perplexity: 8)
How could one of the noblest feelings of human nature be so near to one of the most
detestable corruptions of it? (Compare Symposium; Laws).
Leaving the Greek or ancient point of view, we may regard the question in a more
general way. Friendship is the union of two persons in mutual affection and
remembrance of one another. The friend can do for his friend what he cannot do for
himself. He can give him counsel in time of difficulty; he can teach him ‘to see himself as
others see him’; he can stand by him, when all the world are against him; he can gladden
and enlighten him by his presence; he ‘can divide his sorrows,’ he can ‘double his joys;’
he can anticipate his wants. He will discover ways of helping him without creating a
sense of his own superiority; he will find out his mental trials, but only that he may
minister to them. Among true friends jealousy has no place: they do not complain of one
another for making new friends, or for not revealing some secret of their lives; (in
friendship too there must be reserves;) they do not intrude upon one another, and they
mutually rejoice in any good which happens to either of them, though it may be to the
loss of the other. They may live apart and have little intercourse, but when they meet,
the old tie is as strong as ever— according to the common saying, they find one another 
always the same. The greatest good of friendship is not daily intercourse, for
circumstances rarely admit of this; but on the great occasions of life, when the advice of
a friend is needed, then the word spoken in season about conduct, about health, about
marriage, about business,—the letter written from a distance by a disinterested person
who sees with clearer eyes may be of inestimable value. When the heart is failing and
despair is setting in, then to hear the voice or grasp the hand of a friend, in a shipwreck,
in a defeat, in some other failure or misfortune, may restore the necessary courage and
composure to the paralysed and disordered mind, and convert the feeble person into a
hero; (compare Symposium).
It is true that friendships are apt to be disappointing: either we expect too much from
them; or we are indolent and do not ‘keep them in repair;’ or being admitted to intimacy
with another, we see his faults too clearly and lose our respect for him; and he loses his
affection for us. Friendships may be too violent; and they may be too sensitive. The
egotism of one of the parties may be too much for the other. The word of counsel or
sympathy has been uttered too obtrusively, at the wrong time, or in the wrong manner;
or the need of it has not been perceived until too late. ‘Oh if he had only told me’ has
been the silent thought of many a troubled soul. And some things have to be indicated
rather than spoken, because the very mention of them tends to disturb the equability of
friendship. The alienation of friends, like many other human evils, is commonly due to a
want of tact and insight. There is not enough of the Scimus et hanc veniam petimusque
damusque vicissim. The sweet draught of sympathy is not inexhaustible; and it tends to
weaken the person who too freely partakes of it. Thus we see that there are many causes
which impair the happiness of friends.
We may expect a friendship almost divine, such as philosophers have sometimes
dreamed of: we find what is human. The good of it is necessarily limited; it does not take
the place of marriage; it affords rather a solace than an arm of support. It had better not
be based on pecuniary obligations; these more often mar than make a friendship. It is
most likely to be permanent when the two friends are equal and independent, or when
they are engaged together in some common work or have some public interest in
common. It exists among the bad or inferior sort of men almost as much as among the
good; the bad and good, and ‘the neither bad nor good,’ are drawn together in a strange 
manner by personal attachment. The essence of it is loyalty, without which it would
cease to be friendship.
Another question 9) may be raised, whether friendship can safely exist between young
persons of different sexes, not connected by ties of relationship, and without the thought
of love or marriage; whether, again, a wife or a husband should have any intimate
friend, besides his or her partner in marriage. The answer to this latter question is
rather perplexing, and would probably be different in different countries (compare
Sympos.). While we do not deny that great good may result from such attachments, for
the mind may be drawn out and the character enlarged by them; yet we feel also that
they are attended with many dangers, and that this Romance of Heavenly Love requires
a strength, a freedom from passion, a self-control, which, in youth especially, are rarely
to be found. The propriety of such friendships must be estimated a good deal by the
manner in which public opinion regards them; they must be reconciled with the
ordinary duties of life; and they must be justified by the result.
Yet another question, 10). Admitting that friendships cannot be always permanent, we
may ask when and upon what conditions should they be dissolved. It would be futile to
retain the name when the reality has ceased to be. That two friends should part
company whenever the relation between them begins to drag may be better for both of
them. But then arises the consideration, how should these friends in youth or friends of
the past regard or be regarded by one another? They are parted, but there still remain
duties mutually owing by them. They will not admit the world to share in their
difference any more than in their friendship; the memory of an old attachment, like the
memory of the dead, has a kind of sacredness for them on which they will not allow
others to intrude. Neither, if they were ever worthy to bear the name of friends, will
either of them entertain any enmity or dislike of the other who was once so much to
him. Neither will he by ‘shadowed hint reveal’ the secrets great or small which an
unfortunate mistake has placed within his reach. He who is of a noble mind will dwell
upon his own faults rather than those of another, and will be ready to take upon himself
the blame of their separation. He will feel pain at the loss of a friend; and he will
remember with gratitude his ancient kindness. But he will not lightly renew a tie which
has not been lightly broken...These are a few of the Problems of Friendship, some of
them suggested by the Lysis, others by modern life, which he who wishes to make or 
keep a friend may profitably study. (Compare Bacon, Essay on Friendship; Cic. de
Amicitia.) 
Lysis, or Friendship
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, who is the narrator, Menexenus,
Hippothales, Lysis, Ctesippus.
SCENE: A newly-erected Palaestra outside the walls of Athens.
I was going from the Academy straight to the Lyceum, intending to take the outer road,
which is close under the wall. When I came to the postern gate of the city, which is by
the fountain of Panops, I fell in with Hippothales, the son of Hieronymus, and Ctesippus
the Paeanian, and a company of young men who were standing with them. Hippothales,
seeing me approach, asked whence I came and whither I was going.
I am going, I replied, from the Academy straight to the Lyceum.
Then come straight to us, he said, and put in here; you may as well.
Who are you, I said; and where am I to come?
He showed me an enclosed space and an open door over against the wall. And there, he
said, is the building at which we all meet: and a goodly company we are.
And what is this building, I asked; and what sort of entertainment have you?
The building, he replied, is a newly erected Palaestra; and the entertainment is generally
conversation, to which you are welcome.
Thank you, I said; and is there any teacher there?
Yes, he said, your old friend and admirer, Miccus.
Indeed, I replied; he is a very eminent professor.
Are you disposed, he said, to go with me and see them?
Yes, I said; but I should like to know first, what is expected of me, and who is the
favourite among you? 
Some persons have one favourite, Socrates, and some another, he said.
And who is yours? I asked: tell me that, Hippothales.
At this he blushed; and I said to him, O Hippothales, thou son of Hieronymus! do not
say that you are, or that you are not, in love; the confession is too late; for I see that you
are not only in love, but are already far gone in your love. Simple and foolish as I am, the
Gods have given me the power of understanding affections of this kind.
Whereupon he blushed more and more.
Ctesippus said: I like to see you blushing, Hippothales, and hesitating to tell Socrates the
name; when, if he were with you but for a very short time, you would have plagued him
to death by talking about nothing else. Indeed, Socrates, he has literally deafened us,
and stopped our ears with the praises of Lysis; and if he is a little intoxicated, there is
every likelihood that we may have our sleep murdered with a cry of Lysis. His
performances in prose are bad enough, but nothing at all in comparison with his verse;
and when he drenches us with his poems and other compositions, it is really too bad;
and worse still is his manner of singing them to his love; he has a voice which is truly
appalling, and we cannot help hearing him: and now having a question put to him by
you, behold he is blushing.
Who is Lysis? I said: I suppose that he must be young; for the name does not recall any
one to me.
Why, he said, his father being a very well-known man, he retains his patronymic, and is
not as yet commonly called by his own name; but, although you do not know his name, I
am sure that you must know his face, for that is quite enough to distinguish him.
But tell me whose son he is, I said.
He is the eldest son of Democrates, of the deme of Aexone.
Ah, Hippothales, I said; what a noble and really perfect love you have found! I wish that
you would favour me with the exhibition which you have been making to the rest of the 
company, and then I shall be able to judge whether you know what a lover ought to say
about his love, either to the youth himself, or to others.
Nay, Socrates, he said; you surely do not attach any importance to what he is saying.
Do you mean, I said, that you disown the love of the person whom he says that you love?
No; but I deny that I make verses or address compositions to him.
He is not in his right mind, said Ctesippus; he is talking nonsense, and is stark mad.
O Hippothales, I said, if you have ever made any verses or songs in honour of your
favourite, I do not want to hear them; but I want to know the purport of them, that I
may be able to judge of your mode of approaching your fair one.
Ctesippus will be able to tell you, he said; for if, as he avers, the sound of my words is
always dinning in his ears, he must have a very accurate knowledge and recollection of
them.
Yes, indeed, said Ctesippus; I know only too well; and very ridiculous the tale is: for
although he is a lover, and very devotedly in love, he has nothing particular to talk about
to his beloved which a child might not say. Now is not that ridiculous? He can only
speak of the wealth of Democrates, which the whole city celebrates, and grandfather
Lysis, and the other ancestors of the youth, and their stud of horses, and their victory at
the Pythian games, and at the Isthmus, and at Nemea with four horses and single
horses—these are the tales which he composes and repeats. And there is greater twaddle
still. Only the day before yesterday he made a poem in which he described the
entertainment of Heracles, who was a connexion of the family, setting forth how in
virtue of this relationship he was hospitably received by an ancestor of Lysis; this
ancestor was himself begotten of Zeus by the daughter of the founder of the deme. And
these are the sort of old wives’ tales which he sings and recites to us, and we are obliged
to listen to him.
When I heard this, I said: O ridiculous Hippothales! how can you be making and singing
hymns in honour of yourself before you have won? 
But my songs and verses, he said, are not in honour of myself, Socrates.
You think not? I said.
Nay, but what do you think? he replied.
Most assuredly, I said, those songs are all in your own honour; for if you win your
beautiful love, your discourses and songs will be a glory to you, and may be truly
regarded as hymns of praise composed in honour of you who have conquered and won
such a love; but if he slips away from you, the more you have praised him, the more
ridiculous you will look at having lost this fairest and best of blessings; and therefore the
wise lover does not praise his beloved until he has won him, because he is afraid of
accidents. There is also another danger; the fair, when any one praises or magnifies
them, are filled with the spirit of pride and vain-glory. Do you not agree with me?
Yes, he said.
And the more vain-glorious they are, the more difficult is the capture of them?
I believe you.
What should you say of a hunter who frightened away his prey, and made the capture of
the animals which he is hunting more difficult?
He would be a bad hunter, undoubtedly.
Yes; and if, instead of soothing them, he were to infuriate them with words and songs,
that would show a great want of wit: do you not agree.
Yes.
And now reflect, Hippothales, and see whether you are not guilty of all these errors in
writing poetry. For I can hardly suppose that you will affirm a man to be a good poet
who injures himself by his poetry. 
Assuredly not, he said; such a poet would be a fool. And this is the reason why I take you
into my counsels, Socrates, and I shall be glad of any further advice which you may have
to offer. Will you tell me by what words or actions I may become endeared to my love?
That is not easy to determine, I said; but if you will bring your love to me, and will let me
talk with him, I may perhaps be able to show you how to converse with him, instead of
singing and reciting in the fashion of which you are accused.
There will be no difficulty in bringing him, he replied; if you will only go with Ctesippus
into the Palaestra, and sit down and talk, I believe that he will come of his own accord;
for he is fond of listening, Socrates. And as this is the festival of the Hermaea, the young
men and boys are all together, and there is no separation between them. He will be sure
to come: but if he does not, Ctesippus with whom he is familiar, and whose relation
Menexenus is his great friend, shall call him.
That will be the way, I said. Thereupon I led Ctesippus into the Palaestra, and the rest
followed.
Upon entering we found that the boys had just been sacrificing; and this part of the
festival was nearly at an end. They were all in their white array, and games at dice were
going on among them. Most of them were in the outer court amusing themselves; but
some were in a corner of the Apodyterium playing at odd and even with a number of
dice, which they took out of little wicker baskets. There was also a circle of lookers-on;
among them was Lysis. He was standing with the other boys and youths, having a crown
upon his head, like a fair vision, and not less worthy of praise for his goodness than for
his beauty. We left them, and went over to the opposite side of the room, where, finding
a quiet place, we sat down; and then we began to talk. This attracted Lysis, who was
constantly turning round to look at us—he was evidently wanting to come to us. For a
time he hesitated and had not the courage to come alone; but first of all, his friend
Menexenus, leaving his play, entered the Palaestra from the court, and when he saw
Ctesippus and myself, was going to take a seat by us; and then Lysis, seeing him,
followed, and sat down by his side; and the other boys joined. I should observe that
Hippothales, when he saw the crowd, got behind them, where he thought that he would
be out of sight of Lysis, lest he should anger him; and there he stood and listened. 
I turned to Menexenus, and said: Son of Demophon, which of you two youths is the
elder?
That is a matter of dispute between us, he said.
And which is the nobler? Is that also a matter of dispute?
Yes, certainly.
And another disputed point is, which is the fairer?
The two boys laughed.
I shall not ask which is the richer of the two, I said; for you are friends, are you not?
Certainly, they replied.
And friends have all things in common, so that one of you can be no richer than the
other, if you say truly that you are friends.
They assented. I was about to ask which was the juster of the two, and which was the
wiser of the two; but at this moment Menexenus was called away by some one who came
and said that the gymnastic-master wanted him. I supposed that he had to offer
sacrifice. So he went away, and I asked Lysis some more questions. I dare say, Lysis, I
said, that your father and mother love you very much.
Certainly, he said.
And they would wish you to be perfectly happy.
Yes.
But do you think that any one is happy who is in the condition of a slave, and who
cannot do what he likes?
I should think not indeed, he said. 
And if your father and mother love you, and desire that you should be happy, no one can
doubt that they are very ready to promote your happiness.
Certainly, he replied.
And do they then permit you to do what you like, and never rebuke you or hinder you
from doing what you desire?
Yes, indeed, Socrates; there are a great many things which they hinder me from doing.
What do you mean? I said. Do they want you to be happy, and yet hinder you from doing
what you like? for example, if you want to mount one of your father’s chariots, and take
the reins at a race, they will not allow you to do so—they will prevent you?
Certainly, he said, they will not allow me to do so.
Whom then will they allow?
There is a charioteer, whom my father pays for driving.
And do they trust a hireling more than you? and may he do what he likes with the
horses? and do they pay him for this?
They do.
But I dare say that you may take the whip and guide the mule-cart if you like;—they will
permit that?
Permit me! indeed they will not.
Then, I said, may no one use the whip to the mules?
Yes, he said, the muleteer.
And is he a slave or a free man?
A slave, he said. 
And do they esteem a slave of more value than you who are their son? And do they
entrust their property to him rather than to you? and allow him to do what he likes,
when they prohibit you? Answer me now: Are you your own master, or do they not even
allow that?
Nay, he said; of course they do not allow it.
Then you have a master?
Yes, my tutor; there he is.
And is he a slave?
To be sure; he is our slave, he replied.
Surely, I said, this is a strange thing, that a free man should be governed by a slave. And
what does he do with you?
He takes me to my teachers.
You do not mean to say that your teachers also rule over you?
Of course they do.
Then I must say that your father is pleased to inflict many lords and masters on you. But
at any rate when you go home to your mother, she will let you have your own way, and
will not interfere with your happiness; her wool, or the piece of cloth which she is
weaving, are at your disposal: I am sure that there is nothing to hinder you from
touching her wooden spathe, or her comb, or any other of her spinning implements.
Nay, Socrates, he replied, laughing; not only does she hinder me, but I should be beaten
if I were to touch one of them.
Well, I said, this is amazing. And did you ever behave ill to your father or your mother?
No, indeed, he replied. 
But why then are they so terribly anxious to prevent you from being happy, and doing as
you like?—keeping you all day long in subjection to another, and, in a word, doing
nothing which you desire; so that you have no good, as would appear, out of their great
possessions, which are under the control of anybody rather than of you, and have no use
of your own fair person, which is tended and taken care of by another; while you, Lysis,
are master of nobody, and can do nothing?
Why, he said, Socrates, the reason is that I am not of age.
I doubt whether that is the real reason, I said; for I should imagine that your father
Democrates, and your mother, do permit you to do many things already, and do not wait
until you are of age: for example, if they want anything read or written, you, I presume,
would be the first person in the house who is summoned by them.
Very true.
And you would be allowed to write or read the letters in any order which you please, or
to take up the lyre and tune the notes, and play with the fingers, or strike with the
plectrum, exactly as you please, and neither father nor mother would interfere with you.
That is true, he said.
Then what can be the reason, Lysis, I said, why they allow you to do the one and not the
other?
I suppose, he said, because I understand the one, and not the other.
Yes, my dear youth, I said, the reason is not any deficiency of years, but a deficiency of
knowledge; and whenever your father thinks that you are wiser than he is, he will
instantly commit himself and his possessions to you.
I think so.
Aye, I said; and about your neighbour, too, does not the same rule hold as about your
father? If he is satisfied that you know more of housekeeping than he does, will he
continue to administer his affairs himself, or will he commit them to you? 
I think that he will commit them to me.
Will not the Athenian people, too, entrust their affairs to you when they see that you
have wisdom enough to manage them?
Yes.
And oh! let me put another case, I said: There is the great king, and he has an eldest son,
who is the Prince of Asia;—suppose that you and I go to him and establish to his
satisfaction that we are better cooks than his son, will he not entrust to us the
prerogative of making soup, and putting in anything that we like while the pot is boiling,
rather than to the Prince of Asia, who is his son?
To us, clearly.
And we shall be allowed to throw in salt by handfuls, whereas the son will not be allowed
to put in as much as he can take up between his fingers?
Of course.
Or suppose again that the son has bad eyes, will he allow him, or will he not allow him,
to touch his own eyes if he thinks that he has no knowledge of medicine?
He will not allow him.
Whereas, if he supposes us to have a knowledge of medicine, he will allow us to do what
we like with him—even to open the eyes wide and sprinkle ashes upon them, because he
supposes that we know what is best?
That is true.
And everything in which we appear to him to be wiser than himself or his son he will
commit to us?
That is very true, Socrates, he replied. 
Then now, my dear Lysis, I said, you perceive that in things which we know every one
will trust us,—Hellenes and barbarians, men and women,—and we may do as we please
about them, and no one will like to interfere with us; we shall be free, and masters of
others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall be benefited by them. But in
things of which we have no understanding, no one will trust us to do as seems good to
us—they will hinder us as far as they can; and not only strangers, but father and mother,
and the friend, if there be one, who is dearer still, will also hinder us; and we shall be
subject to others; and these things will not be ours, for we shall not be benefited by
them. Do you agree?
He assented.
And shall we be friends to others, and will any others love us, in as far as we are useless
to them?
Certainly not.
Neither can your father or mother love you, nor can anybody love anybody else, in so far
as they are useless to them?
No.
And therefore, my boy, if you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you
will be useful and good; but if you are not wise, neither father, nor mother, nor kindred,
nor any one else, will be your friends. And in matters of which you have as yet no
knowledge, can you have any conceit of knowledge?
That is impossible, he replied.
And you, Lysis, if you require a teacher, have not yet attained to wisdom.
True.
And therefore you are not conceited, having nothing of which to be conceited.
Indeed, Socrates, I think not. 
When I heard him say this, I turned to Hippothales, and was very nearly making a
blunder, for I was going to say to him: That is the way, Hippothales, in which you should
talk to your beloved, humbling and lowering him, and not as you do, puffing him up and
spoiling him. But I saw that he was in great excitement and confusion at what had been
said, and I remembered that, although he was in the neighbourhood, he did not want to
be seen by Lysis; so upon second thoughts I refrained.
In the meantime Menexenus came back and sat down in his place by Lysis; and Lysis, in
a childish and affectionate manner, whispered privately in my ear, so that Menexenus
should not hear: Do, Socrates, tell Menexenus what you have been telling me.
Suppose that you tell him yourself, Lysis, I replied; for I am sure that you were
attending.
Certainly, he replied.
Try, then, to remember the words, and be as exact as you can in repeating them to him,
and if you have forgotten anything, ask me again the next time that you see me.
I will be sure to do so, Socrates; but go on telling him something new, and let me hear,
as long as I am allowed to stay.
I certainly cannot refuse, I said, since you ask me; but then, as you know, Menexenus is
very pugnacious, and therefore you must come to the rescue if he attempts to upset me.
Yes, indeed, he said; he is very pugnacious, and that is the reason why I want you to
argue with him.
That I may make a fool of myself?
No, indeed, he said; but I want you to put him down.
That is no easy matter, I replied; for he is a terrible fellow—a pupil of Ctesippus. And
there is Ctesippus himself: do you see him?
Never mind, Socrates, you shall argue with him. 
Well, I suppose that I must, I replied.
Hereupon Ctesippus complained that we were talking in secret, and keeping the feast to
ourselves.
I shall be happy, I said, to let you have a share. Here is Lysis, who does not understand
something that I was saying, and wants me to ask Menexenus, who, as he thinks, is
likely to know.
And why do you not ask him? he said.
Very well, I said, I will; and do you, Menexenus, answer. But first I must tell you that I
am one who from my childhood upward have set my heart upon a certain thing. All
people have their fancies; some desire horses, and others dogs; and some are fond of
gold, and others of honour. Now, I have no violent desire of any of these things; but I
have a passion for friends; and I would rather have a good friend than the best cock or
quail in the world: I would even go further, and say the best horse or dog. Yea, by the
dog of Egypt, I should greatly prefer a real friend to all the gold of Darius, or even to
Darius himself: I am such a lover of friends as that. And when I see you and Lysis, at
your early age, so easily possessed of this treasure, and so soon, he of you, and you of
him, I am amazed and delighted, seeing that I myself, although I am now advanced in
years, am so far from having made a similar acquisition, that I do not even know in what
way a friend is acquired. But I want to ask you a question about this, for you have
experience: tell me then, when one loves another, is the lover or the beloved the friend;
or may either be the friend?
Either may, I should think, be the friend of either.
Do you mean, I said, that if only one of them loves the other, they are mutual friends?
Yes, he said; that is my meaning.
But what if the lover is not loved in return? which is a very possible case.
Yes. 
Or is, perhaps, even hated? which is a fancy which sometimes is entertained by lovers
respecting their beloved. Nothing can exceed their love; and yet they imagine either that
they are not loved in return, or that they are hated. Is not that true?
Yes, he said, quite true.
In that case, the one loves, and the other is loved?
Yes.
Then which is the friend of which? Is the lover the friend of the beloved, whether he be
loved in return, or hated; or is the beloved the friend; or is there no friendship at all on
either side, unless they both love one another?
There would seem to be none at all.
Then this notion is not in accordance with our previous one. We were saying that both
were friends, if one only loved; but now, unless they both love, neither is a friend.
That appears to be true.
Then nothing which does not love in return is beloved by a lover?
I think not.
Then they are not lovers of horses, whom the horses do not love in return; nor lovers of
quails, nor of dogs, nor of wine, nor of gymnastic exercises, who have no return of love;
no, nor of wisdom, unless wisdom loves them in return. Or shall we say that they do love
them, although they are not beloved by them; and that the poet was wrong who sings—
‘Happy the man to whom his children are dear, and steeds having single hoofs, and dogs
of chase, and the stranger of another land’?
I do not think that he was wrong.
You think that he is right? 
Yes.
Then, Menexenus, the conclusion is, that what is beloved, whether loving or hating, may
be dear to the lover of it: for example, very young children, too young to love, or even
hating their father or mother when they are punished by them, are never dearer to them
than at the time when they are being hated by them.
I think that what you say is true.
And, if so, not the lover, but the beloved, is the friend or dear one?
Yes.
And the hated one, and not the hater, is the enemy?
Clearly.
Then many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the
friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends. Yet how absurd, my dear
friend, or indeed impossible is this paradox of a man being an enemy to his friend or a
friend to his enemy.
I quite agree, Socrates, in what you say.
But if this cannot be, the lover will be the friend of that which is loved?
True.
And the hater will be the enemy of that which is hated?
Certainly.
Yet we must acknowledge in this, as in the preceding instance, that a man may be the
friend of one who is not his friend, or who may be his enemy, when he loves that which
does not love him or which even hates him. And he may be the enemy of one who is not
his enemy, and is even his friend: for example, when he hates that which does not hate
him, or which even loves him. 
That appears to be true.
But if the lover is not a friend, nor the beloved a friend, nor both together, what are we
to say? Whom are we to call friends to one another? Do any remain?
Indeed, Socrates, I cannot find any.
But, O Menexenus! I said, may we not have been altogether wrong in our conclusions?
I am sure that we have been wrong, Socrates, said Lysis. And he blushed as he spoke, the
words seeming to come from his lips involuntarily, because his whole mind was taken
up with the argument; there was no mistaking his attentive look while he was listening.
I was pleased at the interest which was shown by Lysis, and I wanted to give Menexenus
a rest, so I turned to him and said, I think, Lysis, that what you say is true, and that, if
we had been right, we should never have gone so far wrong; let us proceed no further in
this direction (for the road seems to be getting troublesome), but take the other path
into which we turned, and see what the poets have to say; for they are to us in a manner
the fathers and authors of wisdom, and they speak of friends in no light or trivial
manner, but God himself, as they say, makes them and draws them to one another; and
this they express, if I am not mistaken, in the following words:—
‘God is ever drawing like towards like, and making them acquainted.’
I dare say that you have heard those words.
Yes, he said; I have.
And have you not also met with the treatises of philosophers who say that like must love
like? they are the people who argue and write about nature and the universe.
Very true, he replied.
And are they right in saying this?
They may be. 
Perhaps, I said, about half, or possibly, altogether, right, if their meaning were rightly
apprehended by us. For the more a bad man has to do with a bad man, and the more
nearly he is brought into contact with him, the more he will be likely to hate him, for he
injures him; and injurer and injured cannot be friends. Is not that true?
Yes, he said.
Then one half of the saying is untrue, if the wicked are like one another?
That is true.
But the real meaning of the saying, as I imagine, is, that the good are like one another,
and friends to one another; and that the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity
with one another or with themselves; for they are passionate and restless, and anything
which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with
any other thing. Do you not agree?
Yes, I do.
Then, my friend, those who say that the like is friendly to the like mean to intimate, if I
rightly apprehend them, that the good only is the friend of the good, and of him only;
but that the evil never attains to any real friendship, either with good or evil. Do you
agree?
He nodded assent.
Then now we know how to answer the question ‘Who are friends?’ for the argument
declares ‘That the good are friends.’
Yes, he said, that is true.
Yes, I replied; and yet I am not quite satisfied with this answer. By heaven, and shall I
tell you what I suspect? I will. Assuming that like, inasmuch as he is like, is the friend of
like, and useful to him—or rather let me try another way of putting the matter: Can like
do any good or harm to like which he could not do to himself, or suffer anything from 
his like which he would not suffer from himself? And if neither can be of any use to the
other, how can they be loved by one another? Can they now?
They cannot.
And can he who is not loved be a friend?
Certainly not.
But say that the like is not the friend of the like in so far as he is like; still the good may
be the friend of the good in so far as he is good?
True.
But then again, will not the good, in so far as he is good, be sufficient for himself?
Certainly he will. And he who is sufficient wants nothing— that is implied in the word
sufficient.
Of course not.
And he who wants nothing will desire nothing?
He will not.
Neither can he love that which he does not desire?
He cannot.
And he who loves not is not a lover or friend?
Clearly not.
What place then is there for friendship, if, when absent, good men have no need of one
another (for even when alone they are sufficient for themselves), and when present have
no use of one another? How can such persons ever be induced to value one another?
They cannot. 
And friends they cannot be, unless they value one another?
Very true.
But see now, Lysis, whether we are not being deceived in all this—are we not indeed
entirely wrong?
How so? he replied.
Have I not heard some one say, as I just now recollect, that the like is the greatest enemy
of the like, the good of the good?—Yes, and he quoted the authority of Hesiod, who says:
‘Potter quarrels with potter, bard with bard, Beggar with beggar;’
and of all other things he affirmed, in like manner, ‘That of necessity the most like are
most full of envy, strife, and hatred of one another, and the most unlike, of friendship.
For the poor man is compelled to be the friend of the rich, and the weak requires the aid
of the strong, and the sick man of the physician; and every one who is ignorant, has to
love and court him who knows.’ And indeed he went on to say in grandiloquent
language, that the idea of friendship existing between similars is not the truth, but the
very reverse of the truth, and that the most opposed are the most friendly; for that
everything desires not like but that which is most unlike: for example, the dry desires
the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the
full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite,
whereas like receives nothing from like. And I thought that he who said this was a
charming man, and that he spoke well. What do the rest of you say?
I should say, at first hearing, that he is right, said Menexenus.
Then we are to say that the greatest friendship is of opposites?
Exactly.
Yes, Menexenus; but will not that be a monstrous answer? and will not the all-wise
eristics be down upon us in triumph, and ask, fairly enough, whether love is not the very 
opposite of hate; and what answer shall we make to them—must we not admit that they
speak the truth?
We must.
They will then proceed to ask whether the enemy is the friend of the friend, or the friend
the friend of the enemy?
Neither, he replied.
Well, but is a just man the friend of the unjust, or the temperate of the intemperate, or
the good of the bad?
I do not see how that is possible.
And yet, I said, if friendship goes by contraries, the contraries must be friends.
They must.
Then neither like and like nor unlike and unlike are friends.
I suppose not.
And yet there is a further consideration: may not all these notions of friendship be
erroneous? but may not that which is neither good nor evil still in some cases be the
friend of the good?
How do you mean? he said.
Why really, I said, the truth is that I do not know; but my head is dizzy with thinking of
the argument, and therefore I hazard the conjecture, that ‘the beautiful is the friend,’ as
the old proverb says. Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a
nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls. For I affirm that the good is the
beautiful. You will agree to that?
Yes. 
This I say from a sort of notion that what is neither good nor evil is the friend of the
beautiful and the good, and I will tell you why I am inclined to think so: I assume that
there are three principles—the good, the bad, and that which is neither good nor bad.
You would agree—would you not?
I agree.
And neither is the good the friend of the good, nor the evil of the evil, nor the good of the
evil;—these alternatives are excluded by the previous argument; and therefore, if there
be such a thing as friendship or love at all, we must infer that what is neither good nor
evil must be the friend, either of the good, or of that which is neither good nor evil, for
nothing can be the friend of the bad.
True.
But neither can like be the friend of like, as we were just now saying.
True.
And if so, that which is neither good nor evil can have no friend which is neither good
nor evil.
Clearly not.
Then the good alone is the friend of that only which is neither good nor evil.
That may be assumed to be certain.
And does not this seem to put us in the right way? Just remark, that the body which is in
health requires neither medical nor any other aid, but is well enough; and the healthy
man has no love of the physician, because he is in health.
He has none.
But the sick loves him, because he is sick?
Certainly. 
And sickness is an evil, and the art of medicine a good and useful thing?
Yes.
But the human body, regarded as a body, is neither good nor evil?
True.
And the body is compelled by reason of disease to court and make friends of the art of
medicine?
Yes.
Then that which is neither good nor evil becomes the friend of good, by reason of the
presence of evil?
So we may infer.
And clearly this must have happened before that which was neither good nor evil had
become altogether corrupted with the element of evil—if itself had become evil it would
not still desire and love the good; for, as we were saying, the evil cannot be the friend of
the good.
Impossible.
Further, I must observe that some substances are assimilated when others are present
with them; and there are some which are not assimilated: take, for example, the case of
an ointment or colour which is put on another substance.
Very good.
In such a case, is the substance which is anointed the same as the colour or ointment?
What do you mean? he said.
This is what I mean: Suppose that I were to cover your auburn locks with white lead,
would they be really white, or would they only appear to be white? 
They would only appear to be white, he replied.
And yet whiteness would be present in them?
True.
But that would not make them at all the more white, notwithstanding the presence of
white in them—they would not be white any more than black?
No.
But when old age infuses whiteness into them, then they become assimilated, and are
white by the presence of white.
Certainly.
Now I want to know whether in all cases a substance is assimilated by the presence of
another substance; or must the presence be after a peculiar sort?
The latter, he said.
Then that which is neither good nor evil may be in the presence of evil, but not as yet
evil, and that has happened before now?
Yes.
And when anything is in the presence of evil, not being as yet evil, the presence of good
arouses the desire of good in that thing; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing
evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which was once both good
and evil has now become evil only, and the good was supposed to have no friendship
with the evil?
None.
And therefore we say that those who are already wise, whether Gods or men, are no
longer lovers of wisdom; nor can they be lovers of wisdom who are ignorant to the
extent of being evil, for no evil or ignorant person is a lover of wisdom. There remain 
those who have the misfortune to be ignorant, but are not yet hardened in their
ignorance, or void of understanding, and do not as yet fancy that they know what they
do not know: and therefore those who are the lovers of wisdom are as yet neither good
nor bad. But the bad do not love wisdom any more than the good; for, as we have
already seen, neither is unlike the friend of unlike, nor like of like. You remember that?
Yes, they both said.
And so, Lysis and Menexenus, we have discovered the nature of friendship— there can
be no doubt of it: Friendship is the love which by reason of the presence of evil the
neither good nor evil has of the good, either in the soul, or in the body, or anywhere.
They both agreed and entirely assented, and for a moment I rejoiced and was satisfied
like a huntsman just holding fast his prey. But then a most unaccountable suspicion
came across me, and I felt that the conclusion was untrue. I was pained, and said, Alas!
Lysis and Menexenus, I am afraid that we have been grasping at a shadow only.
Why do you say so? said Menexenus.
I am afraid, I said, that the argument about friendship is false: arguments, like men, are
often pretenders.
How do you mean? he asked.
Well, I said; look at the matter in this way: a friend is the friend of some one; is he not?
Certainly he is.
And has he a motive and object in being a friend, or has he no motive and object?
He has a motive and object.
And is the object which makes him a friend, dear to him, or neither dear nor hateful to
him?
I do not quite follow you, he said. 
I do not wonder at that, I said. But perhaps, if I put the matter in another way, you will
be able to follow me, and my own meaning will be clearer to myself. The sick man, as I
was just now saying, is the friend of the physician—is he not?
Yes.
And he is the friend of the physician because of disease, and for the sake of health?
Yes.
And disease is an evil?
Certainly.
And what of health? I said. Is that good or evil, or neither?
Good, he replied.
And we were saying, I believe, that the body being neither good nor evil, because of
disease, that is to say because of evil, is the friend of medicine, and medicine is a good:
and medicine has entered into this friendship for the sake of health, and health is a
good.
True.
And is health a friend, or not a friend?
A friend.
And disease is an enemy?
Yes.
Then that which is neither good nor evil is the friend of the good because of the evil and
hateful, and for the sake of the good and the friend?
Clearly. 
Then the friend is a friend for the sake of the friend, and because of the enemy?
That is to be inferred.
Then at this point, my boys, let us take heed, and be on our guard against deceptions. I
will not again repeat that the friend is the friend of the friend, and the like of the like,
which has been declared by us to be an impossibility; but, in order that this new
statement may not delude us, let us attentively examine another point, which I will
proceed to explain: Medicine, as we were saying, is a friend, or dear to us for the sake of
health?
Yes.
And health is also dear?
Certainly.
And if dear, then dear for the sake of something?
Yes.
And surely this object must also be dear, as is implied in our previous admissions?
Yes.
And that something dear involves something else dear?
Yes.
But then, proceeding in this way, shall we not arrive at some first principle of friendship
or dearness which is not capable of being referred to any other, for the sake of which, as
we maintain, all other things are dear, and, having there arrived, we shall stop?
True.
My fear is that all those other things, which, as we say, are dear for the sake of another,
are illusions and deceptions only, but where that first principle is, there is the true ideal 
of friendship. Let me put the matter thus: Suppose the case of a great treasure (this may
be a son, who is more precious to his father than all his other treasures); would not the
father, who values his son above all things, value other things also for the sake of his
son? I mean, for instance, if he knew that his son had drunk hemlock, and the father
thought that wine would save him, he would value the wine?
He would.
And also the vessel which contains the wine?
Certainly.
But does he therefore value the three measures of wine, or the earthen vessel which
contains them, equally with his son? Is not this rather the true state of the case? All his
anxiety has regard not to the means which are provided for the sake of an object, but to
the object for the sake of which they are provided. And although we may often say that
gold and silver are highly valued by us, that is not the truth; for there is a further object,
whatever it may be, which we value most of all, and for the sake of which gold and all
our other possessions are acquired by us. Am I not right?
Yes, certainly.
And may not the same be said of the friend? That which is only dear to us for the sake of
something else is improperly said to be dear, but the truly dear is that in which all these
so-called dear friendships terminate.
That, he said, appears to be true.
And the truly dear or ultimate principle of friendship is not for the sake of any other or
further dear.
True.
Then we have done with the notion that friendship has any further object. May we then
infer that the good is the friend?
I think so. 
And the good is loved for the sake of the evil? Let me put the case in this way: Suppose
that of the three principles, good, evil, and that which is neither good nor evil, there
remained only the good and the neutral, and that evil went far away, and in no way
affected soul or body, nor ever at all that class of things which, as we say, are neither
good nor evil in themselves;—would the good be of any use, or other than useless to us?
For if there were nothing to hurt us any longer, we should have no need of anything that
would do us good. Then would be clearly seen that we did but love and desire the good
because of the evil, and as the remedy of the evil, which was the disease; but if there had
been no disease, there would have been no need of a remedy. Is not this the nature of
the good—to be loved by us who are placed between the two, because of the evil? but
there is no use in the good for its own sake.
I suppose not.
Then the final principle of friendship, in which all other friendships terminated, those, I
mean, which are relatively dear and for the sake of something else, is of another and a
different nature from them. For they are called dear because of another dear or friend.
But with the true friend or dear, the case is quite the reverse; for that is proved to be
dear because of the hated, and if the hated were away it would be no longer dear.
Very true, he replied: at any rate not if our present view holds good.
But, oh! will you tell me, I said, whether if evil were to perish, we should hunger any
more, or thirst any more, or have any similar desire? Or may we suppose that hunger
will remain while men and animals remain, but not so as to be hurtful? And the same of
thirst and the other desires,— that they will remain, but will not be evil because evil has
perished? Or rather shall I say, that to ask what either will be then or will not be is
ridiculous, for who knows? This we do know, that in our present condition hunger may
injure us, and may also benefit us:—Is not that true?
Yes.
And in like manner thirst or any similar desire may sometimes be a good and sometimes
an evil to us, and sometimes neither one nor the other?
To be sure. 
But is there any reason why, because evil perishes, that which is not evil should perish
with it?
None.
Then, even if evil perishes, the desires which are neither good nor evil will remain?
Clearly they will.
And must not a man love that which he desires and affects?
He must.
Then, even if evil perishes, there may still remain some elements of love or friendship?
Yes.
But not if evil is the cause of friendship: for in that case nothing will be the friend of any
other thing after the destruction of evil; for the effect cannot remain when the cause is
destroyed.
True.
And have we not admitted already that the friend loves something for a reason? and at
the time of making the admission we were of opinion that the neither good nor evil loves
the good because of the evil?
Very true.
But now our view is changed, and we conceive that there must be some other cause of
friendship?
I suppose so.
May not the truth be rather, as we were saying just now, that desire is the cause of
friendship; for that which desires is dear to that which is desired at the time of desiring
it? and may not the other theory have been only a long story about nothing? 
Likely enough.
But surely, I said, he who desires, desires that of which he is in want?
Yes.
And that of which he is in want is dear to him?
True.
And he is in want of that of which he is deprived?
Certainly.
Then love, and desire, and friendship would appear to be of the natural or congenial.
Such, Lysis and Menexenus, is the inference.
They assented.
Then if you are friends, you must have natures which are congenial to one another?
Certainly, they both said.
And I say, my boys, that no one who loves or desires another would ever have loved or
desired or affected him, if he had not been in some way congenial to him, either in his
soul, or in his character, or in his manners, or in his form.
Yes, yes, said Menexenus. But Lysis was silent.
Then, I said, the conclusion is, that what is of a congenial nature must be loved.
It follows, he said.
Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love.
Lysis and Menexenus gave a faint assent to this; and Hippothales changed into all
manner of colours with delight. 
Here, intending to revise the argument, I said: Can we point out any difference between
the congenial and the like? For if that is possible, then I think, Lysis and Menexenus,
there may be some sense in our argument about friendship. But if the congenial is only
the like, how will you get rid of the other argument, of the uselessness of like to like in as
far as they are like; for to say that what is useless is dear, would be absurd? Suppose,
then, that we agree to distinguish between the congenial and the like—in the
intoxication of argument, that may perhaps be allowed.
Very true.
And shall we further say that the good is congenial, and the evil uncongenial to every
one? Or again that the evil is congenial to the evil, and the good to the good; and that
which is neither good nor evil to that which is neither good nor evil?
They agreed to the latter alternative.
Then, my boys, we have again fallen into the old discarded error; for the unjust will be
the friend of the unjust, and the bad of the bad, as well as the good of the good.
That appears to be the result.
But again, if we say that the congenial is the same as the good, in that case the good and
he only will be the friend of the good.
True.
But that too was a position of ours which, as you will remember, has been already
refuted by ourselves.
We remember.
Then what is to be done? Or rather is there anything to be done? I can only, like the wise
men who argue in courts, sum up the arguments:—If neither the beloved, nor the lover,
nor the like, nor the unlike, nor the good, nor the congenial, nor any other of whom we
spoke—for there were such a number of them that I cannot remember all—if none of
these are friends, I know not what remains to be said. 
Here I was going to invite the opinion of some older person, when suddenly we were
interrupted by the tutors of Lysis and Menexenus, who came upon us like an evil
apparition with their brothers, and bade them go home, as it was getting late. At first, we
and the by-standers drove them off; but afterwards, as they would not mind, and only
went on shouting in their barbarous dialect, and got angry, and kept calling the boys—
they appeared to us to have been drinking rather too much at the Hermaea, which made
them difficult to manage—we fairly gave way and broke up the company.
I said, however, a few words to the boys at parting: O Menexenus and Lysis, how
ridiculous that you two boys, and I, an old boy, who would fain be one of you, should
imagine ourselves to be friends—this is what the by- standers will go away and say—and
as yet we have not been able to discover what is a friend! 
Euthyphro
by
Plato
Translated with an
introduction by
Benjamin Jowett 
INTRODUCTION.
In the Meno, Anytus had parted from Socrates with the significant words: ‘That in any
city, and particularly in the city of Athens, it is easier to do men harm than to do them
good;’ and Socrates was anticipating another opportunity of talking with him. In the
Euthyphro, Socrates is awaiting his trial for impiety. But before the trial begins, Plato
would like to put the world on their trial, and convince them of ignorance in that very
matter touching which Socrates is accused. An incident which may perhaps really have
occurred in the family of Euthyphro, a learned Athenian diviner and soothsayer,
furnishes the occasion of the discussion.
This Euthyphro and Socrates are represented as meeting in the porch of the King
Archon. (Compare Theaet.) Both have legal business in hand. Socrates is defendant in a
suit for impiety which Meletus has brought against him (it is remarked by the way that
he is not a likely man himself to have brought a suit against another); and Euthyphro too 
is plaintiff in an action for murder, which he has brought against his own father. The
latter has originated in the following manner:—A poor dependant of the family had slain
one of their domestic slaves in Naxos. The guilty person was bound and thrown into a
ditch by the command of Euthyphro’s father, who sent to the interpreters of religion at
Athens to ask what should be done with him. Before the messenger came back the
criminal had died from hunger and exposure.
This is the origin of the charge of murder which Euthyphro brings against his father.
Socrates is confident that before he could have undertaken the responsibility of such a
prosecution, he must have been perfectly informed of the nature of piety and impiety;
and as he is going to be tried for impiety himself, he thinks that he cannot do better
than learn of Euthyphro (who will be admitted by everybody, including the judges, to be
an unimpeachable authority) what piety is, and what is impiety. What then is piety?
Euthyphro, who, in the abundance of his knowledge, is very willing to undertake all the
responsibility, replies: That piety is doing as I do, prosecuting your father (if he is guilty)
on a charge of murder; doing as the gods do—as Zeus did to Cronos, and Cronos to
Uranus.
Socrates has a dislike to these tales of mythology, and he fancies that this dislike of his
may be the reason why he is charged with impiety. ‘Are they really true?’ ‘Yes, they are;’
and Euthyphro will gladly tell Socrates some more of them. But Socrates would like first
of all to have a more satisfactory answer to the question, ‘What is piety?’ ‘Doing as I do,
charging a father with murder,’ may be a single instance of piety, but can hardly be
regarded as a general definition.
Euthyphro replies, that ‘Piety is what is dear to the gods, and impiety is what is not dear
to them.’ But may there not be differences of opinion, as among men, so also among
the gods? Especially, about good and evil, which have no fixed rule; and these are
precisely the sort of differences which give rise to quarrels. And therefore what may be 
dear to one god may not be dear to another, and the same action may be both pious
and impious; e.g. your chastisement of your father, Euthyphro, may be dear or pleasing
to Zeus (who inflicted a similar chastisement on his own father), but not equally pleasing
to Cronos or Uranus (who suffered at the hands of their sons).
Euthyphro answers that there is no difference of opinion, either among gods or men, as
to the propriety of punishing a murderer. Yes, rejoins Socrates, when they know him to
be a murderer; but you are assuming the point at issue. If all the circumstances of the
case are considered, are you able to show that your father was guilty of murder, or that
all the gods are agreed in approving of our prosecution of him? And must you not allow
that what is hated by one god may be liked by another? Waiving this last, however,
Socrates proposes to amend the definition, and say that ‘what all the gods love is pious,
and what they all hate is impious.’ To this Euthyphro agrees.
Socrates proceeds to analyze the new form of the definition. He shows that in other
cases the act precedes the state; e.g. the act of being carried, loved, etc. precedes the
state of being carried, loved, etc., and therefore that which is dear to the gods is dear to
the gods because it is first loved of them, not loved of them because it is dear to them.
But the pious or holy is loved by the gods because it is pious or holy, which is equivalent
to saying, that it is loved by them because it is dear to them. Here then appears to be a
contradiction,—Euthyphro has been giving an attribute or accident of piety only, and
not the essence. Euthyphro acknowledges himself that his explanations seem to walk
away or go round in a circle, like the moving figures of Daedalus, the ancestor of
Socrates, who has communicated his art to his descendants.
Socrates, who is desirous of stimulating the indolent intelligence of Euthyphro, raises the
question in another manner: ‘Is all the pious just?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Is all the just pious?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then
what part of justice is piety?’ Euthyphro replies that piety is that part of justice which
‘attends’ to the gods, as there is another part of justice which ‘attends’ to men. But what
is the meaning of ‘attending’ to the gods? The word ‘attending,’ when applied to dogs, 
horses, and men, implies that in some way they are made better. But how do pious or
holy acts make the gods any better? Euthyphro explains that he means by pious acts,
acts of service or ministration. Yes; but the ministrations of the husbandman, the
physician, and the builder have an end. To what end do we serve the gods, and what do
we help them to accomplish? Euthyphro replies, that all these difficult questions cannot
be resolved in a short time; and he would rather say simply that piety is knowing how to
please the gods in word and deed, by prayers and sacrifices. In other words, says
Socrates, piety is ‘a science of asking and giving’—asking what we want and giving what
they want; in short, a mode of doing business between gods and men. But although
they are the givers of all good, how can we give them any good in return? ‘Nay, but we
give them honour.’ Then we give them not what is beneficial, but what is pleasing or
dear to them; and this is the point which has been already disproved.
Socrates, although weary of the subterfuges and evasions of Euthyphro, remains
unshaken in his conviction that he must know the nature of piety, or he would never
have prosecuted his old father. He is still hoping that he will condescend to instruct him.
But Euthyphro is in a hurry and cannot stay. And Socrates’ last hope of knowing the
nature of piety before he is prosecuted for impiety has disappeared. As in the
Euthydemus the irony is carried on to the end.
The Euthyphro is manifestly designed to contrast the real nature of piety and impiety
with the popular conceptions of them. But when the popular conceptions of them have
been overthrown, Socrates does not offer any definition of his own: as in the Laches and
Lysis, he prepares the way for an answer to the question which he has raised; but true to
his own character, refuses to answer himself.
Euthyphro is a religionist, and is elsewhere spoken of, if he be the same person, as the
author of a philosophy of names, by whose ‘prancing steeds’ Socrates in the Cratylus is
carried away. He has the conceit and self- confidence of a Sophist; no doubt that he is
right in prosecuting his father has ever entered into his mind. Like a Sophist too, he is 
incapable either of framing a general definition or of following the course of an
argument. His wrong-headedness, one-sidedness, narrowness, positiveness, are
characteristic of his priestly office. His failure to apprehend an argument may be
compared to a similar defect which is observable in the rhapsode Ion. But he is not a
bad man, and he is friendly to Socrates, whose familiar sign he recognizes with interest.
Though unable to follow him he is very willing to be led by him, and eagerly catches at
any suggestion which saves him from the trouble of thinking. Moreover he is the enemy
of Meletus, who, as he says, is availing himself of the popular dislike to innovations in
religion in order to injure Socrates; at the same time he is amusingly confident that he
has weapons in his own armoury which would be more than a match for him. He is quite
sincere in his prosecution of his father, who has accidentally been guilty of homicide,
and is not wholly free from blame. To purge away the crime appears to him in the light
of a duty, whoever may be the criminal.
Thus begins the contrast between the religion of the letter, or of the narrow and
unenlightened conscience, and the higher notion of religion which Socrates vainly
endeavours to elicit from him. ‘Piety is doing as I do’ is the idea of religion which first
occurs to him, and to many others who do not say what they think with equal frankness.
For men are not easily persuaded that any other religion is better than their own; or that
other nations, e.g. the Greeks in the time of Socrates, were equally serious in their
religious beliefs and difficulties. The chief difference between us and them is, that they
were slowly learning what we are in process of forgetting. Greek mythology hardly
admitted of the distinction between accidental homicide and murder: that the pollution
of blood was the same in both cases is also the feeling of the Athenian diviner. He had
not as yet learned the lesson, which philosophy was teaching, that Homer and Hesiod, if
not banished from the state, or whipped out of the assembly, as Heracleitus more rudely
proposed, at any rate were not to be appealed to as authorities in religion; and he is
ready to defend his conduct by the examples of the gods. These are the very tales which
Socrates cannot abide; and his dislike of them, as he suspects, has branded him with the 
reputation of impiety. Here is one answer to the question, ‘Why Socrates was put to
death,’ suggested by the way. Another is conveyed in the words, ‘The Athenians do not
care about any man being thought wise until he begins to make other men wise; and
then for some reason or other they are angry:’ which may be said to be the rule of
popular toleration in most other countries, and not at Athens only. In the course of the
argument Socrates remarks that the controversial nature of morals and religion arises
out of the difficulty of verifying them. There is no measure or standard to which they can
be referred.
The next definition, ‘Piety is that which is loved of the gods,’ is shipwrecked on a refined
distinction between the state and the act, corresponding respectively to the adjective
(philon) and the participle (philoumenon), or rather perhaps to the participle and the
verb (philoumenon and phileitai). The act is prior to the state (as in Aristotle the
energeia precedes the dunamis); and the state of being loved is preceded by the act of
being loved. But piety or holiness is preceded by the act of being pious, not by the act
of being loved; and therefore piety and the state of being loved are different. Through
such subtleties of dialectic Socrates is working his way into a deeper region of thought
and feeling. He means to say that the words ‘loved of the gods’ express an attribute
only, and not the essence of piety.
Then follows the third and last definition, ‘Piety is a part of justice.’ Thus far Socrates has
proceeded in placing religion on a moral foundation. He is seeking to realize the
harmony of religion and morality, which the great poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Pindar had unconsciously anticipated, and which is the universal want of all men. To this
the soothsayer adds the ceremonial element, ‘attending upon the gods.’ When further
interrogated by Socrates as to the nature of this ‘attention to the gods,’ he replies, that
piety is an affair of business, a science of giving and asking, and the like. Socrates points
out the anthropomorphism of these notions, (compare Symp.; Republic; Politicus.) But
when we expect him to go on and show that the true service of the gods is the service
of the spirit and the co-operation with them in all things true and good, he stops short; 
this was a lesson which the soothsayer could not have been made to understand, and
which every one must learn for himself.
There seem to be altogether three aims or interests in this little Dialogue: (1) the
dialectical development of the idea of piety; (2) the antithesis of true and false religion,
which is carried to a certain extent only; (3) the defence of Socrates.
The subtle connection with the Apology and the Crito; the holding back of the
conclusion, as in the Charmides, Lysis, Laches, Protagoras, and other Dialogues; the deep
insight into the religious world; the dramatic power and play of the two characters; the
inimitable irony, are reasons for believing that the Euthyphro is a genuine Platonic
writing. The spirit in which the popular representations of mythology are denounced
recalls Republic II. The virtue of piety has been already mentioned as one of five in the
Protagoras, but is not reckoned among the four cardinal virtues of Republic IV. The
figure of Daedalus has occurred in the Meno; that of Proteus in the Euthydemus and Io.
The kingly science has already appeared in the Euthydemus, and will reappear in the
Republic and Statesman. But neither from these nor any other indications of similarity or
difference, and still less from arguments respecting the suitableness of this little work to
aid Socrates at the time of his trial or the reverse, can any evidence of the date be
obtained. 
EUTHYPHRO
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Euthyphro.
SCENE: The Porch of the King Archon.
EUTHYPHRO: Why have you left the Lyceum, Socrates? and what are you doing in the
Porch of the King Archon? Surely you cannot be concerned in a suit before the King, like
myself?
SOCRATES: Not in a suit, Euthyphro; impeachment is the word which the Athenians use.
EUTHYPHRO: What! I suppose that some one has been prosecuting you, for I cannot
believe that you are the prosecutor of another.
SOCRATES: Certainly not. 
EUTHYPHRO: Then some one else has been prosecuting you?
SOCRATES: Yes.
EUTHYPHRO: And who is he?
SOCRATES: A young man who is little known, Euthyphro; and I hardly know him: his
name is Meletus, and he is of the deme of Pitthis. Perhaps you may remember his
appearance; he has a beak, and long straight hair, and a beard which is ill grown.
EUTHYPHRO: No, I do not remember him, Socrates. But what is the charge which he
brings against you?
SOCRATES: What is the charge? Well, a very serious charge, which shows a good deal of
character in the young man, and for which he is certainly not to be despised. He says he
knows how the youth are corrupted and who are their corruptors. I fancy that he must
be a wise man, and seeing that I am the reverse of a wise man, he has found me out,
and is going to accuse me of corrupting his young friends. And of this our mother the
state is to be the judge. Of all our political men he is the only one who seems to me to
begin in the right way, with the cultivation of virtue in youth; like a good husbandman,
he makes the young shoots his first care, and clears away us who are the destroyers of
them. This is only the first step; he will afterwards attend to the elder branches; and if he
goes on as he has begun, he will be a very great public benefactor.
EUTHYPHRO: I hope that he may; but I rather fear, Socrates, that the opposite will turn
out to be the truth. My opinion is that in attacking you he is simply aiming a blow at the
foundation of the state. But in what way does he say that you corrupt the young?
SOCRATES: He brings a wonderful accusation against me, which at first hearing excites
surprise: he says that I am a poet or maker of gods, and that I invent new gods and deny
the existence of old ones; this is the ground of his indictment. 
EUTHYPHRO: I understand, Socrates; he means to attack you about the familiar sign
which occasionally, as you say, comes to you. He thinks that you are a neologian, and he
is going to have you up before the court for this. He knows that such a charge is readily
received by the world, as I myself know too well; for when I speak in the assembly about
divine things, and foretell the future to them, they laugh at me and think me a madman.
Yet every word that I say is true. But they are jealous of us all; and we must be brave and
go at them.
SOCRATES: Their laughter, friend Euthyphro, is not a matter of much consequence. For a
man may be thought wise; but the Athenians, I suspect, do not much trouble themselves
about him until he begins to impart his wisdom to others, and then for some reason or
other, perhaps, as you say, from jealousy, they are angry.
EUTHYPHRO: I am never likely to try their temper in this way.
SOCRATES: I dare say not, for you are reserved in your behaviour, and seldom impart
your wisdom. But I have a benevolent habit of pouring out myself to everybody, and
would even pay for a listener, and I am afraid that the Athenians may think me too
talkative. Now if, as I was saying, they would only laugh at me, as you say that they
laugh at you, the time might pass gaily enough in the court; but perhaps they may be in
earnest, and then what the end will be you soothsayers only can predict.
EUTHYPHRO: I dare say that the affair will end in nothing, Socrates, and that you will win
your cause; and I think that I shall win my own.
SOCRATES: And what is your suit, Euthyphro? are you the pursuer or the defendant?
EUTHYPHRO: I am the pursuer.
SOCRATES: Of whom?
EUTHYPHRO: You will think me mad when I tell you. 
SOCRATES: Why, has the fugitive wings?
EUTHYPHRO: Nay, he is not very volatile at his time of life.
SOCRATES: Who is he?
EUTHYPHRO: My father.
SOCRATES: Your father! my good man?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And of what is he accused?
EUTHYPHRO: Of murder, Socrates.
SOCRATES: By the powers, Euthyphro! how little does the common herd know of the
nature of right and truth. A man must be an extraordinary man, and have made great
strides in wisdom, before he could have seen his way to bring such an action.
EUTHYPHRO: Indeed, Socrates, he must.
SOCRATES: I suppose that the man whom your father murdered was one of your
relatives—clearly he was; for if he had been a stranger you would never have thought of
prosecuting him.
EUTHYPHRO: I am amused, Socrates, at your making a distinction between one who is a
relation and one who is not a relation; for surely the pollution is the same in either case,
if you knowingly associate with the murderer when you ought to clear yourself and him
by proceeding against him. The real question is whether the murdered man has been
justly slain. If justly, then your duty is to let the matter alone; but if unjustly, then even if
the murderer lives under the same roof with you and eats at the same table, proceed
against him. Now the man who is dead was a poor dependant of mine who worked for 
us as a field labourer on our farm in Naxos, and one day in a fit of drunken passion he
got into a quarrel with one of our domestic servants and slew him. My father bound him
hand and foot and threw him into a ditch, and then sent to Athens to ask of a diviner
what he should do with him. Meanwhile he never attended to him and took no care
about him, for he regarded him as a murderer; and thought that no great harm would
be done even if he did die. Now this was just what happened. For such was the effect of
cold and hunger and chains upon him, that before the messenger returned from the
diviner, he was dead. And my father and family are angry with me for taking the part of
the murderer and prosecuting my father. They say that he did not kill him, and that if he
did, the dead man was but a murderer, and I ought not to take any notice, for that a son
is impious who prosecutes a father. Which shows, Socrates, how little they know what
the gods think about piety and impiety.
SOCRATES: Good heavens, Euthyphro! and is your knowledge of religion and of things
pious and impious so very exact, that, supposing the circumstances to be as you state
them, you are not afraid lest you too may be doing an impious thing in bringing an
action against your father?
EUTHYPHRO: The best of Euthyphro, and that which distinguishes him, Socrates, from
other men, is his exact knowledge of all such matters. What should I be good for
without it?
SOCRATES: Rare friend! I think that I cannot do better than be your disciple. Then before
the trial with Meletus comes on I shall challenge him, and say that I have always had a
great interest in religious questions, and now, as he charges me with rash imaginations
and innovations in religion, I have become your disciple. You, Meletus, as I shall say to
him, acknowledge Euthyphro to be a great theologian, and sound in his opinions; and if
you approve of him you ought to approve of me, and not have me into court; but if you
disapprove, you should begin by indicting him who is my teacher, and who will be the
ruin, not of the young, but of the old; that is to say, of myself whom he instructs, and of 
his old father whom he admonishes and chastises. And if Meletus refuses to listen to
me, but will go on, and will not shift the indictment from me to you, I cannot do better
than repeat this challenge in the court.
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, indeed, Socrates; and if he attempts to indict me I am mistaken if I do
not find a flaw in him; the court shall have a great deal more to say to him than to me.
SOCRATES: And I, my dear friend, knowing this, am desirous of becoming your disciple.
For I observe that no one appears to notice you—not even this Meletus; but his sharp
eyes have found me out at once, and he has indicted me for impiety. And therefore, I
adjure you to tell me the nature of piety and impiety, which you said that you knew so
well, and of murder, and of other offences against the gods. What are they? Is not piety
in every action always the same? and impiety, again—is it not always the opposite of
piety, and also the same with itself, having, as impiety, one notion which includes
whatever is impious?
EUTHYPHRO: To be sure, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And what is piety, and what is impiety?
EUTHYPHRO: Piety is doing as I am doing; that is to say, prosecuting any one who is
guilty of murder, sacrilege, or of any similar crime—whether he be your father or
mother, or whoever he may be—that makes no difference; and not to prosecute them is
impiety. And please to consider, Socrates, what a notable proof I will give you of the
truth of my words, a proof which I have already given to others:—of the principle, I
mean, that the impious, whoever he may be, ought not to go unpunished. For do not
men regard Zeus as the best and most righteous of the gods?—and yet they admit that
he bound his father (Cronos) because he wickedly devoured his sons, and that he too
had punished his own father (Uranus) for a similar reason, in a nameless manner. And
yet when I proceed against my father, they are angry with me. So inconsistent are they
in their way of talking when the gods are concerned, and when I am concerned. 
SOCRATES: May not this be the reason, Euthyphro, why I am charged with impiety—that
I cannot away with these stories about the gods? and therefore I suppose that people
think me wrong. But, as you who are well informed about them approve of them, I
cannot do better than assent to your superior wisdom. What else can I say, confessing
as I do, that I know nothing about them? Tell me, for the love of Zeus, whether you
really believe that they are true.
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates; and things more wonderful still, of which the world is in
ignorance.
SOCRATES: And do you really believe that the gods fought with one another, and had
dire quarrels, battles, and the like, as the poets say, and as you may see represented in
the works of great artists? The temples are full of them; and notably the robe of Athene,
which is carried up to the Acropolis at the great Panathenaea, is embroidered with them.
Are all these tales of the gods true, Euthyphro?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates; and, as I was saying, I can tell you, if you would like to hear
them, many other things about the gods which would quite amaze you.
SOCRATES: I dare say; and you shall tell me them at some other time when I have
leisure. But just at present I would rather hear from you a more precise answer, which
you have not as yet given, my friend, to the question, What is ‘piety’? When asked, you
only replied, Doing as you do, charging your father with murder.
EUTHYPHRO: And what I said was true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: No doubt, Euthyphro; but you would admit that there are many other pious
acts?
EUTHYPHRO: There are. 
SOCRATES: Remember that I did not ask you to give me two or three examples of piety,
but to explain the general idea which makes all pious things to be pious. Do you not
recollect that there was one idea which made the impious impious, and the pious pious?
EUTHYPHRO: I remember.
SOCRATES: Tell me what is the nature of this idea, and then I shall have a standard to
which I may look, and by which I may measure actions, whether yours or those of any
one else, and then I shall be able to say that such and such an action is pious, such
another impious.
EUTHYPHRO: I will tell you, if you like.
SOCRATES: I should very much like.
EUTHYPHRO: Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is
not dear to them.
SOCRATES: Very good, Euthyphro; you have now given me the sort of answer which I
wanted. But whether what you say is true or not I cannot as yet tell, although I make no
doubt that you will prove the truth of your words.
EUTHYPHRO: Of course.
SOCRATES: Come, then, and let us examine what we are saying. That thing or person
which is dear to the gods is pious, and that thing or person which is hateful to the gods
is impious, these two being the extreme opposites of one another. Was not that said?
EUTHYPHRO: It was.
SOCRATES: And well said?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates, I thought so; it was certainly said. 
SOCRATES: And further, Euthyphro, the gods were admitted to have enmities and
hatreds and differences?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, that was also said.
SOCRATES: And what sort of difference creates enmity and anger? Suppose for example
that you and I, my good friend, differ about a number; do differences of this sort make
us enemies and set us at variance with one another? Do we not go at once to arithmetic,
and put an end to them by a sum?
EUTHYPHRO: True.
SOCRATES: Or suppose that we differ about magnitudes, do we not quickly end the
differences by measuring?
EUTHYPHRO: Very true.
SOCRATES: And we end a controversy about heavy and light by resorting to a weighing
machine?
EUTHYPHRO: To be sure.
SOCRATES: But what differences are there which cannot be thus decided, and which
therefore make us angry and set us at enmity with one another? I dare say the answer
does not occur to you at the moment, and therefore I will suggest that these enmities
arise when the matters of difference are the just and unjust, good and evil, honourable
and dishonourable. Are not these the points about which men differ, and about which
when we are unable satisfactorily to decide our differences, you and I and all of us
quarrel, when we do quarrel? (Compare Alcib.)
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates, the nature of the differences about which we quarrel is such
as you describe. 
SOCRATES: And the quarrels of the gods, noble Euthyphro, when they occur, are of a
like nature?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly they are.
SOCRATES: They have differences of opinion, as you say, about good and evil, just and
unjust, honourable and dishonourable: there would have been no quarrels among them,
if there had been no such differences—would there now?
EUTHYPHRO: You are quite right.
SOCRATES: Does not every man love that which he deems noble and just and good, and
hate the opposite of them?
EUTHYPHRO: Very true.
SOCRATES: But, as you say, people regard the same things, some as just and others as
unjust,—about these they dispute; and so there arise wars and fightings among them.
EUTHYPHRO: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then the same things are hated by the gods and loved by the gods, and are
both hateful and dear to them?
EUTHYPHRO: True.
SOCRATES: And upon this view the same things, Euthyphro, will be pious and also
impious?
EUTHYPHRO: So I should suppose.
SOCRATES: Then, my friend, I remark with surprise that you have not answered the
question which I asked. For I certainly did not ask you to tell me what action is both 
pious and impious: but now it would seem that what is loved by the gods is also hated
by them. And therefore, Euthyphro, in thus chastising your father you may very likely be
doing what is agreeable to Zeus but disagreeable to Cronos or Uranus, and what is
acceptable to Hephaestus but unacceptable to Here, and there may be other gods who
have similar differences of opinion.
EUTHYPHRO: But I believe, Socrates, that all the gods would be agreed as to the
propriety of punishing a murderer: there would be no difference of opinion about that.
SOCRATES: Well, but speaking of men, Euthyphro, did you ever hear any one arguing
that a murderer or any sort of evil-doer ought to be let off?
EUTHYPHRO: I should rather say that these are the questions which they are always
arguing, especially in courts of law: they commit all sorts of crimes, and there is nothing
which they will not do or say in their own defence.
SOCRATES: But do they admit their guilt, Euthyphro, and yet say that they ought not to
be punished?
EUTHYPHRO: No; they do not.
SOCRATES: Then there are some things which they do not venture to say and do: for
they do not venture to argue that the guilty are to be unpunished, but they deny their
guilt, do they not?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then they do not argue that the evil-doer should not be punished, but they
argue about the fact of who the evil-doer is, and what he did and when?
EUTHYPHRO: True. 
SOCRATES: And the gods are in the same case, if as you assert they quarrel about just
and unjust, and some of them say while others deny that injustice is done among them.
For surely neither God nor man will ever venture to say that the doer of injustice is not
to be punished?
EUTHYPHRO: That is true, Socrates, in the main.
SOCRATES: But they join issue about the particulars—gods and men alike; and, if they
dispute at all, they dispute about some act which is called in question, and which by
some is affirmed to be just, by others to be unjust. Is not that true?
EUTHYPHRO: Quite true.
SOCRATES: Well then, my dear friend Euthyphro, do tell me, for my better instruction
and information, what proof have you that in the opinion of all the gods a servant who
is guilty of murder, and is put in chains by the master of the dead man, and dies
because he is put in chains before he who bound him can learn from the interpreters of
the gods what he ought to do with him, dies unjustly; and that on behalf of such an one
a son ought to proceed against his father and accuse him of murder. How would you
show that all the gods absolutely agree in approving of his act? Prove to me that they
do, and I will applaud your wisdom as long as I live.
EUTHYPHRO: It will be a difficult task; but I could make the matter very clear indeed to
you.
SOCRATES: I understand; you mean to say that I am not so quick of apprehension as the
judges: for to them you will be sure to prove that the act is unjust, and hateful to the
gods.
EUTHYPHRO: Yes indeed, Socrates; at least if they will listen to me. 
SOCRATES: But they will be sure to listen if they find that you are a good speaker. There
was a notion that came into my mind while you were speaking; I said to myself: ‘Well,
and what if Euthyphro does prove to me that all the gods regarded the death of the serf
as unjust, how do I know anything more of the nature of piety and impiety? for granting
that this action may be hateful to the gods, still piety and impiety are not adequately
defined by these distinctions, for that which is hateful to the gods has been shown to be
also pleasing and dear to them.’ And therefore, Euthyphro, I do not ask you to prove
this; I will suppose, if you like, that all the gods condemn and abominate such an action.
But I will amend the definition so far as to say that what all the gods hate is impious,
and what they love pious or holy; and what some of them love and others hate is both
or neither. Shall this be our definition of piety and impiety?
EUTHYPHRO: Why not, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Why not! certainly, as far as I am concerned, Euthyphro, there is no reason
why not. But whether this admission will greatly assist you in the task of instructing me
as you promised, is a matter for you to consider.
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, I should say that what all the gods love is pious and holy, and the
opposite which they all hate, impious.
SOCRATES: Ought we to enquire into the truth of this, Euthyphro, or simply to accept
the mere statement on our own authority and that of others? What do you say?
EUTHYPHRO: We should enquire; and I believe that the statement will stand the test of
enquiry.
SOCRATES: We shall know better, my good friend, in a little while. The point which I
should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods
because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods. 
EUTHYPHRO: I do not understand your meaning, Socrates.
SOCRATES: I will endeavour to explain: we, speak of carrying and we speak of being
carried, of leading and being led, seeing and being seen. You know that in all such cases
there is a difference, and you know also in what the difference lies?
EUTHYPHRO: I think that I understand.
SOCRATES: And is not that which is beloved distinct from that which loves?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Well; and now tell me, is that which is carried in this state of carrying
because it is carried, or for some other reason?
EUTHYPHRO: No; that is the reason.
SOCRATES: And the same is true of what is led and of what is seen?
EUTHYPHRO: True.
SOCRATES: And a thing is not seen because it is visible, but conversely, visible because it
is seen; nor is a thing led because it is in the state of being led, or carried because it is in
the state of being carried, but the converse of this. And now I think, Euthyphro, that my
meaning will be intelligible; and my meaning is, that any state of action or passion
implies previous action or passion. It does not become because it is becoming, but it is
in a state of becoming because it becomes; neither does it suffer because it is in a state
of suffering, but it is in a state of suffering because it suffers. Do you not agree?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Is not that which is loved in some state either of becoming or suffering? 
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the same holds as in the previous instances; the state of being loved
follows the act of being loved, and not the act the state.
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And what do you say of piety, Euthyphro: is not piety, according to your
definition, loved by all the gods?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Because it is pious or holy, or for some other reason?
EUTHYPHRO: No, that is the reason.
SOCRATES: It is loved because it is holy, not holy because it is loved?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And that which is dear to the gods is loved by them, and is in a state to be
loved of them because it is loved of them?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then that which is dear to the gods, Euthyphro, is not holy, nor is that which
is holy loved of God, as you affirm; but they are two different things.
EUTHYPHRO: How do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I mean to say that the holy has been acknowledged by us to be loved of
God because it is holy, not to be holy because it is loved.
EUTHYPHRO: Yes. 
SOCRATES: But that which is dear to the gods is dear to them because it is loved by
them, not loved by them because it is dear to them.
EUTHYPHRO: True.
SOCRATES: But, friend Euthyphro, if that which is holy is the same with that which is dear
to God, and is loved because it is holy, then that which is dear to God would have been
loved as being dear to God; but if that which is dear to God is dear to him because
loved by him, then that which is holy would have been holy because loved by him. But
now you see that the reverse is the case, and that they are quite different from one
another. For one (theophiles) is of a kind to be loved cause it is loved, and the other
(osion) is loved because it is of a kind to be loved. Thus you appear to me, Euthyphro,
when I ask you what is the essence of holiness, to offer an attribute only, and not the
essence—the attribute of being loved by all the gods. But you still refuse to explain to
me the nature of holiness. And therefore, if you please, I will ask you not to hide your
treasure, but to tell me once more what holiness or piety really is, whether dear to the
gods or not (for that is a matter about which we will not quarrel); and what is impiety?
EUTHYPHRO: I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean. For somehow
or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk
away from us.
SOCRATES: Your words, Euthyphro, are like the handiwork of my ancestor Daedalus; and
if I were the sayer or propounder of them, you might say that my arguments walk away
and will not remain fixed where they are placed because I am a descendant of his. But
now, since these notions are your own, you must find some other gibe, for they
certainly, as you yourself allow, show an inclination to be on the move.
EUTHYPHRO: Nay, Socrates, I shall still say that you are the Daedalus who sets
arguments in motion; not I, certainly, but you make them move or go round, for they
would never have stirred, as far as I am concerned. 
SOCRATES: Then I must be a greater than Daedalus: for whereas he only made his own
inventions to move, I move those of other people as well. And the beauty of it is, that I
would rather not. For I would give the wisdom of Daedalus, and the wealth of Tantalus,
to be able to detain them and keep them fixed. But enough of this. As I perceive that
you are lazy, I will myself endeavour to show you how you might instruct me in the
nature of piety; and I hope that you will not grudge your labour. Tell me, then—Is not
that which is pious necessarily just?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is, then, all which is just pious? or, is that which is pious all just, but that
which is just, only in part and not all, pious?
EUTHYPHRO: I do not understand you, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And yet I know that you are as much wiser than I am, as you are younger.
But, as I was saying, revered friend, the abundance of your wisdom makes you lazy.
Please to exert yourself, for there is no real difficulty in understanding me. What I mean I
may explain by an illustration of what I do not mean. The poet (Stasinus) sings—
‘Of Zeus, the author and creator of all these things, You will not tell: for where there is
fear there is also reverence.’
Now I disagree with this poet. Shall I tell you in what respect?
EUTHYPHRO: By all means.
SOCRATES: I should not say that where there is fear there is also reverence; for I am sure
that many persons fear poverty and disease, and the like evils, but I do not perceive that
they reverence the objects of their fear.
EUTHYPHRO: Very true. 
SOCRATES: But where reverence is, there is fear; for he who has a feeling of reverence
and shame about the commission of any action, fears and is afraid of an ill reputation.
EUTHYPHRO: No doubt.
SOCRATES: Then we are wrong in saying that where there is fear there is also reverence;
and we should say, where there is reverence there is also fear. But there is not always
reverence where there is fear; for fear is a more extended notion, and reverence is a part
of fear, just as the odd is a part of number, and number is a more extended notion than
the odd. I suppose that you follow me now?
EUTHYPHRO: Quite well.
SOCRATES: That was the sort of question which I meant to raise when I asked whether
the just is always the pious, or the pious always the just; and whether there may not be
justice where there is not piety; for justice is the more extended notion of which piety is
only a part. Do you dissent?
EUTHYPHRO: No, I think that you are quite right.
SOCRATES: Then, if piety is a part of justice, I suppose that we should enquire what part?
If you had pursued the enquiry in the previous cases; for instance, if you had asked me
what is an even number, and what part of number the even is, I should have had no
difficulty in replying, a number which represents a figure having two equal sides. Do you
not agree?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, I quite agree.
SOCRATES: In like manner, I want you to tell me what part of justice is piety or holiness,
that I may be able to tell Meletus not to do me injustice, or indict me for impiety, as I am
now adequately instructed by you in the nature of piety or holiness, and their opposites. 
EUTHYPHRO: Piety or holiness, Socrates, appears to me to be that part of justice which
attends to the gods, as there is the other part of justice which attends to men.
SOCRATES: That is good, Euthyphro; yet still there is a little point about which I should
like to have further information, What is the meaning of ‘attention’? For attention can
hardly be used in the same sense when applied to the gods as when applied to other
things. For instance, horses are said to require attention, and not every person is able to
attend to them, but only a person skilled in horsemanship. Is it not so?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: I should suppose that the art of horsemanship is the art of attending to
horses?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Nor is every one qualified to attend to dogs, but only the huntsman?
EUTHYPHRO: True.
SOCRATES: And I should also conceive that the art of the huntsman is the art of
attending to dogs?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: As the art of the oxherd is the art of attending to oxen?
EUTHYPHRO: Very true.
SOCRATES: In like manner holiness or piety is the art of attending to the gods?—that
would be your meaning, Euthyphro?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes. 
SOCRATES: And is not attention always designed for the good or benefit of that to
which the attention is given? As in the case of horses, you may observe that when
attended to by the horseman’s art they are benefited and improved, are they not?
EUTHYPHRO: True.
SOCRATES: As the dogs are benefited by the huntsman’s art, and the oxen by the art of
the oxherd, and all other things are tended or attended for their good and not for their
hurt?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly, not for their hurt.
SOCRATES: But for their good?
EUTHYPHRO: Of course.
SOCRATES: And does piety or holiness, which has been defined to be the art of
attending to the gods, benefit or improve them? Would you say that when you do a
holy act you make any of the gods better?
EUTHYPHRO: No, no; that was certainly not what I meant.
SOCRATES: And I, Euthyphro, never supposed that you did. I asked you the question
about the nature of the attention, because I thought that you did not.
EUTHYPHRO: You do me justice, Socrates; that is not the sort of attention which I mean.
SOCRATES: Good: but I must still ask what is this attention to the gods which is called
piety?
EUTHYPHRO: It is such, Socrates, as servants show to their masters.
SOCRATES: I understand—a sort of ministration to the gods. 
EUTHYPHRO: Exactly.
SOCRATES: Medicine is also a sort of ministration or service, having in view the
attainment of some object—would you not say of health?
EUTHYPHRO: I should.
SOCRATES: Again, there is an art which ministers to the ship-builder with a view to the
attainment of some result?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates, with a view to the building of a ship.
SOCRATES: As there is an art which ministers to the house-builder with a view to the
building of a house?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And now tell me, my good friend, about the art which ministers to the gods:
what work does that help to accomplish? For you must surely know if, as you say, you
are of all men living the one who is best instructed in religion.
EUTHYPHRO: And I speak the truth, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Tell me then, oh tell me—what is that fair work which the gods do by the
help of our ministrations?
EUTHYPHRO: Many and fair, Socrates, are the works which they do.
SOCRATES: Why, my friend, and so are those of a general. But the chief of them is easily
told. Would you not say that victory in war is the chief of them?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly. 
SOCRATES: Many and fair, too, are the works of the husbandman, if I am not mistaken;
but his chief work is the production of food from the earth?
EUTHYPHRO: Exactly.
SOCRATES: And of the many and fair things done by the gods, which is the chief or
principal one?
EUTHYPHRO: I have told you already, Socrates, that to learn all these things accurately
will be very tiresome. Let me simply say that piety or holiness is learning how to please
the gods in word and deed, by prayers and sacrifices. Such piety is the salvation of
families and states, just as the impious, which is unpleasing to the gods, is their ruin and
destruction.
SOCRATES: I think that you could have answered in much fewer words the chief
question which I asked, Euthyphro, if you had chosen. But I see plainly that you are not
disposed to instruct me—clearly not: else why, when we reached the point, did you turn
aside? Had you only answered me I should have truly learned of you by this time the
nature of piety. Now, as the asker of a question is necessarily dependent on the
answerer, whither he leads I must follow; and can only ask again, what is the pious, and
what is piety? Do you mean that they are a sort of science of praying and sacrificing?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, I do.
SOCRATES: And sacrificing is giving to the gods, and prayer is asking of the gods?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Upon this view, then, piety is a science of asking and giving?
EUTHYPHRO: You understand me capitally, Socrates. 
SOCRATES: Yes, my friend; the reason is that I am a votary of your science, and give my
mind to it, and therefore nothing which you say will be thrown away upon me. Please
then to tell me, what is the nature of this service to the gods? Do you mean that we
prefer requests and give gifts to them?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, I do.
SOCRATES: Is not the right way of asking to ask of them what we want?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And the right way of giving is to give to them in return what they want of us.
There would be no meaning in an art which gives to any one that which he does not
want.
EUTHYPHRO: Very true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then piety, Euthyphro, is an art which gods and men have of doing business
with one another?
EUTHYPHRO: That is an expression which you may use, if you like.
SOCRATES: But I have no particular liking for anything but the truth. I wish, however,
that you would tell me what benefit accrues to the gods from our gifts. There is no
doubt about what they give to us; for there is no good thing which they do not give; but
how we can give any good thing to them in return is far from being equally clear. If they
give everything and we give nothing, that must be an affair of business in which we have
very greatly the advantage of them.
EUTHYPHRO: And do you imagine, Socrates, that any benefit accrues to the gods from
our gifts? 
SOCRATES: But if not, Euthyphro, what is the meaning of gifts which are conferred by us
upon the gods?
EUTHYPHRO: What else, but tributes of honour; and, as I was just now saying, what
pleases them?
SOCRATES: Piety, then, is pleasing to the gods, but not beneficial or dear to them?
EUTHYPHRO: I should say that nothing could be dearer.
SOCRATES: Then once more the assertion is repeated that piety is dear to the gods?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And when you say this, can you wonder at your words not standing firm, but
walking away? Will you accuse me of being the Daedalus who makes them walk away,
not perceiving that there is another and far greater artist than Daedalus who makes
them go round in a circle, and he is yourself; for the argument, as you will perceive,
comes round to the same point. Were we not saying that the holy or pious was not the
same with that which is loved of the gods? Have you forgotten?
EUTHYPHRO: I quite remember.
SOCRATES: And are you not saying that what is loved of the gods is holy; and is not this
the same as what is dear to them—do you see?
EUTHYPHRO: True.
SOCRATES: Then either we were wrong in our former assertion; or, if we were right then,
we are wrong now.
EUTHYPHRO: One of the two must be true. 
SOCRATES: Then we must begin again and ask, What is piety? That is an enquiry which I
shall never be weary of pursuing as far as in me lies; and I entreat you not to scorn me,
but to apply your mind to the utmost, and tell me the truth. For, if any man knows, you
are he; and therefore I must detain you, like Proteus, until you tell. If you had not
certainly known the nature of piety and impiety, I am confident that you would never, on
behalf of a serf, have charged your aged father with murder. You would not have run
such a risk of doing wrong in the sight of the gods, and you would have had too much
respect for the opinions of men. I am sure, therefore, that you know the nature of piety
and impiety. Speak out then, my dear Euthyphro, and do not hide your knowledge.
EUTHYPHRO: Another time, Socrates; for I am in a hurry, and must go now.
SOCRATES: Alas! my companion, and will you leave me in despair? I was hoping that
you would instruct me in the nature of piety and impiety; and then I might have cleared
myself of Meletus and his indictment. I would have told him that I had been enlightened
by Euthyphro, and had given up rash innovations and speculations, in which I indulged
only through ignorance, and that now I am about to lead a better life.
THE END


Menexenus
by
Plato
Translated with an
introduction by
Benjamin Jowett 
PREFACE
It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of Plato from the
spurious. The only external evidence to them which is of much value is that of Aristotle;
for the Alexandrian catalogues of a century later include manifest forgeries. Even the
value of the Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty concerning
the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to him. And several of the
citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato, and some of them omit the name of the
dialogue from which they are taken. Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of
a particular author, general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the
genuineness of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more likely to have
been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation, than longer ones; and some
kinds of composition, such as epistles or panegyrical orations, are more liable to
suspicion than others; those, again, which have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring
of a later age, or the slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a motive or
some affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which seem to have originated in
a name or statement really occurring in some classical author, are also of doubtful
credit; while there is no instance of any ancient writing proved to be a forgery, which
combines excellence with length. A really great and original writer would have no object
in fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator, the ‘literary hack’ of
Alexandria and Athens, the Gods did not grant originality or genius. Further, in
attempting to balance the evidence for and against a Platonic dialogue, we must not
forget that the form of the Platonic writing was common to several of his
contemporaries. Aeschines, Euclid, Phaedo, Antisthenes, and in the next generation
Aristotle, are all said to have composed dialogues; and mistakes of names are very likely
to have occurred. Greek literature in the third century before Christ was almost as
voluminous as our own, and without the safeguards of regular publication, or printing,
or binding, or even of distinct titles. An unknown writing was naturally attributed to a
known writer whose works bore the same character; and the name once appended 
easily obtained authority. A tendency may also be observed to blend the works and
opinions of the master with those of his scholars. To a later Platonist, the difference
between Plato and his imitators was not so perceptible as to ourselves. The Memorabilia
of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are but a part of a considerable Socratic
literature which has passed away. And we must consider how we should regard the
question of the genuineness of a particular writing, if this lost literature had been
preserved to us.
These considerations lead us to adopt the following criteria of genuineness: (1) That is
most certainly Plato’s which Aristotle attributes to him by name, which (2) is of
considerable length, of (3) great excellence, and also (4) in harmony with the general
spirit of the Platonic writings. But the testimony of Aristotle cannot always be
distinguished from that of a later age (see above); and has various degrees of
importance. Those writings which he cites without mentioning Plato, under their own
names, e.g. the Hippias, the Funeral Oration, the Phaedo, etc., have an inferior degree of
evidence in their favour. They may have been supposed by him to be the writings of
another, although in the case of really great works, e.g. the Phaedo, this is not credible;
those again which are quoted but not named, are still more defective in their external
credentials. There may be also a possibility that Aristotle was mistaken, or may have
confused the master and his scholars in the case of a short writing; but this is
inconceivable about a more important work, e.g. the Laws, especially when we
remember that he was living at Athens, and a frequenter of the groves of the Academy,
during the last twenty years of Plato’s life. Nor must we forget that in all his numerous
citations from the Platonic writings he never attributes any passage found in the extant
dialogues to any one but Plato. And lastly, we may remark that one or two great
writings, such as the Parmenides and the Politicus, which are wholly devoid of
Aristotelian (1) credentials may be fairly attributed to Plato, on the ground of (2) length,
(3) excellence, and (4) accordance with the general spirit of his writings. Indeed the
greater part of the evidence for the genuineness of ancient Greek authors may be 
summed up under two heads only: (1) excellence; and (2) uniformity of tradition—a kind
of evidence, which though in many cases sufficient, is of inferior value.
Proceeding upon these principles we appear to arrive at the conclusion that nineteentwentieths
of all the writings which have ever been ascribed to Plato, are undoubtedly
genuine. There is another portion of them, including the Epistles, the Epinomis, the
dialogues rejected by the ancients themselves, namely, the Axiochus, De justo, De
virtute, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and external
evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there still remains a small
portion of which we are unable to affirm either that they are genuine or spurious. They
may have been written in youth, or possibly like the works of some painters, may be
partly or wholly the compositions of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some
contemporary transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some
Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master. Not that on grounds
either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject them. Some difference of style,
or inferiority of execution, or inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered
decisive of their spurious character. For who always does justice to himself, or who
writes with equal care at all times? Certainly not Plato, who exhibits the greatest
differences in dramatic power, in the formation of sentences, and in the use of words, if
his earlier writings are compared with his later ones, say the Protagoras or Phaedrus
with the Laws. Or who can be expected to think in the same manner during a period of
authorship extending over above fifty years, in an age of great intellectual activity, as
well as of political and literary transition? Certainly not Plato, whose earlier writings are
separated from his later ones by as wide an interval of philosophical speculation as that
which separates his later writings from Aristotle.
The dialogues which appear to have the next claim to genuineness among the Platonic
writings, are the Lesser Hippias, the Menexenus or Funeral Oration, the First Alcibiades.
Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are cited by Aristotle; the first in
the Metaphysics, the latter in the Rhetoric. Neither of them are expressly attributed to 
Plato, but in his citation of both of them he seems to be referring to passages in the
extant dialogues. From the mention of ‘Hippias’ in the singular by Aristotle, we may
perhaps infer that he was unacquainted with a second dialogue bearing the same name.
Moreover, the mere existence of a Greater and Lesser Hippias, and of a First and Second
Alcibiades, does to a certain extent throw a doubt upon both of them. Though a very
clever and ingenious work, the Lesser Hippias does not appear to contain anything
beyond the power of an imitator, who was also a careful student of the earlier Platonic
writings, to invent. The motive or leading thought of the dialogue may be detected in
Xen. Mem., and there is no similar instance of a ‘motive’ which is taken from Xenophon
in an undoubted dialogue of Plato. On the other hand, the upholders of the
genuineness of the dialogue will find in the Hippias a true Socratic spirit; they will
compare the Ion as being akin both in subject and treatment; they will urge the
authority of Aristotle; and they will detect in the treatment of the Sophist, in the satirical
reasoning upon Homer, in the reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine that vice is
ignorance, traces of a Platonic authorship. In reference to the last point we are doubtful,
as in some of the other dialogues, whether the author is asserting or overthrowing the
paradox of Socrates, or merely following the argument ‘whither the wind blows.’ That no
conclusion is arrived at is also in accordance with the character of the earlier dialogues.
The resemblances or imitations of the Gorgias, Protagoras, and Euthydemus, which have
been observed in the Hippias, cannot with certainty be adduced on either side of the
argument. On the whole, more may be said in favour of the genuineness of the Hippias
than against it.
The Menexenus or Funeral Oration is cited by Aristotle, and is interesting as supplying
an example of the manner in which the orators praised ‘the Athenians among the
Athenians,’ falsifying persons and dates, and casting a veil over the gloomier events of
Athenian history. It exhibits an acquaintance with the funeral oration of Thucydides, and
was, perhaps, intended to rival that great work. If genuine, the proper place of the
Menexenus would be at the end of the Phaedrus. The satirical opening and the 
concluding words bear a great resemblance to the earlier dialogues; the oration itself is
professedly a mimetic work, like the speeches in the Phaedrus, and cannot therefore be
tested by a comparison of the other writings of Plato. The funeral oration of Pericles is
expressly mentioned in the Phaedrus, and this may have suggested the subject, in the
same manner that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested by the slight mention of
Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus in the Republic; and the Theages by
the mention of Theages in the Apology and Republic; or as the Second Alcibiades seems
to be founded upon the text of Xenophon, Mem. A similar taste for parody appears not
only in the Phaedrus, but in the Protagoras, in the Symposium, and to a certain extent in
the Parmenides.
To these two doubtful writings of Plato I have added the First Alcibiades, which, of all
the disputed dialogues of Plato, has the greatest merit, and is somewhat longer than
any of them, though not verified by the testimony of Aristotle, and in many respects at
variance with the Symposium in the description of the relations of Socrates and
Alcibiades. Like the Lesser Hippias and the Menexenus, it is to be compared to the
earlier writings of Plato. The motive of the piece may, perhaps, be found in that passage
of the Symposium in which Alcibiades describes himself as self-convicted by the words
of Socrates. For the disparaging manner in which Schleiermacher has spoken of this
dialogue there seems to be no sufficient foundation. At the same time, the lesson
imparted is simple, and the irony more transparent than in the undoubted dialogues of
Plato. We know, too, that Alcibiades was a favourite thesis, and that at least five or six
dialogues bearing this name passed current in antiquity, and are attributed to
contemporaries of Socrates and Plato. (1) In the entire absence of real external evidence
(for the catalogues of the Alexandrian librarians cannot be regarded as trustworthy); and
(2) in the absence of the highest marks either of poetical or philosophical excellence;
and (3) considering that we have express testimony to the existence of contemporary
writings bearing the name of Alcibiades, we are compelled to suspend our judgment on
the genuineness of the extant dialogue. 
Neither at this point, nor at any other, do we propose to draw an absolute line of
demarcation between genuine and spurious writings of Plato. They fade off
imperceptibly from one class to another. There may have been degrees of genuineness
in the dialogues themselves, as there are certainly degrees of evidence by which they
are supported. The traditions of the oral discourses both of Socrates and Plato may have
formed the basis of semi-Platonic writings; some of them may be of the same mixed
character which is apparent in Aristotle and Hippocrates, although the form of them is
different. But the writings of Plato, unlike the writings of Aristotle, seem never to have
been confused with the writings of his disciples: this was probably due to their definite
form, and to their inimitable excellence. The three dialogues which we have offered to
the criticism of the reader may be partly spurious and partly genuine; they may be
altogether spurious;—that is an alternative which must be frankly admitted. Nor can we
maintain of some other dialogues, such as the Parmenides, and the Sophist, and
Politicus, that no considerable objection can be urged against them, though greatly
overbalanced by the weight (chiefly) of internal evidence in their favour. Nor, on the
other hand, can we exclude a bare possibility that some dialogues which are usually
rejected, such as the Greater Hippias and the Cleitophon, may be genuine. The nature
and object of these semi-Platonic writings require more careful study and more
comparison of them with one another, and with forged writings in general, than they
have yet received, before we can finally decide on their character. We do not consider
them all as genuine until they can be proved to be spurious, as is often maintained and
still more often implied in this and similar discussions; but should say of some of them,
that their genuineness is neither proven nor disproven until further evidence about
them can be adduced. And we are as confident that the Epistles are spurious, as that the
Republic, the Timaeus, and the Laws are genuine.
On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under the name of Plato, if
we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves and two or three other
plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a 
considerable change and growth may have taken place in his philosophy (see above).
That twentieth debatable portion scarcely in any degree affects our judgment of Plato,
either as a thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting questions to the
scholar and critic, is of little importance to the general reader. 
INTRODUCTION
The Menexenus has more the character of a rhetorical exercise than any other of the
Platonic works. The writer seems to have wished to emulate Thucydides, and the far
slighter work of Lysias. In his rivalry with the latter, to whom in the Phaedrus Plato shows
a strong antipathy, he is entirely successful, but he is not equal to Thucydides. The
Menexenus, though not without real Hellenic interest, falls very far short of the rugged
grandeur and political insight of the great historian. The fiction of the speech having
been invented by Aspasia is well sustained, and is in the manner of Plato,
notwithstanding the anachronism which puts into her mouth an allusion to the peace of
Antalcidas, an event occurring forty years after the date of the supposed oration. But
Plato, like Shakespeare, is careless of such anachronisms, which are not supposed to
strike the mind of the reader. The effect produced by these grandiloquent orations on
Socrates, who does not recover after having heard one of them for three days and more,
is truly Platonic.
Such discourses, if we may form a judgment from the three which are extant (for the socalled
Funeral Oration of Demosthenes is a bad and spurious imitation of Thucydides
and Lysias), conformed to a regular type. They began with Gods and ancestors, and the
legendary history of Athens, to which succeeded an almost equally fictitious account of
later times. The Persian war usually formed the centre of the narrative; in the age of
Isocrates and Demosthenes the Athenians were still living on the glories of Marathon
and Salamis. The Menexenus veils in panegyric the weak places of Athenian history. The
war of Athens and Boeotia is a war of liberation; the Athenians gave back the Spartans
taken at Sphacteria out of kindness— indeed, the only fault of the city was too great
kindness to their enemies, who were more honoured than the friends of others
(compare Thucyd., which seems to contain the germ of the idea); we democrats are the
aristocracy of virtue, and the like. These are the platitudes and falsehoods in which
history is disguised. The taking of Athens is hardly mentioned. 
The author of the Menexenus, whether Plato or not, is evidently intending to ridicule the
practice, and at the same time to show that he can beat the rhetoricians in their own
line, as in the Phaedrus he may be supposed to offer an example of what Lysias might
have said, and of how much better he might have written in his own style. The orators
had recourse to their favourite loci communes, one of which, as we find in Lysias, was
the shortness of the time allowed them for preparation. But Socrates points out that
they had them always ready for delivery, and that there was no difficulty in improvising
any number of such orations. To praise the Athenians among the Athenians was easy,—
to praise them among the Lacedaemonians would have been a much more difficult task.
Socrates himself has turned rhetorician, having learned of a woman, Aspasia, the
mistress of Pericles; and any one whose teachers had been far inferior to his own—say,
one who had learned from Antiphon the Rhamnusian—would be quite equal to the task
of praising men to themselves. When we remember that Antiphon is described by
Thucydides as the best pleader of his day, the satire on him and on the whole tribe of
rhetoricians is transparent.
The ironical assumption of Socrates, that he must be a good orator because he had
learnt of Aspasia, is not coarse, as Schleiermacher supposes, but is rather to be regarded
as fanciful. Nor can we say that the offer of Socrates to dance naked out of love for
Menexenus, is any more un-Platonic than the threat of physical force which Phaedrus
uses towards Socrates. Nor is there any real vulgarity in the fear which Socrates
expresses that he will get a beating from his mistress, Aspasia: this is the natural
exaggeration of what might be expected from an imperious woman. Socrates is not to
be taken seriously in all that he says, and Plato, both in the Symposium and elsewhere, is
not slow to admit a sort of Aristophanic humour. How a great original genius like Plato
might or might not have written, what was his conception of humour, or what limits he
would have prescribed to himself, if any, in drawing the picture of the Silenus Socrates,
are problems which no critical instinct can determine. 
On the other hand, the dialogue has several Platonic traits, whether original or imitated
may be uncertain. Socrates, when he departs from his character of a ‘know nothing’ and
delivers a speech, generally pretends that what he is speaking is not his own
composition. Thus in the Cratylus he is run away with; in the Phaedrus he has heard
somebody say something— is inspired by the genius loci; in the Symposium he derives
his wisdom from Diotima of Mantinea, and the like. But he does not impose on
Menexenus by his dissimulation. Without violating the character of Socrates, Plato, who
knows so well how to give a hint, or some one writing in his name, intimates clearly
enough that the speech in the Menexenus like that in the Phaedrus is to be attributed to
Socrates. The address of the dead to the living at the end of the oration may also be
compared to the numerous addresses of the same kind which occur in Plato, in whom
the dramatic element is always tending to prevail over the rhetorical. The remark has
been often made, that in the Funeral Oration of Thucydides there is no allusion to the
existence of the dead. But in the Menexenus a future state is clearly, although not
strongly, asserted.
Whether the Menexenus is a genuine writing of Plato, or an imitation only, remains
uncertain. In either case, the thoughts are partly borrowed from the Funeral Oration of
Thucydides; and the fact that they are so, is not in favour of the genuineness of the
work. Internal evidence seems to leave the question of authorship in doubt. There are
merits and there are defects which might lead to either conclusion. The form of the
greater part of the work makes the enquiry difficult; the introduction and the finale
certainly wear the look either of Plato or of an extremely skilful imitator. The excellence
of the forgery may be fairly adduced as an argument that it is not a forgery at all. In this
uncertainty the express testimony of Aristotle, who quotes, in the Rhetoric, the wellknown
words, ‘It is easy to praise the Athenians among the Athenians,’ from the Funeral
Oration, may perhaps turn the balance in its favour. It must be remembered also that
the work was famous in antiquity, and is included in the Alexandrian catalogues of
Platonic writings. 
MENEXENUS
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates and Menexenus.
SOCRATES: Whence come you, Menexenus? Are you from the Agora?
MENEXENUS: Yes, Socrates; I have been at the Council.
SOCRATES: And what might you be doing at the Council? And yet I need hardly ask, for I
see that you, believing yourself to have arrived at the end of education and of
philosophy, and to have had enough of them, are mounting upwards to things higher
still, and, though rather young for the post, are intending to govern us elder men, like
the rest of your family, which has always provided some one who kindly took care of us.
MENEXENUS: Yes, Socrates, I shall be ready to hold office, if you allow and advise that I
should, but not if you think otherwise. I went to the council chamber because I heard
that the Council was about to choose some one who was to speak over the dead. For
you know that there is to be a public funeral?
SOCRATES: Yes, I know. And whom did they choose?
MENEXENUS: No one; they delayed the election until tomorrow, but I believe that either
Archinus or Dion will be chosen.
SOCRATES: O Menexenus! Death in battle is certainly in many respects a noble thing.
The dead man gets a fine and costly funeral, although he may have been poor, and an
elaborate speech is made over him by a wise man who has long ago prepared what he
has to say, although he who is praised may not have been good for much. The speakers
praise him for what he has done and for what he has not done—that is the beauty of
them—and they steal away our souls with their embellished words; in every conceivable
form they praise the city; and they praise those who died in war, and all our ancestors
who went before us; and they praise ourselves also who are still alive, until I feel quite 
elevated by their laudations, and I stand listening to their words, Menexenus, and
become enchanted by them, and all in a moment I imagine myself to have become a
greater and nobler and finer man than I was before. And if, as often happens, there are
any foreigners who accompany me to the speech, I become suddenly conscious of
having a sort of triumph over them, and they seem to experience a corresponding
feeling of admiration at me, and at the greatness of the city, which appears to them,
when they are under the influence of the speaker, more wonderful than ever. This
consciousness of dignity lasts me more than three days, and not until the fourth or fifth
day do I come to my senses and know where I am; in the meantime I have been living in
the Islands of the Blest. Such is the art of our rhetoricians, and in such manner does the
sound of their words keep ringing in my ears.
MENEXENUS: You are always making fun of the rhetoricians, Socrates; this time,
however, I am inclined to think that the speaker who is chosen will not have much to
say, for he has been called upon to speak at a moment’s notice, and he will be
compelled almost to improvise.
SOCRATES: But why, my friend, should he not have plenty to say? Every rhetorician has
speeches ready made; nor is there any difficulty in improvising that sort of stuff. Had the
orator to praise Athenians among Peloponnesians, or Peloponnesians among Athenians,
he must be a good rhetorician who could succeed and gain credit. But there is no
difficulty in a man’s winning applause when he is contending for fame among the
persons whom he is praising.
MENEXENUS: Do you think not, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Certainly ‘not.’
MENEXENUS: Do you think that you could speak yourself if there should be a necessity,
and if the Council were to choose you? 
SOCRATES: That I should be able to speak is no great wonder, Menexenus, considering
that I have an excellent mistress in the art of rhetoric,—she who has made so many
good speakers, and one who was the best among all the Hellenes—Pericles, the son of
Xanthippus.
MENEXENUS: And who is she? I suppose that you mean Aspasia.
SOCRATES: Yes, I do; and besides her I had Connus, the son of Metrobius, as a master,
and he was my master in music, as she was in rhetoric. No wonder that a man who has
received such an education should be a finished speaker; even the pupil of very inferior
masters, say, for example, one who had learned music of Lamprus, and rhetoric of
Antiphon the Rhamnusian, might make a figure if he were to praise the Athenians
among the Athenians.
MENEXENUS: And what would you be able to say if you had to speak?
SOCRATES: Of my own wit, most likely nothing; but yesterday I heard Aspasia
composing a funeral oration about these very dead. For she had been told, as you were
saying, that the Athenians were going to choose a speaker, and she repeated to me the
sort of speech which he should deliver, partly improvising and partly from previous
thought, putting together fragments of the funeral oration which Pericles spoke, but
which, as I believe, she composed.
MENEXENUS: And can you remember what Aspasia said?
SOCRATES: I ought to be able, for she taught me, and she was ready to strike me
because I was always forgetting.
MENEXENUS: Then why will you not rehearse what she said?
SOCRATES: Because I am afraid that my mistress may be angry with me if I publish her
speech. 
MENEXENUS: Nay, Socrates, let us have the speech, whether Aspasia’s or any one else’s,
no matter. I hope that you will oblige me.
SOCRATES: But I am afraid that you will laugh at me if I continue the games of youth in
old age.
MENEXENUS: Far otherwise, Socrates; let us by all means have the speech.
SOCRATES: Truly I have such a disposition to oblige you, that if you bid me dance naked
I should not like to refuse, since we are alone. Listen then: If I remember rightly, she
began as follows, with the mention of the dead:— (Thucyd.)
There is a tribute of deeds and of words. The departed have already had the first, when
going forth on their destined journey they were attended on their way by the state and
by their friends; the tribute of words remains to be given to them, as is meet and by law
ordained. For noble words are a memorial and a crown of noble actions, which are given
to the doers of them by the hearers. A word is needed which will duly praise the dead
and gently admonish the living, exhorting the brethren and descendants of the departed
to imitate their virtue, and consoling their fathers and mothers and the survivors, if any,
who may chance to be alive of the previous generation. What sort of a word will this be,
and how shall we rightly begin the praises of these brave men? In their life they rejoiced
their own friends with their valour, and their death they gave in exchange for the
salvation of the living. And I think that we should praise them in the order in which
nature made them good, for they were good because they were sprung from good
fathers. Wherefore let us first of all praise the goodness of their birth; secondly, their
nurture and education; and then let us set forth how noble their actions were, and how
worthy of the education which they had received.
And first as to their birth. Their ancestors were not strangers, nor are these their
descendants sojourners only, whose fathers have come from another country; but they
are the children of the soil, dwelling and living in their own land. And the country which 
brought them up is not like other countries, a stepmother to her children, but their own
true mother; she bore them and nourished them and received them, and in her bosom
they now repose. It is meet and right, therefore, that we should begin by praising the
land which is their mother, and that will be a way of praising their noble birth.
The country is worthy to be praised, not only by us, but by all mankind; first, and above
all, as being dear to the Gods. This is proved by the strife and contention of the Gods
respecting her. And ought not the country which the Gods praise to be praised by all
mankind? The second praise which may be fairly claimed by her, is that at the time when
the whole earth was sending forth and creating diverse animals, tame and wild, she our
mother was free and pure from savage monsters, and out of all animals selected and
brought forth man, who is superior to the rest in understanding, and alone has justice
and religion. And a great proof that she brought forth the common ancestors of us and
of the departed, is that she provided the means of support for her offspring. For as a
woman proves her motherhood by giving milk to her young ones (and she who has no
fountain of milk is not a mother), so did this our land prove that she was the mother of
men, for in those days she alone and first of all brought forth wheat and barley for
human food, which is the best and noblest sustenance for man, whom she regarded as
her true offspring. And these are truer proofs of motherhood in a country than in a
woman, for the woman in her conception and generation is but the imitation of the
earth, and not the earth of the woman. And of the fruit of the earth she gave a
plenteous supply, not only to her own, but to others also; and afterwards she made the
olive to spring up to be a boon to her children, and to help them in their toils. And when
she had herself nursed them and brought them up to manhood, she gave them Gods to
be their rulers and teachers, whose names are well known, and need not now be
repeated. They are the Gods who first ordered our lives, and instructed us in the arts for
the supply of our daily needs, and taught us the acquisition and use of arms for the
defence of the country. 
Thus born into the world and thus educated, the ancestors of the departed lived and
made themselves a government, which I ought briefly to commemorate. For
government is the nurture of man, and the government of good men is good, and of
bad men bad. And I must show that our ancestors were trained under a good
government, and for this reason they were good, and our contemporaries are also good,
among whom our departed friends are to be reckoned. Then as now, and indeed always,
from that time to this, speaking generally, our government was an aristocracy—a form
of government which receives various names, according to the fancies of men, and is
sometimes called democracy, but is really an aristocracy or government of the best
which has the approval of the many. For kings we have always had, first hereditary and
then elected, and authority is mostly in the hands of the people, who dispense offices
and power to those who appear to be most deserving of them. Neither is a man rejected
from weakness or poverty or obscurity of origin, nor honoured by reason of the
opposite, as in other states, but there is one principle—he who appears to be wise and
good is a governor and ruler. The basis of this our government is equality of birth; for
other states are made up of all sorts and unequal conditions of men, and therefore their
governments are unequal; there are tyrannies and there are oligarchies, in which the one
party are slaves and the others masters. But we and our citizens are brethren, the
children all of one mother, and we do not think it right to be one another’s masters or
servants; but the natural equality of birth compels us to seek for legal equality, and to
recognize no superiority except in the reputation of virtue and wisdom.
And so their and our fathers, and these, too, our brethren, being nobly born and having
been brought up in all freedom, did both in their public and private capacity many
noble deeds famous over the whole world. They were the deeds of men who thought
that they ought to fight both against Hellenes for the sake of Hellenes on behalf of
freedom, and against barbarians in the common interest of Hellas. Time would fail me to
tell of their defence of their country against the invasion of Eumolpus and the Amazons,
or of their defence of the Argives against the Cadmeians, or of the Heracleids against 
the Argives; besides, the poets have already declared in song to all mankind their glory,
and therefore any commemoration of their deeds in prose which we might attempt
would hold a second place. They already have their reward, and I say no more of them;
but there are other worthy deeds of which no poet has worthily sung, and which are still
wooing the poet’s muse. Of these I am bound to make honourable mention, and shall
invoke others to sing of them also in lyric and other strains, in a manner becoming the
actors. And first I will tell how the Persians, lords of Asia, were enslaving Europe, and
how the children of this land, who were our fathers, held them back. Of these I will speak
first, and praise their valour, as is meet and fitting. He who would rightly estimate them
should place himself in thought at that time, when the whole of Asia was subject to the
third king of Persia. The first king, Cyrus, by his valour freed the Persians, who were his
countrymen, and subjected the Medes, who were their lords, and he ruled over the rest
of Asia, as far as Egypt; and after him came his son, who ruled all the accessible part of
Egypt and Libya; the third king was Darius, who extended the land boundaries of the
empire to Scythia, and with his fleet held the sea and the islands. None presumed to be
his equal; the minds of all men were enthralled by him—so many and mighty and
warlike nations had the power of Persia subdued. Now Darius had a quarrel against us
and the Eretrians, because, as he said, we had conspired against Sardis, and he sent
500,000 men in transports and vessels of war, and 300 ships, and Datis as commander,
telling him to bring the Eretrians and Athenians to the king, if he wished to keep his
head on his shoulders. He sailed against the Eretrians, who were reputed to be amongst
the noblest and most warlike of the Hellenes of that day, and they were numerous, but
he conquered them all in three days; and when he had conquered them, in order that no
one might escape, he searched the whole country after this manner: his soldiers, coming
to the borders of Eretria and spreading from sea to sea, joined hands and passed
through the whole country, in order that they might be able to tell the king that no one
had escaped them. And from Eretria they went to Marathon with a like intention,
expecting to bind the Athenians in the same yoke of necessity in which they had bound
the Eretrians. Having effected one-half of their purpose, they were in the act of 
attempting the other, and none of the Hellenes dared to assist either the Eretrians or the
Athenians, except the Lacedaemonians, and they arrived a day too late for the battle;
but the rest were panic-stricken and kept quiet, too happy in having escaped for a time.
He who has present to his mind that conflict will know what manner of men they were
who received the onset of the barbarians at Marathon, and chastened the pride of the
whole of Asia, and by the victory which they gained over the barbarians first taught
other men that the power of the Persians was not invincible, but that hosts of men and
the multitude of riches alike yield to valour. And I assert that those men are the fathers
not only of ourselves, but of our liberties and of the liberties of all who are on the
continent, for that was the action to which the Hellenes looked back when they ventured
to fight for their own safety in the battles which ensued: they became disciples of the
men of Marathon. To them, therefore, I assign in my speech the first place, and the
second to those who fought and conquered in the sea fights at Salamis and Artemisium;
for of them, too, one might have many things to say—of the assaults which they
endured by sea and land, and how they repelled them. I will mention only that act of
theirs which appears to me to be the noblest, and which followed that of Marathon and
came nearest to it; for the men of Marathon only showed the Hellenes that it was
possible to ward off the barbarians by land, the many by the few; but there was no proof
that they could be defeated by ships, and at sea the Persians retained the reputation of
being invincible in numbers and wealth and skill and strength. This is the glory of the
men who fought at sea, that they dispelled the second terror which had hitherto
possessed the Hellenes, and so made the fear of numbers, whether of ships or men, to
cease among them. And so the soldiers of Marathon and the sailors of Salamis became
the schoolmasters of Hellas; the one teaching and habituating the Hellenes not to fear
the barbarians at sea, and the others not to fear them by land. Third in order, for the
number and valour of the combatants, and third in the salvation of Hellas, I place the
battle of Plataea. And now the Lacedaemonians as well as the Athenians took part in the
struggle; they were all united in this greatest and most terrible conflict of all; wherefore
their virtues will be celebrated in times to come, as they are now celebrated by us. But at 
a later period many Hellenic tribes were still on the side of the barbarians, and there was
a report that the great king was going to make a new attempt upon the Hellenes, and
therefore justice requires that we should also make mention of those who crowned the
previous work of our salvation, and drove and purged away all barbarians from the sea.
These were the men who fought by sea at the river Eurymedon, and who went on the
expedition to Cyprus, and who sailed to Egypt and divers other places; and they should
be gratefully remembered by us, because they compelled the king in fear for himself to
look to his own safety instead of plotting the destruction of Hellas.
And so the war against the barbarians was fought out to the end by the whole city on
their own behalf, and on behalf of their countrymen. There was peace, and our city was
held in honour; and then, as prosperity makes men jealous, there succeeded a jealousy
of her, and jealousy begat envy, and so she became engaged against her will in a war
with the Hellenes. On the breaking out of war, our citizens met the Lacedaemonians at
Tanagra, and fought for the freedom of the Boeotians; the issue was doubtful, and was
decided by the engagement which followed. For when the Lacedaemonians had gone
on their way, leaving the Boeotians, whom they were aiding, on the third day after the
battle of Tanagra, our countrymen conquered at Oenophyta, and righteously restored
those who had been unrighteously exiled. And they were the first after the Persian war
who fought on behalf of liberty in aid of Hellenes against Hellenes; they were brave
men, and freed those whom they aided, and were the first too who were honourably
interred in this sepulchre by the state. Afterwards there was a mighty war, in which all
the Hellenes joined, and devastated our country, which was very ungrateful of them; and
our countrymen, after defeating them in a naval engagement and taking their leaders,
the Spartans, at Sphagia, when they might have destroyed them, spared their lives, and
gave them back, and made peace, considering that they should war with the fellowcountrymen
only until they gained a victory over them, and not because of the private
anger of the state destroy the common interest of Hellas; but that with barbarians they
should war to the death. Worthy of praise are they also who waged this war, and are 
here interred; for they proved, if any one doubted the superior prowess of the Athenians
in the former war with the barbarians, that their doubts had no foundation—showing by
their victory in the civil war with Hellas, in which they subdued the other chief state of
the Hellenes, that they could conquer single-handed those with whom they had been
allied in the war against the barbarians. After the peace there followed a third war, which
was of a terrible and desperate nature, and in this many brave men who are here
interred lost their lives—many of them had won victories in Sicily, whither they had gone
over the seas to fight for the liberties of the Leontines, to whom they were bound by
oaths; but, owing to the distance, the city was unable to help them, and they lost heart
and came to misfortune, their very enemies and opponents winning more renown for
valour and temperance than the friends of others. Many also fell in naval engagements
at the Hellespont, after having in one day taken all the ships of the enemy, and defeated
them in other naval engagements. And what I call the terrible and desperate nature of
the war, is that the other Hellenes, in their extreme animosity towards the city, should
have entered into negotiations with their bitterest enemy, the king of Persia, whom they,
together with us, had expelled;—him, without us, they again brought back, barbarian
against Hellenes, and all the hosts, both of Hellenes and barbarians, were united against
Athens. And then shone forth the power and valour of our city. Her enemies had
supposed that she was exhausted by the war, and our ships were blockaded at Mitylene.
But the citizens themselves embarked, and came to the rescue with sixty other ships,
and their valour was confessed of all men, for they conquered their enemies and
delivered their friends. And yet by some evil fortune they were left to perish at sea, and
therefore are not interred here. Ever to be remembered and honoured are they, for by
their valour not only that sea- fight was won for us, but the entire war was decided by
them, and through them the city gained the reputation of being invincible, even though
attacked by all mankind. And that reputation was a true one, for the defeat which came
upon us was our own doing. We were never conquered by others, and to this day we are
still unconquered by them; but we were our own conquerors, and received defeat at our
own hands. Afterwards there was quiet and peace abroad, but there sprang up war at 
home; and, if men are destined to have civil war, no one could have desired that his city
should take the disorder in a milder form. How joyful and natural was the reconciliation
of those who came from the Piraeus and those who came from the city; with what
moderation did they order the war against the tyrants in Eleusis, and in a manner how
unlike what the other Hellenes expected! And the reason of this gentleness was the
veritable tie of blood, which created among them a friendship as of kinsmen, faithful not
in word only, but in deed. And we ought also to remember those who then fell by one
another’s hands, and on such occasions as these to reconcile them with sacrifices and
prayers, praying to those who have power over them, that they may be reconciled even
as we are reconciled. For they did not attack one another out of malice or enmity, but
they were unfortunate. And that such was the fact we ourselves are witnesses, who are
of the same race with them, and have mutually received and granted forgiveness of
what we have done and suffered. After this there was perfect peace, and the city had
rest; and her feeling was that she forgave the barbarians, who had severely suffered at
her hands and severely retaliated, but that she was indignant at the ingratitude of the
Hellenes, when she remembered how they had received good from her and returned
evil, having made common cause with the barbarians, depriving her of the ships which
had once been their salvation, and dismantling our walls, which had preserved their own
from falling. She thought that she would no longer defend the Hellenes, when enslaved
either by one another or by the barbarians, and did accordingly. This was our feeling,
while the Lacedaemonians were thinking that we who were the champions of liberty had
fallen, and that their business was to subject the remaining Hellenes. And why should I
say more? for the events of which I am speaking happened not long ago and we can all
of us remember how the chief peoples of Hellas, Argives and Boeotians and Corinthians,
came to feel the need of us, and, what is the greatest miracle of all, the Persian king
himself was driven to such extremity as to come round to the opinion, that from this
city, of which he was the destroyer, and from no other, his salvation would proceed. 
And if a person desired to bring a deserved accusation against our city, he would find
only one charge which he could justly urge—that she was too compassionate and too
favourable to the weaker side. And in this instance she was not able to hold out or keep
her resolution of refusing aid to her injurers when they were being enslaved, but she
was softened, and did in fact send out aid, and delivered the Hellenes from slavery, and
they were free until they afterwards enslaved themselves. Whereas, to the great king she
refused to give the assistance of the state, for she could not forget the trophies of
Marathon and Salamis and Plataea; but she allowed exiles and volunteers to assist him,
and they were his salvation. And she herself, when she was compelled, entered into the
war, and built walls and ships, and fought with the Lacedaemonians on behalf of the
Parians. Now the king fearing this city and wanting to stand aloof, when he saw the
Lacedaemonians growing weary of the war at sea, asked of us, as the price of his alliance
with us and the other allies, to give up the Hellenes in Asia, whom the Lacedaemonians
had previously handed over to him, he thinking that we should refuse, and that then he
might have a pretence for withdrawing from us. About the other allies he was mistaken,
for the Corinthians and Argives and Boeotians, and the other states, were quite willing
to let them go, and swore and covenanted, that, if he would pay them money, they
would make over to him the Hellenes of the continent, and we alone refused to give
them up and swear. Such was the natural nobility of this city, so sound and healthy was
the spirit of freedom among us, and the instinctive dislike of the barbarian, because we
are pure Hellenes, having no admixture of barbarism in us. For we are not like many
others, descendants of Pelops or Cadmus or Egyptus or Danaus, who are by nature
barbarians, and yet pass for Hellenes, and dwell in the midst of us; but we are pure
Hellenes, uncontaminated by any foreign element, and therefore the hatred of the
foreigner has passed unadulterated into the life-blood of the city. And so,
notwithstanding our noble sentiments, we were again isolated, because we were
unwilling to be guilty of the base and unholy act of giving up Hellenes to barbarians.
And we were in the same case as when we were subdued before; but, by the favour of
Heaven, we managed better, for we ended the war without the loss of our ships or walls 
or colonies; the enemy was only too glad to be quit of us. Yet in this war we lost many
brave men, such as were those who fell owing to the ruggedness of the ground at the
battle of Corinth, or by treason at Lechaeum. Brave men, too, were those who delivered
the Persian king, and drove the Lacedaemonians from the sea. I remind you of them,
and you must celebrate them together with me, and do honour to their memories.
Such were the actions of the men who are here interred, and of others who have died
on behalf of their country; many and glorious things I have spoken of them, and there
are yet many more and more glorious things remaining to be told—many days and
nights would not suffice to tell of them. Let them not be forgotten, and let every man
remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of
their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind. Even as I exhort you this day, and in all
future time, whenever I meet with any of you, shall continue to remind and exhort you,
O ye sons of heroes, that you strive to be the bravest of men. And I think that I ought
now to repeat what your fathers desired to have said to you who are their survivors,
when they went out to battle, in case anything happened to them. I will tell you what I
heard them say, and what, if they had only speech, they would fain be saying, judging
from what they then said. And you must imagine that you hear them saying what I now
repeat to you:—
‘Sons, the event proves that your fathers were brave men; for we might have lived
dishonourably, but have preferred to die honourably rather than bring you and your
children into disgrace, and rather than dishonour our own fathers and forefathers;
considering that life is not life to one who is a dishonour to his race, and that to such a
one neither men nor Gods are friendly, either while he is on the earth or after death in
the world below. Remember our words, then, and whatever is your aim let virtue be the
condition of the attainment of your aim, and know that without this all possessions and
pursuits are dishonourable and evil. For neither does wealth bring honour to the owner,
if he be a coward; of such a one the wealth belongs to another, and not to himself. Nor
does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear 
comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and
manifesting forth his cowardice. And all knowledge, when separated from justice and
virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last
and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your
ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that
to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us. And we shall most likely be
defeated, and you will most likely be victors in the contest, if you learn so to order your
lives as not to abuse or waste the reputation of your ancestors, knowing that to a man
who has any self-respect, nothing is more dishonourable than to be honoured, not for
his own sake, but on account of the reputation of his ancestors. The honour of parents is
a fair and noble treasure to their posterity, but to have the use of a treasure of wealth
and honour, and to leave none to your successors, because you have neither money nor
reputation of your own, is alike base and dishonourable. And if you follow our precepts
you will be received by us as friends, when the hour of destiny brings you hither; but if
you neglect our words and are disgraced in your lives, no one will welcome or receive
you. This is the message which is to be delivered to our children.
‘Some of us have fathers and mothers still living, and we would urge them, if, as is likely,
we shall die, to bear the calamity as lightly as possible, and not to condole with one
another; for they have sorrows enough, and will not need any one to stir them up. While
we gently heal their wounds, let us remind them that the Gods have heard the chief part
of their prayers; for they prayed, not that their children might live for ever, but that they
might be brave and renowned. And this, which is the greatest good, they have attained.
A mortal man cannot expect to have everything in his own life turning out according to
his will; and they, if they bear their misfortunes bravely, will be truly deemed brave
fathers of the brave. But if they give way to their sorrows, either they will be suspected
of not being our parents, or we of not being such as our panegyrists declare. Let not
either of the two alternatives happen, but rather let them be our chief and true
panegyrists, who show in their lives that they are true men, and had men for their sons. 
Of old the saying, “Nothing too much,” appeared to be, and really was, well said. For he
whose happiness rests with himself, if possible, wholly, and if not, as far as is possible,—
who is not hanging in suspense on other men, or changing with the vicissitude of their
fortune,—has his life ordered for the best. He is the temperate and valiant and wise; and
when his riches come and go, when his children are given and taken away, he will
remember the proverb— “Neither rejoicing overmuch nor grieving overmuch,” for he
relies upon himself. And such we would have our parents to be—that is our word and
wish, and as such we now offer ourselves, neither lamenting overmuch, nor fearing
overmuch, if we are to die at this time. And we entreat our fathers and mothers to retain
these feelings throughout their future life, and to be assured that they will not please us
by sorrowing and lamenting over us. But, if the dead have any knowledge of the living,
they will displease us most by making themselves miserable and by taking their
misfortunes too much to heart, and they will please us best if they bear their loss lightly
and temperately. For our life will have the noblest end which is vouchsafed to man, and
should be glorified rather than lamented. And if they will direct their minds to the care
and nurture of our wives and children, they will soonest forget their misfortunes, and
live in a better and nobler way, and be dearer to us.
‘This is all that we have to say to our families: and to the state we would say—Take care
of our parents and of our sons: let her worthily cherish the old age of our parents, and
bring up our sons in the right way. But we know that she will of her own accord take
care of them, and does not need any exhortation of ours.’
This, O ye children and parents of the dead, is the message which they bid us deliver to
you, and which I do deliver with the utmost seriousness. And in their name I beseech
you, the children, to imitate your fathers, and you, parents, to be of good cheer about
yourselves; for we will nourish your age, and take care of you both publicly and privately
in any place in which one of us may meet one of you who are the parents of the dead.
And the care of you which the city shows, you know yourselves; for she has made
provision by law concerning the parents and children of those who die in war; the 
highest authority is specially entrusted with the duty of watching over them above all
other citizens, and they will see that your fathers and mothers have no wrong done to
them. The city herself shares in the education of the children, desiring as far as it is
possible that their orphanhood may not be felt by them; while they are children she is a
parent to them, and when they have arrived at man’s estate she sends them to their
several duties, in full armour clad; and bringing freshly to their minds the ways of their
fathers, she places in their hands the instruments of their fathers’ virtues; for the sake of
the omen, she would have them from the first begin to rule over their own houses
arrayed in the strength and arms of their fathers. And as for the dead, she never ceases
honouring them, celebrating in common for all rites which become the property of each;
and in addition to this, holding gymnastic and equestrian contests, and musical festivals
of every sort. She is to the dead in the place of a son and heir, and to their sons in the
place of a father, and to their parents and elder kindred in the place of a guardian—ever
and always caring for them. Considering this, you ought to bear your calamity the more
gently; for thus you will be most endeared to the dead and to the living, and your
sorrows will heal and be healed. And now do you and all, having lamented the dead in
common according to the law, go your ways.
You have heard, Menexenus, the oration of Aspasia the Milesian.
MENEXENUS: Truly, Socrates, I marvel that Aspasia, who is only a woman, should be able
to compose such a speech; she must be a rare one.
SOCRATES: Well, if you are incredulous, you may come with me and hear her.
MENEXENUS: I have often met Aspasia, Socrates, and know what she is like.
SOCRATES: Well, and do you not admire her, and are you not grateful for her speech?
MENEXENUS: Yes, Socrates, I am very grateful to her or to him who told you, and still
more to you who have told me. 
SOCRATES: Very good. But you must take care not to tell of me, and then at some future
time I will repeat to you many other excellent political speeches of hers.
MENEXENUS: Fear not, only let me hear them, and I will keep the secret.
SOCRATES: Then I will keep my promise.
THE END
LESSER HIPPIAS
TRANSLATED BY
BENJAMIN
JOWETT 
APPENDIX I.
It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of
Plato from the spurious. The only external evidence to them which is of
much value is that of Aristotle; for the Alexandrian catalogues of a
century later include manifest forgeries. Even the value of the
Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty
concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to
him. And several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato, and
some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are taken.
Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular author,
general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the genuineness
of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more likely to
have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation, than longer
ones; and some kinds of composition, such as epistles or panegyrical
orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those, again, which
have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later age, or the
slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a motive or some
affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which seem to have
originated in a name or statement really occurring in some classical 
author, are also of doubtful credit; while there is no instance of any
ancient writing proved to be a forgery, which combines excellence with
length. A really great and original writer would have no object in
fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator, the 'literary
hack' of Alexandria and Athens, the Gods did not grant originality or
genius. Further, in attempting to balance the evidence for and against a
Platonic dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the Platonic writing
was common to several of his contemporaries. Aeschines, Euclid, Phaedo,
Antisthenes, and in the next generation Aristotle, are all said to have
composed dialogues; and mistakes of names are very likely to have occurred.
Greek literature in the third century before Christ was almost as
voluminous as our own, and without the safeguards of regular publication,
or printing, or binding, or even of distinct titles. An unknown writing
was naturally attributed to a known writer whose works bore the same
character; and the name once appended easily obtained authority. A
tendency may also be observed to blend the works and opinions of the master
with those of his scholars. To a later Platonist, the difference between
Plato and his imitators was not so perceptible as to ourselves. The
Memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are but a part of a
considerable Socratic literature which has passed away. And we must 
consider how we should regard the question of the genuineness of a
particular writing, if this lost literature had been preserved to us.
These considerations lead us to adopt the following criteria of
genuineness: (1) That is most certainly Plato's which Aristotle attributes
to him by name, which (2) is of considerable length, of (3) great
excellence, and also (4) in harmony with the general spirit of the Platonic
writings. But the testimony of Aristotle cannot always be distinguished
from that of a later age (see above); and has various degrees of
importance. Those writings which he cites without mentioning Plato, under
their own names, e.g. the Hippias, the Funeral Oration, the Phaedo, etc.,
have an inferior degree of evidence in their favour. They may have been
supposed by him to be the writings of another, although in the case of
really great works, e.g. the Phaedo, this is not credible; those again
which are quoted but not named, are still more defective in their external
credentials. There may be also a possibility that Aristotle was mistaken,
or may have confused the master and his scholars in the case of a short
writing; but this is inconceivable about a more important work, e.g. the
Laws, especially when we remember that he was living at Athens, and a
frequenter of the groves of the Academy, during the last twenty years of
Plato's life. Nor must we forget that in all his numerous citations from 
the Platonic writings he never attributes any passage found in the extant
dialogues to any one but Plato. And lastly, we may remark that one or two
great writings, such as the Parmenides and the Politicus, which are wholly
devoid of Aristotelian (1) credentials may be fairly attributed to Plato,
on the ground of (2) length, (3) excellence, and (4) accordance with the
general spirit of his writings. Indeed the greater part of the evidence
for the genuineness of ancient Greek authors may be summed up under two
heads only: (1) excellence; and (2) uniformity of tradition--a kind of
evidence, which though in many cases sufficient, is of inferior value.
Proceeding upon these principles we appear to arrive at the conclusion that
nineteen-twentieths of all the writings which have ever been ascribed to
Plato, are undoubtedly genuine. There is another portion of them,
including the Epistles, the Epinomis, the dialogues rejected by the
ancients themselves, namely, the Axiochus, De justo, De virtute, Demodocus,
Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and external
evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there still
remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either that they
are genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth, or possibly
like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly the compositions
of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some contemporary 
transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some
Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master. Not
that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject
them. Some difference of style, or inferiority of execution, or
inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive of their
spurious character. For who always does justice to himself, or who writes
with equal care at all times? Certainly not Plato, who exhibits the
greatest differences in dramatic power, in the formation of sentences, and
in the use of words, if his earlier writings are compared with his later
ones, say the Protagoras or Phaedrus with the Laws. Or who can be expected
to think in the same manner during a period of authorship extending over
above fifty years, in an age of great intellectual activity, as well as of
political and literary transition? Certainly not Plato, whose earlier
writings are separated from his later ones by as wide an interval of
philosophical speculation as that which separates his later writings from
Aristotle.
The dialogues which have been translated in the first Appendix, and which
appear to have the next claim to genuineness among the Platonic writings,
are the Lesser Hippias, the Menexenus or Funeral Oration, the First
Alcibiades. Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are cited 
by Aristotle; the first in the Metaphysics, the latter in the Rhetoric.
Neither of them are expressly attributed to Plato, but in his citation of
both of them he seems to be referring to passages in the extant dialogues.
From the mention of 'Hippias' in the singular by Aristotle, we may perhaps
infer that he was unacquainted with a second dialogue bearing the same
name. Moreover, the mere existence of a Greater and Lesser Hippias, and of
a First and Second Alcibiades, does to a certain extent throw a doubt upon
both of them. Though a very clever and ingenious work, the Lesser Hippias
does not appear to contain anything beyond the power of an imitator, who
was also a careful student of the earlier Platonic writings, to invent.
The motive or leading thought of the dialogue may be detected in Xen. Mem.,
and there is no similar instance of a 'motive' which is taken from Xenophon
in an undoubted dialogue of Plato. On the other hand, the upholders of the
genuineness of the dialogue will find in the Hippias a true Socratic
spirit; they will compare the Ion as being akin both in subject and
treatment; they will urge the authority of Aristotle; and they will detect
in the treatment of the Sophist, in the satirical reasoning upon Homer, in
the reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine that vice is ignorance, traces of
a Platonic authorship. In reference to the last point we are doubtful, as
in some of the other dialogues, whether the author is asserting or 
overthrowing the paradox of Socrates, or merely following the argument
'whither the wind blows.' That no conclusion is arrived at is also in
accordance with the character of the earlier dialogues. The resemblances
or imitations of the Gorgias, Protagoras, and Euthydemus, which have been
observed in the Hippias, cannot with certainty be adduced on either side of
the argument. On the whole, more may be said in favour of the genuineness
of the Hippias than against it.
The Menexenus or Funeral Oration is cited by Aristotle, and is interesting
as supplying an example of the manner in which the orators praised 'the
Athenians among the Athenians,' falsifying persons and dates, and casting a
veil over the gloomier events of Athenian history. It exhibits an
acquaintance with the funeral oration of Thucydides, and was, perhaps,
intended to rival that great work. If genuine, the proper place of the
Menexenus would be at the end of the Phaedrus. The satirical opening and
the concluding words bear a great resemblance to the earlier dialogues; the
oration itself is professedly a mimetic work, like the speeches in the
Phaedrus, and cannot therefore be tested by a comparison of the other
writings of Plato. The funeral oration of Pericles is expressly mentioned
in the Phaedrus, and this may have suggested the subject, in the same
manner that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested by the slight mention of 
Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus in the Republic; and the
Theages by the mention of Theages in the Apology and Republic; or as the
Second Alcibiades seems to be founded upon the text of Xenophon, Mem. A
similar taste for parody appears not only in the Phaedrus, but in the
Protagoras, in the Symposium, and to a certain extent in the Parmenides.
To these two doubtful writings of Plato I have added the First Alcibiades,
which, of all the disputed dialogues of Plato, has the greatest merit, and
is somewhat longer than any of them, though not verified by the testimony
of Aristotle, and in many respects at variance with the Symposium in the
description of the relations of Socrates and Alcibiades. Like the Lesser
Hippias and the Menexenus, it is to be compared to the earlier writings of
Plato. The motive of the piece may, perhaps, be found in that passage of
the Symposium in which Alcibiades describes himself as self-convicted by
the words of Socrates. For the disparaging manner in which Schleiermacher
has spoken of this dialogue there seems to be no sufficient foundation. At
the same time, the lesson imparted is simple, and the irony more
transparent than in the undoubted dialogues of Plato. We know, too, that
Alcibiades was a favourite thesis, and that at least five or six dialogues
bearing this name passed current in antiquity, and are attributed to
contemporaries of Socrates and Plato. (1) In the entire absence of real 
external evidence (for the catalogues of the Alexandrian librarians cannot
be regarded as trustworthy); and (2) in the absence of the highest marks
either of poetical or philosophical excellence; and (3) considering that we
have express testimony to the existence of contemporary writings bearing
the name of Alcibiades, we are compelled to suspend our judgment on the
genuineness of the extant dialogue.
Neither at this point, nor at any other, do we propose to draw an absolute
line of demarcation between genuine and spurious writings of Plato. They
fade off imperceptibly from one class to another. There may have been
degrees of genuineness in the dialogues themselves, as there are certainly
degrees of evidence by which they are supported. The traditions of the
oral discourses both of Socrates and Plato may have formed the basis of
semi-Platonic writings; some of them may be of the same mixed character
which is apparent in Aristotle and Hippocrates, although the form of them
is different. But the writings of Plato, unlike the writings of Aristotle,
seem never to have been confused with the writings of his disciples: this
was probably due to their definite form, and to their inimitable
excellence. The three dialogues which we have offered in the Appendix to
the criticism of the reader may be partly spurious and partly genuine; they
may be altogether spurious;--that is an alternative which must be frankly 
admitted. Nor can we maintain of some other dialogues, such as the
Parmenides, and the Sophist, and Politicus, that no considerable objection
can be urged against them, though greatly overbalanced by the weight
(chiefly) of internal evidence in their favour. Nor, on the other hand,
can we exclude a bare possibility that some dialogues which are usually
rejected, such as the Greater Hippias and the Cleitophon, may be genuine.
The nature and object of these semi-Platonic writings require more careful
study and more comparison of them with one another, and with forged
writings in general, than they have yet received, before we can finally
decide on their character. We do not consider them all as genuine until
they can be proved to be spurious, as is often maintained and still more
often implied in this and similar discussions; but should say of some of
them, that their genuineness is neither proven nor disproven until further
evidence about them can be adduced. And we are as confident that the
Epistles are spurious, as that the Republic, the Timaeus, and the Laws are
genuine.
On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under the
name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves
and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by those
who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have 
taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth debatable
portion scarcely in any degree affects our judgment of Plato, either as a
thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting questions to
the scholar and critic, is of little importance to the general reader. 

INTRODUCTION.
The Lesser Hippias may be compared with the earlier dialogues of Plato, in
which the contrast of Socrates and the Sophists is most strongly exhibited.
Hippias, like Protagoras and Gorgias, though civil, is vain and boastful:
he knows all things; he can make anything, including his own clothes; he is
a manufacturer of poems and declamations, and also of seal-rings, shoes,
strigils; his girdle, which he has woven himself, is of a finer than
Persian quality. He is a vainer, lighter nature than the two great
Sophists (compare Protag.), but of the same character with them, and
equally impatient of the short cut-and-thrust method of Socrates, whom he
endeavours to draw into a long oration. At last, he gets tired of being
defeated at every point by Socrates, and is with difficulty induced to
proceed (compare Thrasymachus, Protagoras, Callicles, and others, to whom
the same reluctance is ascribed).
Hippias like Protagoras has common sense on his side, when he argues,
citing passages of the Iliad in support of his view, that Homer intended
Achilles to be the bravest, Odysseus the wisest of the Greeks. But he is
easily overthrown by the superior dialectics of Socrates, who pretends to
show that Achilles is not true to his word, and that no similar 
inconsistency is to be found in Odysseus. Hippias replies that Achilles
unintentionally, but Odysseus intentionally, speaks falsehood. But is it
better to do wrong intentionally or unintentionally? Socrates, relying on
the analogy of the arts, maintains the former, Hippias the latter of the
two alternatives...All this is quite conceived in the spirit of Plato, who
is very far from making Socrates always argue on the side of truth. The
over-reasoning on Homer, which is of course satirical, is also in the
spirit of Plato. Poetry turned logic is even more ridiculous than
'rhetoric turned logic,' and equally fallacious. There were reasoners in
ancient as well as in modern times, who could never receive the natural
impression of Homer, or of any other book which they read. The argument of
Socrates, in which he picks out the apparent inconsistencies and
discrepancies in the speech and actions of Achilles, and the final paradox,
'that he who is true is also false,' remind us of the interpretation by
Socrates of Simonides in the Protagoras, and of similar reasonings in the
first book of the Republic. The discrepancies which Socrates discovers in
the words of Achilles are perhaps as great as those discovered by some of
the modern separatists of the Homeric poems...
At last, Socrates having caught Hippias in the toils of the voluntary and
involuntary, is obliged to confess that he is wandering about in the same 
labyrinth; he makes the reflection on himself which others would make upon
him (compare Protagoras). He does not wonder that he should be in a
difficulty, but he wonders at Hippias, and he becomes sensible of the
gravity of the situation, when ordinary men like himself can no longer go
to the wise and be taught by them.
It may be remarked as bearing on the genuineness of this dialogue: (1)
that the manners of the speakers are less subtle and refined than in the
other dialogues of Plato; (2) that the sophistry of Socrates is more
palpable and unblushing, and also more unmeaning; (3) that many turns of
thought and style are found in it which appear also in the other
dialogues:--whether resemblances of this kind tell in favour of or against
the genuineness of an ancient writing, is an important question which will
have to be answered differently in different cases. For that a writer may
repeat himself is as true as that a forger may imitate; and Plato
elsewhere, either of set purpose or from forgetfulness, is full of
repetitions. The parallelisms of the Lesser Hippias, as already remarked,
are not of the kind which necessarily imply that the dialogue is the work
of a forger. The parallelisms of the Greater Hippias with the other
dialogues, and the allusion to the Lesser (where Hippias sketches the
programme of his next lecture, and invites Socrates to attend and bring any 
friends with him who may be competent judges), are more than suspicious:--
they are of a very poor sort, such as we cannot suppose to have been due to
Plato himself. The Greater Hippias more resembles the Euthydemus than any
other dialogue; but is immeasurably inferior to it. The Lesser Hippias
seems to have more merit than the Greater, and to be more Platonic in
spirit. The character of Hippias is the same in both dialogues, but his
vanity and boasting are even more exaggerated in the Greater Hippias. His
art of memory is specially mentioned in both. He is an inferior type of
the same species as Hippodamus of Miletus (Arist. Pol.). Some passages in
which the Lesser Hippias may be advantageously compared with the
undoubtedly genuine dialogues of Plato are the following:--Less. Hipp.:
compare Republic (Socrates' cunning in argument): compare Laches
(Socrates' feeling about arguments): compare Republic (Socrates not
unthankful): compare Republic (Socrates dishonest in argument).
The Lesser Hippias, though inferior to the other dialogues, may be
reasonably believed to have been written by Plato, on the ground (1) of
considerable excellence; (2) of uniform tradition beginning with Aristotle
and his school. That the dialogue falls below the standard of Plato's
other works, or that he has attributed to Socrates an unmeaning paradox 
(perhaps with the view of showing that he could beat the Sophists at their
own weapons; or that he could 'make the worse appear the better cause'; or
Merely as a dialectical experiment)--are not sufficient reasons for
Doubting the genuineness of the work. 

LESSER HIPPIAS
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Eudicus, Socrates, Hippias.
EUDICUS: Why are you silent, Socrates, after the magnificent display which
Hippias has been making? Why do you not either refute his words, if he
seems to you to have been wrong in any point, or join with us in commending
him? There is the more reason why you should speak, because we are now
alone, and the audience is confined to those who may fairly claim to take
part in a philosophical discussion.
SOCRATES: I should greatly like, Eudicus, to ask Hippias the meaning of
what he was saying just now about Homer. I have heard your father,
Apemantus, declare that the Iliad of Homer is a finer poem than the Odyssey
in the same degree that Achilles was a better man than Odysseus; Odysseus,
he would say, is the central figure of the one poem and Achilles of the
other. Now, I should like to know, if Hippias has no objection to tell me,
what he thinks about these two heroes, and which of them he maintains to be
the better; he has already told us in the course of his exhibition many 
things of various kinds about Homer and divers other poets.EUDICUS: I am sure that
Hippias will be delighted to answer anything which
you would like to ask; tell me, Hippias, if Socrates asks you a question,
will you answer him?
HIPPIAS: Indeed, Eudicus, I should be strangely inconsistent if I refused
to answer Socrates, when at each Olympic festival, as I went up from my
house at Elis to the temple of Olympia, where all the Hellenes were
assembled, I continually professed my willingness to perform any of the
exhibitions which I had prepared, and to answer any questions which any one
had to ask.
SOCRATES: Truly, Hippias, you are to be congratulated, if at every Olympic
festival you have such an encouraging opinion of your own wisdom when you
go up to the temple. I doubt whether any muscular hero would be so
fearless and confident in offering his body to the combat at Olympia, as
you are in offering your mind.
HIPPIAS: And with good reason, Socrates; for since the day when I first
entered the lists at Olympia I have never found any man who was my superior
in anything. (Compare Gorgias.)
SOCRATES: What an ornament, Hippias, will the reputation of your wisdom be
to the city of Elis and to your parents! But to return: what say you of 
Odysseus and Achilles? Which is the better of the two? and in what
particular does either surpass the other? For when you were exhibiting and
there was company in the room, though I could not follow you, I did not
like to ask what you meant, because a crowd of people were present, and I
was afraid that the question might interrupt your exhibition. But now that
there are not so many of us, and my friend Eudicus bids me ask, I wish you
would tell me what you were saying about these two heroes, so that I may
clearly understand; how did you distinguish them?
HIPPIAS: I shall have much pleasure, Socrates, in explaining to you more
clearly than I could in public my views about these and also about other
heroes. I say that Homer intended Achilles to be the bravest of the men
who went to Troy, Nestor the wisest, and Odysseus the wiliest.
SOCRATES: O rare Hippias, will you be so good as not to laugh, if I find a
difficulty in following you, and repeat my questions several times over?
Please to answer me kindly and gently.
HIPPIAS: I should be greatly ashamed of myself, Socrates, if I, who teach
others and take money of them, could not, when I was asked by you, answer
in a civil and agreeable manner.
SOCRATES: Thank you: the fact is, that I seemed to understand what you
meant when you said that the poet intended Achilles to be the bravest of 
men, and also that he intended Nestor to be the wisest; but when you said
that he meant Odysseus to be the wiliest, I must confess that I could not
understand what you were saying. Will you tell me, and then I shall
perhaps understand you better; has not Homer made Achilles wily?
HIPPIAS: Certainly not, Socrates; he is the most straight-forward of
mankind, and when Homer introduces them talking with one another in the
passage called the Prayers, Achilles is supposed by the poet to say to
Odysseus:--
'Son of Laertes, sprung from heaven, crafty Odysseus, I will speak out
plainly the word which I intend to carry out in act, and which will, I
believe, be accomplished. For I hate him like the gates of death who
thinks one thing and says another. But I will speak that which shall be
accomplished.'
Now, in these verses he clearly indicates the character of the two men; he
shows Achilles to be true and simple, and Odysseus to be wily and false;
for he supposes Achilles to be addressing Odysseus in these lines.
SOCRATES: Now, Hippias, I think that I understand your meaning; when you
say that Odysseus is wily, you clearly mean that he is false?
HIPPIAS: Exactly so, Socrates; it is the character of Odysseus, as he is
represented by Homer in many passages both of the Iliad and Odyssey. 
SOCRATES: And Homer must be presumed to have meant that the true man is
not the same as the false?
HIPPIAS: Of course, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And is that your own opinion, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Certainly; how can I have any other?
SOCRATES: Well, then, as there is no possibility of asking Homer what he
meant in these verses of his, let us leave him; but as you show a
willingness to take up his cause, and your opinion agrees with what you
declare to be his, will you answer on behalf of yourself and him?
HIPPIAS: I will; ask shortly anything which you like.
SOCRATES: Do you say that the false, like the sick, have no power to do
things, or that they have the power to do things?
HIPPIAS: I should say that they have power to do many things, and in
particular to deceive mankind.
SOCRATES: Then, according to you, they are both powerful and wily, are
they not?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And are they wily, and do they deceive by reason of their
simplicity and folly, or by reason of their cunning and a certain sort of
prudence? 
HIPPIAS: By reason of their cunning and prudence, most certainly.
SOCRATES: Then they are prudent, I suppose?
HIPPIAS: So they are--very.
SOCRATES: And if they are prudent, do they know or do they not know what
they do?
HIPPIAS: Of course, they know very well; and that is why they do mischief
to others.
SOCRATES: And having this knowledge, are they ignorant, or are they wise?
HIPPIAS: Wise, certainly; at least, in so far as they can deceive.
SOCRATES: Stop, and let us recall to mind what you are saying; are you not
saying that the false are powerful and prudent and knowing and wise in
those things about which they are false?
HIPPIAS: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And the true differ from the false--the true and the false are
the very opposite of each other?
HIPPIAS: That is my view.
SOCRATES: Then, according to your view, it would seem that the false are
to be ranked in the class of the powerful and wise?
HIPPIAS: Assuredly.
SOCRATES: And when you say that the false are powerful and wise in so far 
as they are false, do you mean that they have or have not the power of
uttering their falsehoods if they like?
HIPPIAS: I mean to say that they have the power.
SOCRATES: In a word, then, the false are they who are wise and have the
power to speak falsely?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then a man who has not the power of speaking falsely and is
ignorant cannot be false?
HIPPIAS: You are right.
SOCRATES: And every man has power who does that which he wishes at the
time when he wishes. I am not speaking of any special case in which he is
prevented by disease or something of that sort, but I am speaking
generally, as I might say of you, that you are able to write my name when
you like. Would you not call a man able who could do that?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And tell me, Hippias, are you not a skilful calculator and
arithmetician?
HIPPIAS: Yes, Socrates, assuredly I am.
SOCRATES: And if some one were to ask you what is the sum of 3 multiplied
by 700, you would tell him the true answer in a moment, if you pleased? 
HIPPIAS: certainly I should.
SOCRATES: Is not that because you are the wisest and ablest of men in
these matters?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And being as you are the wisest and ablest of men in these
matters of calculation, are you not also the best?
HIPPIAS: To be sure, Socrates, I am the best.
SOCRATES: And therefore you would be the most able to tell the truth about
these matters, would you not?
HIPPIAS: Yes, I should.
SOCRATES: And could you speak falsehoods about them equally well? I must
beg, Hippias, that you will answer me with the same frankness and
magnanimity which has hitherto characterized you. If a person were to ask
you what is the sum of 3 multiplied by 700, would not you be the best and
most consistent teller of a falsehood, having always the power of speaking
falsely as you have of speaking truly, about these same matters, if you
wanted to tell a falsehood, and not to answer truly? Would the ignorant
man be better able to tell a falsehood in matters of calculation than you
would be, if you chose? Might he not sometimes stumble upon the truth,
when he wanted to tell a lie, because he did not know, whereas you who are 
the wise man, if you wanted to tell a lie would always and consistently
lie?
HIPPIAS: Yes, there you are quite right.
SOCRATES: Does the false man tell lies about other things, but not about
number, or when he is making a calculation?
HIPPIAS: To be sure; he would tell as many lies about number as about
other things.
SOCRATES: Then may we further assume, Hippias, that there are men who are
false about calculation and number?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Who can they be? For you have already admitted that he who is
false must have the ability to be false: you said, as you will remember,
that he who is unable to be false will not be false?
HIPPIAS: Yes, I remember; it was so said.
SOCRATES: And were you not yourself just now shown to be best able to
speak falsely about calculation?
HIPPIAS: Yes; that was another thing which was said.
SOCRATES: And are you not likewise said to speak truly about calculation?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then the same person is able to speak both falsely and truly 
about calculation? And that person is he who is good at calculation--the
arithmetician?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Who, then, Hippias, is discovered to be false at calculation?
Is he not the good man? For the good man is the able man, and he is the
true man.
HIPPIAS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: Do you not see, then, that the same man is false and also true
about the same matters? And the true man is not a whit better than the
false; for indeed he is the same with him and not the very opposite, as you
were just now imagining.
HIPPIAS: Not in that instance, clearly.
SOCRATES: Shall we examine other instances?
HIPPIAS: Certainly, if you are disposed.
SOCRATES: Are you not also skilled in geometry?
HIPPIAS: I am.
SOCRATES: Well, and does not the same hold in that science also? Is not
the same person best able to speak falsely or to speak truly about
diagrams; and he is--the geometrician?
HIPPIAS: Yes. 
SOCRATES: He and no one else is good at it?
HIPPIAS: Yes, he and no one else.
SOCRATES: Then the good and wise geometer has this double power in the
highest degree; and if there be a man who is false about diagrams the good
man will be he, for he is able to be false; whereas the bad is unable, and
for this reason is not false, as has been admitted.
HIPPIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Once more--let us examine a third case; that of the astronomer,
in whose art, again, you, Hippias, profess to be a still greater proficient
than in the preceding--do you not?
HIPPIAS: Yes, I am.
SOCRATES: And does not the same hold of astronomy?
HIPPIAS: True, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And in astronomy, too, if any man be able to speak falsely he
will be the good astronomer, but he who is not able will not speak falsely,
for he has no knowledge.
HIPPIAS: Clearly not.
SOCRATES: Then in astronomy also, the same man will be true and false?
HIPPIAS: It would seem so.
SOCRATES: And now, Hippias, consider the question at large about all the 
sciences, and see whether the same principle does not always hold. I know
that in most arts you are the wisest of men, as I have heard you boasting
in the agora at the tables of the money-changers, when you were setting
forth the great and enviable stores of your wisdom; and you said that upon
one occasion, when you went to the Olympic games, all that you had on your
person was made by yourself. You began with your ring, which was of your
own workmanship, and you said that you could engrave rings; and you had
another seal which was also of your own workmanship, and a strigil and an
oil flask, which you had made yourself; you said also that you had made the
shoes which you had on your feet, and the cloak and the short tunic; but
what appeared to us all most extraordinary and a proof of singular art, was
the girdle of your tunic, which, you said, was as fine as the most costly
Persian fabric, and of your own weaving; moreover, you told us that you had
brought with you poems, epic, tragic, and dithyrambic, as well as prose
writings of the most various kinds; and you said that your skill was also
pre-eminent in the arts which I was just now mentioning, and in the true
principles of rhythm and harmony and of orthography; and if I remember
rightly, there were a great many other accomplishments in which you
excelled. I have forgotten to mention your art of memory, which you regard
as your special glory, and I dare say that I have forgotten many other 
things; but, as I was saying, only look to your own arts--and there are
plenty of them--and to those of others; and tell me, having regard to the
admissions which you and I have made, whether you discover any department
of art or any description of wisdom or cunning, whichever name you use, in
which the true and false are different and not the same: tell me, if you
can, of any. But you cannot.
HIPPIAS: Not without consideration, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Nor will consideration help you, Hippias, as I believe; but then
if I am right, remember what the consequence will be.
HIPPIAS: I do not know what you mean, Socrates.
SOCRATES: I suppose that you are not using your art of memory, doubtless
because you think that such an accomplishment is not needed on the present
occasion. I will therefore remind you of what you were saying: were you
not saying that Achilles was a true man, and Odysseus false and wily?
HIPPIAS: I was.
SOCRATES: And now do you perceive that the same person has turned out to
be false as well as true? If Odysseus is false he is also true, and if
Achilles is true he is also false, and so the two men are not opposed to
one another, but they are alike.
HIPPIAS: O Socrates, you are always weaving the meshes of an argument, 
selecting the most difficult point, and fastening upon details instead of
grappling with the matter in hand as a whole. Come now, and I will
demonstrate to you, if you will allow me, by many satisfactory proofs, that
Homer has made Achilles a better man than Odysseus, and a truthful man too;
and that he has made the other crafty, and a teller of many untruths, and
inferior to Achilles. And then, if you please, you shall make a speech on
the other side, in order to prove that Odysseus is the better man; and this
may be compared to mine, and then the company will know which of us is the
better speaker.
SOCRATES: O Hippias, I do not doubt that you are wiser than I am. But I
have a way, when anybody else says anything, of giving close attention to
him, especially if the speaker appears to me to be a wise man. Having a
desire to understand, I question him, and I examine and analyse and put
together what he says, in order that I may understand; but if the speaker
appears to me to be a poor hand, I do not interrogate him, or trouble
myself about him, and you may know by this who they are whom I deem to be
wise men, for you will see that when I am talking with a wise man, I am
very attentive to what he says; and I ask questions of him, in order that I
may learn, and be improved by him. And I could not help remarking while
you were speaking, that when you recited the verses in which Achilles, as 
you argued, attacks Odysseus as a deceiver, that you must be strangely
mistaken, because Odysseus, the man of wiles, is never found to tell a lie;
but Achilles is found to be wily on your own showing. At any rate he
speaks falsely; for first he utters these words, which you just now
repeated,--
'He is hateful to me even as the gates of death who thinks one thing and
says another:'--
And then he says, a little while afterwards, he will not be persuaded by
Odysseus and Agamemnon, neither will he remain at Troy; but, says he,--
'To-morrow, when I have offered sacrifices to Zeus and all the Gods, having
loaded my ships well, I will drag them down into the deep; and then you
shall see, if you have a mind, and if such things are a care to you, early
in the morning my ships sailing over the fishy Hellespont, and my men
eagerly plying the oar; and, if the illustrious shaker of the earth gives
me a good voyage, on the third day I shall reach the fertile Phthia.'
And before that, when he was reviling Agamemnon, he said,--
'And now to Phthia I will go, since to return home in the beaked ships is
far better, nor am I inclined to stay here in dishonour and amass wealth
and riches for you.'
But although on that occasion, in the presence of the whole army, he spoke 
after this fashion, and on the other occasion to his companions, he appears
never to have made any preparation or attempt to draw down the ships, as if
he had the least intention of sailing home; so nobly regardless was he of
the truth. Now I, Hippias, originally asked you the question, because I
was in doubt as to which of the two heroes was intended by the poet to be
the best, and because I thought that both of them were the best, and that
it would be difficult to decide which was the better of them, not only in
respect of truth and falsehood, but of virtue generally, for even in this
matter of speaking the truth they are much upon a par.
HIPPIAS: There you are wrong, Socrates; for in so far as Achilles speaks
falsely, the falsehood is obviously unintentional. He is compelled against
his will to remain and rescue the army in their misfortune. But when
Odysseus speaks falsely he is voluntarily and intentionally false.
SOCRATES: You, sweet Hippias, like Odysseus, are a deceiver yourself.
HIPPIAS: Certainly not, Socrates; what makes you say so?
SOCRATES: Because you say that Achilles does not speak falsely from
design, when he is not only a deceiver, but besides being a braggart, in
Homer's description of him is so cunning, and so far superior to Odysseus
in lying and pretending, that he dares to contradict himself, and Odysseus
does not find him out; at any rate he does not appear to say anything to 
him which would imply that he perceived his falsehood.
HIPPIAS: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Did you not observe that afterwards, when he is speaking to
Odysseus, he says that he will sail away with the early dawn; but to Ajax
he tells quite a different story?
HIPPIAS: Where is that?
SOCRATES: Where he says,--
'I will not think about bloody war until the son of warlike Priam,
illustrious Hector, comes to the tents and ships of the Myrmidons,
slaughtering the Argives, and burning the ships with fire; and about my
tent and dark ship, I suspect that Hector, although eager for the battle,
will nevertheless stay his hand.'
Now, do you really think, Hippias, that the son of Thetis, who had been the
pupil of the sage Cheiron, had such a bad memory, or would have carried the
art of lying to such an extent (when he had been assailing liars in the
most violent terms only the instant before) as to say to Odysseus that he
would sail away, and to Ajax that he would remain, and that he was not
rather practising upon the simplicity of Odysseus, whom he regarded as an
ancient, and thinking that he would get the better of him by his own
cunning and falsehood? 
HIPPIAS: No, I do not agree with you, Socrates; but I believe that
Achilles is induced to say one thing to Ajax, and another to Odysseus in
the innocence of his heart, whereas Odysseus, whether he speaks falsely or
truly, speaks always with a purpose.
SOCRATES: Then Odysseus would appear after all to be better than Achilles?
HIPPIAS: Certainly not, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Why, were not the voluntary liars only just now shown to be
better than the involuntary?
HIPPIAS: And how, Socrates, can those who intentionally err, and
voluntarily and designedly commit iniquities, be better than those who err
and do wrong involuntarily? Surely there is a great excuse to be made for
a man telling a falsehood, or doing an injury or any sort of harm to
another in ignorance. And the laws are obviously far more severe on those
who lie or do evil, voluntarily, than on those who do evil involuntarily.
SOCRATES: You see, Hippias, as I have already told you, how pertinacious I
am in asking questions of wise men. And I think that this is the only good
point about me, for I am full of defects, and always getting wrong in some
way or other. My deficiency is proved to me by the fact that when I meet
one of you who are famous for wisdom, and to whose wisdom all the Hellenes
are witnesses, I am found out to know nothing. For speaking generally, I 
hardly ever have the same opinion about anything which you have, and what
proof of ignorance can be greater than to differ from wise men? But I have
one singular good quality, which is my salvation; I am not ashamed to
learn, and I ask and enquire, and am very grateful to those who answer me,
and never fail to give them my grateful thanks; and when I learn a thing I
never deny my teacher, or pretend that the lesson is a discovery of my own;
but I praise his wisdom, and proclaim what I have learned from him. And
now I cannot agree in what you are saying, but I strongly disagree. Well,
I know that this is my own fault, and is a defect in my character, but I
will not pretend to be more than I am; and my opinion, Hippias, is the very
contrary of what you are saying. For I maintain that those who hurt or
injure mankind, and speak falsely and deceive, and err voluntarily, are
better far than those who do wrong involuntarily. Sometimes, however, I am
of the opposite opinion; for I am all abroad in my ideas about this matter,
a condition obviously occasioned by ignorance. And just now I happen to be
in a crisis of my disorder at which those who err voluntarily appear to me
better than those who err involuntarily. My present state of mind is due
to our previous argument, which inclines me to believe that in general
those who do wrong involuntarily are worse than those who do wrong
voluntarily, and therefore I hope that you will be good to me, and not 
refuse to heal me; for you will do me a much greater benefit if you cure my
soul of ignorance, than you would if you were to cure my body of disease.
I must, however, tell you beforehand, that if you make a long oration to me
you will not cure me, for I shall not be able to follow you; but if you
will answer me, as you did just now, you will do me a great deal of good,
and I do not think that you will be any the worse yourself. And I have
some claim upon you also, O son of Apemantus, for you incited me to
converse with Hippias; and now, if Hippias will not answer me, you must
entreat him on my behalf.
EUDICUS: But I do not think, Socrates, that Hippias will require any
entreaty of mine; for he has already said that he will refuse to answer no
man.--Did you not say so, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Yes, I did; but then, Eudicus, Socrates is always troublesome in
an argument, and appears to be dishonest. (Compare Gorgias; Republic.)
SOCRATES: Excellent Hippias, I do not do so intentionally (if I did, it
would show me to be a wise man and a master of wiles, as you would argue),
but unintentionally, and therefore you must pardon me; for, as you say, he
who is unintentionally dishonest should be pardoned.
EUDICUS: Yes, Hippias, do as he says; and for our sake, and also that you
may not belie your profession, answer whatever Socrates asks you. 
HIPPIAS: I will answer, as you request me; and do you ask whatever you
like.
SOCRATES: I am very desirous, Hippias, of examining this question, as to
which are the better--those who err voluntarily or involuntarily? And if
you will answer me, I think that I can put you in the way of approaching
the subject: You would admit, would you not, that there are good runners?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And there are bad runners?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he who runs well is a good runner, and he who runs ill is a
bad runner?
HIPPIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And he who runs slowly runs ill, and he who runs quickly runs
well?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then in a race, and in running, swiftness is a good, and
slowness is an evil quality?
HIPPIAS: To be sure.
SOCRATES: Which of the two then is a better runner? He who runs slowly
voluntarily, or he who runs slowly involuntarily? 
HIPPIAS: He who runs slowly voluntarily.
SOCRATES: And is not running a species of doing?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And if a species of doing, a species of action?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then he who runs badly does a bad and dishonourable action in a
race?
HIPPIAS: Yes; a bad action, certainly.
SOCRATES: And he who runs slowly runs badly?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then the good runner does this bad and disgraceful action
voluntarily, and the bad involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: That is to be inferred.
SOCRATES: Then he who involuntarily does evil actions, is worse in a race
than he who does them voluntarily?
HIPPIAS: Yes, in a race.
SOCRATES: Well, but at a wrestling match--which is the better wrestler, he
who falls voluntarily or involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: He who falls voluntarily, doubtless.
SOCRATES: And is it worse or more dishonourable at a wrestling match, to 
fall, or to throw another?
HIPPIAS: To fall.
SOCRATES: Then, at a wrestling match, he who voluntarily does base and
dishonourable actions is a better wrestler than he who does them
involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: That appears to be the truth.
SOCRATES: And what would you say of any other bodily exercise--is not he
who is better made able to do both that which is strong and that which is
weak--that which is fair and that which is foul?--so that when he does bad
actions with the body, he who is better made does them voluntarily, and he
who is worse made does them involuntarily.
HIPPIAS: Yes, that appears to be true about strength.
SOCRATES: And what do you say about grace, Hippias? Is not he who is
better made able to assume evil and disgraceful figures and postures
voluntarily, as he who is worse made assumes them involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Then voluntary ungracefulness comes from excellence of the
bodily frame, and involuntary from the defect of the bodily frame?
HIPPIAS: True.
SOCRATES: And what would you say of an unmusical voice; would you prefer 
the voice which is voluntarily or involuntarily out of tune?
HIPPIAS: That which is voluntarily out of tune.
SOCRATES: The involuntary is the worse of the two?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And would you choose to possess goods or evils?
HIPPIAS: Goods.
SOCRATES: And would you rather have feet which are voluntarily or
involuntarily lame?
HIPPIAS: Feet which are voluntarily lame.
SOCRATES: But is not lameness a defect or deformity?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is not blinking a defect in the eyes?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And would you rather always have eyes with which you might
voluntarily blink and not see, or with which you might involuntarily blink?
HIPPIAS: I would rather have eyes which voluntarily blink.
SOCRATES: Then in your own case you deem that which voluntarily acts ill,
better than that which involuntarily acts ill?
HIPPIAS: Yes, certainly, in cases such as you mention.
SOCRATES: And does not the same hold of ears, nostrils, mouth, and of all 
the senses--those which involuntarily act ill are not to be desired, as
being defective; and those which voluntarily act ill are to be desired as
being good?
HIPPIAS: I agree.
SOCRATES: And what would you say of instruments;--which are the better
sort of instruments to have to do with?--those with which a man acts ill
voluntarily or involuntarily? For example, had a man better have a rudder
with which he will steer ill, voluntarily or involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: He had better have a rudder with which he will steer ill
voluntarily.
SOCRATES: And does not the same hold of the bow and the lyre, the flute
and all other things?
HIPPIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And would you rather have a horse of such a temper that you may
ride him ill voluntarily or involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: I would rather have a horse which I could ride ill voluntarily.
SOCRATES: That would be the better horse?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then with a horse of better temper, vicious actions would be
produced voluntarily; and with a horse of bad temper involuntarily? 
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And that would be true of a dog, or of any other animal?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is it better to possess the mind of an archer who
voluntarily or involuntarily misses the mark?
HIPPIAS: Of him who voluntarily misses.
SOCRATES: This would be the better mind for the purposes of archery?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then the mind which involuntarily errs is worse than the mind
which errs voluntarily?
HIPPIAS: Yes, certainly, in the use of the bow.
SOCRATES: And what would you say of the art of medicine;--has not the mind
which voluntarily works harm to the body, more of the healing art?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then in the art of medicine the voluntary is better than the
involuntary?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well, and in lute-playing and in flute-playing, and in all arts
and sciences, is not that mind the better which voluntarily does what is
evil and dishonourable, and goes wrong, and is not the worse that which 
does so involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: And what would you say of the characters of slaves? Should we
not prefer to have those who voluntarily do wrong and make mistakes, and
are they not better in their mistakes than those who commit them
involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And should we not desire to have our own minds in the best state
possible?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And will our minds be better if they do wrong and make mistakes
voluntarily or involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: O, Socrates, it would be a monstrous thing to say that those who
do wrong voluntarily are better than those who do wrong involuntarily!
SOCRATES: And yet that appears to be the only inference.
HIPPIAS: I do not think so.
SOCRATES: But I imagined, Hippias, that you did. Please to answer once
more: Is not justice a power, or knowledge, or both? Must not justice, at
all events, be one of these?
HIPPIAS: Yes. 
SOCRATES: But if justice is a power of the soul, then the soul which has
the greater power is also the more just; for that which has the greater
power, my good friend, has been proved by us to be the better.
HIPPIAS: Yes, that has been proved.
SOCRATES: And if justice is knowledge, then the wiser will be the juster
soul, and the more ignorant the more unjust?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: But if justice be power as well as knowledge--then will not the
soul which has both knowledge and power be the more just, and that which is
the more ignorant be the more unjust? Must it not be so?
HIPPIAS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And is not the soul which has the greater power and wisdom also
better, and better able to do both good and evil in every action?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: The soul, then, which acts ill, acts voluntarily by power and
art--and these either one or both of them are elements of justice?
HIPPIAS: That seems to be true.
SOCRATES: And to do injustice is to do ill, and not to do injustice is to
do well?
HIPPIAS: Yes. 
SOCRATES: And will not the better and abler soul when it does wrong, do
wrong voluntarily, and the bad soul involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And the good man is he who has the good soul, and the bad man is
he who has the bad?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then the good man will voluntarily do wrong, and the bad man
involuntarily, if the good man is he who has the good soul?
HIPPIAS: Which he certainly has.
SOCRATES: Then, Hippias, he who voluntarily does wrong and disgraceful
things, if there be such a man, will be the good man?
HIPPIAS: There I cannot agree with you.
SOCRATES: Nor can I agree with myself, Hippias; and yet that seems to be
the conclusion which, as far as we can see at present, must follow from our
argument. As I was saying before, I am all abroad, and being in perplexity
am always changing my opinion. Now, that I or any ordinary man should
wander in perplexity is not surprising; but if you wise men also wander,
and we cannot come to you and rest from our wandering, the matter begins to
be serious both to us and to you 

Ion
by
Plato
Translated with an
introduction by
Benjamin Jowett


 
INTRODUCTION.
The Ion is the shortest, or nearly the shortest, of all the writings which bear the name of
Plato, and is not authenticated by any early external testimony. The grace and beauty of
this little work supply the only, and perhaps a sufficient, proof of its genuineness. The
plan is simple; the dramatic interest consists entirely in the contrast between the irony of
Socrates and the transparent vanity and childlike enthusiasm of the rhapsode Ion. The
theme of the Dialogue may possibly have been suggested by the passage of
Xenophon’s Memorabilia in which the rhapsodists are described by Euthydemus as ‘very
precise about the exact words of Homer, but very idiotic themselves.’ (Compare
Aristotle, Met.)
Ion the rhapsode has just come to Athens; he has been exhibiting in Epidaurus at the
festival of Asclepius, and is intending to exhibit at the festival of the Panathenaea.
Socrates admires and envies the rhapsode’s art; for he is always well dressed and in
good company—in the company of good poets and of Homer, who is the prince of
them. In the course of conversation the admission is elicited from Ion that his skill is
restricted to Homer, and that he knows nothing of inferior poets, such as Hesiod and
Archilochus;—he brightens up and is wide awake when Homer is being recited, but is
apt to go to sleep at the recitations of any other poet. ‘And yet, surely, he who knows
the superior ought to know the inferior also;—he who can judge of the good speaker is
able to judge of the bad. And poetry is a whole; and he who judges of poetry by rules of
art ought to be able to judge of all poetry.’ This is confirmed by the analogy of
sculpture, painting, flute-playing, and the other arts. The argument is at last brought
home to the mind of Ion, who asks how this contradiction is to be solved. The solution
given by Socrates is as follows:—
The rhapsode is not guided by rules of art, but is an inspired person who derives a
mysterious power from the poet; and the poet, in like manner, is inspired by the God. 
The poets and their interpreters may be compared to a chain of magnetic rings
suspended from one another, and from a magnet. The magnet is the Muse, and the ring
which immediately follows is the poet himself; from him are suspended other poets;
there is also a chain of rhapsodes and actors, who also hang from the Muses, but are let
down at the side; and the last ring of all is the spectator. The poet is the inspired
interpreter of the God, and this is the reason why some poets, like Homer, are restricted
to a single theme, or, like Tynnichus, are famous for a single poem; and the rhapsode is
the inspired interpreter of the poet, and for a similar reason some rhapsodes, like Ion,
are the interpreters of single poets.
Ion is delighted at the notion of being inspired, and acknowledges that he is beside
himself when he is performing;—his eyes rain tears and his hair stands on end. Socrates
is of opinion that a man must be mad who behaves in this way at a festival when he is
surrounded by his friends and there is nothing to trouble him. Ion is confident that
Socrates would never think him mad if he could only hear his embellishments of Homer.
Socrates asks whether he can speak well about everything in Homer. ‘Yes, indeed he
can.’ ‘What about things of which he has no knowledge?’ Ion answers that he can
interpret anything in Homer. But, rejoins Socrates, when Homer speaks of the arts, as for
example, of chariot-driving, or of medicine, or of prophecy, or of navigation—will he, or
will the charioteer or physician or prophet or pilot be the better judge? Ion is compelled
to admit that every man will judge of his own particular art better than the rhapsode. He
still maintains, however, that he understands the art of the general as well as any one.
‘Then why in this city of Athens, in which men of merit are always being sought after, is
he not at once appointed a general?’ Ion replies that he is a foreigner, and the
Athenians and Spartans will not appoint a foreigner to be their general. ‘No, that is not
the real reason; there are many examples to the contrary. But Ion has long been playing
tricks with the argument; like Proteus, he transforms himself into a variety of shapes, and
is at last about to run away in the disguise of a general. Would he rather be regarded as 
inspired or dishonest?’ Ion, who has no suspicion of the irony of Socrates, eagerly
embraces the alternative of inspiration.
The Ion, like the other earlier Platonic Dialogues, is a mixture of jest and earnest, in
which no definite result is obtained, but some Socratic or Platonic truths are allowed
dimly to appear.
The elements of a true theory of poetry are contained in the notion that the poet is
inspired. Genius is often said to be unconscious, or spontaneous, or a gift of nature: that
‘genius is akin to madness’ is a popular aphorism of modern times. The greatest
strength is observed to have an element of limitation. Sense or passion are too much for
the ‘dry light’ of intelligence which mingles with them and becomes discoloured by
them. Imagination is often at war with reason and fact. The concentration of the mind
on a single object, or on a single aspect of human nature, overpowers the orderly
perception of the whole. Yet the feelings too bring truths home to the minds of many
who in the way of reason would be incapable of understanding them. Reflections of this
kind may have been passing before Plato’s mind when he describes the poet as inspired,
or when, as in the Apology, he speaks of poets as the worst critics of their own
writings—anybody taken at random from the crowd is a better interpreter of them than
they are of themselves. They are sacred persons, ‘winged and holy things’ who have a
touch of madness in their composition (Phaedr.), and should be treated with every sort
of respect (Republic), but not allowed to live in a well-ordered state. Like the Statesmen
in the Meno, they have a divine instinct, but they are narrow and confused; they do not
attain to the clearness of ideas, or to the knowledge of poetry or of any other art as a
whole.
In the Protagoras the ancient poets are recognized by Protagoras himself as the original
sophists; and this family resemblance may be traced in the Ion. The rhapsode belongs to
the realm of imitation and of opinion: he professes to have all knowledge, which is
derived by him from Homer, just as the sophist professes to have all wisdom, which is 
contained in his art of rhetoric. Even more than the sophist he is incapable of
appreciating the commonest logical distinctions; he cannot explain the nature of his
own art; his great memory contrasts with his inability to follow the steps of the
argument. And in his highest moments of inspiration he has an eye to his own gains.
The old quarrel between philosophy and poetry, which in the Republic leads to their
final separation, is already working in the mind of Plato, and is embodied by him in the
contrast between Socrates and Ion. Yet here, as in the Republic, Socrates shows a
sympathy with the poetic nature. Also, the manner in which Ion is affected by his own
recitations affords a lively illustration of the power which, in the Republic, Socrates
attributes to dramatic performances over the mind of the performer. His allusion to his
embellishments of Homer, in which he declares himself to have surpassed Metrodorus
of Lampsacus and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, seems to show that, like them, he belonged
to the allegorical school of interpreters. The circumstance that nothing more is known of
him may be adduced in confirmation of the argument that this truly Platonic little work
is not a forgery of later times. 
ION
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Ion.
SOCRATES: Welcome, Ion. Are you from your native city of Ephesus?
ION: No, Socrates; but from Epidaurus, where I attended the festival of Asclepius.
SOCRATES: And do the Epidaurians have contests of rhapsodes at the festival?
ION: O yes; and of all sorts of musical performers.
SOCRATES: And were you one of the competitors—and did you succeed?
ION: I obtained the first prize of all, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Well done; and I hope that you will do the same for us at the Panathenaea.
ION: And I will, please heaven.
SOCRATES: I often envy the profession of a rhapsode, Ion; for you have always to wear
fine clothes, and to look as beautiful as you can is a part of your art. Then, again, you are
obliged to be continually in the company of many good poets; and especially of Homer,
who is the best and most divine of them; and to understand him, and not merely learn
his words by rote, is a thing greatly to be envied. And no man can be a rhapsode who
does not understand the meaning of the poet. For the rhapsode ought to interpret the
mind of the poet to his hearers, but how can he interpret him well unless he knows what
he means? All this is greatly to be envied. 
ION: Very true, Socrates; interpretation has certainly been the most laborious part of my
art; and I believe myself able to speak about Homer better than any man; and that
neither Metrodorus of Lampsacus, nor Stesimbrotus of Thasos, nor Glaucon, nor any
one else who ever was, had as good ideas about Homer as I have, or as many.
SOCRATES: I am glad to hear you say so, Ion; I see that you will not refuse to acquaint
me with them.
ION: Certainly, Socrates; and you really ought to hear how exquisitely I render Homer. I
think that the Homeridae should give me a golden crown.
SOCRATES: I shall take an opportunity of hearing your embellishments of him at some
other time. But just now I should like to ask you a question: Does your art extend to
Hesiod and Archilochus, or to Homer only?
ION: To Homer only; he is in himself quite enough.
SOCRATES: Are there any things about which Homer and Hesiod agree?
ION: Yes; in my opinion there are a good many.
SOCRATES: And can you interpret better what Homer says, or what Hesiod says, about
these matters in which they agree?
ION: I can interpret them equally well, Socrates, where they agree.
SOCRATES: But what about matters in which they do not agree?—for example, about
divination, of which both Homer and Hesiod have something to say,—
ION: Very true:
SOCRATES: Would you or a good prophet be a better interpreter of what these two
poets say about divination, not only when they agree, but when they disagree? 
ION: A prophet.
SOCRATES: And if you were a prophet, would you not be able to interpret them when
they disagree as well as when they agree?
ION: Clearly.
SOCRATES: But how did you come to have this skill about Homer only, and not about
Hesiod or the other poets? Does not Homer speak of the same themes which all other
poets handle? Is not war his great argument? and does he not speak of human society
and of intercourse of men, good and bad, skilled and unskilled, and of the gods
conversing with one another and with mankind, and about what happens in heaven and
in the world below, and the generations of gods and heroes? Are not these the themes
of which Homer sings?
ION: Very true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And do not the other poets sing of the same?
ION: Yes, Socrates; but not in the same way as Homer.
SOCRATES: What, in a worse way?
ION: Yes, in a far worse.
SOCRATES: And Homer in a better way?
ION: He is incomparably better.
SOCRATES: And yet surely, my dear friend Ion, in a discussion about arithmetic, where
many people are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest, there is somebody who
can judge which of them is the good speaker? 
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he who judges of the good will be the same as he who judges of the
bad speakers?
ION: The same.
SOCRATES: And he will be the arithmetician?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well, and in discussions about the wholesomeness of food, when many
persons are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest, will he who recognizes the
better speaker be a different person from him who recognizes the worse, or the same?
ION: Clearly the same.
SOCRATES: And who is he, and what is his name?
ION: The physician.
SOCRATES: And speaking generally, in all discussions in which the subject is the same
and many men are speaking, will not he who knows the good know the bad speaker
also? For if he does not know the bad, neither will he know the good when the same
topic is being discussed.
ION: True.
SOCRATES: Is not the same person skilful in both?
ION: Yes. 
SOCRATES: And you say that Homer and the other poets, such as Hesiod and
Archilochus, speak of the same things, although not in the same way; but the one
speaks well and the other not so well?
ION: Yes; and I am right in saying so.
SOCRATES: And if you knew the good speaker, you would also know the inferior
speakers to be inferior?
ION: That is true.
SOCRATES: Then, my dear friend, can I be mistaken in saying that Ion is equally skilled in
Homer and in other poets, since he himself acknowledges that the same person will be a
good judge of all those who speak of the same things; and that almost all poets do
speak of the same things?
ION: Why then, Socrates, do I lose attention and go to sleep and have absolutely no
ideas of the least value, when any one speaks of any other poet; but when Homer is
mentioned, I wake up at once and am all attention and have plenty to say?
SOCRATES: The reason, my friend, is obvious. No one can fail to see that you speak of
Homer without any art or knowledge. If you were able to speak of him by rules of art,
you would have been able to speak of all other poets; for poetry is a whole.
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And when any one acquires any other art as a whole, the same may be said
of them. Would you like me to explain my meaning, Ion?
ION: Yes, indeed, Socrates; I very much wish that you would: for I love to hear you wise
men talk. 
SOCRATES: O that we were wise, Ion, and that you could truly call us so; but you
rhapsodes and actors, and the poets whose verses you sing, are wise; whereas I am a
common man, who only speak the truth. For consider what a very commonplace and
trivial thing is this which I have said—a thing which any man might say: that when a man
has acquired a knowledge of a whole art, the enquiry into good and bad is one and the
same. Let us consider this matter; is not the art of painting a whole?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And there are and have been many painters good and bad?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And did you ever know any one who was skilful in pointing out the
excellences and defects of Polygnotus the son of Aglaophon, but incapable of criticizing
other painters; and when the work of any other painter was produced, went to sleep and
was at a loss, and had no ideas; but when he had to give his opinion about Polygnotus,
or whoever the painter might be, and about him only, woke up and was attentive and
had plenty to say?
ION: No indeed, I have never known such a person.
SOCRATES: Or did you ever know of any one in sculpture, who was skilful in expounding
the merits of Daedalus the son of Metion, or of Epeius the son of Panopeus, or of
Theodorus the Samian, or of any individual sculptor; but when the works of sculptors in
general were produced, was at a loss and went to sleep and had nothing to say?
ION: No indeed; no more than the other.
SOCRATES: And if I am not mistaken, you never met with any one among flute-players
or harp-players or singers to the harp or rhapsodes who was able to discourse of 
Olympus or Thamyras or Orpheus, or Phemius the rhapsode of Ithaca, but was at a loss
when he came to speak of Ion of Ephesus, and had no notion of his merits or defects?
ION: I cannot deny what you say, Socrates. Nevertheless I am conscious in my own self,
and the world agrees with me in thinking that I do speak better and have more to say
about Homer than any other man. But I do not speak equally well about others—tell me
the reason of this.
SOCRATES: I perceive, Ion; and I will proceed to explain to you what I imagine to be the
reason of this. The gift which you possess of speaking excellently about Homer is not an
art, but, as I was just saying, an inspiration; there is a divinity moving you, like that
contained in the stone which Euripides calls a magnet, but which is commonly known as
the stone of Heraclea. This stone not only attracts iron rings, but also imparts to them a
similar power of attracting other rings; and sometimes you may see a number of pieces
of iron and rings suspended from one another so as to form quite a long chain: and all
of them derive their power of suspension from the original stone. In like manner the
Muse first of all inspires men herself; and from these inspired persons a chain of other
persons is suspended, who take the inspiration. For all good poets, epic as well as lyric,
compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed.
And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric
poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but
when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like
Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the
influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind. And the soul of the lyric
poet does the same, as they themselves say; for they tell us that they bring songs from
honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses; they, like the
bees, winging their way from flower to flower. And this is true. For the poet is a light and
winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is
out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this
state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles. Many are the noble words in 
which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking
about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to
utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of
them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another
epic or iambic verses—and he who is good at one is not good at any other kind of
verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of
art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore
God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses
diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be
speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of
unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is
conversing with us. And Tynnichus the Chalcidian affords a striking instance of what I
am saying: he wrote nothing that any one would care to remember but the famous
paean which is in every one’s mouth, one of the finest poems ever written, simply an
invention of the Muses, as he himself says. For in this way the God would seem to
indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or
the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the
interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed. Was not this the lesson
which the God intended to teach when by the mouth of the worst of poets he sang the
best of songs? Am I not right, Ion?
ION: Yes, indeed, Socrates, I feel that you are; for your words touch my soul, and I am
persuaded that good poets by a divine inspiration interpret the things of the Gods to us.
SOCRATES: And you rhapsodists are the interpreters of the poets?
ION: There again you are right.
SOCRATES: Then you are the interpreters of interpreters?
ION: Precisely. 
SOCRATES: I wish you would frankly tell me, Ion, what I am going to ask of you: When
you produce the greatest effect upon the audience in the recitation of some striking
passage, such as the apparition of Odysseus leaping forth on the floor, recognized by
the suitors and casting his arrows at his feet, or the description of Achilles rushing at
Hector, or the sorrows of Andromache, Hecuba, or Priam,—are you in your right mind?
Are you not carried out of yourself, and does not your soul in an ecstasy seem to be
among the persons or places of which you are speaking, whether they are in Ithaca or in
Troy or whatever may be the scene of the poem?
ION: That proof strikes home to me, Socrates. For I must frankly confess that at the tale
of pity my eyes are filled with tears, and when I speak of horrors, my hair stands on end
and my heart throbs.
SOCRATES: Well, Ion, and what are we to say of a man who at a sacrifice or festival,
when he is dressed in holiday attire, and has golden crowns upon his head, of which
nobody has robbed him, appears weeping or panic-stricken in the presence of more
than twenty thousand friendly faces, when there is no one despoiling or wronging
him;—is he in his right mind or is he not?
ION: No indeed, Socrates, I must say that, strictly speaking, he is not in his right mind.
SOCRATES: And are you aware that you produce similar effects on most of the
spectators?
ION: Only too well; for I look down upon them from the stage, and behold the various
emotions of pity, wonder, sternness, stamped upon their countenances when I am
speaking: and I am obliged to give my very best attention to them; for if I make them
cry I myself shall laugh, and if I make them laugh I myself shall cry when the time of
payment arrives. 
SOCRATES: Do you know that the spectator is the last of the rings which, as I am saying,
receive the power of the original magnet from one another? The rhapsode like yourself
and the actor are intermediate links, and the poet himself is the first of them. Through
all these the God sways the souls of men in any direction which he pleases, and makes
one man hang down from another. Thus there is a vast chain of dancers and masters
and under- masters of choruses, who are suspended, as if from the stone, at the side of
the rings which hang down from the Muse. And every poet has some Muse from whom
he is suspended, and by whom he is said to be possessed, which is nearly the same
thing; for he is taken hold of. And from these first rings, which are the poets, depend
others, some deriving their inspiration from Orpheus, others from Musaeus; but the
greater number are possessed and held by Homer. Of whom, Ion, you are one, and are
possessed by Homer; and when any one repeats the words of another poet you go to
sleep, and know not what to say; but when any one recites a strain of Homer you wake
up in a moment, and your soul leaps within you, and you have plenty to say; for not by
art or knowledge about Homer do you say what you say, but by divine inspiration and
by possession; just as the Corybantian revellers too have a quick perception of that
strain only which is appropriated to the God by whom they are possessed, and have
plenty of dances and words for that, but take no heed of any other. And you, Ion, when
the name of Homer is mentioned have plenty to say, and have nothing to say of others.
You ask, ‘Why is this?’ The answer is that you praise Homer not by art but by divine
inspiration.
ION: That is good, Socrates; and yet I doubt whether you will ever have eloquence
enough to persuade me that I praise Homer only when I am mad and possessed; and if
you could hear me speak of him I am sure you would never think this to be the case.
SOCRATES: I should like very much to hear you, but not until you have answered a
question which I have to ask. On what part of Homer do you speak well?—not surely
about every part. 
ION: There is no part, Socrates, about which I do not speak well: of that I can assure you.
SOCRATES: Surely not about things in Homer of which you have no knowledge?
ION: And what is there in Homer of which I have no knowledge?
SOCRATES: Why, does not Homer speak in many passages about arts? For example,
about driving; if I can only remember the lines I will repeat them.
ION: I remember, and will repeat them.
SOCRATES: Tell me then, what Nestor says to Antilochus, his son, where he bids him be
careful of the turn at the horserace in honour of Patroclus.
ION: ‘Bend gently,’ he says, ‘in the polished chariot to the left of them, and urge the
horse on the right hand with whip and voice; and slacken the rein. And when you are at
the goal, let the left horse draw near, yet so that the nave of the well-wrought wheel
may not even seem to touch the extremity; and avoid catching the stone (Il.).’
SOCRATES: Enough. Now, Ion, will the charioteer or the physician be the better judge of
the propriety of these lines?
ION: The charioteer, clearly.
SOCRATES: And will the reason be that this is his art, or will there be any other reason?
ION: No, that will be the reason.
SOCRATES: And every art is appointed by God to have knowledge of a certain work; for
that which we know by the art of the pilot we do not know by the art of medicine?
ION: Certainly not. 
SOCRATES: Nor do we know by the art of the carpenter that which we know by the art
of medicine?
ION: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And this is true of all the arts;—that which we know with one art we do not
know with the other? But let me ask a prior question: You admit that there are
differences of arts?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: You would argue, as I should, that when one art is of one kind of knowledge
and another of another, they are different?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Yes, surely; for if the subject of knowledge were the same, there would be
no meaning in saying that the arts were different,—if they both gave the same
knowledge. For example, I know that here are five fingers, and you know the same. And
if I were to ask whether I and you became acquainted with this fact by the help of the
same art of arithmetic, you would acknowledge that we did?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Tell me, then, what I was intending to ask you,—whether this holds
universally? Must the same art have the same subject of knowledge, and different arts
other subjects of knowledge?
ION: That is my opinion, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then he who has no knowledge of a particular art will have no right
judgment of the sayings and doings of that art? 
ION: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then which will be a better judge of the lines which you were reciting from
Homer, you or the charioteer?
ION: The charioteer.
SOCRATES: Why, yes, because you are a rhapsode and not a charioteer.
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the art of the rhapsode is different from that of the charioteer?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if a different knowledge, then a knowledge of different matters?
ION: True.
SOCRATES: You know the passage in which Hecamede, the concubine of Nestor, is
described as giving to the wounded Machaon a posset, as he says,
‘Made with Pramnian wine; and she grated cheese of goat’s milk with a grater of bronze,
and at his side placed an onion which gives a relish to drink (Il.).’
Now would you say that the art of the rhapsode or the art of medicine was better able
to judge of the propriety of these lines?
ION: The art of medicine.
SOCRATES: And when Homer says,
‘And she descended into the deep like a leaden plummet, which, set in the horn of ox
that ranges in the fields, rushes along carrying death among the ravenous fishes (Il.),’— 
will the art of the fisherman or of the rhapsode be better able to judge whether these
lines are rightly expressed or not?
ION: Clearly, Socrates, the art of the fisherman.
SOCRATES: Come now, suppose that you were to say to me: ‘Since you, Socrates, are
able to assign different passages in Homer to their corresponding arts, I wish that you
would tell me what are the passages of which the excellence ought to be judged by the
prophet and prophetic art’; and you will see how readily and truly I shall answer you. For
there are many such passages, particularly in the Odyssee; as, for example, the passage
in which Theoclymenus the prophet of the house of Melampus says to the suitors:—
‘Wretched men! what is happening to you? Your heads and your faces and your limbs
underneath are shrouded in night; and the voice of lamentation bursts forth, and your
cheeks are wet with tears. And the vestibule is full, and the court is full, of ghosts
descending into the darkness of Erebus, and the sun has perished out of heaven, and an
evil mist is spread abroad (Od.).’
And there are many such passages in the Iliad also; as for example in the description of
the battle near the rampart, where he says:—
‘As they were eager to pass the ditch, there came to them an omen: a soaring eagle,
holding back the people on the left, bore a huge bloody dragon in his talons, still living
and panting; nor had he yet resigned the strife, for he bent back and smote the bird
which carried him on the breast by the neck, and he in pain let him fall from him to the
ground into the midst of the multitude. And the eagle, with a cry, was borne afar on the
wings of the wind (Il.).’
These are the sort of things which I should say that the prophet ought to consider and
determine. 
ION: And you are quite right, Socrates, in saying so.
SOCRATES: Yes, Ion, and you are right also. And as I have selected from the Iliad and
Odyssee for you passages which describe the office of the prophet and the physician
and the fisherman, do you, who know Homer so much better than I do, Ion, select for
me passages which relate to the rhapsode and the rhapsode’s art, and which the
rhapsode ought to examine and judge of better than other men.
ION: All passages, I should say, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Not all, Ion, surely. Have you already forgotten what you were saying? A
rhapsode ought to have a better memory.
ION: Why, what am I forgetting?
SOCRATES: Do you not remember that you declared the art of the rhapsode to be
different from the art of the charioteer?
ION: Yes, I remember.
SOCRATES: And you admitted that being different they would have different subjects of
knowledge?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then upon your own showing the rhapsode, and the art of the rhapsode, will
not know everything?
ION: I should exclude certain things, Socrates.
SOCRATES: You mean to say that you would exclude pretty much the subjects of the
other arts. As he does not know all of them, which of them will he know? 
ION: He will know what a man and what a woman ought to say, and what a freeman and
what a slave ought to say, and what a ruler and what a subject.
SOCRATES: Do you mean that a rhapsode will know better than the pilot what the ruler
of a sea-tossed vessel ought to say?
ION: No; the pilot will know best.
SOCRATES: Or will the rhapsode know better than the physician what the ruler of a sick
man ought to say?
ION: He will not.
SOCRATES: But he will know what a slave ought to say?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Suppose the slave to be a cowherd; the rhapsode will know better than the
cowherd what he ought to say in order to soothe the infuriated cows?
ION: No, he will not.
SOCRATES: But he will know what a spinning-woman ought to say about the working of
wool?
ION: No.
SOCRATES: At any rate he will know what a general ought to say when exhorting his
soldiers?
ION: Yes, that is the sort of thing which the rhapsode will be sure to know.
SOCRATES: Well, but is the art of the rhapsode the art of the general? 
ION: I am sure that I should know what a general ought to say.
SOCRATES: Why, yes, Ion, because you may possibly have a knowledge of the art of the
general as well as of the rhapsode; and you may also have a knowledge of
horsemanship as well as of the lyre: and then you would know when horses were well or
ill managed. But suppose I were to ask you: By the help of which art, Ion, do you know
whether horses are well managed, by your skill as a horseman or as a performer on the
lyre—what would you answer?
ION: I should reply, by my skill as a horseman.
SOCRATES: And if you judged of performers on the lyre, you would admit that you
judged of them as a performer on the lyre, and not as a horseman?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And in judging of the general’s art, do you judge of it as a general or a
rhapsode?
ION: To me there appears to be no difference between them.
SOCRATES: What do you mean? Do you mean to say that the art of the rhapsode and of
the general is the same?
ION: Yes, one and the same.
SOCRATES: Then he who is a good rhapsode is also a good general?
ION: Certainly, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And he who is a good general is also a good rhapsode?
ION: No; I do not say that. 
SOCRATES: But you do say that he who is a good rhapsode is also a good general.
ION: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And you are the best of Hellenic rhapsodes?
ION: Far the best, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And are you the best general, Ion?
ION: To be sure, Socrates; and Homer was my master.
SOCRATES: But then, Ion, what in the name of goodness can be the reason why you,
who are the best of generals as well as the best of rhapsodes in all Hellas, go about as a
rhapsode when you might be a general? Do you think that the Hellenes want a
rhapsode with his golden crown, and do not want a general?
ION: Why, Socrates, the reason is, that my countrymen, the Ephesians, are the servants
and soldiers of Athens, and do not need a general; and you and Sparta are not likely to
have me, for you think that you have enough generals of your own.
SOCRATES: My good Ion, did you never hear of Apollodorus of Cyzicus?
ION: Who may he be?
SOCRATES: One who, though a foreigner, has often been chosen their general by the
Athenians: and there is Phanosthenes of Andros, and Heraclides of Clazomenae, whom
they have also appointed to the command of their armies and to other offices, although
aliens, after they had shown their merit. And will they not choose Ion the Ephesian to be
their general, and honour him, if he prove himself worthy? Were not the Ephesians
originally Athenians, and Ephesus is no mean city? But, indeed, Ion, if you are correct in
saying that by art and knowledge you are able to praise Homer, you do not deal fairly
with me, and after all your professions of knowing many glorious things about Homer, 
and promises that you would exhibit them, you are only a deceiver, and so far from
exhibiting the art of which you are a master, will not, even after my repeated entreaties,
explain to me the nature of it. You have literally as many forms as Proteus; and now you
go all manner of ways, twisting and turning, and, like Proteus, become all manner of
people at once, and at last slip away from me in the disguise of a general, in order that
you may escape exhibiting your Homeric lore. And if you have art, then, as I was saying,
in falsifying your promise that you would exhibit Homer, you are not dealing fairly with
me. But if, as I believe, you have no art, but speak all these beautiful words about Homer
unconsciously under his inspiring influence, then I acquit you of dishonesty, and shall
only say that you are inspired. Which do you prefer to be thought, dishonest or
inspired?
ION: There is a great difference, Socrates, between the two alternatives; and inspiration
is by far the nobler.
SOCRATES: Then, Ion, I shall assume the nobler alternative; and attribute to you in your
praises of Homer inspiration, and not art.
                                                                                 THE END
Gorgias
by
Plato
Translated with an
introduction by
Benjamin Jowett 
INTRODUCTION.
In several of the dialogues of Plato, doubts have arisen among his interpreters as to
which of the various subjects discussed in them is the main thesis. The speakers have
the freedom of conversation; no severe rules of art restrict them, and sometimes we are
inclined to think, with one of the dramatis personae in the Theaetetus, that the
digressions have the greater interest. Yet in the most irregular of the dialogues there is
also a certain natural growth or unity; the beginning is not forgotten at the end, and
numerous allusions and references are interspersed, which form the loose connecting
links of the whole. We must not neglect this unity, but neither must we attempt to
confine the Platonic dialogue on the Procrustean bed of a single idea. (Compare
Introduction to the Phaedrus.)
Two tendencies seem to have beset the interpreters of Plato in this matter. First, they
have endeavoured to hang the dialogues upon one another by the slightest threads;
and have thus been led to opposite and contradictory assertions respecting their order
and sequence. The mantle of Schleiermacher has descended upon his successors, who
have applied his method with the most various results. The value and use of the method
has been hardly, if at all, examined either by him or them. Secondly, they have extended
almost indefinitely the scope of each separate dialogue; in this way they think that they
have escaped all difficulties, not seeing that what they have gained in generality they
have lost in truth and distinctness. Metaphysical conceptions easily pass into one
another; and the simpler notions of antiquity, which we can only realize by an effort,
imperceptibly blend with the more familiar theories of modern philosophers. An eye for
proportion is needed (his own art of measuring) in the study of Plato, as well as of other
great artists. We may hardly admit that the moral antithesis of good and pleasure, or the
intellectual antithesis of knowledge and opinion, being and appearance, are never far off
in a Platonic discussion. But because they are in the background, we should not bring
them into the foreground, or expect to discern them equally in all the dialogues. 
There may be some advantage in drawing out a little the main outlines of the building;
but the use of this is limited, and may be easily exaggerated. We may give Plato too
much system, and alter the natural form and connection of his thoughts. Under the idea
that his dialogues are finished works of art, we may find a reason for everything, and
lose the highest characteristic of art, which is simplicity. Most great works receive a new
light from a new and original mind. But whether these new lights are true or only
suggestive, will depend on their agreement with the spirit of Plato, and the amount of
direct evidence which can be urged in support of them. When a theory is running away
with us, criticism does a friendly office in counselling moderation, and recalling us to the
indications of the text.
Like the Phaedrus, the Gorgias has puzzled students of Plato by the appearance of two
or more subjects. Under the cover of rhetoric higher themes are introduced; the
argument expands into a general view of the good and evil of man. After making an
ineffectual attempt to obtain a sound definition of his art from Gorgias, Socrates
assumes the existence of a universal art of flattery or simulation having several
branches:—this is the genus of which rhetoric is only one, and not the highest species.
To flattery is opposed the true and noble art of life which he who possesses seeks
always to impart to others, and which at last triumphs, if not here, at any rate in another
world. These two aspects of life and knowledge appear to be the two leading ideas of
the dialogue. The true and the false in individuals and states, in the treatment of the
soul as well as of the body, are conceived under the forms of true and false art. In the
development of this opposition there arise various other questions, such as the two
famous paradoxes of Socrates (paradoxes as they are to the world in general, ideals as
they may be more worthily called): (1) that to do is worse than to suffer evil; and (2) that
when a man has done evil he had better be punished than unpunished; to which may be
added (3) a third Socratic paradox or ideal, that bad men do what they think best, but
not what they desire, for the desire of all is towards the good. That pleasure is to be
distinguished from good is proved by the simultaneousness of pleasure and pain, and 
by the possibility of the bad having in certain cases pleasures as great as those of the
good, or even greater. Not merely rhetoricians, but poets, musicians, and other artists,
the whole tribe of statesmen, past as well as present, are included in the class of
flatterers. The true and false finally appear before the judgment-seat of the gods below.
The dialogue naturally falls into three divisions, to which the three characters of Gorgias,
Polus, and Callicles respectively correspond; and the form and manner change with the
stages of the argument. Socrates is deferential towards Gorgias, playful and yet cutting
in dealing with the youthful Polus, ironical and sarcastic in his encounter with Callicles. In
the first division the question is asked—What is rhetoric? To this there is no answer
given, for Gorgias is soon made to contradict himself by Socrates, and the argument is
transferred to the hands of his disciple Polus, who rushes to the defence of his master.
The answer has at last to be given by Socrates himself, but before he can even explain
his meaning to Polus, he must enlighten him upon the great subject of shams or
flatteries. When Polus finds his favourite art reduced to the level of cookery, he replies
that at any rate rhetoricians, like despots, have great power. Socrates denies that they
have any real power, and hence arise the three paradoxes already mentioned. Although
they are strange to him, Polus is at last convinced of their truth; at least, they seem to
him to follow legitimately from the premises. Thus the second act of the dialogue closes.
Then Callicles appears on the scene, at first maintaining that pleasure is good, and that
might is right, and that law is nothing but the combination of the many weak against
the few strong. When he is confuted he withdraws from the argument, and leaves
Socrates to arrive at the conclusion by himself. The conclusion is that there are two
kinds of statesmanship, a higher and a lower—that which makes the people better, and
that which only flatters them, and he exhorts Callicles to choose the higher. The
dialogue terminates with a mythus of a final judgment, in which there will be no more
flattery or disguise, and no further use for the teaching of rhetoric.
The characters of the three interlocutors also correspond to the parts which are
assigned to them. Gorgias is the great rhetorician, now advanced in years, who goes 
from city to city displaying his talents, and is celebrated throughout Greece. Like all the
Sophists in the dialogues of Plato, he is vain and boastful, yet he has also a certain
dignity, and is treated by Socrates with considerable respect. But he is no match for him
in dialectics. Although he has been teaching rhetoric all his life, he is still incapable of
defining his own art. When his ideas begin to clear up, he is unwilling to admit that
rhetoric can be wholly separated from justice and injustice, and this lingering sentiment
of morality, or regard for public opinion, enables Socrates to detect him in a
contradiction. Like Protagoras, he is described as of a generous nature; he expresses his
approbation of Socrates’ manner of approaching a question; he is quite ‘one of
Socrates’ sort, ready to be refuted as well as to refute,’ and very eager that Callicles and
Socrates should have the game out. He knows by experience that rhetoric exercises
great influence over other men, but he is unable to explain the puzzle how rhetoric can
teach everything and know nothing.
Polus is an impetuous youth, a runaway ‘colt,’ as Socrates describes him, who wanted
originally to have taken the place of Gorgias under the pretext that the old man was
tired, and now avails himself of the earliest opportunity to enter the lists. He is said to be
the author of a work on rhetoric, and is again mentioned in the Phaedrus, as the
inventor of balanced or double forms of speech (compare Gorg.; Symp.). At first he is
violent and ill-mannered, and is angry at seeing his master overthrown. But in the
judicious hands of Socrates he is soon restored to good-humour, and compelled to
assent to the required conclusion. Like Gorgias, he is overthrown because he
compromises; he is unwilling to say that to do is fairer or more honourable than to
suffer injustice. Though he is fascinated by the power of rhetoric, and dazzled by the
splendour of success, he is not insensible to higher arguments. Plato may have felt that
there would be an incongruity in a youth maintaining the cause of injustice against the
world. He has never heard the other side of the question, and he listens to the
paradoxes, as they appear to him, of Socrates with evident astonishment. He can hardly 
understand the meaning of Archelaus being miserable, or of rhetoric being only useful
in self- accusation. When the argument with him has fairly run out,
Callicles, in whose house they are assembled, is introduced on the stage: he is with
difficulty convinced that Socrates is in earnest; for if these things are true, then, as he
says with real emotion, the foundations of society are upside down. In him another type
of character is represented; he is neither sophist nor philosopher, but man of the world,
and an accomplished Athenian gentleman. He might be described in modern language
as a cynic or materialist, a lover of power and also of pleasure, and unscrupulous in his
means of attaining both. There is no desire on his part to offer any compromise in the
interests of morality; nor is any concession made by him. Like Thrasymachus in the
Republic, though he is not of the same weak and vulgar class, he consistently maintains
that might is right. His great motive of action is political ambition; in this he is
characteristically Greek. Like Anytus in the Meno, he is the enemy of the Sophists; but
favours the new art of rhetoric, which he regards as an excellent weapon of attack and
defence. He is a despiser of mankind as he is of philosophy, and sees in the laws of the
state only a violation of the order of nature, which intended that the stronger should
govern the weaker (compare Republic). Like other men of the world who are of a
speculative turn of mind, he generalizes the bad side of human nature, and has easily
brought down his principles to his practice. Philosophy and poetry alike supply him with
distinctions suited to his view of human life. He has a good will to Socrates, whose
talents he evidently admires, while he censures the puerile use which he makes of them.
He expresses a keen intellectual interest in the argument. Like Anytus, again, he has a
sympathy with other men of the world; the Athenian statesmen of a former generation,
who showed no weakness and made no mistakes, such as Miltiades, Themistocles,
Pericles, are his favourites. His ideal of human character is a man of great passions and
great powers, which he has developed to the utmost, and which he uses in his own
enjoyment and in the government of others. Had Critias been the name instead of 
Callicles, about whom we know nothing from other sources, the opinions of the man
would have seemed to reflect the history of his life.
And now the combat deepens. In Callicles, far more than in any sophist or rhetorician, is
concentrated the spirit of evil against which Socrates is contending, the spirit of the
world, the spirit of the many contending against the one wise man, of which the
Sophists, as he describes them in the Republic, are the imitators rather than the authors,
being themselves carried away by the great tide of public opinion. Socrates approaches
his antagonist warily from a distance, with a sort of irony which touches with a light
hand both his personal vices (probably in allusion to some scandal of the day) and his
servility to the populace. At the same time, he is in most profound earnest, as
Chaerephon remarks. Callicles soon loses his temper, but the more he is irritated, the
more provoking and matter of fact does Socrates become. A repartee of his which
appears to have been really made to the ‘omniscient’ Hippias, according to the
testimony of Xenophon (Mem.), is introduced. He is called by Callicles a popular
declaimer, and certainly shows that he has the power, in the words of Gorgias, of being
‘as long as he pleases,’ or ‘as short as he pleases’ (compare Protag.). Callicles exhibits
great ability in defending himself and attacking Socrates, whom he accuses of trifling
and word-splitting; he is scandalized that the legitimate consequences of his own
argument should be stated in plain terms; after the manner of men of the world, he
wishes to preserve the decencies of life. But he cannot consistently maintain the bad
sense of words; and getting confused between the abstract notions of better, superior,
stronger, he is easily turned round by Socrates, and only induced to continue the
argument by the authority of Gorgias. Once, when Socrates is describing the manner in
which the ambitious citizen has to identify himself with the people, he partially
recognizes the truth of his words.
The Socrates of the Gorgias may be compared with the Socrates of the Protagoras and
Meno. As in other dialogues, he is the enemy of the Sophists and rhetoricians; and also
of the statesmen, whom he regards as another variety of the same species. His 
behaviour is governed by that of his opponents; the least forwardness or egotism on
their part is met by a corresponding irony on the part of Socrates. He must speak, for
philosophy will not allow him to be silent. He is indeed more ironical and provoking
than in any other of Plato’s writings: for he is ‘fooled to the top of his bent’ by the
worldliness of Callicles. But he is also more deeply in earnest. He rises higher than even
in the Phaedo and Crito: at first enveloping his moral convictions in a cloud of dust and
dialectics, he ends by losing his method, his life, himself, in them. As in the Protagoras
and Phaedrus, throwing aside the veil of irony, he makes a speech, but, true to his
character, not until his adversary has refused to answer any more questions. The
presentiment of his own fate is hanging over him. He is aware that Socrates, the single
real teacher of politics, as he ventures to call himself, cannot safely go to war with the
whole world, and that in the courts of earth he will be condemned. But he will be
justified in the world below. Then the position of Socrates and Callicles will be reversed;
all those things ‘unfit for ears polite’ which Callicles has prophesied as likely to happen
to him in this life, the insulting language, the box on the ears, will recoil upon his
assailant. (Compare Republic, and the similar reversal of the position of the lawyer and
the philosopher in the Theaetetus).
There is an interesting allusion to his own behaviour at the trial of the generals after the
battle of Arginusae, which he ironically attributes to his ignorance of the manner in
which a vote of the assembly should be taken. This is said to have happened ‘last year’
(B.C. 406), and therefore the assumed date of the dialogue has been fixed at 405 B.C.,
when Socrates would already have been an old man. The date is clearly marked, but is
scarcely reconcilable with another indication of time, viz. the ‘recent’ usurpation of
Archelaus, which occurred in the year 413; and still less with the ‘recent’ death of
Pericles, who really died twenty-four years previously (429 B.C.) and is afterwards
reckoned among the statesmen of a past age; or with the mention of Nicias, who died in
413, and is nevertheless spoken of as a living witness. But we shall hereafter have reason
to observe, that although there is a general consistency of times and persons in the 
Dialogues of Plato, a precise dramatic date is an invention of his commentators (Preface
to Republic).
The conclusion of the Dialogue is remarkable, (1) for the truly characteristic declaration
of Socrates that he is ignorant of the true nature and bearing of these things, while he
affirms at the same time that no one can maintain any other view without being
ridiculous. The profession of ignorance reminds us of the earlier and more exclusively
Socratic Dialogues. But neither in them, nor in the Apology, nor in the Memorabilia of
Xenophon, does Socrates express any doubt of the fundamental truths of morality. He
evidently regards this ‘among the multitude of questions’ which agitate human life ‘as
the principle which alone remains unshaken.’ He does not insist here, any more than in
the Phaedo, on the literal truth of the myth, but only on the soundness of the doctrine
which is contained in it, that doing wrong is worse than suffering, and that a man should
be rather than seem; for the next best thing to a man’s being just is that he should be
corrected and become just; also that he should avoid all flattery, whether of himself or
of others; and that rhetoric should be employed for the maintenance of the right only.
The revelation of another life is a recapitulation of the argument in a figure.
(2) Socrates makes the singular remark, that he is himself the only true politician of his
age. In other passages, especially in the Apology, he disclaims being a politician at all.
There he is convinced that he or any other good man who attempted to resist the
popular will would be put to death before he had done any good to himself or others.
Here he anticipates such a fate for himself, from the fact that he is ‘the only man of the
present day who performs his public duties at all.’ The two points of view are not really
inconsistent, but the difference between them is worth noticing: Socrates is and is not a
public man. Not in the ordinary sense, like Alcibiades or Pericles, but in a higher one;
and this will sooner or later entail the same consequences on him. He cannot be a
private man if he would; neither can he separate morals from politics. Nor is he unwilling
to be a politician, although he foresees the dangers which await him; but he must first
become a better and wiser man, for he as well as Callicles is in a state of perplexity and 
uncertainty. And yet there is an inconsistency: for should not Socrates too have taught
the citizens better than to put him to death?
And now, as he himself says, we will ‘resume the argument from the beginning.’
Socrates, who is attended by his inseparable disciple, Chaerephon, meets Callicles in the
streets of Athens. He is informed that he has just missed an exhibition of Gorgias, which
he regrets, because he was desirous, not of hearing Gorgias display his rhetoric, but of
interrogating him concerning the nature of his art. Callicles proposes that they shall go
with him to his own house, where Gorgias is staying. There they find the great
rhetorician and his younger friend and disciple Polus.
SOCRATES: Put the question to him, Chaerephon.
CHAEREPHON: What question?
SOCRATES: Who is he?—such a question as would elicit from a man the answer, ‘I am a
cobbler.’
Polus suggests that Gorgias may be tired, and desires to answer for him. ‘Who is
Gorgias?’ asks Chaerephon, imitating the manner of his master Socrates. ‘One of the
best of men, and a proficient in the best and noblest of experimental arts,’ etc., replies
Polus, in rhetorical and balanced phrases. Socrates is dissatisfied at the length and
unmeaningness of the answer; he tells the disconcerted volunteer that he has mistaken
the quality for the nature of the art, and remarks to Gorgias, that Polus has learnt how to
make a speech, but not how to answer a question. He wishes that Gorgias would answer
him. Gorgias is willing enough, and replies to the question asked by Chaerephon,—that
he is a rhetorician, and in Homeric language, ‘boasts himself to be a good one.’ At the
request of Socrates he promises to be brief; for ‘he can be as long as he pleases, and as
short as he pleases.’ Socrates would have him bestow his length on others, and
proceeds to ask him a number of questions, which are answered by him to his own 
great satisfaction, and with a brevity which excites the admiration of Socrates. The result
of the discussion may be summed up as follows:—
Rhetoric treats of discourse; but music and medicine, and other particular arts, are also
concerned with discourse; in what way then does rhetoric differ from them? Gorgias
draws a distinction between the arts which deal with words, and the arts which have to
do with external actions. Socrates extends this distinction further, and divides all
productive arts into two classes: (1) arts which may be carried on in silence; and (2) arts
which have to do with words, or in which words are coextensive with action, such as
arithmetic, geometry, rhetoric. But still Gorgias could hardly have meant to say that
arithmetic was the same as rhetoric. Even in the arts which are concerned with words
there are differences. What then distinguishes rhetoric from the other arts which have to
do with words? ‘The words which rhetoric uses relate to the best and greatest of human
things.’ But tell me, Gorgias, what are the best? ‘Health first, beauty next, wealth third,’ in
the words of the old song, or how would you rank them? The arts will come to you in a
body, each claiming precedence and saying that her own good is superior to that of the
rest—How will you choose between them? ‘I should say, Socrates, that the art of
persuasion, which gives freedom to all men, and to individuals power in the state, is the
greatest good.’ But what is the exact nature of this persuasion?—is the persevering
retort: You could not describe Zeuxis as a painter, or even as a painter of figures, if there
were other painters of figures; neither can you define rhetoric simply as an art of
persuasion, because there are other arts which persuade, such as arithmetic, which is an
art of persuasion about odd and even numbers. Gorgias is made to see the necessity of
a further limitation, and he now defines rhetoric as the art of persuading in the law
courts, and in the assembly, about the just and unjust. But still there are two sorts of
persuasion: one which gives knowledge, and another which gives belief without
knowledge; and knowledge is always true, but belief may be either true or false,—there
is therefore a further question: which of the two sorts of persuasion does rhetoric effect
in courts of law and assemblies? Plainly that which gives belief and not that which gives 
knowledge; for no one can impart a real knowledge of such matters to a crowd of
persons in a few minutes. And there is another point to be considered:—when the
assembly meets to advise about walls or docks or military expeditions, the rhetorician is
not taken into counsel, but the architect, or the general. How would Gorgias explain this
phenomenon? All who intend to become disciples, of whom there are several in the
company, and not Socrates only, are eagerly asking:—About what then will rhetoric
teach us to persuade or advise the state?
Gorgias illustrates the nature of rhetoric by adducing the example of Themistocles, who
persuaded the Athenians to build their docks and walls, and of Pericles, whom Socrates
himself has heard speaking about the middle wall of the Piraeus. He adds that he has
exercised a similar power over the patients of his brother Herodicus. He could be chosen
a physician by the assembly if he pleased, for no physician could compete with a
rhetorician in popularity and influence. He could persuade the multitude of anything by
the power of his rhetoric; not that the rhetorician ought to abuse this power any more
than a boxer should abuse the art of self- defence. Rhetoric is a good thing, but, like all
good things, may be unlawfully used. Neither is the teacher of the art to be deemed
unjust because his pupils are unjust and make a bad use of the lessons which they have
learned from him.
Socrates would like to know before he replies, whether Gorgias will quarrel with him if
he points out a slight inconsistency into which he has fallen, or whether he, like himself,
is one who loves to be refuted. Gorgias declares that he is quite one of his sort, but fears
that the argument may be tedious to the company. The company cheer, and
Chaerephon and Callicles exhort them to proceed. Socrates gently points out the
supposed inconsistency into which Gorgias appears to have fallen, and which he is
inclined to think may arise out of a misapprehension of his own. The rhetorician has
been declared by Gorgias to be more persuasive to the ignorant than the physician, or
any other expert. And he is said to be ignorant, and this ignorance of his is regarded by
Gorgias as a happy condition, for he has escaped the trouble of learning. But is he as 
ignorant of just and unjust as he is of medicine or building? Gorgias is compelled to
admit that if he did not know them previously he must learn them from his teacher as a
part of the art of rhetoric. But he who has learned carpentry is a carpenter, and he who
has learned music is a musician, and he who has learned justice is just. The rhetorician
then must be a just man, and rhetoric is a just thing. But Gorgias has already admitted
the opposite of this, viz. that rhetoric may be abused, and that the rhetorician may act
unjustly. How is the inconsistency to be explained?
The fallacy of this argument is twofold; for in the first place, a man may know justice and
not be just—here is the old confusion of the arts and the virtues;—nor can any teacher
be expected to counteract wholly the bent of natural character; and secondly, a man
may have a degree of justice, but not sufficient to prevent him from ever doing wrong.
Polus is naturally exasperated at the sophism, which he is unable to detect; of course, he
says, the rhetorician, like every one else, will admit that he knows justice (how can he do
otherwise when pressed by the interrogations of Socrates?), but he thinks that great
want of manners is shown in bringing the argument to such a pass. Socrates ironically
replies, that when old men trip, the young set them on their legs again; and he is quite
willing to retract, if he can be shown to be in error, but upon one condition, which is that
Polus studies brevity. Polus is in great indignation at not being allowed to use as many
words as he pleases in the free state of Athens. Socrates retorts, that yet harder will be
his own case, if he is compelled to stay and listen to them. After some altercation they
agree (compare Protag.), that Polus shall ask and Socrates answer.
‘What is the art of Rhetoric?’ says Polus. Not an art at all, replies Socrates, but a thing
which in your book you affirm to have created art. Polus asks, ‘What thing?’ and
Socrates answers, An experience or routine of making a sort of delight or gratification.
‘But is not rhetoric a fine thing?’ I have not yet told you what rhetoric is. Will you ask me
another question—What is cookery? ‘What is cookery?’ An experience or routine of
making a sort of delight or gratification. Then they are the same, or rather fall under the
same class, and rhetoric has still to be distinguished from cookery. ‘What is rhetoric?’ 
asks Polus once more. A part of a not very creditable whole, which may be termed
flattery, is the reply. ‘But what part?’ A shadow of a part of politics. This, as might be
expected, is wholly unintelligible, both to Gorgias and Polus; and, in order to explain his
meaning to them, Socrates draws a distinction between shadows or appearances and
realities; e.g. there is real health of body or soul, and the appearance of them; real arts
and sciences, and the simulations of them. Now the soul and body have two arts waiting
upon them, first the art of politics, which attends on the soul, having a legislative part
and a judicial part; and another art attending on the body, which has no generic name,
but may also be described as having two divisions, one of which is medicine and the
other gymnastic. Corresponding with these four arts or sciences there are four shams or
simulations of them, mere experiences, as they may be termed, because they give no
reason of their own existence. The art of dressing up is the sham or simulation of
gymnastic, the art of cookery, of medicine; rhetoric is the simulation of justice, and
sophistic of legislation. They may be summed up in an arithmetical formula:—
Tiring : gymnastic :: cookery : medicine :: sophistic : legislation.
And,
Cookery : medicine :: rhetoric : the art of justice.
And this is the true scheme of them, but when measured only by the gratification which
they procure, they become jumbled together and return to their aboriginal chaos.
Socrates apologizes for the length of his speech, which was necessary to the explanation
of the subject, and begs Polus not unnecessarily to retaliate on him.
‘Do you mean to say that the rhetoricians are esteemed flatterers?’ They are not
esteemed at all. ‘Why, have they not great power, and can they not do whatever they
desire?’ They have no power, and they only do what they think best, and never what
they desire; for they never attain the true object of desire, which is the good. ‘As if you,
Socrates, would not envy the possessor of despotic power, who can imprison, exile, kill 
any one whom he pleases.’ But Socrates replies that he has no wish to put any one to
death; he who kills another, even justly, is not to be envied, and he who kills him unjustly
is to be pitied; it is better to suffer than to do injustice. He does not consider that going
about with a dagger and putting men out of the way, or setting a house on fire, is real
power. To this Polus assents, on the ground that such acts would be punished, but he is
still of opinion that evil-doers, if they are unpunished, may be happy enough. He
instances Archelaus, son of Perdiccas, the usurper of Macedonia. Does not Socrates
think him happy?—Socrates would like to know more about him; he cannot pronounce
even the great king to be happy, unless he knows his mental and moral condition. Polus
explains that Archelaus was a slave, being the son of a woman who was the slave of
Alcetas, brother of Perdiccas king of Macedon—and he, by every species of crime, first
murdering his uncle and then his cousin and half-brother, obtained the kingdom. This
was very wicked, and yet all the world, including Socrates, would like to have his place.
Socrates dismisses the appeal to numbers; Polus, if he will, may summon all the rich
men of Athens, Nicias and his brothers, Aristocrates, the house of Pericles, or any other
great family— this is the kind of evidence which is adduced in courts of justice, where
truth depends upon numbers. But Socrates employs proof of another sort; his appeal is
to one witness only,—that is to say, the person with whom he is speaking; him he will
convict out of his own mouth. And he is prepared to show, after his manner, that
Archelaus cannot be a wicked man and yet happy.
The evil-doer is deemed happy if he escapes, and miserable if he suffers punishment;
but Socrates thinks him less miserable if he suffers than if he escapes. Polus is of opinion
that such a paradox as this hardly deserves refutation, and is at any rate sufficiently
refuted by the fact. Socrates has only to compare the lot of the successful tyrant who is
the envy of the world, and of the wretch who, having been detected in a criminal
attempt against the state, is crucified or burnt to death. Socrates replies, that if they are
both criminal they are both miserable, but that the unpunished is the more miserable of
the two. At this Polus laughs outright, which leads Socrates to remark that laughter is a 
new species of refutation. Polus replies, that he is already refuted; for if he will take the
votes of the company, he will find that no one agrees with him. To this Socrates rejoins,
that he is not a public man, and (referring to his own conduct at the trial of the generals
after the battle of Arginusae) is unable to take the suffrages of any company, as he had
shown on a recent occasion; he can only deal with one witness at a time, and that is the
person with whom he is arguing. But he is certain that in the opinion of any man to do is
worse than to suffer evil.
Polus, though he will not admit this, is ready to acknowledge that to do evil is
considered the more foul or dishonourable of the two. But what is fair and what is foul;
whether the terms are applied to bodies, colours, figures, laws, habits, studies, must they
not be defined with reference to pleasure and utility? Polus assents to this latter
doctrine, and is easily persuaded that the fouler of two things must exceed either in pain
or in hurt. But the doing cannot exceed the suffering of evil in pain, and therefore must
exceed in hurt. Thus doing is proved by the testimony of Polus himself to be worse or
more hurtful than suffering.
There remains the other question: Is a guilty man better off when he is punished or
when he is unpunished? Socrates replies, that what is done justly is suffered justly: if the
act is just, the effect is just; if to punish is just, to be punished is just, and therefore fair,
and therefore beneficent; and the benefit is that the soul is improved. There are three
evils from which a man may suffer, and which affect him in estate, body, and soul;—
these are, poverty, disease, injustice; and the foulest of these is injustice, the evil of the
soul, because that brings the greatest hurt. And there are three arts which heal these
evils—trading, medicine, justice—and the fairest of these is justice. Happy is he who has
never committed injustice, and happy in the second degree he who has been healed by
punishment. And therefore the criminal should himself go to the judge as he would to
the physician, and purge away his crime. Rhetoric will enable him to display his guilt in
proper colours, and to sustain himself and others in enduring the necessary penalty.
And similarly if a man has an enemy, he will desire not to punish him, but that he shall 
go unpunished and become worse and worse, taking care only that he does no injury to
himself. These are at least conceivable uses of the art, and no others have been
discovered by us.
Here Callicles, who has been listening in silent amazement, asks Chaerephon whether
Socrates is in earnest, and on receiving the assurance that he is, proceeds to ask the
same question of Socrates himself. For if such doctrines are true, life must have been
turned upside down, and all of us are doing the opposite of what we ought to be doing.
Socrates replies in a style of playful irony, that before men can understand one another
they must have some common feeling. And such a community of feeling exists between
himself and Callicles, for both of them are lovers, and they have both a pair of loves; the
beloved of Callicles are the Athenian Demos and Demos the son of Pyrilampes; the
beloved of Socrates are Alcibiades and philosophy. The peculiarity of Callicles is that he
can never contradict his loves; he changes as his Demos changes in all his opinions; he
watches the countenance of both his loves, and repeats their sentiments, and if any one
is surprised at his sayings and doings, the explanation of them is, that he is not a free
agent, but must always be imitating his two loves. And this is the explanation of
Socrates’ peculiarities also. He is always repeating what his mistress, Philosophy, is
saying to him, who unlike his other love, Alcibiades, is ever the same, ever true. Callicles
must refute her, or he will never be at unity with himself; and discord in life is far worse
than the discord of musical sounds.
Callicles answers, that Gorgias was overthrown because, as Polus said, in compliance
with popular prejudice he had admitted that if his pupil did not know justice the
rhetorician must teach him; and Polus has been similarly entangled, because his
modesty led him to admit that to suffer is more honourable than to do injustice. By
custom ‘yes,’ but not by nature, says Callicles. And Socrates is always playing between
the two points of view, and putting one in the place of the other. In this very argument,
what Polus only meant in a conventional sense has been affirmed by him to be a law of 
nature. For convention says that ‘injustice is dishonourable,’ but nature says that ‘might
is right.’ And we are always taming down the nobler spirits among us to the
conventional level. But sometimes a great man will rise up and reassert his original
rights, trampling under foot all our formularies, and then the light of natural justice
shines forth. Pindar says, ‘Law, the king of all, does violence with high hand;’ as is indeed
proved by the example of Heracles, who drove off the oxen of Geryon and never paid
for them.
This is the truth, Socrates, as you will be convinced, if you leave philosophy and pass on
to the real business of life. A little philosophy is an excellent thing; too much is the ruin
of a man. He who has not ‘passed his metaphysics’ before he has grown up to manhood
will never know the world. Philosophers are ridiculous when they take to politics, and I
dare say that politicians are equally ridiculous when they take to philosophy: ‘Every
man,’ as Euripides says, ‘is fondest of that in which he is best.’ Philosophy is graceful in
youth, like the lisp of infancy, and should be cultivated as a part of education; but when
a grown-up man lisps or studies philosophy, I should like to beat him. None of those
over-refined natures ever come to any good; they avoid the busy haunts of men, and
skulk in corners, whispering to a few admiring youths, and never giving utterance to any
noble sentiments.
For you, Socrates, I have a regard, and therefore I say to you, as Zethus says to Amphion
in the play, that you have ‘a noble soul disguised in a puerile exterior.’ And I would have
you consider the danger which you and other philosophers incur. For you would not
know how to defend yourself if any one accused you in a law-court,—there you would
stand, with gaping mouth and dizzy brain, and might be murdered, robbed, boxed on
the ears with impunity. Take my advice, then, and get a little common sense; leave to
others these frivolities; walk in the ways of the wealthy and be wise.
Socrates professes to have found in Callicles the philosopher’s touchstone; and he is
certain that any opinion in which they both agree must be the very truth. Callicles has all 
the three qualities which are needed in a critic—knowledge, good-will, frankness;
Gorgias and Polus, although learned men, were too modest, and their modesty made
them contradict themselves. But Callicles is well-educated; and he is not too modest to
speak out (of this he has already given proof), and his good-will is shown both by his
own profession and by his giving the same caution against philosophy to Socrates,
which Socrates remembers hearing him give long ago to his own clique of friends. He
will pledge himself to retract any error into which he may have fallen, and which Callicles
may point out. But he would like to know first of all what he and Pindar mean by natural
justice. Do they suppose that the rule of justice is the rule of the stronger or of the
better?’ ‘There is no difference.’ Then are not the many superior to the one, and the
opinions of the many better? And their opinion is that justice is equality, and that to do
is more dishonourable than to suffer wrong. And as they are the superior or stronger,
this opinion of theirs must be in accordance with natural as well as conventional justice.
‘Why will you continue splitting words? Have I not told you that the superior is the
better?’ But what do you mean by the better? Tell me that, and please to be a little
milder in your language, if you do not wish to drive me away. ‘I mean the worthier, the
wiser.’ You mean to say that one man of sense ought to rule over ten thousand fools?
‘Yes, that is my meaning.’ Ought the physician then to have a larger share of meats and
drinks? or the weaver to have more coats, or the cobbler larger shoes, or the farmer
more seed? ‘You are always saying the same things, Socrates.’ Yes, and on the same
subjects too; but you are never saying the same things. For, first, you defined the
superior to be the stronger, and then the wiser, and now something else;—what DO you
mean? ‘I mean men of political ability, who ought to govern and to have more than the
governed.’ Than themselves? ‘What do you mean?’ I mean to say that every man is his
own governor. ‘I see that you mean those dolts, the temperate. But my doctrine is, that a
man should let his desires grow, and take the means of satisfying them. To the many
this is impossible, and therefore they combine to prevent him. But if he is a king, and
has power, how base would he be in submitting to them! To invite the common herd to
be lord over him, when he might have the enjoyment of all things! For the truth is, 
Socrates, that luxury and self-indulgence are virtue and happiness; all the rest is mere
talk.’
Socrates compliments Callicles on his frankness in saying what other men only think.
According to his view, those who want nothing are not happy. ‘Why,’ says Callicles, ‘if
they were, stones and the dead would be happy.’ Socrates in reply is led into a halfserious,
half-comic vein of reflection. ‘Who knows,’ as Euripides says, ‘whether life may
not be death, and death life?’ Nay, there are philosophers who maintain that even in life
we are dead, and that the body (soma) is the tomb (sema) of the soul. And some
ingenious Sicilian has made an allegory, in which he represents fools as the uninitiated,
who are supposed to be carrying water to a vessel, which is full of holes, in a similarly
holey sieve, and this sieve is their own soul. The idea is fanciful, but nevertheless is a
figure of a truth which I want to make you acknowledge, viz. that the life of contentment
is better than the life of indulgence. Are you disposed to admit that? ‘Far otherwise.’
Then hear another parable. The life of self-contentment and self-indulgence may be
represented respectively by two men, who are filling jars with streams of wine, honey,
milk,—the jars of the one are sound, and the jars of the other leaky; the first fils his jars,
and has no more trouble with them; the second is always filling them, and would suffer
extreme misery if he desisted. Are you of the same opinion still? ‘Yes, Socrates, and the
figure expresses what I mean. For true pleasure is a perpetual stream, flowing in and
flowing out. To be hungry and always eating, to be thirsty and always drinking, and to
have all the other desires and to satisfy them, that, as I admit, is my idea of happiness.’
And to be itching and always scratching? ‘I do not deny that there may be happiness
even in that.’ And to indulge unnatural desires, if they are abundantly satisfied? Callicles
is indignant at the introduction of such topics. But he is reminded by Socrates that they
are introduced, not by him, but by the maintainer of the identity of pleasure and good.
Will Callicles still maintain this? ‘Yes, for the sake of consistency, he will.’ The answer
does not satisfy Socrates, who fears that he is losing his touchstone. A profession of
seriousness on the part of Callicles reassures him, and they proceed with the argument. 
Pleasure and good are the same, but knowledge and courage are not the same either
with pleasure or good, or with one another. Socrates disproves the first of these
statements by showing that two opposites cannot coexist, but must alternate with one
another—to be well and ill together is impossible. But pleasure and pain are
simultaneous, and the cessation of them is simultaneous; e.g. in the case of drinking and
thirsting, whereas good and evil are not simultaneous, and do not cease simultaneously,
and therefore pleasure cannot be the same as good.
Callicles has already lost his temper, and can only be persuaded to go on by the
interposition of Gorgias. Socrates, having already guarded against objections by
distinguishing courage and knowledge from pleasure and good, proceeds:—The good
are good by the presence of good, and the bad are bad by the presence of evil. And the
brave and wise are good, and the cowardly and foolish are bad. And he who feels
pleasure is good, and he who feels pain is bad, and both feel pleasure and pain in nearly
the same degree, and sometimes the bad man or coward in a greater degree. Therefore
the bad man or coward is as good as the brave or may be even better.
Callicles endeavours now to avert the inevitable absurdity by affirming that he and all
mankind admitted some pleasures to be good and others bad. The good are the
beneficial, and the bad are the hurtful, and we should choose the one and avoid the
other. But this, as Socrates observes, is a return to the old doctrine of himself and Polus,
that all things should be done for the sake of the good.
Callicles assents to this, and Socrates, finding that they are agreed in distinguishing
pleasure from good, returns to his old division of empirical habits, or shams, or flatteries,
which study pleasure only, and the arts which are concerned with the higher interests of
soul and body. Does Callicles agree to this division? Callicles will agree to anything, in
order that he may get through the argument. Which of the arts then are flatteries?
Flute-playing, harp-playing, choral exhibitions, the dithyrambics of Cinesias are all
equally condemned on the ground that they give pleasure only; and Meles the harp-
player, who was the father of Cinesias, failed even in that. The stately muse of Tragedy is
bent upon pleasure, and not upon improvement. Poetry in general is only a rhetorical
address to a mixed audience of men, women, and children. And the orators are very far
from speaking with a view to what is best; their way is to humour the assembly as if they
were children.
Callicles replies, that this is only true of some of them; others have a real regard for their
fellow-citizens. Granted; then there are two species of oratory; the one a flattery,
another which has a real regard for the citizens. But where are the orators among whom
you find the latter? Callicles admits that there are none remaining, but there were such
in the days when Themistocles, Cimon, Miltiades, and the great Pericles were still alive.
Socrates replies that none of these were true artists, setting before themselves the duty
of bringing order out of disorder. The good man and true orator has a settled design,
running through his life, to which he conforms all his words and actions; he desires to
implant justice and eradicate injustice, to implant all virtue and eradicate all vice in the
minds of his citizens. He is the physician who will not allow the sick man to indulge his
appetites with a variety of meats and drinks, but insists on his exercising self-restraint.
And this is good for the soul, and better than the unrestrained indulgence which
Callicles was recently approving.
Here Callicles, who had been with difficulty brought to this point, turns restive, and
suggests that Socrates shall answer his own questions. ‘Then,’ says Socrates, ‘one man
must do for two;’ and though he had hoped to have given Callicles an ‘Amphion’ in
return for his ‘Zethus,’ he is willing to proceed; at the same time, he hopes that Callicles
will correct him, if he falls into error. He recapitulates the advantages which he has
already won:—
The pleasant is not the same as the good—Callicles and I are agreed about that,—but
pleasure is to be pursued for the sake of the good, and the good is that of which the
presence makes us good; we and all things good have acquired some virtue or other. 
And virtue, whether of body or soul, of things or persons, is not attained by accident,
but is due to order and harmonious arrangement. And the soul which has order is better
than the soul which is without order, and is therefore temperate and is therefore good,
and the intemperate is bad. And he who is temperate is also just and brave and pious,
and has attained the perfection of goodness and therefore of happiness, and the
intemperate whom you approve is the opposite of all this and is wretched. He therefore
who would be happy must pursue temperance and avoid intemperance, and if possible
escape the necessity of punishment, but if he have done wrong he must endure
punishment. In this way states and individuals should seek to attain harmony, which, as
the wise tell us, is the bond of heaven and earth, of gods and men. Callicles has never
discovered the power of geometrical proportion in both worlds; he would have men aim
at disproportion and excess. But if he be wrong in this, and if self-control is the true
secret of happiness, then the paradox is true that the only use of rhetoric is in selfaccusation,
and Polus was right in saying that to do wrong is worse than to suffer
wrong, and Gorgias was right in saying that the rhetorician must be a just man. And you
were wrong in taunting me with my defenceless condition, and in saying that I might be
accused or put to death or boxed on the ears with impunity. For I may repeat once
more, that to strike is worse than to be stricken—to do than to suffer. What I said then is
now made fast in adamantine bonds. I myself know not the true nature of these things,
but I know that no one can deny my words and not be ridiculous. To do wrong is the
greatest of evils, and to suffer wrong is the next greatest evil. He who would avoid the
last must be a ruler, or the friend of a ruler; and to be the friend he must be the equal of
the ruler, and must also resemble him. Under his protection he will suffer no evil, but will
he also do no evil? Nay, will he not rather do all the evil which he can and escape? And
in this way the greatest of all evils will befall him. ‘But this imitator of the tyrant,’ rejoins
Callicles, ‘will kill any one who does not similarly imitate him.’ Socrates replies that he is
not deaf, and that he has heard that repeated many times, and can only reply, that a bad
man will kill a good one. ‘Yes, and that is the provoking thing.’ Not provoking to a man
of sense who is not studying the arts which will preserve him from danger; and this, as 
you say, is the use of rhetoric in courts of justice. But how many other arts are there
which also save men from death, and are yet quite humble in their pretensions—such as
the art of swimming, or the art of the pilot? Does not the pilot do men at least as much
service as the rhetorician, and yet for the voyage from Aegina to Athens he does not
charge more than two obols, and when he disembarks is quite unassuming in his
demeanour? The reason is that he is not certain whether he has done his passengers any
good in saving them from death, if one of them is diseased in body, and still more if he
is diseased in mind—who can say? The engineer too will often save whole cities, and yet
you despise him, and would not allow your son to marry his daughter, or his son to
marry yours. But what reason is there in this? For if virtue only means the saving of life,
whether your own or another’s, you have no right to despise him or any practiser of
saving arts. But is not virtue something different from saving and being saved? I would
have you rather consider whether you ought not to disregard length of life, and think
only how you can live best, leaving all besides to the will of Heaven. For you must not
expect to have influence either with the Athenian Demos or with Demos the son of
Pyrilampes, unless you become like them. What do you say to this?
‘There is some truth in what you are saying, but I do not entirely believe you.’
That is because you are in love with Demos. But let us have a little more conversation.
You remember the two processes—one which was directed to pleasure, the other which
was directed to making men as good as possible. And those who have the care of the
city should make the citizens as good as possible. But who would undertake a public
building, if he had never had a teacher of the art of building, and had never constructed
a building before? or who would undertake the duty of state-physician, if he had never
cured either himself or any one else? Should we not examine him before we entrusted
him with the office? And as Callicles is about to enter public life, should we not examine
him? Whom has he made better? For we have already admitted that this is the
statesman’s proper business. And we must ask the same question about Pericles, and
Cimon, and Miltiades, and Themistocles. Whom did they make better? Nay, did not 
Pericles make the citizens worse? For he gave them pay, and at first he was very popular
with them, but at last they condemned him to death. Yet surely he would be a bad
tamer of animals who, having received them gentle, taught them to kick and butt, and
man is an animal; and Pericles who had the charge of man only made him wilder, and
more savage and unjust, and therefore he could not have been a good statesman. The
same tale might be repeated about Cimon, Themistocles, Miltiades. But the charioteer
who keeps his seat at first is not thrown out when he gains greater experience and skill.
The inference is, that the statesman of a past age were no better than those of our own.
They may have been cleverer constructors of docks and harbours, but they did not
improve the character of the citizens. I have told you again and again (and I purposely
use the same images) that the soul, like the body, may be treated in two ways—there is
the meaner and the higher art. You seemed to understand what I said at the time, but
when I ask you who were the really good statesmen, you answer—as if I asked you who
were the good trainers, and you answered, Thearion, the baker, Mithoecus, the author of
the Sicilian cookery-book, Sarambus, the vintner. And you would be affronted if I told
you that these are a parcel of cooks who make men fat only to make them thin. And
those whom they have fattened applaud them, instead of finding fault with them, and
lay the blame of their subsequent disorders on their physicians. In this respect, Callicles,
you are like them; you applaud the statesmen of old, who pandered to the vices of the
citizens, and filled the city with docks and harbours, but neglected virtue and justice.
And when the fit of illness comes, the citizens who in like manner applauded
Themistocles, Pericles, and others, will lay hold of you and my friend Alcibiades, and you
will suffer for the misdeeds of your predecessors. The old story is always being
repeated—‘after all his services, the ungrateful city banished him, or condemned him to
death.’ As if the statesman should not have taught the city better! He surely cannot
blame the state for having unjustly used him, any more than the sophist or teacher can
find fault with his pupils if they cheat him. And the sophist and orator are in the same
case; although you admire rhetoric and despise sophistic, whereas sophistic is really the
higher of the two. The teacher of the arts takes money, but the teacher of virtue or 
politics takes no money, because this is the only kind of service which makes the disciple
desirous of requiting his teacher.
Socrates concludes by finally asking, to which of the two modes of serving the state
Callicles invites him:—‘to the inferior and ministerial one,’ is the ingenuous reply. That is
the only way of avoiding death, replies Socrates; and he has heard often enough, and
would rather not hear again, that the bad man will kill the good. But he thinks that such
a fate is very likely reserved for him, because he remarks that he is the only person who
teaches the true art of politics. And very probably, as in the case which he described to
Polus, he may be the physician who is tried by a jury of children. He cannot say that he
has procured the citizens any pleasure, and if any one charges him with perplexing
them, or with reviling their elders, he will not be able to make them understand that he
has only been actuated by a desire for their good. And therefore there is no saying what
his fate may be. ‘And do you think that a man who is unable to help himself is in a good
condition?’ Yes, Callicles, if he have the true self- help, which is never to have said or
done any wrong to himself or others. If I had not this kind of self-help, I should be
ashamed; but if I die for want of your flattering rhetoric, I shall die in peace. For death is
no evil, but to go to the world below laden with offences is the worst of evils. In proof of
which I will tell you a tale:—
Under the rule of Cronos, men were judged on the day of their death, and when
judgment had been given upon them they departed—the good to the islands of the
blest, the bad to the house of vengeance. But as they were still living, and had their
clothes on at the time when they were being judged, there was favouritism, and Zeus,
when he came to the throne, was obliged to alter the mode of procedure, and try them
after death, having first sent down Prometheus to take away from them the
foreknowledge of death. Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus were appointed to be the
judges; Rhadamanthus for Asia, Aeacus for Europe, and Minos was to hold the court of
appeal. Now death is the separation of soul and body, but after death soul and body
alike retain their characteristics; the fat man, the dandy, the branded slave, are all 
distinguishable. Some prince or potentate, perhaps even the great king himself, appears
before Rhadamanthus, and he instantly detects him, though he knows not who he is; he
sees the scars of perjury and iniquity, and sends him away to the house of torment.
For there are two classes of souls who undergo punishment—the curable and the
incurable. The curable are those who are benefited by their punishment; the incurable
are such as Archelaus, who benefit others by becoming a warning to them. The latter
class are generally kings and potentates; meaner persons, happily for themselves, have
not the same power of doing injustice. Sisyphus and Tityus, not Thersites, are supposed
by Homer to be undergoing everlasting punishment. Not that there is anything to
prevent a great man from being a good one, as is shown by the famous example of
Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus. But to Rhadamanthus the souls are only known as
good or bad; they are stripped of their dignities and preferments; he despatches the
bad to Tartarus, labelled either as curable or incurable, and looks with love and
admiration on the soul of some just one, whom he sends to the islands of the blest.
Similar is the practice of Aeacus; and Minos overlooks them, holding a golden sceptre,
as Odysseus in Homer saw him
‘Wielding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.’
My wish for myself and my fellow-men is, that we may present our souls undefiled to
the judge in that day; my desire in life is to be able to meet death. And I exhort you, and
retort upon you the reproach which you cast upon me,—that you will stand before the
judge, gaping, and with dizzy brain, and any one may box you on the ear, and do you all
manner of evil.
Perhaps you think that this is an old wives’ fable. But you, who are the three wisest men
in Hellas, have nothing better to say, and no one will ever show that to do is better than
to suffer evil. A man should study to be, and not merely to seem. If he is bad, he should
become good, and avoid all flattery, whether of the many or of the few. 
Follow me, then; and if you are looked down upon, that will do you no harm. And when
we have practised virtue, we will betake ourselves to politics, but not until we are
delivered from the shameful state of ignorance and uncertainty in which we are at
present. Let us follow in the way of virtue and justice, and not in the way to which you,
Callicles, invite us; for that way is nothing worth.
We will now consider in order some of the principal points of the dialogue. Having
regard (1) to the age of Plato and the ironical character of his writings, we may compare
him with himself, and with other great teachers, and we may note in passing the
objections of his critics. And then (2) casting one eye upon him, we may cast another
upon ourselves, and endeavour to draw out the great lessons which he teaches for all
time, stripped of the accidental form in which they are enveloped.
(1) In the Gorgias, as in nearly all the other dialogues of Plato, we are made aware that
formal logic has as yet no existence. The old difficulty of framing a definition recurs. The
illusive analogy of the arts and the virtues also continues. The ambiguity of several
words, such as nature, custom, the honourable, the good, is not cleared up. The Sophists
are still floundering about the distinction of the real and seeming. Figures of speech are
made the basis of arguments. The possibility of conceiving a universal art or science,
which admits of application to a particular subject-matter, is a difficulty which remains
unsolved, and has not altogether ceased to haunt the world at the present day
(compare Charmides). The defect of clearness is also apparent in Socrates himself,
unless we suppose him to be practising on the simplicity of his opponent, or rather
perhaps trying an experiment in dialectics. Nothing can be more fallacious than the
contradiction which he pretends to have discovered in the answers of Gorgias (see
above). The advantages which he gains over Polus are also due to a false antithesis of
pleasure and good, and to an erroneous assertion that an agent and a patient may be
described by similar predicates;—a mistake which Aristotle partly shares and partly
corrects in the Nicomachean Ethics. Traces of a ‘robust sophistry’ are likewise discernible
in his argument with Callicles. 
(2) Although Socrates professes to be convinced by reason only, yet the argument is
often a sort of dialectical fiction, by which he conducts himself and others to his own
ideal of life and action. And we may sometimes wish that we could have suggested
answers to his antagonists, or pointed out to them the rocks which lay concealed under
the ambiguous terms good, pleasure, and the like. But it would be as useless to examine
his arguments by the requirements of modern logic, as to criticise this ideal from a
merely utilitarian point of view. If we say that the ideal is generally regarded as
unattainable, and that mankind will by no means agree in thinking that the criminal is
happier when punished than when unpunished, any more than they would agree to the
stoical paradox that a man may be happy on the rack, Plato has already admitted that
the world is against him. Neither does he mean to say that Archelaus is tormented by
the stings of conscience; or that the sensations of the impaled criminal are more
agreeable than those of the tyrant drowned in luxurious enjoyment. Neither is he
speaking, as in the Protagoras, of virtue as a calculation of pleasure, an opinion which he
afterwards repudiates in the Phaedo. What then is his meaning? His meaning we shall
be able to illustrate best by parallel notions, which, whether justifiable by logic or not,
have always existed among mankind. We must remind the reader that Socrates himself
implies that he will be understood or appreciated by very few.
He is speaking not of the consciousness of happiness, but of the idea of happiness.
When a martyr dies in a good cause, when a soldier falls in battle, we do not suppose
that death or wounds are without pain, or that their physical suffering is always
compensated by a mental satisfaction. Still we regard them as happy, and we would a
thousand times rather have their death than a shameful life. Nor is this only because we
believe that they will obtain an immortality of fame, or that they will have crowns of
glory in another world, when their enemies and persecutors will be proportionably
tormented. Men are found in a few instances to do what is right, without reference to
public opinion or to consequences. And we regard them as happy on this ground only,
much as Socrates’ friends in the opening of the Phaedo are described as regarding him; 
or as was said of another, ‘they looked upon his face as upon the face of an angel.’ We
are not concerned to justify this idealism by the standard of utility or public opinion, but
merely to point out the existence of such a sentiment in the better part of human
nature.
The idealism of Plato is founded upon this sentiment. He would maintain that in some
sense or other truth and right are alone to be sought, and that all other goods are only
desirable as means towards these. He is thought to have erred in ‘considering the agent
only, and making no reference to the happiness of others, as affected by him.’ But the
happiness of others or of mankind, if regarded as an end, is really quite as ideal and
almost as paradoxical to the common understanding as Plato’s conception of happiness.
For the greatest happiness of the greatest number may mean also the greatest pain of
the individual which will procure the greatest pleasure of the greatest number. Ideas of
utility, like those of duty and right, may be pushed to unpleasant consequences. Nor can
Plato in the Gorgias be deemed purely self-regarding, considering that Socrates
expressly mentions the duty of imparting the truth when discovered to others. Nor must
we forget that the side of ethics which regards others is by the ancients merged in
politics. Both in Plato and Aristotle, as well as in the Stoics, the social principle, though
taking another form, is really far more prominent than in most modern treatises on
ethics.
The idealizing of suffering is one of the conceptions which have exercised the greatest
influence on mankind. Into the theological import of this, or into the consideration of
the errors to which the idea may have given rise, we need not now enter. All will agree
that the ideal of the Divine Sufferer, whose words the world would not receive, the man
of sorrows of whom the Hebrew prophets spoke, has sunk deep into the heart of the
human race. It is a similar picture of suffering goodness which Plato desires to pourtray,
not without an allusion to the fate of his master Socrates. He is convinced that,
somehow or other, such an one must be happy in life or after death. In the Republic, he
endeavours to show that his happiness would be assured here in a well-ordered state. 
But in the actual condition of human things the wise and good are weak and miserable;
such an one is like a man fallen among wild beasts, exposed to every sort of wrong and
obloquy.
Plato, like other philosophers, is thus led on to the conclusion, that if ‘the ways of God’
to man are to be ‘justified,’ the hopes of another life must be included. If the question
could have been put to him, whether a man dying in torments was happy still, even if, as
he suggests in the Apology, ‘death be only a long sleep,’ we can hardly tell what would
have been his answer. There have been a few, who, quite independently of rewards and
punishments or of posthumous reputation, or any other influence of public opinion,
have been willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of others. It is difficult to say how
far in such cases an unconscious hope of a future life, or a general faith in the victory of
good in the world, may have supported the sufferers. But this extreme idealism is not in
accordance with the spirit of Plato. He supposes a day of retribution, in which the good
are to be rewarded and the wicked punished. Though, as he says in the Phaedo, no man
of sense will maintain that the details of the stories about another world are true, he will
insist that something of the kind is true, and will frame his life with a view to this
unknown future. Even in the Republic he introduces a future life as an afterthought,
when the superior happiness of the just has been established on what is thought to be
an immutable foundation. At the same time he makes a point of determining his main
thesis independently of remoter consequences.
(3) Plato’s theory of punishment is partly vindictive, partly corrective. In the Gorgias, as
well as in the Phaedo and Republic, a few great criminals, chiefly tyrants, are reserved as
examples. But most men have never had the opportunity of attaining this pre-eminence
of evil. They are not incurable, and their punishment is intended for their improvement.
They are to suffer because they have sinned; like sick men, they must go to the physician
and be healed. On this representation of Plato’s the criticism has been made, that the
analogy of disease and injustice is partial only, and that suffering, instead of improving
men, may have just the opposite effect. 
Like the general analogy of the arts and the virtues, the analogy of disease and injustice,
or of medicine and justice, is certainly imperfect. But ideas must be given through
something; the nature of the mind which is unseen can only be represented under
figures derived from visible objects. If these figures are suggestive of some new aspect
under which the mind may be considered, we cannot find fault with them for not exactly
coinciding with the ideas represented. They partake of the imperfect nature of language,
and must not be construed in too strict a manner. That Plato sometimes reasons from
them as if they were not figures but realities, is due to the defective logical analysis of
his age.
Nor does he distinguish between the suffering which improves and the suffering which
only punishes and deters. He applies to the sphere of ethics a conception of punishment
which is really derived from criminal law. He does not see that such punishment is only
negative, and supplies no principle of moral growth or development. He is not far off
the higher notion of an education of man to be begun in this world, and to be
continued in other stages of existence, which is further developed in the Republic. And
Christian thinkers, who have ventured out of the beaten track in their meditations on the
‘last things,’ have found a ray of light in his writings. But he has not explained how or in
what way punishment is to contribute to the improvement of mankind. He has not
followed out the principle which he affirms in the Republic, that ‘God is the author of
evil only with a view to good,’ and that ‘they were the better for being punished.’ Still his
doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments may be compared favourably
with that perversion of Christian doctrine which makes the everlasting punishment of
human beings depend on a brief moment of time, or even on the accident of an
accident. And he has escaped the difficulty which has often beset divines, respecting the
future destiny of the meaner sort of men (Thersites and the like), who are neither very
good nor very bad, by not counting them worthy of eternal damnation.
We do Plato violence in pressing his figures of speech or chains of argument; and not
less so in asking questions which were beyond the horizon of his vision, or did not come 
within the scope of his design. The main purpose of the Gorgias is not to answer
questions about a future world, but to place in antagonism the true and false life, and to
contrast the judgments and opinions of men with judgment according to the truth.
Plato may be accused of representing a superhuman or transcendental virtue in the
description of the just man in the Gorgias, or in the companion portrait of the
philosopher in the Theaetetus; and at the same time may be thought to be condemning
a state of the world which always has existed and always will exist among men. But such
ideals act powerfully on the imagination of mankind. And such condemnations are not
mere paradoxes of philosophers, but the natural rebellion of the higher sense of right in
man against the ordinary conditions of human life. The greatest statesmen have fallen
very far short of the political ideal, and are therefore justly involved in the general
condemnation.
Subordinate to the main purpose of the dialogue are some other questions, which may
be briefly considered:—
a. The antithesis of good and pleasure, which as in other dialogues is supposed to
consist in the permanent nature of the one compared with the transient and relative
nature of the other. Good and pleasure, knowledge and sense, truth and opinion,
essence and generation, virtue and pleasure, the real and the apparent, the infinite and
finite, harmony or beauty and discord, dialectic and rhetoric or poetry, are so many pairs
of opposites, which in Plato easily pass into one another, and are seldom kept perfectly
distinct. And we must not forget that Plato’s conception of pleasure is the Heracleitean
flux transferred to the sphere of human conduct. There is some degree of unfairness in
opposing the principle of good, which is objective, to the principle of pleasure, which is
subjective. For the assertion of the permanence of good is only based on the
assumption of its objective character. Had Plato fixed his mind, not on the ideal nature
of good, but on the subjective consciousness of happiness, that would have been found
to be as transient and precarious as pleasure. 
b. The arts or sciences, when pursued without any view to truth, or the improvement of
human life, are called flatteries. They are all alike dependent upon the opinion of
mankind, from which they are derived. To Plato the whole world appears to be sunk in
error, based on self-interest. To this is opposed the one wise man hardly professing to
have found truth, yet strong in the conviction that a virtuous life is the only good,
whether regarded with reference to this world or to another. Statesmen, Sophists,
rhetoricians, poets, are alike brought up for judgment. They are the parodies of wise
men, and their arts are the parodies of true arts and sciences. All that they call science is
merely the result of that study of the tempers of the Great Beast, which he describes in
the Republic.
c. Various other points of contact naturally suggest themselves between the Gorgias and
other dialogues, especially the Republic, the Philebus, and the Protagoras. There are
closer resemblances both of spirit and language in the Republic than in any other
dialogue, the verbal similarity tending to show that they were written at the same period
of Plato’s life. For the Republic supplies that education and training of which the Gorgias
suggests the necessity. The theory of the many weak combining against the few strong
in the formation of society (which is indeed a partial truth), is similar in both of them,
and is expressed in nearly the same language. The sufferings and fate of the just man,
the powerlessness of evil, and the reversal of the situation in another life, are also points
of similarity. The poets, like the rhetoricians, are condemned because they aim at
pleasure only, as in the Republic they are expelled the State, because they are imitators,
and minister to the weaker side of human nature. That poetry is akin to rhetoric may be
compared with the analogous notion, which occurs in the Protagoras, that the ancient
poets were the Sophists of their day. In some other respects the Protagoras rather offers
a contrast than a parallel. The character of Protagoras may be compared with that of
Gorgias, but the conception of happiness is different in the two dialogues; being
described in the former, according to the old Socratic notion, as deferred or 
accumulated pleasure, while in the Gorgias, and in the Phaedo, pleasure and good are
distinctly opposed.
This opposition is carried out from a speculative point of view in the Philebus. There
neither pleasure nor wisdom are allowed to be the chief good, but pleasure and good
are not so completely opposed as in the Gorgias. For innocent pleasures, and such as
have no antecedent pains, are allowed to rank in the class of goods. The allusion to
Gorgias’ definition of rhetoric (Philebus; compare Gorg.), as the art of persuasion, of all
arts the best, for to it all things submit, not by compulsion, but of their own free will—
marks a close and perhaps designed connection between the two dialogues. In both the
ideas of measure, order, harmony, are the connecting links between the beautiful and
the good.
In general spirit and character, that is, in irony and antagonism to public opinion, the
Gorgias most nearly resembles the Apology, Crito, and portions of the Republic, and like
the Philebus, though from another point of view, may be thought to stand in the same
relation to Plato’s theory of morals which the Theaetetus bears to his theory of
knowledge.
d. A few minor points still remain to be summed up: (1) The extravagant irony in the
reason which is assigned for the pilot’s modest charge; and in the proposed use of
rhetoric as an instrument of self-condemnation; and in the mighty power of geometrical
equality in both worlds. (2) The reference of the mythus to the previous discussion
should not be overlooked: the fate reserved for incurable criminals such as Archelaus;
the retaliation of the box on the ears; the nakedness of the souls and of the judges who
are stript of the clothes or disguises which rhetoric and public opinion have hitherto
provided for them (compare Swift’s notion that the universe is a suit of clothes, Tale of a
Tub). The fiction seems to have involved Plato in the necessity of supposing that the
soul retained a sort of corporeal likeness after death. (3) The appeal of the authority of 
Homer, who says that Odysseus saw Minos in his court ‘holding a golden sceptre,’ which
gives verisimilitude to the tale.
It is scarcely necessary to repeat that Plato is playing ‘both sides of the game,’ and that
in criticising the characters of Gorgias and Polus, we are not passing any judgment on
historical individuals, but only attempting to analyze the ‘dramatis personae’ as they
were conceived by him. Neither is it necessary to enlarge upon the obvious fact that
Plato is a dramatic writer, whose real opinions cannot always be assumed to be those
which he puts into the mouth of Socrates, or any other speaker who appears to have the
best of the argument; or to repeat the observation that he is a poet as well as a
philosopher; or to remark that he is not to be tried by a modern standard, but
interpreted with reference to his place in the history of thought and the opinion of his
time.
It has been said that the most characteristic feature of the Gorgias is the assertion of the
right of dissent, or private judgment. But this mode of stating the question is really
opposed both to the spirit of Plato and of ancient philosophy generally. For Plato is not
asserting any abstract right or duty of toleration, or advantage to be derived from
freedom of thought; indeed, in some other parts of his writings (e.g. Laws), he has fairly
laid himself open to the charge of intolerance. No speculations had as yet arisen
respecting the ‘liberty of prophesying;’ and Plato is not affirming any abstract right of
this nature: but he is asserting the duty and right of the one wise and true man to
dissent from the folly and falsehood of the many. At the same time he acknowledges
the natural result, which he hardly seeks to avert, that he who speaks the truth to a
multitude, regardless of consequences, will probably share the fate of Socrates.
...
The irony of Plato sometimes veils from us the height of idealism to which he soars.
When declaring truths which the many will not receive, he puts on an armour which 
cannot be pierced by them. The weapons of ridicule are taken out of their hands and the
laugh is turned against themselves. The disguises which Socrates assumes are like the
parables of the New Testament, or the oracles of the Delphian God; they half conceal,
half reveal, his meaning. The more he is in earnest, the more ironical he becomes; and
he is never more in earnest or more ironical than in the Gorgias. He hardly troubles
himself to answer seriously the objections of Gorgias and Polus, and therefore he
sometimes appears to be careless of the ordinary requirements of logic. Yet in the
highest sense he is always logical and consistent with himself. The form of the argument
may be paradoxical; the substance is an appeal to the higher reason. He is uttering
truths before they can be understood, as in all ages the words of philosophers, when
they are first uttered, have found the world unprepared for them. A further
misunderstanding arises out of the wildness of his humour; he is supposed not only by
Callicles, but by the rest of mankind, to be jesting when he is profoundly serious. At
length he makes even Polus in earnest. Finally, he drops the argument, and heedless any
longer of the forms of dialectic, he loses himself in a sort of triumph, while at the same
time he retaliates upon his adversaries. From this confusion of jest and earnest, we may
now return to the ideal truth, and draw out in a simple form the main theses of the
dialogue.
First Thesis:—
It is a greater evil to do than to suffer injustice.
Compare the New Testament—
‘It is better to suffer for well doing than for evil doing.’—1 Pet.
And the Sermon on the Mount—
‘Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.’—Matt. 
The words of Socrates are more abstract than the words of Christ, but they equally imply
that the only real evil is moral evil. The righteous may suffer or die, but they have their
reward; and even if they had no reward, would be happier than the wicked. The world,
represented by Polus, is ready, when they are asked, to acknowledge that injustice is
dishonourable, and for their own sakes men are willing to punish the offender (compare
Republic). But they are not equally willing to acknowledge that injustice, even if
successful, is essentially evil, and has the nature of disease and death. Especially when
crimes are committed on the great scale—the crimes of tyrants, ancient or modern—
after a while, seeing that they cannot be undone, and have become a part of history,
mankind are disposed to forgive them, not from any magnanimity or charity, but
because their feelings are blunted by time, and ‘to forgive is convenient to them.’ The
tangle of good and evil can no longer be unravelled; and although they know that the
end cannot justify the means, they feel also that good has often come out of evil. But
Socrates would have us pass the same judgment on the tyrant now and always; though
he is surrounded by his satellites, and has the applauses of Europe and Asia ringing in
his ears; though he is the civilizer or liberator of half a continent, he is, and always will
be, the most miserable of men. The greatest consequences for good or for evil cannot
alter a hair’s breadth the morality of actions which are right or wrong in themselves. This
is the standard which Socrates holds up to us. Because politics, and perhaps human life
generally, are of a mixed nature we must not allow our principles to sink to the level of
our practice.
And so of private individuals—to them, too, the world occasionally speaks of the
consequences of their actions:—if they are lovers of pleasure, they will ruin their health;
if they are false or dishonest, they will lose their character. But Socrates would speak to
them, not of what will be, but of what is—of the present consequence of lowering and
degrading the soul. And all higher natures, or perhaps all men everywhere, if they were
not tempted by interest or passion, would agree with him—they would rather be the
victims than the perpetrators of an act of treachery or of tyranny. Reason tells them that 
death comes sooner or later to all, and is not so great an evil as an unworthy life, or
rather, if rightly regarded, not an evil at all, but to a good man the greatest good. For in
all of us there are slumbering ideals of truth and right, which may at any time awaken
and develop a new life in us.
Second Thesis:—
It is better to suffer for wrong doing than not to suffer.
There might have been a condition of human life in which the penalty followed at once,
and was proportioned to the offence. Moral evil would then be scarcely distinguishable
from physical; mankind would avoid vice as they avoid pain or death. But nature, with a
view of deepening and enlarging our characters, has for the most part hidden from us
the consequences of our actions, and we can only foresee them by an effort of
reflection. To awaken in us this habit of reflection is the business of early education,
which is continued in maturer years by observation and experience. The spoilt child is in
later life said to be unfortunate—he had better have suffered when he was young, and
been saved from suffering afterwards. But is not the sovereign equally unfortunate
whose education and manner of life are always concealing from him the consequences
of his own actions, until at length they are revealed to him in some terrible downfall,
which may, perhaps, have been caused not by his own fault? Another illustration is
afforded by the pauper and criminal classes, who scarcely reflect at all, except on the
means by which they can compass their immediate ends. We pity them, and make
allowances for them; but we do not consider that the same principle applies to human
actions generally. Not to have been found out in some dishonesty or folly, regarded
from a moral or religious point of view, is the greatest of misfortunes. The success of our
evil doings is a proof that the gods have ceased to strive with us, and have given us over
to ourselves. There is nothing to remind us of our sins, and therefore nothing to correct
them. Like our sorrows, they are healed by time; 
‘While rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen.’
The ‘accustomed irony’ of Socrates adds a corollary to the argument:— ‘Would you
punish your enemy, you should allow him to escape unpunished’— this is the true
retaliation. (Compare the obscure verse of Proverbs, ‘Therefore if thine enemy hunger,
feed him,’ etc., quoted in Romans.)
Men are not in the habit of dwelling upon the dark side of their own lives: they do not
easily see themselves as others see them. They are very kind and very blind to their own
faults; the rhetoric of self-love is always pleading with them on their own behalf.
Adopting a similar figure of speech, Socrates would have them use rhetoric, not in
defence but in accusation of themselves. As they are guided by feeling rather than by
reason, to their feelings the appeal must be made. They must speak to themselves; they
must argue with themselves; they must paint in eloquent words the character of their
own evil deeds. To any suffering which they have deserved, they must persuade
themselves to submit. Under the figure there lurks a real thought, which, expressed in
another form, admits of an easy application to ourselves. For do not we too accuse as
well as excuse ourselves? And we call to our aid the rhetoric of prayer and preaching,
which the mind silently employs while the struggle between the better and the worse is
going on within us. And sometimes we are too hard upon ourselves, because we want to
restore the balance which self-love has overthrown or disturbed; and then again we may
hear a voice as of a parent consoling us. In religious diaries a sort of drama is often
enacted by the consciences of men ‘accusing or else excusing them.’ For all our life long
we are talking with ourselves:—What is thought but speech? What is feeling but
rhetoric? And if rhetoric is used on one side only we shall be always in danger of being
deceived. And so the words of Socrates, which at first sounded paradoxical, come home
to the experience of all of us.
Third Thesis:— 
We do not what we will, but what we wish.
Socrates would teach us a lesson which we are slow to learn—that good intentions, and
even benevolent actions, when they are not prompted by wisdom, are of no value. We
believe something to be for our good which we afterwards find out not to be for our
good. The consequences may be inevitable, for they may follow an invariable law, yet
they may often be the very opposite of what is expected by us. When we increase
pauperism by almsgiving; when we tie up property without regard to changes of
circumstances; when we say hastily what we deliberately disapprove; when we do in a
moment of passion what upon reflection we regret; when from any want of self-control
we give another an advantage over us—we are doing not what we will, but what we
wish. All actions of which the consequences are not weighed and foreseen, are of this
impotent and paralytic sort; and the author of them has ‘the least possible power’ while
seeming to have the greatest. For he is actually bringing about the reverse of what he
intended. And yet the book of nature is open to him, in which he who runs may read if
he will exercise ordinary attention; every day offers him experiences of his own and of
other men’s characters, and he passes them unheeded by. The contemplation of the
consequences of actions, and the ignorance of men in regard to them, seems to have
led Socrates to his famous thesis:—‘Virtue is knowledge;’ which is not so much an error
or paradox as a half truth, seen first in the twilight of ethical philosophy, but also the
half of the truth which is especially needed in the present age. For as the world has
grown older men have been too apt to imagine a right and wrong apart from
consequences; while a few, on the other hand, have sought to resolve them wholly into
their consequences. But Socrates, or Plato for him, neither divides nor identifies them;
though the time has not yet arrived either for utilitarian or transcendental systems of
moral philosophy, he recognizes the two elements which seem to lie at the basis of
morality. (Compare the following: ‘Now, and for us, it is a time to Hellenize and to praise
knowing; for we have Hebraized too much and have overvalued doing. But the habits
and discipline received from Hebraism remain for our race an eternal possession. And as 
humanity is constituted, one must never assign the second rank to-day without being
ready to restore them to the first to-morrow.’ Sir William W. Hunter, Preface to Orissa.)
Fourth Thesis:—
To be and not to seem is the end of life.
The Greek in the age of Plato admitted praise to be one of the chief incentives to moral
virtue, and to most men the opinion of their fellows is a leading principle of action.
Hence a certain element of seeming enters into all things; all or almost all desire to
appear better than they are, that they may win the esteem or admiration of others. A
man of ability can easily feign the language of piety or virtue; and there is an
unconscious as well as a conscious hypocrisy which, according to Socrates, is the worst
of the two. Again, there is the sophistry of classes and professions. There are the
different opinions about themselves and one another which prevail in different ranks of
society. There is the bias given to the mind by the study of one department of human
knowledge to the exclusion of the rest; and stronger far the prejudice engendered by a
pecuniary or party interest in certain tenets. There is the sophistry of law, the sophistry
of medicine, the sophistry of politics, the sophistry of theology. All of these disguises
wear the appearance of the truth; some of them are very ancient, and we do not easily
disengage ourselves from them; for we have inherited them, and they have become a
part of us. The sophistry of an ancient Greek sophist is nothing compared with the
sophistry of a religious order, or of a church in which during many ages falsehood has
been accumulating, and everything has been said on one side, and nothing on the
other. The conventions and customs which we observe in conversation, and the
opposition of our interests when we have dealings with one another (‘the buyer saith, it
is nought—it is nought,’ etc.), are always obscuring our sense of truth and right. The
sophistry of human nature is far more subtle than the deceit of any one man. Few
persons speak freely from their own natures, and scarcely any one dares to think for
himself: most of us imperceptibly fall into the opinions of those around us, which we 
partly help to make. A man who would shake himself loose from them, requires great
force of mind; he hardly knows where to begin in the search after truth. On every side
he is met by the world, which is not an abstraction of theologians, but the most real of
all things, being another name for ourselves when regarded collectively and subjected
to the influences of society.
Then comes Socrates, impressed as no other man ever was, with the unreality and
untruthfulness of popular opinion, and tells mankind that they must be and not seem.
How are they to be? At any rate they must have the spirit and desire to be. If they are
ignorant, they must acknowledge their ignorance to themselves; if they are conscious of
doing evil, they must learn to do well; if they are weak, and have nothing in them which
they can call themselves, they must acquire firmness and consistency; if they are
indifferent, they must begin to take an interest in the great questions which surround
them. They must try to be what they would fain appear in the eyes of their fellow-men.
A single individual cannot easily change public opinion; but he can be true and
innocent, simple and independent; he can know what he does, and what he does not
know; and though not without an effort, he can form a judgment of his own, at least in
common matters. In his most secret actions he can show the same high principle
(compare Republic) which he shows when supported and watched by public opinion.
And on some fitting occasion, on some question of humanity or truth or right, even an
ordinary man, from the natural rectitude of his disposition, may be found to take up
arms against a whole tribe of politicians and lawyers, and be too much for them.
Who is the true and who the false statesman?—
The true statesman is he who brings order out of disorder; who first organizes and then
administers the government of his own country; and having made a nation, seeks to
reconcile the national interests with those of Europe and of mankind. He is not a mere
theorist, nor yet a dealer in expedients; the whole and the parts grow together in his
mind; while the head is conceiving, the hand is executing. Although obliged to descend 
to the world, he is not of the world. His thoughts are fixed not on power or riches or
extension of territory, but on an ideal state, in which all the citizens have an equal
chance of health and life, and the highest education is within the reach of all, and the
moral and intellectual qualities of every individual are freely developed, and ‘the idea of
good’ is the animating principle of the whole. Not the attainment of freedom alone, or
of order alone, but how to unite freedom with order is the problem which he has to
solve.
The statesman who places before himself these lofty aims has undertaken a task which
will call forth all his powers. He must control himself before he can control others; he
must know mankind before he can manage them. He has no private likes or dislikes; he
does not conceal personal enmity under the disguise of moral or political principle: such
meannesses, into which men too often fall unintentionally, are absorbed in the
consciousness of his mission, and in his love for his country and for mankind. He will
sometimes ask himself what the next generation will say of him; not because he is
careful of posthumous fame, but because he knows that the result of his life as a whole
will then be more fairly judged. He will take time for the execution of his plans; not
hurrying them on when the mind of a nation is unprepared for them; but like the Ruler
of the Universe Himself, working in the appointed time, for he knows that human life, ‘if
not long in comparison with eternity’ (Republic), is sufficient for the fulfilment of many
great purposes. He knows, too, that the work will be still going on when he is no longer
here; and he will sometimes, especially when his powers are failing, think of that other
‘city of which the pattern is in heaven’ (Republic).
The false politician is the serving-man of the state. In order to govern men he becomes
like them; their ‘minds are married in conjunction;’ they ‘bear themselves’ like vulgar and
tyrannical masters, and he is their obedient servant. The true politician, if he would rule
men, must make them like himself; he must ‘educate his party’ until they cease to be a
party; he must breathe into them the spirit which will hereafter give form to their
institutions. Politics with him are not a mechanism for seeming what he is not, or for 
carrying out the will of the majority. Himself a representative man, he is the
representative not of the lower but of the higher elements of the nation. There is a
better (as well as a worse) public opinion of which he seeks to lay hold; as there is also a
deeper current of human affairs in which he is borne up when the waves nearer the
shore are threatening him. He acknowledges that he cannot take the world by force—
two or three moves on the political chess board are all that he can fore see—two or
three weeks moves on the political chessboard are all that he can foresee—two or three
weeks or months are granted to him in which he can provide against a coming struggle.
But he knows also that there are permanent principles of politics which are always
tending to the well-being of states—better administration, better education, the
reconciliation of conflicting elements, increased security against external enemies. These
are not ‘of to-day or yesterday,’ but are the same in all times, and under all forms of
government. Then when the storm descends and the winds blow, though he knows not
beforehand the hour of danger, the pilot, not like Plato’s captain in the Republic, halfblind
and deaf, but with penetrating eye and quick ear, is ready to take command of the
ship and guide her into port.
The false politician asks not what is true, but what is the opinion of the world—not what
is right, but what is expedient. The only measures of which he approves are the
measures which will pass. He has no intention of fighting an uphill battle; he keeps the
roadway of politics. He is unwilling to incur the persecution and enmity which political
convictions would entail upon him. He begins with popularity, and in fair weather sails
gallantly along. But unpopularity soon follows him. For men expect their leaders to be
better and wiser than themselves: to be their guides in danger, their saviours in
extremity; they do not really desire them to obey all the ignorant impulses of the
popular mind; and if they fail them in a crisis they are disappointed. Then, as Socrates
says, the cry of ingratitude is heard, which is most unreasonable; for the people, who
have been taught no better, have done what might be expected of them, and their
statesmen have received justice at their hands. 
The true statesman is aware that he must adapt himself to times and circumstances. He
must have allies if he is to fight against the world; he must enlighten public opinion; he
must accustom his followers to act together. Although he is not the mere executor of
the will of the majority, he must win over the majority to himself. He is their leader and
not their follower, but in order to lead he must also follow. He will neither exaggerate
nor undervalue the power of a statesman, neither adopting the ‘laissez faire’ nor the
‘paternal government’ principle; but he will, whether he is dealing with children in
politics, or with full- grown men, seek to do for the people what the government can do
for them, and what, from imperfect education or deficient powers of combination, they
cannot do for themselves. He knows that if he does too much for them they will do
nothing; and that if he does nothing for them they will in some states of society be
utterly helpless. For the many cannot exist without the few, if the material force of a
country is from below, wisdom and experience are from above. It is not a small part of
human evils which kings and governments make or cure. The statesman is well aware
that a great purpose carried out consistently during many years will at last be executed.
He is playing for a stake which may be partly determined by some accident, and
therefore he will allow largely for the unknown element of politics. But the game being
one in which chance and skill are combined, if he plays long enough he is certain of
victory. He will not be always consistent, for the world is changing; and though he
depends upon the support of a party, he will remember that he is the minister of the
whole. He lives not for the present, but for the future, and he is not at all sure that he
will be appreciated either now or then. For he may have the existing order of society
against him, and may not be remembered by a distant posterity.
There are always discontented idealists in politics who, like Socrates in the Gorgias, find
fault with all statesmen past as well as present, not excepting the greatest names of
history. Mankind have an uneasy feeling that they ought to be better governed than
they are. Just as the actual philosopher falls short of the one wise man, so does the
actual statesman fall short of the ideal. And so partly from vanity and egotism, but partly 
also from a true sense of the faults of eminent men, a temper of dissatisfaction and
criticism springs up among those who are ready enough to acknowledge the inferiority
of their own powers. No matter whether a statesman makes high professions or none at
all—they are reduced sooner or later to the same level. And sometimes the more
unscrupulous man is better esteemed than the more conscientious, because he has not
equally deceived expectations. Such sentiments may be unjust, but they are widely
spread; we constantly find them recurring in reviews and newspapers, and still oftener in
private conversation.
We may further observe that the art of government, while in some respects tending to
improve, has in others a tendency to degenerate, as institutions become more popular.
Governing for the people cannot easily be combined with governing by the people: the
interests of classes are too strong for the ideas of the statesman who takes a
comprehensive view of the whole. According to Socrates the true governor will find ruin
or death staring him in the face, and will only be induced to govern from the fear of
being governed by a worse man than himself (Republic). And in modern times, though
the world has grown milder, and the terrible consequences which Plato foretells no
longer await an English statesman, any one who is not actuated by a blind ambition will
only undertake from a sense of duty a work in which he is most likely to fail; and even if
he succeed, will rarely be rewarded by the gratitude of his own generation.
Socrates, who is not a politician at all, tells us that he is the only real politician of his
time. Let us illustrate the meaning of his words by applying them to the history of our
own country. He would have said that not Pitt or Fox, or Canning or Sir R. Peel, are the
real politicians of their time, but Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Ricardo. These
during the greater part of their lives occupied an inconsiderable space in the eyes of the
public. They were private persons; nevertheless they sowed in the minds of men seeds
which in the next generation have become an irresistible power. ‘Herein is that saying
true, One soweth and another reapeth.’ We may imagine with Plato an ideal statesman
in whom practice and speculation are perfectly harmonized; for there is no necessary 
opposition between them. But experience shows that they are commonly divorced—the
ordinary politician is the interpreter or executor of the thoughts of others, and hardly
ever brings to the birth a new political conception. One or two only in modern times,
like the Italian statesman Cavour, have created the world in which they moved. The
philosopher is naturally unfitted for political life; his great ideas are not understood by
the many; he is a thousand miles away from the questions of the day. Yet perhaps the
lives of thinkers, as they are stiller and deeper, are also happier than the lives of those
who are more in the public eye. They have the promise of the future, though they are
regarded as dreamers and visionaries by their own contemporaries. And when they are
no longer here, those who would have been ashamed of them during their lives claim
kindred with them, and are proud to be called by their names. (Compare Thucyd.)
Who is the true poet?
Plato expels the poets from his Republic because they are allied to sense; because they
stimulate the emotions; because they are thrice removed from the ideal truth. And in a
similar spirit he declares in the Gorgias that the stately muse of tragedy is a votary of
pleasure and not of truth. In modern times we almost ridicule the idea of poetry
admitting of a moral. The poet and the prophet, or preacher, in primitive antiquity are
one and the same; but in later ages they seem to fall apart. The great art of novel
writing, that peculiar creation of our own and the last century, which, together with the
sister art of review writing, threatens to absorb all literature, has even less of seriousness
in her composition. Do we not often hear the novel writer censured for attempting to
convey a lesson to the minds of his readers?
Yet the true office of a poet or writer of fiction is not merely to give amusement, or to
be the expression of the feelings of mankind, good or bad, or even to increase our
knowledge of human nature. There have been poets in modern times, such as Goethe or
Wordsworth, who have not forgotten their high vocation of teachers; and the two
greatest of the Greek dramatists owe their sublimity to their ethical character. The 
noblest truths, sung of in the purest and sweetest language, are still the proper material
of poetry. The poet clothes them with beauty, and has a power of making them enter
into the hearts and memories of men. He has not only to speak of themes above the
level of ordinary life, but to speak of them in a deeper and tenderer way than they are
ordinarily felt, so as to awaken the feeling of them in others. The old he makes young
again; the familiar principle he invests with a new dignity; he finds a noble expression for
the common- places of morality and politics. He uses the things of sense so as to
indicate what is beyond; he raises us through earth to heaven. He expresses what the
better part of us would fain say, and the half-conscious feeling is strengthened by the
expression. He is his own critic, for the spirit of poetry and of criticism are not divided in
him. His mission is not to disguise men from themselves, but to reveal to them their own
nature, and make them better acquainted with the world around them. True poetry is
the remembrance of youth, of love, the embodiment in words of the happiest and
holiest moments of life, of the noblest thoughts of man, of the greatest deeds of the
past. The poet of the future may return to his greater calling of the prophet or teacher;
indeed, we hardly know what may not be effected for the human race by a better use of
the poetical and imaginative faculty. The reconciliation of poetry, as of religion, with
truth, may still be possible. Neither is the element of pleasure to be excluded. For when
we substitute a higher pleasure for a lower we raise men in the scale of existence. Might
not the novelist, too, make an ideal, or rather many ideals of social life, better than a
thousand sermons? Plato, like the Puritans, is too much afraid of poetic and artistic
influences. But he is not without a true sense of the noble purposes to which art may be
applied (Republic).
Modern poetry is often a sort of plaything, or, in Plato’s language, a flattery, a sophistry,
or sham, in which, without any serious purpose, the poet lends wings to his fancy and
exhibits his gifts of language and metre. Such an one seeks to gratify the taste of his
readers; he has the ‘savoir faire,’ or trick of writing, but he has not the higher spirit of
poetry. He has no conception that true art should bring order out of disorder; that it 
should make provision for the soul’s highest interest; that it should be pursued only with
a view to ‘the improvement of the citizens.’ He ministers to the weaker side of human
nature (Republic); he idealizes the sensual; he sings the strain of love in the latest
fashion; instead of raising men above themselves he brings them back to the ‘tyranny of
the many masters,’ from which all his life long a good man has been praying to be
delivered. And often, forgetful of measure and order, he will express not that which is
truest, but that which is strongest. Instead of a great and nobly-executed subject,
perfect in every part, some fancy of a heated brain is worked out with the strangest
incongruity. He is not the master of his words, but his words—perhaps borrowed from
another—the faded reflection of some French or German or Italian writer, have the
better of him. Though we are not going to banish the poets, how can we suppose that
such utterances have any healing or life-giving influence on the minds of men?
‘Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:’ Art then must be true, and politics must
be true, and the life of man must be true and not a seeming or sham. In all of them
order has to be brought out of disorder, truth out of error and falsehood. This is what
we mean by the greatest improvement of man. And so, having considered in what way
‘we can best spend the appointed time, we leave the result with God.’ Plato does not say
that God will order all things for the best (compare Phaedo), but he indirectly implies
that the evils of this life will be corrected in another. And as we are very far from the
best imaginable world at present, Plato here, as in the Phaedo and Republic, supposes a
purgatory or place of education for mankind in general, and for a very few a Tartarus or
hell. The myth which terminates the dialogue is not the revelation, but rather, like all
similar descriptions, whether in the Bible or Plato, the veil of another life. For no visible
thing can reveal the invisible. Of this Plato, unlike some commentators on Scripture, is
fully aware. Neither will he dogmatize about the manner in which we are ‘born again’
(Republic). Only he is prepared to maintain the ultimate triumph of truth and right, and
declares that no one, not even the wisest of the Greeks, can affirm any other doctrine
without being ridiculous. 
There is a further paradox of ethics, in which pleasure and pain are held to be
indifferent, and virtue at the time of action and without regard to consequences is
happiness. From this elevation or exaggeration of feeling Plato seems to shrink: he
leaves it to the Stoics in a later generation to maintain that when impaled or on the rack
the philosopher may be happy (compare Republic). It is observable that in the Republic
he raises this question, but it is not really discussed; the veil of the ideal state, the
shadow of another life, are allowed to descend upon it and it passes out of sight. The
martyr or sufferer in the cause of right or truth is often supposed to die in raptures,
having his eye fixed on a city which is in heaven. But if there were no future, might he
not still be happy in the performance of an action which was attended only by a painful
death? He himself may be ready to thank God that he was thought worthy to do Him
the least service, without looking for a reward; the joys of another life may not have
been present to his mind at all. Do we suppose that the mediaeval saint, St. Bernard, St.
Francis, St. Catharine of Sienna, or the Catholic priest who lately devoted himself to
death by a lingering disease that he might solace and help others, was thinking of the
‘sweets’ of heaven? No; the work was already heaven to him and enough. Much less will
the dying patriot be dreaming of the praises of man or of an immortality of fame: the
sense of duty, of right, and trust in God will be sufficient, and as far as the mind can
reach, in that hour. If he were certain that there were no life to come, he would not have
wished to speak or act otherwise than he did in the cause of truth or of humanity.
Neither, on the other hand, will he suppose that God has forsaken him or that the future
is to be a mere blank to him. The greatest act of faith, the only faith which cannot pass
away, is his who has not known, but yet has believed. A very few among the sons of men
have made themselves independent of circumstances, past, present, or to come. He who
has attained to such a temper of mind has already present with him eternal life; he
needs no arguments to convince him of immortality; he has in him already a principle
stronger than death. He who serves man without the thought of reward is deemed to be
a more faithful servant than he who works for hire. May not the service of God, which is
the more disinterested, be in like manner the higher? And although only a very few in 
the course of the world’s history —Christ himself being one of them—have attained to
such a noble conception of God and of the human soul, yet the ideal of them may be
present to us, and the remembrance of them be an example to us, and their lives may
shed a light on many dark places both of philosophy and theology.
THE MYTHS OF PLATO.
The myths of Plato are a phenomenon unique in literature. There are four longer ones:
these occur in the Phaedrus, Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic. That in the Republic is the
most elaborate and finished of them. Three of these greater myths, namely those
contained in the Phaedo, the Gorgias and the Republic, relate to the destiny of human
souls in a future life. The magnificent myth in the Phaedrus treats of the immortality, or
rather the eternity of the soul, in which is included a former as well as a future state of
existence. To these may be added, (1) the myth, or rather fable, occurring in the
Statesman, in which the life of innocence is contrasted with the ordinary life of man and
the consciousness of evil: (2) the legend of the Island of Atlantis, an imaginary history,
which is a fragment only, commenced in the Timaeus and continued in the Critias: (3)
the much less artistic fiction of the foundation of the Cretan colony which is introduced
in the preface to the Laws, but soon falls into the background: (4) the beautiful but
rather artificial tale of Prometheus and Epimetheus narrated in his rhetorical manner by
Protagoras in the dialogue called after him: (5) the speech at the beginning of the
Phaedrus, which is a parody of the orator Lysias; the rival speech of Socrates and the
recantation of it. To these may be added (6) the tale of the grasshoppers, and (7) the
tale of Thamus and of Theuth, both in the Phaedrus: (8) the parable of the Cave
(Republic), in which the previous argument is recapitulated, and the nature and degrees
of knowledge having been previously set forth in the abstract are represented in a
picture: (9) the fiction of the earth-born men (Republic; compare Laws), in which by the
adaptation of an old tradition Plato makes a new beginning for his society: (10) the myth
of Aristophanes respecting the division of the sexes, Sym.: (11) the parable of the noble
captain, the pilot, and the mutinous sailors (Republic), in which is represented the 
relation of the better part of the world, and of the philosopher, to the mob of politicians:
(12) the ironical tale of the pilot who plies between Athens and Aegina charging only a
small payment for saving men from death, the reason being that he is uncertain whether
to live or die is better for them (Gor.): (13) the treatment of freemen and citizens by
physicians and of slaves by their apprentices,—a somewhat laboured figure of speech
intended to illustrate the two different ways in which the laws speak to men (Laws).
There also occur in Plato continuous images; some of them extend over several pages,
appearing and reappearing at intervals: such as the bees stinging and stingless (paupers
and thieves) in the Eighth Book of the Republic, who are generated in the transition
from timocracy to oligarchy: the sun, which is to the visible world what the idea of good
is to the intellectual, in the Sixth Book of the Republic: the composite animal, having the
form of a man, but containing under a human skin a lion and a many-headed monster
(Republic): the great beast, i.e. the populace: and the wild beast within us, meaning the
passions which are always liable to break out: the animated comparisons of the
degradation of philosophy by the arts to the dishonoured maiden, and of the tyrant to
the parricide, who ‘beats his father, having first taken away his arms’: the dog, who is
your only philosopher: the grotesque and rather paltry image of the argument
wandering about without a head (Laws), which is repeated, not improved, from the
Gorgias: the argument personified as veiling her face (Republic), as engaged in a chase,
as breaking upon us in a first, second and third wave:—on these figures of speech the
changes are rung many times over. It is observable that nearly all these parables or
continuous images are found in the Republic; that which occurs in the Theaetetus, of the
midwifery of Socrates, is perhaps the only exception. To make the list complete, the
mathematical figure of the number of the state (Republic), or the numerical interval
which separates king from tyrant, should not be forgotten.
The myth in the Gorgias is one of those descriptions of another life which, like the Sixth
Aeneid of Virgil, appear to contain reminiscences of the mysteries. It is a vision of the
rewards and punishments which await good and bad men after death. It supposes the 
body to continue and to be in another world what it has become in this. It includes a
Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, like the sister myths of the Phaedo and the Republic.
The Inferno is reserved for great criminals only. The argument of the dialogue is
frequently referred to, and the meaning breaks through so as rather to destroy the
liveliness and consistency of the picture. The structure of the fiction is very slight, the
chief point or moral being that in the judgments of another world there is no possibility
of concealment: Zeus has taken from men the power of foreseeing death, and brings
together the souls both of them and their judges naked and undisguised at the
judgment-seat. Both are exposed to view, stripped of the veils and clothes which might
prevent them from seeing into or being seen by one another.
The myth of the Phaedo is of the same type, but it is more cosmological, and also more
poetical. The beautiful and ingenious fancy occurs to Plato that the upper atmosphere is
an earth and heaven in one, a glorified earth, fairer and purer than that in which we
dwell. As the fishes live in the ocean, mankind are living in a lower sphere, out of which
they put their heads for a moment or two and behold a world beyond. The earth which
we inhabit is a sediment of the coarser particles which drop from the world above, and
is to that heavenly earth what the desert and the shores of the ocean are to us. A part of
the myth consists of description of the interior of the earth, which gives the opportunity
of introducing several mythological names and of providing places of torment for the
wicked. There is no clear distinction of soul and body; the spirits beneath the earth are
spoken of as souls only, yet they retain a sort of shadowy form when they cry for mercy
on the shores of the lake; and the philosopher alone is said to have got rid of the body.
All the three myths in Plato which relate to the world below have a place for repentant
sinners, as well as other homes or places for the very good and very bad. It is a natural
reflection which is made by Plato elsewhere, that the two extremes of human character
are rarely met with, and that the generality of mankind are between them. Hence a place
must be found for them. In the myth of the Phaedo they are carried down the river
Acheron to the Acherusian lake, where they dwell, and are purified of their evil deeds, 
and receive the rewards of their good. There are also incurable sinners, who are cast into
Tartarus, there to remain as the penalty of atrocious crimes; these suffer everlastingly.
And there is another class of hardly-curable sinners who are allowed from time to time
to approach the shores of the Acherusian lake, where they cry to their victims for mercy;
which if they obtain they come out into the lake and cease from their torments.
Neither this, nor any of the three greater myths of Plato, nor perhaps any allegory or
parable relating to the unseen world, is consistent with itself. The language of
philosophy mingles with that of mythology; abstract ideas are transformed into persons,
figures of speech into realities. These myths may be compared with the Pilgrim’s
Progress of Bunyan, in which discussions of theology are mixed up with the incidents of
travel, and mythological personages are associated with human beings: they are also
garnished with names and phrases taken out of Homer, and with other fragments of
Greek tradition.
The myth of the Republic is more subtle and also more consistent than either of the two
others. It has a greater verisimilitude than they have, and is full of touches which recall
the experiences of human life. It will be noticed by an attentive reader that the twelve
days during which Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide with the time passed by
the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious observation, not often made, that good men
who have lived in a well-governed city (shall we say in a religious and respectable
society?) are more likely to make mistakes in their choice of life than those who have
had more experience of the world and of evil. It is a more familiar remark that we
constantly blame others when we have only ourselves to blame; and the philosopher
must acknowledge, however reluctantly, that there is an element of chance in human life
with which it is sometimes impossible for man to cope. That men drink more of the
waters of forgetfulness than is good for them is a poetical description of a familiar truth.
We have many of us known men who, like Odysseus, have wearied of ambition and have
only desired rest. We should like to know what became of the infants ‘dying almost as
soon as they were born,’ but Plato only raises, without satisfying, our curiosity. The two 
companies of souls, ascending and descending at either chasm of heaven and earth, and
conversing when they come out into the meadow, the majestic figures of the judges
sitting in heaven, the voice heard by Ardiaeus, are features of the great allegory which
have an indescribable grandeur and power. The remark already made respecting the
inconsistency of the two other myths must be extended also to this: it is at once an
orrery, or model of the heavens, and a picture of the Day of Judgment.
The three myths are unlike anything else in Plato. There is an Oriental, or rather an
Egyptian element in them, and they have an affinity to the mysteries and to the Orphic
modes of worship. To a certain extent they are un-Greek; at any rate there is hardly
anything like them in other Greek writings which have a serious purpose; in spirit they
are mediaeval. They are akin to what may be termed the underground religion in all
ages and countries. They are presented in the most lively and graphic manner, but they
are never insisted on as true; it is only affirmed that nothing better can be said about a
future life. Plato seems to make use of them when he has reached the limits of human
knowledge; or, to borrow an expression of his own, when he is standing on the outside
of the intellectual world. They are very simple in style; a few touches bring the picture
home to the mind, and make it present to us. They have also a kind of authority gained
by the employment of sacred and familiar names, just as mere fragments of the words
of Scripture, put together in any form and applied to any subject, have a power of their
own. They are a substitute for poetry and mythology; and they are also a reform of
mythology. The moral of them may be summed up in a word or two: After death the
Judgment; and ‘there is some better thing remaining for the good than for the evil.’
All literature gathers into itself many elements of the past: for example, the tale of the
earth-born men in the Republic appears at first sight to be an extravagant fancy, but it is
restored to propriety when we remember that it is based on a legendary belief. The art
of making stories of ghosts and apparitions credible is said to consist in the manner of
telling them. The effect is gained by many literary and conversational devices, such as
the previous raising of curiosity, the mention of little circumstances, simplicity, 
picturesqueness, the naturalness of the occasion, and the like. This art is possessed by
Plato in a degree which has never been equalled.
The myth in the Phaedrus is even greater than the myths which have been already
described, but is of a different character. It treats of a former rather than of a future life.
It represents the conflict of reason aided by passion or righteous indignation on the one
hand, and of the animal lusts and instincts on the other. The soul of man has followed
the company of some god, and seen truth in the form of the universal before it was
born in this world. Our present life is the result of the struggle which was then carried
on. This world is relative to a former world, as it is often projected into a future. We ask
the question, Where were men before birth? As we likewise enquire, What will become
of them after death? The first question is unfamiliar to us, and therefore seems to be
unnatural; but if we survey the whole human race, it has been as influential and as
widely spread as the other. In the Phaedrus it is really a figure of speech in which the
‘spiritual combat’ of this life is represented. The majesty and power of the whole
passage—especially of what may be called the theme or proem (beginning ‘The mind
through all her being is immortal’)—can only be rendered very inadequately in another
language.
The myth in the Statesman relates to a former cycle of existence, in which men were
born of the earth, and by the reversal of the earth’s motion had their lives reversed and
were restored to youth and beauty: the dead came to life, the old grew middle-aged,
and the middle-aged young; the youth became a child, the child an infant, the infant
vanished into the earth. The connection between the reversal of the earth’s motion and
the reversal of human life is of course verbal only, yet Plato, like theologians in other
ages, argues from the consistency of the tale to its truth. The new order of the world
was immediately under the government of God; it was a state of innocence in which
men had neither wants nor cares, in which the earth brought forth all things
spontaneously, and God was to man what man now is to the animals. There were no
great estates, or families, or private possessions, nor any traditions of the past, because 
men were all born out of the earth. This is what Plato calls the ‘reign of Cronos;’ and in
like manner he connects the reversal of the earth’s motion with some legend of which
he himself was probably the inventor.
The question is then asked, under which of these two cycles of existence was man the
happier,—under that of Cronos, which was a state of innocence, or that of Zeus, which is
our ordinary life? For a while Plato balances the two sides of the serious controversy,
which he has suggested in a figure. The answer depends on another question: What use
did the children of Cronos make of their time? They had boundless leisure and the
faculty of discoursing, not only with one another, but with the animals. Did they employ
these advantages with a view to philosophy, gathering from every nature some addition
to their store of knowledge? or, Did they pass their time in eating and drinking and
telling stories to one another and to the beasts?—in either case there would be no
difficulty in answering. But then, as Plato rather mischievously adds, ‘Nobody knows
what they did,’ and therefore the doubt must remain undetermined.
To the first there succeeds a second epoch. After another natural convulsion, in which
the order of the world and of human life is once more reversed, God withdraws his
guiding hand, and man is left to the government of himself. The world begins again, and
arts and laws are slowly and painfully invented. A secular age succeeds to a theocratical.
In this fanciful tale Plato has dropped, or almost dropped, the garb of mythology. He
suggests several curious and important thoughts, such as the possibility of a state of
innocence, the existence of a world without traditions, and the difference between
human and divine government. He has also carried a step further his speculations
concerning the abolition of the family and of property, which he supposes to have no
place among the children of Cronos any more than in the ideal state.
It is characteristic of Plato and of his age to pass from the abstract to the concrete, from
poetry to reality. Language is the expression of the seen, and also of the unseen, and
moves in a region between them. A great writer knows how to strike both these chords, 
sometimes remaining within the sphere of the visible, and then again comprehending a
wider range and soaring to the abstract and universal. Even in the same sentence he
may employ both modes of speech not improperly or inharmoniously. It is useless to
criticise the broken metaphors of Plato, if the effect of the whole is to create a picture
not such as can be painted on canvas, but which is full of life and meaning to the reader.
A poem may be contained in a word or two, which may call up not one but many latent
images; or half reveal to us by a sudden flash the thoughts of many hearts. Often the
rapid transition from one image to another is pleasing to us: on the other hand, any
single figure of speech if too often repeated, or worked out too much at length,
becomes prosy and monotonous. In theology and philosophy we necessarily include
both ‘the moral law within and the starry heaven above,’ and pass from one to the other
(compare for examples Psalms xviii. and xix.). Whether such a use of language is puerile
or noble depends upon the genius of the writer or speaker, and the familiarity of the
associations employed.
In the myths and parables of Plato the ease and grace of conversation is not forgotten:
they are spoken, not written words, stories which are told to a living audience, and so
well told that we are more than half-inclined to believe them (compare Phaedrus). As in
conversation too, the striking image or figure of speech is not forgotten, but is quickly
caught up, and alluded to again and again; as it would still be in our own day in a genial
and sympathetic society. The descriptions of Plato have a greater life and reality than is
to be found in any modern writing. This is due to their homeliness and simplicity. Plato
can do with words just as he pleases; to him they are indeed ‘more plastic than wax’
(Republic). We are in the habit of opposing speech and writing, poetry and prose. But he
has discovered a use of language in which they are united; which gives a fitting
expression to the highest truths; and in which the trifles of courtesy and the familiarities
of daily life are not overlooked. 
GORGIAS
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Callicles, Socrates, Chaerephon, Gorgias, Polus.
SCENE: The house of Callicles.
CALLICLES: The wise man, as the proverb says, is late for a fray, but not for a feast.
SOCRATES: And are we late for a feast?
CALLICLES: Yes, and a delightful feast; for Gorgias has just been exhibiting to us many
fine things.
SOCRATES: It is not my fault, Callicles; our friend Chaerephon is to blame; for he would
keep us loitering in the Agora.
CHAEREPHON: Never mind, Socrates; the misfortune of which I have been the cause I
will also repair; for Gorgias is a friend of mine, and I will make him give the exhibition
again either now, or, if you prefer, at some other time.
CALLICLES: What is the matter, Chaerephon—does Socrates want to hear Gorgias?
CHAEREPHON: Yes, that was our intention in coming.
CALLICLES: Come into my house, then; for Gorgias is staying with me, and he shall
exhibit to you.
SOCRATES: Very good, Callicles; but will he answer our questions? for I want to hear
from him what is the nature of his art, and what it is which he professes and teaches; he
may, as you (Chaerephon) suggest, defer the exhibition to some other time. 
CALLICLES: There is nothing like asking him, Socrates; and indeed to answer questions is
a part of his exhibition, for he was saying only just now, that any one in my house might
put any question to him, and that he would answer.
SOCRATES: How fortunate! will you ask him, Chaerephon—?
CHAEREPHON: What shall I ask him?
SOCRATES: Ask him who he is.
CHAEREPHON: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: I mean such a question as would elicit from him, if he had been a maker of
shoes, the answer that he is a cobbler. Do you understand?
CHAEREPHON: I understand, and will ask him: Tell me, Gorgias, is our friend Callicles
right in saying that you undertake to answer any questions which you are asked?
GORGIAS: Quite right, Chaerephon: I was saying as much only just now; and I may add,
that many years have elapsed since any one has asked me a new one.
CHAEREPHON: Then you must be very ready, Gorgias.
GORGIAS: Of that, Chaerephon, you can make trial.
POLUS: Yes, indeed, and if you like, Chaerephon, you may make trial of me too, for I
think that Gorgias, who has been talking a long time, is tired.
CHAEREPHON: And do you, Polus, think that you can answer better than Gorgias?
POLUS: What does that matter if I answer well enough for you?
CHAEREPHON: Not at all:—and you shall answer if you like. 
POLUS: Ask:—
CHAEREPHON: My question is this: If Gorgias had the skill of his brother Herodicus,
what ought we to call him? Ought he not to have the name which is given to his
brother?
POLUS: Certainly.
CHAEREPHON: Then we should be right in calling him a physician?
POLUS: Yes.
CHAEREPHON: And if he had the skill of Aristophon the son of Aglaophon, or of his
brother Polygnotus, what ought we to call him?
POLUS: Clearly, a painter.
CHAEREPHON: But now what shall we call him—what is the art in which he is skilled.
POLUS: O Chaerephon, there are many arts among mankind which are experimental,
and have their origin in experience, for experience makes the days of men to proceed
according to art, and inexperience according to chance, and different persons in
different ways are proficient in different arts, and the best persons in the best arts. And
our friend Gorgias is one of the best, and the art in which he is a proficient is the
noblest.
SOCRATES: Polus has been taught how to make a capital speech, Gorgias; but he is not
fulfilling the promise which he made to Chaerephon.
GORGIAS: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I mean that he has not exactly answered the question which he was asked. 
GORGIAS: Then why not ask him yourself?
SOCRATES: But I would much rather ask you, if you are disposed to answer: for I see,
from the few words which Polus has uttered, that he has attended more to the art which
is called rhetoric than to dialectic.
POLUS: What makes you say so, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Because, Polus, when Chaerephon asked you what was the art which Gorgias
knows, you praised it as if you were answering some one who found fault with it, but
you never said what the art was.
POLUS: Why, did I not say that it was the noblest of arts?
SOCRATES: Yes, indeed, but that was no answer to the question: nobody asked what
was the quality, but what was the nature, of the art, and by what name we were to
describe Gorgias. And I would still beg you briefly and clearly, as you answered
Chaerephon when he asked you at first, to say what this art is, and what we ought to call
Gorgias: Or rather, Gorgias, let me turn to you, and ask the same question,—what are we
to call you, and what is the art which you profess?
GORGIAS: Rhetoric, Socrates, is my art.
SOCRATES: Then I am to call you a rhetorician?
GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates, and a good one too, if you would call me that which, in
Homeric language, ‘I boast myself to be.’
SOCRATES: I should wish to do so.
GORGIAS: Then pray do.
SOCRATES: And are we to say that you are able to make other men rhetoricians? 
GORGIAS: Yes, that is exactly what I profess to make them, not only at Athens, but in all
places.
SOCRATES: And will you continue to ask and answer questions, Gorgias, as we are at
present doing, and reserve for another occasion the longer mode of speech which Polus
was attempting? Will you keep your promise, and answer shortly the questions which
are asked of you?
GORGIAS: Some answers, Socrates, are of necessity longer; but I will do my best to make
them as short as possible; for a part of my profession is that I can be as short as any
one.
SOCRATES: That is what is wanted, Gorgias; exhibit the shorter method now, and the
longer one at some other time.
GORGIAS: Well, I will; and you will certainly say, that you never heard a man use fewer
words.
SOCRATES: Very good then; as you profess to be a rhetorician, and a maker of
rhetoricians, let me ask you, with what is rhetoric concerned: I might ask with what is
weaving concerned, and you would reply (would you not?), with the making of
garments?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And music is concerned with the composition of melodies?
GORGIAS: It is.
SOCRATES: By Here, Gorgias, I admire the surpassing brevity of your answers.
GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates, I do think myself good at that. 
SOCRATES: I am glad to hear it; answer me in like manner about rhetoric: with what is
rhetoric concerned?
GORGIAS: With discourse.
SOCRATES: What sort of discourse, Gorgias?—such discourse as would teach the sick
under what treatment they might get well?
GORGIAS: No.
SOCRATES: Then rhetoric does not treat of all kinds of discourse?
GORGIAS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And yet rhetoric makes men able to speak?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And to understand that about which they speak?
GORGIAS: Of course.
SOCRATES: But does not the art of medicine, which we were just now mentioning, also
make men able to understand and speak about the sick?
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then medicine also treats of discourse?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Of discourse concerning diseases?
GORGIAS: Just so. 
SOCRATES: And does not gymnastic also treat of discourse concerning the good or evil
condition of the body?
GORGIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And the same, Gorgias, is true of the other arts:—all of them treat of
discourse concerning the subjects with which they severally have to do.
GORGIAS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: Then why, if you call rhetoric the art which treats of discourse, and all the
other arts treat of discourse, do you not call them arts of rhetoric?
GORGIAS: Because, Socrates, the knowledge of the other arts has only to do with some
sort of external action, as of the hand; but there is no such action of the hand in rhetoric
which works and takes effect only through the medium of discourse. And therefore I am
justified in saying that rhetoric treats of discourse.
SOCRATES: I am not sure whether I entirely understand you, but I dare say I shall soon
know better; please to answer me a question:—you would allow that there are arts?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: As to the arts generally, they are for the most part concerned with doing,
and require little or no speaking; in painting, and statuary, and many other arts, the
work may proceed in silence; and of such arts I suppose you would say that they do not
come within the province of rhetoric.
GORGIAS: You perfectly conceive my meaning, Socrates.
SOCRATES: But there are other arts which work wholly through the medium of
language, and require either no action or very little, as, for example, the arts of
arithmetic, of calculation, of geometry, and of playing draughts; in some of these speech 
is pretty nearly co-extensive with action, but in most of them the verbal element is
greater—they depend wholly on words for their efficacy and power: and I take your
meaning to be that rhetoric is an art of this latter sort?
GORGIAS: Exactly.
SOCRATES: And yet I do not believe that you really mean to call any of these arts
rhetoric; although the precise expression which you used was, that rhetoric is an art
which works and takes effect only through the medium of discourse; and an adversary
who wished to be captious might say, ‘And so, Gorgias, you call arithmetic rhetoric.’ But
I do not think that you really call arithmetic rhetoric any more than geometry would be
so called by you.
GORGIAS: You are quite right, Socrates, in your apprehension of my meaning.
SOCRATES: Well, then, let me now have the rest of my answer:—seeing that rhetoric is
one of those arts which works mainly by the use of words, and there are other arts
which also use words, tell me what is that quality in words with which rhetoric is
concerned:—Suppose that a person asks me about some of the arts which I was
mentioning just now; he might say, ‘Socrates, what is arithmetic?’ and I should reply to
him, as you replied to me, that arithmetic is one of those arts which take effect through
words. And then he would proceed to ask: ‘Words about what?’ and I should reply,
Words about odd and even numbers, and how many there are of each. And if he asked
again: ‘What is the art of calculation?’ I should say, That also is one of the arts which is
concerned wholly with words. And if he further said, ‘Concerned with what?’ I should
say, like the clerks in the assembly, ‘as aforesaid’ of arithmetic, but with a difference, the
difference being that the art of calculation considers not only the quantities of odd and
even numbers, but also their numerical relations to themselves and to one another. And
suppose, again, I were to say that astronomy is only words—he would ask, ‘Words about 
what, Socrates?’ and I should answer, that astronomy tells us about the motions of the
stars and sun and moon, and their relative swiftness.
GORGIAS: You would be quite right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And now let us have from you, Gorgias, the truth about rhetoric: which you
would admit (would you not?) to be one of those arts which act always and fulfil all their
ends through the medium of words?
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Words which do what? I should ask. To what class of things do the words
which rhetoric uses relate?
GORGIAS: To the greatest, Socrates, and the best of human things.
SOCRATES: That again, Gorgias is ambiguous; I am still in the dark: for which are the
greatest and best of human things? I dare say that you have heard men singing at feasts
the old drinking song, in which the singers enumerate the goods of life, first health,
beauty next, thirdly, as the writer of the song says, wealth honestly obtained.
GORGIAS: Yes, I know the song; but what is your drift?
SOCRATES: I mean to say, that the producers of those things which the author of the
song praises, that is to say, the physician, the trainer, the money-maker, will at once
come to you, and first the physician will say: ‘O Socrates, Gorgias is deceiving you, for
my art is concerned with the greatest good of men and not his.’ And when I ask, Who
are you? he will reply, ‘I am a physician.’ What do you mean? I shall say. Do you mean
that your art produces the greatest good? ‘Certainly,’ he will answer, ‘for is not health
the greatest good? What greater good can men have, Socrates?’ And after him the
trainer will come and say, ‘I too, Socrates, shall be greatly surprised if Gorgias can show
more good of his art than I can show of mine.’ To him again I shall say, Who are you, 
honest friend, and what is your business? ‘I am a trainer,’ he will reply, ‘and my business
is to make men beautiful and strong in body.’ When I have done with the trainer, there
arrives the money-maker, and he, as I expect, will utterly despise them all. ‘Consider
Socrates,’ he will say, ‘whether Gorgias or any one else can produce any greater good
than wealth.’ Well, you and I say to him, and are you a creator of wealth? ‘Yes,’ he
replies. And who are you? ‘A money-maker.’ And do you consider wealth to be the
greatest good of man? ‘Of course,’ will be his reply. And we shall rejoin: Yes; but our
friend Gorgias contends that his art produces a greater good than yours. And then he
will be sure to go on and ask, ‘What good? Let Gorgias answer.’ Now I want you,
Gorgias, to imagine that this question is asked of you by them and by me; What is that
which, as you say, is the greatest good of man, and of which you are the creator?
Answer us.
GORGIAS: That good, Socrates, which is truly the greatest, being that which gives to
men freedom in their own persons, and to individuals the power of ruling over others in
their several states.
SOCRATES: And what would you consider this to be?
GORGIAS: What is there greater than the word which persuades the judges in the courts,
or the senators in the council, or the citizens in the assembly, or at any other political
meeting?—if you have the power of uttering this word, you will have the physician your
slave, and the trainer your slave, and the money-maker of whom you talk will be found
to gather treasures, not for himself, but for you who are able to speak and to persuade
the multitude.
SOCRATES: Now I think, Gorgias, that you have very accurately explained what you
conceive to be the art of rhetoric; and you mean to say, if I am not mistaken, that
rhetoric is the artificer of persuasion, having this and no other business, and that this is 
her crown and end. Do you know any other effect of rhetoric over and above that of
producing persuasion?
GORGIAS: No: the definition seems to me very fair, Socrates; for persuasion is the chief
end of rhetoric.
SOCRATES: Then hear me, Gorgias, for I am quite sure that if there ever was a man who
entered on the discussion of a matter from a pure love of knowing the truth, I am such a
one, and I should say the same of you.
GORGIAS: What is coming, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I will tell you: I am very well aware that I do not know what, according to
you, is the exact nature, or what are the topics of that persuasion of which you speak,
and which is given by rhetoric; although I have a suspicion about both the one and the
other. And I am going to ask— what is this power of persuasion which is given by
rhetoric, and about what? But why, if I have a suspicion, do I ask instead of telling you?
Not for your sake, but in order that the argument may proceed in such a manner as is
most likely to set forth the truth. And I would have you observe, that I am right in asking
this further question: If I asked, ‘What sort of a painter is Zeuxis?’ and you said, ‘The
painter of figures,’ should I not be right in asking, ‘What kind of figures, and where do
you find them?’
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And the reason for asking this second question would be, that there are
other painters besides, who paint many other figures?
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: But if there had been no one but Zeuxis who painted them, then you would
have answered very well? 
GORGIAS: Quite so.
SOCRATES: Now I want to know about rhetoric in the same way;—is rhetoric the only art
which brings persuasion, or do other arts have the same effect? I mean to say—Does he
who teaches anything persuade men of that which he teaches or not?
GORGIAS: He persuades, Socrates,—there can be no mistake about that.
SOCRATES: Again, if we take the arts of which we were just now speaking:— do not
arithmetic and the arithmeticians teach us the properties of number?
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And therefore persuade us of them?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then arithmetic as well as rhetoric is an artificer of persuasion?
GORGIAS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And if any one asks us what sort of persuasion, and about what, —we shall
answer, persuasion which teaches the quantity of odd and even; and we shall be able to
show that all the other arts of which we were just now speaking are artificers of
persuasion, and of what sort, and about what.
GORGIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then rhetoric is not the only artificer of persuasion?
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Seeing, then, that not only rhetoric works by persuasion, but that other arts
do the same, as in the case of the painter, a question has arisen which is a very fair one: 
Of what persuasion is rhetoric the artificer, and about what?—is not that a fair way of
putting the question?
GORGIAS: I think so.
SOCRATES: Then, if you approve the question, Gorgias, what is the answer?
GORGIAS: I answer, Socrates, that rhetoric is the art of persuasion in courts of law and
other assemblies, as I was just now saying, and about the just and unjust.
SOCRATES: And that, Gorgias, was what I was suspecting to be your notion; yet I would
not have you wonder if by-and-by I am found repeating a seemingly plain question; for I
ask not in order to confute you, but as I was saying that the argument may proceed
consecutively, and that we may not get the habit of anticipating and suspecting the
meaning of one another’s words; I would have you develope your own views in your
own way, whatever may be your hypothesis.
GORGIAS: I think that you are quite right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then let me raise another question; there is such a thing as ‘having learned’?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And there is also ‘having believed’?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is the ‘having learned’ the same as ‘having believed,’ and are learning
and belief the same things?
GORGIAS: In my judgment, Socrates, they are not the same. 
SOCRATES: And your judgment is right, as you may ascertain in this way:— If a person
were to say to you, ‘Is there, Gorgias, a false belief as well as a true?’—you would reply,
if I am not mistaken, that there is.
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well, but is there a false knowledge as well as a true?
GORGIAS: No.
SOCRATES: No, indeed; and this again proves that knowledge and belief differ.
GORGIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And yet those who have learned as well as those who have believed are
persuaded?
GORGIAS: Just so.
SOCRATES: Shall we then assume two sorts of persuasion,—one which is the source of
belief without knowledge, as the other is of knowledge?
GORGIAS: By all means.
SOCRATES: And which sort of persuasion does rhetoric create in courts of law and other
assemblies about the just and unjust, the sort of persuasion which gives belief without
knowledge, or that which gives knowledge?
GORGIAS: Clearly, Socrates, that which only gives belief.
SOCRATES: Then rhetoric, as would appear, is the artificer of a persuasion which creates
belief about the just and unjust, but gives no instruction about them?
GORGIAS: True. 
SOCRATES: And the rhetorician does not instruct the courts of law or other assemblies
about things just and unjust, but he creates belief about them; for no one can be
supposed to instruct such a vast multitude about such high matters in a short time?
GORGIAS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Come, then, and let us see what we really mean about rhetoric; for I do not
know what my own meaning is as yet. When the assembly meets to elect a physician or
a shipwright or any other craftsman, will the rhetorician be taken into counsel? Surely
not. For at every election he ought to be chosen who is most skilled; and, again, when
walls have to be built or harbours or docks to be constructed, not the rhetorician but the
master workman will advise; or when generals have to be chosen and an order of battle
arranged, or a position taken, then the military will advise and not the rhetoricians: what
do you say, Gorgias? Since you profess to be a rhetorician and a maker of rhetoricians, I
cannot do better than learn the nature of your art from you. And here let me assure you
that I have your interest in view as well as my own. For likely enough some one or other
of the young men present might desire to become your pupil, and in fact I see some,
and a good many too, who have this wish, but they would be too modest to question
you. And therefore when you are interrogated by me, I would have you imagine that you
are interrogated by them. ‘What is the use of coming to you, Gorgias?’ they will say—
‘about what will you teach us to advise the state?—about the just and unjust only, or
about those other things also which Socrates has just mentioned?’ How will you answer
them?
GORGIAS: I like your way of leading us on, Socrates, and I will endeavour to reveal to
you the whole nature of rhetoric. You must have heard, I think, that the docks and the
walls of the Athenians and the plan of the harbour were devised in accordance with the
counsels, partly of Themistocles, and partly of Pericles, and not at the suggestion of the
builders. 
SOCRATES: Such is the tradition, Gorgias, about Themistocles; and I myself heard the
speech of Pericles when he advised us about the middle wall.
GORGIAS: And you will observe, Socrates, that when a decision has to be given in such
matters the rhetoricians are the advisers; they are the men who win their point.
SOCRATES: I had that in my admiring mind, Gorgias, when I asked what is the nature of
rhetoric, which always appears to me, when I look at the matter in this way, to be a
marvel of greatness.
GORGIAS: A marvel, indeed, Socrates, if you only knew how rhetoric comprehends and
holds under her sway all the inferior arts. Let me offer you a striking example of this. On
several occasions I have been with my brother Herodicus or some other physician to see
one of his patients, who would not allow the physician to give him medicine, or apply
the knife or hot iron to him; and I have persuaded him to do for me what he would not
do for the physician just by the use of rhetoric. And I say that if a rhetorician and a
physician were to go to any city, and had there to argue in the Ecclesia or any other
assembly as to which of them should be elected state-physician, the physician would
have no chance; but he who could speak would be chosen if he wished; and in a contest
with a man of any other profession the rhetorician more than any one would have the
power of getting himself chosen, for he can speak more persuasively to the multitude
than any of them, and on any subject. Such is the nature and power of the art of
rhetoric! And yet, Socrates, rhetoric should be used like any other competitive art, not
against everybody,—the rhetorician ought not to abuse his strength any more than a
pugilist or pancratiast or other master of fence;—because he has powers which are more
than a match either for friend or enemy, he ought not therefore to strike, stab, or slay
his friends. Suppose a man to have been trained in the palestra and to be a skilful
boxer,—he in the fulness of his strength goes and strikes his father or mother or one of
his familiars or friends; but that is no reason why the trainers or fencing-masters should
be held in detestation or banished from the city;—surely not. For they taught their art 
for a good purpose, to be used against enemies and evil-doers, in self-defence not in
aggression, and others have perverted their instructions, and turned to a bad use their
own strength and skill. But not on this account are the teachers bad, neither is the art in
fault, or bad in itself; I should rather say that those who make a bad use of the art are to
blame. And the same argument holds good of rhetoric; for the rhetorician can speak
against all men and upon any subject,—in short, he can persuade the multitude better
than any other man of anything which he pleases, but he should not therefore seek to
defraud the physician or any other artist of his reputation merely because he has the
power; he ought to use rhetoric fairly, as he would also use his athletic powers. And if
after having become a rhetorician he makes a bad use of his strength and skill, his
instructor surely ought not on that account to be held in detestation or banished. For he
was intended by his teacher to make a good use of his instructions, but he abuses them.
And therefore he is the person who ought to be held in detestation, banished, and put
to death, and not his instructor.
SOCRATES: You, Gorgias, like myself, have had great experience of disputations, and you
must have observed, I think, that they do not always terminate in mutual edification, or
in the definition by either party of the subjects which they are discussing; but
disagreements are apt to arise —somebody says that another has not spoken truly or
clearly; and then they get into a passion and begin to quarrel, both parties conceiving
that their opponents are arguing from personal feeling only and jealousy of themselves,
not from any interest in the question at issue. And sometimes they will go on abusing
one another until the company at last are quite vexed at themselves for ever listening to
such fellows. Why do I say this? Why, because I cannot help feeling that you are now
saying what is not quite consistent or accordant with what you were saying at first about
rhetoric. And I am afraid to point this out to you, lest you should think that I have some
animosity against you, and that I speak, not for the sake of discovering the truth, but
from jealousy of you. Now if you are one of my sort, I should like to cross-examine you,
but if not I will let you alone. And what is my sort? you will ask. I am one of those who 
are very willing to be refuted if I say anything which is not true, and very willing to refute
any one else who says what is not true, and quite as ready to be refuted as to refute; for
I hold that this is the greater gain of the two, just as the gain is greater of being cured of
a very great evil than of curing another. For I imagine that there is no evil which a man
can endure so great as an erroneous opinion about the matters of which we are
speaking; and if you claim to be one of my sort, let us have the discussion out, but if you
would rather have done, no matter;—let us make an end of it.
GORGIAS: I should say, Socrates, that I am quite the man whom you indicate; but,
perhaps, we ought to consider the audience, for, before you came, I had already given a
long exhibition, and if we proceed the argument may run on to a great length. And
therefore I think that we should consider whether we may not be detaining some part of
the company when they are wanting to do something else.
CHAEREPHON: You hear the audience cheering, Gorgias and Socrates, which shows their
desire to listen to you; and for myself, Heaven forbid that I should have any business on
hand which would take me away from a discussion so interesting and so ably
maintained.
CALLICLES: By the gods, Chaerephon, although I have been present at many discussions,
I doubt whether I was ever so much delighted before, and therefore if you go on
discoursing all day I shall be the better pleased.
SOCRATES: I may truly say, Callicles, that I am willing, if Gorgias is.
GORGIAS: After all this, Socrates, I should be disgraced if I refused, especially as I have
promised to answer all comers; in accordance with the wishes of the company, then, do
you begin. and ask of me any question which you like. 
SOCRATES: Let me tell you then, Gorgias, what surprises me in your words; though I
dare say that you may be right, and I may have misunderstood your meaning. You say
that you can make any man, who will learn of you, a rhetorician?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Do you mean that you will teach him to gain the ears of the multitude on
any subject, and this not by instruction but by persuasion?
GORGIAS: Quite so.
SOCRATES: You were saying, in fact, that the rhetorician will have greater powers of
persuasion than the physician even in a matter of health?
GORGIAS: Yes, with the multitude,—that is.
SOCRATES: You mean to say, with the ignorant; for with those who know he cannot be
supposed to have greater powers of persuasion.
GORGIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: But if he is to have more power of persuasion than the physician, he will
have greater power than he who knows?
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Although he is not a physician:—is he?
GORGIAS: No.
SOCRATES: And he who is not a physician must, obviously, be ignorant of what the
physician knows.
GORGIAS: Clearly. 
SOCRATES: Then, when the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician, the
ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who has knowledge?—is not that
the inference?
GORGIAS: In the case supposed:—yes.
SOCRATES: And the same holds of the relation of rhetoric to all the other arts; the
rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has only to discover some way of
persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know?
GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates, and is not this a great comfort?—not to have learned the other
arts, but the art of rhetoric only, and yet to be in no way inferior to the professors of
them?
SOCRATES: Whether the rhetorician is or not inferior on this account is a question which
we will hereafter examine if the enquiry is likely to be of any service to us; but I would
rather begin by asking, whether he is or is not as ignorant of the just and unjust, base
and honourable, good and evil, as he is of medicine and the other arts; I mean to say,
does he really know anything of what is good and evil, base or honourable, just or
unjust in them; or has he only a way with the ignorant of persuading them that he not
knowing is to be esteemed to know more about these things than some one else who
knows? Or must the pupil know these things and come to you knowing them before he
can acquire the art of rhetoric? If he is ignorant, you who are the teacher of rhetoric will
not teach him—it is not your business; but you will make him seem to the multitude to
know them, when he does not know them; and seem to be a good man, when he is not.
Or will you be unable to teach him rhetoric at all, unless he knows the truth of these
things first? What is to be said about all this? By heavens, Gorgias, I wish that you would
reveal to me the power of rhetoric, as you were saying that you would.
GORGIAS: Well, Socrates, I suppose that if the pupil does chance not to know them, he
will have to learn of me these things as well. 
SOCRATES: Say no more, for there you are right; and so he whom you make a
rhetorician must either know the nature of the just and unjust already, or he must be
taught by you.
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Well, and is not he who has learned carpentering a carpenter?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he who has learned music a musician?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he who has learned medicine is a physician, in like manner? He who has
learned anything whatever is that which his knowledge makes him.
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And in the same way, he who has learned what is just is just?
GORGIAS: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And he who is just may be supposed to do what is just?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And must not the just man always desire to do what is just?
GORGIAS: That is clearly the inference.
SOCRATES: Surely, then, the just man will never consent to do injustice?
GORGIAS: Certainly not. 
SOCRATES: And according to the argument the rhetorician must be a just man?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And will therefore never be willing to do injustice?
GORGIAS: Clearly not.
SOCRATES: But do you remember saying just now that the trainer is not to be accused
or banished if the pugilist makes a wrong use of his pugilistic art; and in like manner, if
the rhetorician makes a bad and unjust use of his rhetoric, that is not to be laid to the
charge of his teacher, who is not to be banished, but the wrong-doer himself who made
a bad use of his rhetoric—he is to be banished—was not that said?
GORGIAS: Yes, it was.
SOCRATES: But now we are affirming that the aforesaid rhetorician will never have done
injustice at all?
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: And at the very outset, Gorgias, it was said that rhetoric treated of discourse,
not (like arithmetic) about odd and even, but about just and unjust? Was not this said?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: I was thinking at the time, when I heard you saying so, that rhetoric, which is
always discoursing about justice, could not possibly be an unjust thing. But when you
added, shortly afterwards, that the rhetorician might make a bad use of rhetoric I noted
with surprise the inconsistency into which you had fallen; and I said, that if you thought,
as I did, that there was a gain in being refuted, there would be an advantage in going on
with the question, but if not, I would leave off. And in the course of our investigations,
as you will see yourself, the rhetorician has been acknowledged to be incapable of 
making an unjust use of rhetoric, or of willingness to do injustice. By the dog, Gorgias,
there will be a great deal of discussion, before we get at the truth of all this.
POLUS: And do even you, Socrates, seriously believe what you are now saying about
rhetoric? What! because Gorgias was ashamed to deny that the rhetorician knew the just
and the honourable and the good, and admitted that to any one who came to him
ignorant of them he could teach them, and then out of this admission there arose a
contradiction—the thing which you dearly love, and to which not he, but you, brought
the argument by your captious questions—(do you seriously believe that there is any
truth in all this?) For will any one ever acknowledge that he does not know, or cannot
teach, the nature of justice? The truth is, that there is great want of manners in bringing
the argument to such a pass.
SOCRATES: Illustrious Polus, the reason why we provide ourselves with friends and
children is, that when we get old and stumble, a younger generation may be at hand to
set us on our legs again in our words and in our actions: and now, if I and Gorgias are
stumbling, here are you who should raise us up; and I for my part engage to retract any
error into which you may think that I have fallen-upon one condition:
POLUS: What condition?
SOCRATES: That you contract, Polus, the prolixity of speech in which you indulged at
first.
POLUS: What! do you mean that I may not use as many words as I please?
SOCRATES: Only to think, my friend, that having come on a visit to Athens, which is the
most free-spoken state in Hellas, you when you got there, and you alone, should be
deprived of the power of speech—that would be hard indeed. But then consider my
case:—shall not I be very hardly used, if, when you are making a long oration, and
refusing to answer what you are asked, I am compelled to stay and listen to you, and 
may not go away? I say rather, if you have a real interest in the argument, or, to repeat
my former expression, have any desire to set it on its legs, take back any statement
which you please; and in your turn ask and answer, like myself and Gorgias—refute and
be refuted: for I suppose that you would claim to know what Gorgias knows—would you
not?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And you, like him, invite any one to ask you about anything which he
pleases, and you will know how to answer him?
POLUS: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And now, which will you do, ask or answer?
POLUS: I will ask; and do you answer me, Socrates, the same question which Gorgias, as
you suppose, is unable to answer: What is rhetoric?
SOCRATES: Do you mean what sort of an art?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: To say the truth, Polus, it is not an art at all, in my opinion.
POLUS: Then what, in your opinion, is rhetoric?
SOCRATES: A thing which, as I was lately reading in a book of yours, you say that you
have made an art.
POLUS: What thing?
SOCRATES: I should say a sort of experience.
POLUS: Does rhetoric seem to you to be an experience? 
SOCRATES: That is my view, but you may be of another mind.
POLUS: An experience in what?
SOCRATES: An experience in producing a sort of delight and gratification.
POLUS: And if able to gratify others, must not rhetoric be a fine thing?
SOCRATES: What are you saying, Polus? Why do you ask me whether rhetoric is a fine
thing or not, when I have not as yet told you what rhetoric is?
POLUS: Did I not hear you say that rhetoric was a sort of experience?
SOCRATES: Will you, who are so desirous to gratify others, afford a slight gratification to
me?
POLUS: I will.
SOCRATES: Will you ask me, what sort of an art is cookery?
POLUS: What sort of an art is cookery?
SOCRATES: Not an art at all, Polus.
POLUS: What then?
SOCRATES: I should say an experience.
POLUS: In what? I wish that you would explain to me.
SOCRATES: An experience in producing a sort of delight and gratification, Polus.
POLUS: Then are cookery and rhetoric the same?
SOCRATES: No, they are only different parts of the same profession. 
POLUS: Of what profession?
SOCRATES: I am afraid that the truth may seem discourteous; and I hesitate to answer,
lest Gorgias should imagine that I am making fun of his own profession. For whether or
no this is that art of rhetoric which Gorgias practises I really cannot tell:—from what he
was just now saying, nothing appeared of what he thought of his art, but the rhetoric
which I mean is a part of a not very creditable whole.
GORGIAS: A part of what, Socrates? Say what you mean, and never mind me.
SOCRATES: In my opinion then, Gorgias, the whole of which rhetoric is a part is not an
art at all, but the habit of a bold and ready wit, which knows how to manage mankind:
this habit I sum up under the word ‘flattery’; and it appears to me to have many other
parts, one of which is cookery, which may seem to be an art, but, as I maintain, is only an
experience or routine and not an art:—another part is rhetoric, and the art of attiring
and sophistry are two others: thus there are four branches, and four different things
answering to them. And Polus may ask, if he likes, for he has not as yet been informed,
what part of flattery is rhetoric: he did not see that I had not yet answered him when he
proceeded to ask a further question: Whether I do not think rhetoric a fine thing? But I
shall not tell him whether rhetoric is a fine thing or not, until I have first answered, ‘What
is rhetoric?’ For that would not be right, Polus; but I shall be happy to answer, if you will
ask me, What part of flattery is rhetoric?
POLUS: I will ask and do you answer? What part of flattery is rhetoric?
SOCRATES: Will you understand my answer? Rhetoric, according to my view, is the ghost
or counterfeit of a part of politics.
POLUS: And noble or ignoble? 
SOCRATES: Ignoble, I should say, if I am compelled to answer, for I call what is bad
ignoble: though I doubt whether you understand what I was saying before.
GORGIAS: Indeed, Socrates, I cannot say that I understand myself.
SOCRATES: I do not wonder, Gorgias; for I have not as yet explained myself, and our
friend Polus, colt by name and colt by nature, is apt to run away. (This is an
untranslatable play on the name ‘Polus,’ which means ‘a colt.’)
GORGIAS: Never mind him, but explain to me what you mean by saying that rhetoric is
the counterfeit of a part of politics.
SOCRATES: I will try, then, to explain my notion of rhetoric, and if I am mistaken, my
friend Polus shall refute me. We may assume the existence of bodies and of souls?
GORGIAS: Of course.
SOCRATES: You would further admit that there is a good condition of either of them?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Which condition may not be really good, but good only in appearance? I
mean to say, that there are many persons who appear to be in good health, and whom
only a physician or trainer will discern at first sight not to be in good health.
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: And this applies not only to the body, but also to the soul: in either there
may be that which gives the appearance of health and not the reality?
GORGIAS: Yes, certainly. 
SOCRATES: And now I will endeavour to explain to you more clearly what I mean: The
soul and body being two, have two arts corresponding to them: there is the art of
politics attending on the soul; and another art attending on the body, of which I know
no single name, but which may be described as having two divisions, one of them
gymnastic, and the other medicine. And in politics there is a legislative part, which
answers to gymnastic, as justice does to medicine; and the two parts run into one
another, justice having to do with the same subject as legislation, and medicine with the
same subject as gymnastic, but with a difference. Now, seeing that there are these four
arts, two attending on the body and two on the soul for their highest good; flattery
knowing, or rather guessing their natures, has distributed herself into four shams or
simulations of them; she puts on the likeness of some one or other of them, and
pretends to be that which she simulates, and having no regard for men’s highest
interests, is ever making pleasure the bait of the unwary, and deceiving them into the
belief that she is of the highest value to them. Cookery simulates the disguise of
medicine, and pretends to know what food is the best for the body; and if the physician
and the cook had to enter into a competition in which children were the judges, or men
who had no more sense than children, as to which of them best understands the
goodness or badness of food, the physician would be starved to death. A flattery I deem
this to be and of an ignoble sort, Polus, for to you I am now addressing myself, because
it aims at pleasure without any thought of the best. An art I do not call it, but only an
experience, because it is unable to explain or to give a reason of the nature of its own
applications. And I do not call any irrational thing an art; but if you dispute my words, I
am prepared to argue in defence of them.
Cookery, then, I maintain to be a flattery which takes the form of medicine; and tiring, in
like manner, is a flattery which takes the form of gymnastic, and is knavish, false,
ignoble, illiberal, working deceitfully by the help of lines, and colours, and enamels, and
garments, and making men affect a spurious beauty to the neglect of the true beauty
which is given by gymnastic. 
I would rather not be tedious, and therefore I will only say, after the manner of the
geometricians (for I think that by this time you will be able to follow)
as tiring : gymnastic :: cookery : medicine;
or rather,
as tiring : gymnastic :: sophistry : legislation;
and
as cookery : medicine :: rhetoric : justice.
And this, I say, is the natural difference between the rhetorician and the sophist, but by
reason of their near connection, they are apt to be jumbled up together; neither do they
know what to make of themselves, nor do other men know what to make of them. For if
the body presided over itself, and were not under the guidance of the soul, and the soul
did not discern and discriminate between cookery and medicine, but the body was
made the judge of them, and the rule of judgment was the bodily delight which was
given by them, then the word of Anaxagoras, that word with which you, friend Polus, are
so well acquainted, would prevail far and wide: ‘Chaos’ would come again, and cookery,
health, and medicine would mingle in an indiscriminate mass. And now I have told you
my notion of rhetoric, which is, in relation to the soul, what cookery is to the body. I may
have been inconsistent in making a long speech, when I would not allow you to
discourse at length. But I think that I may be excused, because you did not understand
me, and could make no use of my answer when I spoke shortly, and therefore I had to
enter into an explanation. And if I show an equal inability to make use of yours, I hope
that you will speak at equal length; but if I am able to understand you, let me have the
benefit of your brevity, as is only fair: And now you may do what you please with my
answer. 
POLUS: What do you mean? do you think that rhetoric is flattery?
SOCRATES: Nay, I said a part of flattery; if at your age, Polus, you cannot remember,
what will you do by-and-by, when you get older?
POLUS: And are the good rhetoricians meanly regarded in states, under the idea that
they are flatterers?
SOCRATES: Is that a question or the beginning of a speech?
POLUS: I am asking a question.
SOCRATES: Then my answer is, that they are not regarded at all.
POLUS: How not regarded? Have they not very great power in states?
SOCRATES: Not if you mean to say that power is a good to the possessor.
POLUS: And that is what I do mean to say.
SOCRATES: Then, if so, I think that they have the least power of all the citizens.
POLUS: What! are they not like tyrants? They kill and despoil and exile any one whom
they please.
SOCRATES: By the dog, Polus, I cannot make out at each deliverance of yours, whether
you are giving an opinion of your own, or asking a question of me.
POLUS: I am asking a question of you.
SOCRATES: Yes, my friend, but you ask two questions at once.
POLUS: How two questions? 
SOCRATES: Why, did you not say just now that the rhetoricians are like tyrants, and that
they kill and despoil or exile any one whom they please?
POLUS: I did.
SOCRATES: Well then, I say to you that here are two questions in one, and I will answer
both of them. And I tell you, Polus, that rhetoricians and tyrants have the least possible
power in states, as I was just now saying; for they do literally nothing which they will, but
only what they think best.
POLUS: And is not that a great power?
SOCRATES: Polus has already said the reverse.
POLUS: Said the reverse! nay, that is what I assert.
SOCRATES: No, by the great—what do you call him?—not you, for you say that power is
a good to him who has the power.
POLUS: I do.
SOCRATES: And would you maintain that if a fool does what he thinks best, this is a
good, and would you call this great power?
POLUS: I should not.
SOCRATES: Then you must prove that the rhetorician is not a fool, and that rhetoric is an
art and not a flattery—and so you will have refuted me; but if you leave me unrefuted,
why, the rhetoricians who do what they think best in states, and the tyrants, will have
nothing upon which to congratulate themselves, if as you say, power be indeed a good,
admitting at the same time that what is done without sense is an evil.
POLUS: Yes; I admit that. 
SOCRATES: How then can the rhetoricians or the tyrants have great power in states,
unless Polus can refute Socrates, and prove to him that they do as they will?
POLUS: This fellow—
SOCRATES: I say that they do not do as they will;—now refute me.
POLUS: Why, have you not already said that they do as they think best?
SOCRATES: And I say so still.
POLUS: Then surely they do as they will?
SOCRATES: I deny it.
POLUS: But they do what they think best?
SOCRATES: Aye.
POLUS: That, Socrates, is monstrous and absurd.
SOCRATES: Good words, good Polus, as I may say in your own peculiar style; but if you
have any questions to ask of me, either prove that I am in error or give the answer
yourself.
POLUS: Very well, I am willing to answer that I may know what you mean.
SOCRATES: Do men appear to you to will that which they do, or to will that further end
for the sake of which they do a thing? when they take medicine, for example, at the
bidding of a physician, do they will the drinking of the medicine which is painful, or the
health for the sake of which they drink?
POLUS: Clearly, the health. 
SOCRATES: And when men go on a voyage or engage in business, they do not will that
which they are doing at the time; for who would desire to take the risk of a voyage or
the trouble of business?—But they will, to have the wealth for the sake of which they go
on a voyage.
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And is not this universally true? If a man does something for the sake of
something else, he wills not that which he does, but that for the sake of which he does
it.
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And are not all things either good or evil, or intermediate and indifferent?
POLUS: To be sure, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Wisdom and health and wealth and the like you would call goods, and their
opposites evils?
POLUS: I should.
SOCRATES: And the things which are neither good nor evil, and which partake
sometimes of the nature of good and at other times of evil, or of neither, are such as
sitting, walking, running, sailing; or, again, wood, stones, and the like:—these are the
things which you call neither good nor evil?
POLUS: Exactly so.
SOCRATES: Are these indifferent things done for the sake of the good, or the good for
the sake of the indifferent?
POLUS: Clearly, the indifferent for the sake of the good. 
SOCRATES: When we walk we walk for the sake of the good, and under the idea that it is
better to walk, and when we stand we stand equally for the sake of the good?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And when we kill a man we kill him or exile him or despoil him of his goods,
because, as we think, it will conduce to our good?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Men who do any of these things do them for the sake of the good?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And did we not admit that in doing something for the sake of something
else, we do not will those things which we do, but that other thing for the sake of which
we do them?
POLUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: Then we do not will simply to kill a man or to exile him or to despoil him of
his goods, but we will to do that which conduces to our good, and if the act is not
conducive to our good we do not will it; for we will, as you say, that which is our good,
but that which is neither good nor evil, or simply evil, we do not will. Why are you silent,
Polus? Am I not right?
POLUS: You are right.
SOCRATES: Hence we may infer, that if any one, whether he be a tyrant or a rhetorician,
kills another or exiles another or deprives him of his property, under the idea that the
act is for his own interests when really not for his own interests, he may be said to do
what seems best to him? 
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: But does he do what he wills if he does what is evil? Why do you not
answer?
POLUS: Well, I suppose not.
SOCRATES: Then if great power is a good as you allow, will such a one have great power
in a state?
POLUS: He will not.
SOCRATES: Then I was right in saying that a man may do what seems good to him in a
state, and not have great power, and not do what he wills?
POLUS: As though you, Socrates, would not like to have the power of doing what
seemed good to you in the state, rather than not; you would not be jealous when you
saw any one killing or despoiling or imprisoning whom he pleased, Oh, no!
SOCRATES: Justly or unjustly, do you mean?
POLUS: In either case is he not equally to be envied?
SOCRATES: Forbear, Polus!
POLUS: Why ‘forbear’?
SOCRATES: Because you ought not to envy wretches who are not to be envied, but only
to pity them.
POLUS: And are those of whom I spoke wretches?
SOCRATES: Yes, certainly they are. 
POLUS: And so you think that he who slays any one whom he pleases, and justly slays
him, is pitiable and wretched?
SOCRATES: No, I do not say that of him: but neither do I think that he is to be envied.
POLUS: Were you not saying just now that he is wretched?
SOCRATES: Yes, my friend, if he killed another unjustly, in which case he is also to be
pitied; and he is not to be envied if he killed him justly.
POLUS: At any rate you will allow that he who is unjustly put to death is wretched, and
to be pitied?
SOCRATES: Not so much, Polus, as he who kills him, and not so much as he who is justly
killed.
POLUS: How can that be, Socrates?
SOCRATES: That may very well be, inasmuch as doing injustice is the greatest of evils.
POLUS: But is it the greatest? Is not suffering injustice a greater evil?
SOCRATES: Certainly not.
POLUS: Then would you rather suffer than do injustice?
SOCRATES: I should not like either, but if I must choose between them, I would rather
suffer than do.
POLUS: Then you would not wish to be a tyrant?
SOCRATES: Not if you mean by tyranny what I mean. 
POLUS: I mean, as I said before, the power of doing whatever seems good to you in a
state, killing, banishing, doing in all things as you like.
SOCRATES: Well then, illustrious friend, when I have said my say, do you reply to me.
Suppose that I go into a crowded Agora, and take a dagger under my arm. Polus, I say
to you, I have just acquired rare power, and become a tyrant; for if I think that any of
these men whom you see ought to be put to death, the man whom I have a mind to kill
is as good as dead; and if I am disposed to break his head or tear his garment, he will
have his head broken or his garment torn in an instant. Such is my great power in this
city. And if you do not believe me, and I show you the dagger, you would probably
reply: Socrates, in that sort of way any one may have great power—he may burn any
house which he pleases, and the docks and triremes of the Athenians, and all their other
vessels, whether public or private— but can you believe that this mere doing as you
think best is great power?
POLUS: Certainly not such doing as this.
SOCRATES: But can you tell me why you disapprove of such a power?
POLUS: I can.
SOCRATES: Why then?
POLUS: Why, because he who did as you say would be certain to be punished.
SOCRATES: And punishment is an evil?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And you would admit once more, my good sir, that great power is a benefit
to a man if his actions turn out to his advantage, and that this is the meaning of great
power; and if not, then his power is an evil and is no power. But let us look at the matter 
in another way:—do we not acknowledge that the things of which we were speaking,
the infliction of death, and exile, and the deprivation of property are sometimes a good
and sometimes not a good?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: About that you and I may be supposed to agree?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Tell me, then, when do you say that they are good and when that they are
evil—what principle do you lay down?
POLUS: I would rather, Socrates, that you should answer as well as ask that question.
SOCRATES: Well, Polus, since you would rather have the answer from me, I say that they
are good when they are just, and evil when they are unjust.
POLUS: You are hard of refutation, Socrates, but might not a child refute that statement?
SOCRATES: Then I shall be very grateful to the child, and equally grateful to you if you
will refute me and deliver me from my foolishness. And I hope that refute me you will,
and not weary of doing good to a friend.
POLUS: Yes, Socrates, and I need not go far or appeal to antiquity; events which
happened only a few days ago are enough to refute you, and to prove that many men
who do wrong are happy.
SOCRATES: What events?
POLUS: You see, I presume, that Archelaus the son of Perdiccas is now the ruler of
Macedonia? 
SOCRATES: At any rate I hear that he is.
POLUS: And do you think that he is happy or miserable?
SOCRATES: I cannot say, Polus, for I have never had any acquaintance with him.
POLUS: And cannot you tell at once, and without having an acquaintance with him,
whether a man is happy?
SOCRATES: Most certainly not.
POLUS: Then clearly, Socrates, you would say that you did not even know whether the
great king was a happy man?
SOCRATES: And I should speak the truth; for I do not know how he stands in the matter
of education and justice.
POLUS: What! and does all happiness consist in this?
SOCRATES: Yes, indeed, Polus, that is my doctrine; the men and women who are gentle
and good are also happy, as I maintain, and the unjust and evil are miserable.
POLUS: Then, according to your doctrine, the said Archelaus is miserable?
SOCRATES: Yes, my friend, if he is wicked.
POLUS: That he is wicked I cannot deny; for he had no title at all to the throne which he
now occupies, he being only the son of a woman who was the slave of Alcetas the
brother of Perdiccas; he himself therefore in strict right was the slave of Alcetas; and if
he had meant to do rightly he would have remained his slave, and then, according to
your doctrine, he would have been happy. But now he is unspeakably miserable, for he
has been guilty of the greatest crimes: in the first place he invited his uncle and master,
Alcetas, to come to him, under the pretence that he would restore to him the throne 
which Perdiccas has usurped, and after entertaining him and his son Alexander, who was
his own cousin, and nearly of an age with him, and making them drunk, he threw them
into a waggon and carried them off by night, and slew them, and got both of them out
of the way; and when he had done all this wickedness he never discovered that he was
the most miserable of all men, and was very far from repenting: shall I tell you how he
showed his remorse? he had a younger brother, a child of seven years old, who was the
legitimate son of Perdiccas, and to him of right the kingdom belonged; Archelaus,
however, had no mind to bring him up as he ought and restore the kingdom to him;
that was not his notion of happiness; but not long afterwards he threw him into a well
and drowned him, and declared to his mother Cleopatra that he had fallen in while
running after a goose, and had been killed. And now as he is the greatest criminal of all
the Macedonians, he may be supposed to be the most miserable and not the happiest
of them, and I dare say that there are many Athenians, and you would be at the head of
them, who would rather be any other Macedonian than Archelaus!
SOCRATES: I praised you at first, Polus, for being a rhetorician rather than a reasoner.
And this, as I suppose, is the sort of argument with which you fancy that a child might
refute me, and by which I stand refuted when I say that the unjust man is not happy.
But, my good friend, where is the refutation? I cannot admit a word which you have
been saying.
POLUS: That is because you will not; for you surely must think as I do.
SOCRATES: Not so, my simple friend, but because you will refute me after the manner
which rhetoricians practise in courts of law. For there the one party think that they refute
the other when they bring forward a number of witnesses of good repute in proof of
their allegations, and their adversary has only a single one or none at all. But this kind of
proof is of no value where truth is the aim; a man may often be sworn down by a
multitude of false witnesses who have a great air of respectability. And in this argument
nearly every one, Athenian and stranger alike, would be on your side, if you should bring 
witnesses in disproof of my statement;—you may, if you will, summon Nicias the son of
Niceratus, and let his brothers, who gave the row of tripods which stand in the precincts
of Dionysus, come with him; or you may summon Aristocrates, the son of Scellius, who is
the giver of that famous offering which is at Delphi; summon, if you will, the whole
house of Pericles, or any other great Athenian family whom you choose;— they will all
agree with you: I only am left alone and cannot agree, for you do not convince me;
although you produce many false witnesses against me, in the hope of depriving me of
my inheritance, which is the truth. But I consider that nothing worth speaking of will
have been effected by me unless I make you the one witness of my words; nor by you,
unless you make me the one witness of yours; no matter about the rest of the world. For
there are two ways of refutation, one which is yours and that of the world in general; but
mine is of another sort—let us compare them, and see in what they differ. For, indeed,
we are at issue about matters which to know is honourable and not to know disgraceful;
to know or not to know happiness and misery—that is the chief of them. And what
knowledge can be nobler? or what ignorance more disgraceful than this? And therefore
I will begin by asking you whether you do not think that a man who is unjust and doing
injustice can be happy, seeing that you think Archelaus unjust, and yet happy? May I
assume this to be your opinion?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: But I say that this is an impossibility—here is one point about which we are
at issue:—very good. And do you mean to say also that if he meets with retribution and
punishment he will still be happy?
POLUS: Certainly not; in that case he will be most miserable.
SOCRATES: On the other hand, if the unjust be not punished, then, according to you, he
will be happy?
POLUS: Yes. 
SOCRATES: But in my opinion, Polus, the unjust or doer of unjust actions is miserable in
any case,—more miserable, however, if he be not punished and does not meet with
retribution, and less miserable if he be punished and meets with retribution at the hands
of gods and men.
POLUS: You are maintaining a strange doctrine, Socrates.
SOCRATES: I shall try to make you agree with me, O my friend, for as a friend I regard
you. Then these are the points at issue between us—are they not? I was saying that to
do is worse than to suffer injustice?
POLUS: Exactly so.
SOCRATES: And you said the opposite?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: I said also that the wicked are miserable, and you refuted me?
POLUS: By Zeus, I did.
SOCRATES: In your own opinion, Polus.
POLUS: Yes, and I rather suspect that I was in the right.
SOCRATES: You further said that the wrong-doer is happy if he be unpunished?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And I affirm that he is most miserable, and that those who are punished are
less miserable—are you going to refute this proposition also?
POLUS: A proposition which is harder of refutation than the other, Socrates. 
SOCRATES: Say rather, Polus, impossible; for who can refute the truth?
POLUS: What do you mean? If a man is detected in an unjust attempt to make himself a
tyrant, and when detected is racked, mutilated, has his eyes burned out, and after
having had all sorts of great injuries inflicted on him, and having seen his wife and
children suffer the like, is at last impaled or tarred and burned alive, will he be happier
than if he escape and become a tyrant, and continue all through life doing what he likes
and holding the reins of government, the envy and admiration both of citizens and
strangers? Is that the paradox which, as you say, cannot be refuted?
SOCRATES: There again, noble Polus, you are raising hobgoblins instead of refuting me;
just now you were calling witnesses against me. But please to refresh my memory a
little; did you say—‘in an unjust attempt to make himself a tyrant’?
POLUS: Yes, I did.
SOCRATES: Then I say that neither of them will be happier than the other, —neither he
who unjustly acquires a tyranny, nor he who suffers in the attempt, for of two miserables
one cannot be the happier, but that he who escapes and becomes a tyrant is the more
miserable of the two. Do you laugh, Polus? Well, this is a new kind of refutation,—when
any one says anything, instead of refuting him to laugh at him.
POLUS: But do you not think, Socrates, that you have been sufficiently refuted, when
you say that which no human being will allow? Ask the company.
SOCRATES: O Polus, I am not a public man, and only last year, when my tribe were
serving as Prytanes, and it became my duty as their president to take the votes, there
was a laugh at me, because I was unable to take them. And as I failed then, you must
not ask me to count the suffrages of the company now; but if, as I was saying, you have
no better argument than numbers, let me have a turn, and do you make trial of the sort
of proof which, as I think, is required; for I shall produce one witness only of the truth of 
my words, and he is the person with whom I am arguing; his suffrage I know how to
take; but with the many I have nothing to do, and do not even address myself to them.
May I ask then whether you will answer in turn and have your words put to the proof?
For I certainly think that I and you and every man do really believe, that to do is a
greater evil than to suffer injustice: and not to be punished than to be punished.
POLUS: And I should say neither I, nor any man: would you yourself, for example, suffer
rather than do injustice?
SOCRATES: Yes, and you, too; I or any man would.
POLUS: Quite the reverse; neither you, nor I, nor any man.
SOCRATES: But will you answer?
POLUS: To be sure, I will; for I am curious to hear what you can have to say.
SOCRATES: Tell me, then, and you will know, and let us suppose that I am beginning at
the beginning: which of the two, Polus, in your opinion, is the worst?—to do injustice or
to suffer?
POLUS: I should say that suffering was worst.
SOCRATES: And which is the greater disgrace?—Answer.
POLUS: To do.
SOCRATES: And the greater disgrace is the greater evil?
POLUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: I understand you to say, if I am not mistaken, that the honourable is not the
same as the good, or the disgraceful as the evil? 
POLUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Let me ask a question of you: When you speak of beautiful things, such as
bodies, colours, figures, sounds, institutions, do you not call them beautiful in reference
to some standard: bodies, for example, are beautiful in proportion as they are useful, or
as the sight of them gives pleasure to the spectators; can you give any other account of
personal beauty?
POLUS: I cannot.
SOCRATES: And you would say of figures or colours generally that they were beautiful,
either by reason of the pleasure which they give, or of their use, or of both?
POLUS: Yes, I should.
SOCRATES: And you would call sounds and music beautiful for the same reason?
POLUS: I should.
SOCRATES: Laws and institutions also have no beauty in them except in so far as they
are useful or pleasant or both?
POLUS: I think not.
SOCRATES: And may not the same be said of the beauty of knowledge?
POLUS: To be sure, Socrates; and I very much approve of your measuring beauty by the
standard of pleasure and utility.
SOCRATES: And deformity or disgrace may be equally measured by the opposite
standard of pain and evil?
POLUS: Certainly. 
SOCRATES: Then when of two beautiful things one exceeds in beauty, the measure of
the excess is to be taken in one or both of these; that is to say, in pleasure or utility or
both?
POLUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And of two deformed things, that which exceeds in deformity or disgrace,
exceeds either in pain or evil—must it not be so?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: But then again, what was the observation which you just now made, about
doing and suffering wrong? Did you not say, that suffering wrong was more evil, and
doing wrong more disgraceful?
POLUS: I did.
SOCRATES: Then, if doing wrong is more disgraceful than suffering, the more disgraceful
must be more painful and must exceed in pain or in evil or both: does not that also
follow?
POLUS: Of course.
SOCRATES: First, then, let us consider whether the doing of injustice exceeds the
suffering in the consequent pain: Do the injurers suffer more than the injured?
POLUS: No, Socrates; certainly not.
SOCRATES: Then they do not exceed in pain?
POLUS: No.
SOCRATES: But if not in pain, then not in both? 
POLUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Then they can only exceed in the other?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: That is to say, in evil?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: Then doing injustice will have an excess of evil, and will therefore be a
greater evil than suffering injustice?
POLUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: But have not you and the world already agreed that to do injustice is more
disgraceful than to suffer?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And that is now discovered to be more evil?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And would you prefer a greater evil or a greater dishonour to a less one?
Answer, Polus, and fear not; for you will come to no harm if you nobly resign yourself
into the healing hand of the argument as to a physician without shrinking, and either
say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to me.
POLUS: I should say ‘No.’
SOCRATES: Would any other man prefer a greater to a less evil?
POLUS: No, not according to this way of putting the case, Socrates. 
SOCRATES: Then I said truly, Polus, that neither you, nor I, nor any man, would rather do
than suffer injustice; for to do injustice is the greater evil of the two.
POLUS: That is the conclusion.
SOCRATES: You see, Polus, when you compare the two kinds of refutations, how unlike
they are. All men, with the exception of myself, are of your way of thinking; but your
single assent and witness are enough for me,—I have no need of any other, I take your
suffrage, and am regardless of the rest. Enough of this, and now let us proceed to the
next question; which is, Whether the greatest of evils to a guilty man is to suffer
punishment, as you supposed, or whether to escape punishment is not a greater evil, as
I supposed. Consider:—You would say that to suffer punishment is another name for
being justly corrected when you do wrong?
POLUS: I should.
SOCRATES: And would you not allow that all just things are honourable in so far as they
are just? Please to reflect, and tell me your opinion.
POLUS: Yes, Socrates, I think that they are.
SOCRATES: Consider again:—Where there is an agent, must there not also be a patient?
POLUS: I should say so.
SOCRATES: And will not the patient suffer that which the agent does, and will not the
suffering have the quality of the action? I mean, for example, that if a man strikes, there
must be something which is stricken?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if the striker strikes violently or quickly, that which is struck will he
struck violently or quickly? 
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And the suffering to him who is stricken is of the same nature as the act of
him who strikes?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if a man burns, there is something which is burned?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And if he burns in excess or so as to cause pain, the thing burned will be
burned in the same way?
POLUS: Truly.
SOCRATES: And if he cuts, the same argument holds—there will be something cut?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if the cutting be great or deep or such as will cause pain, the cut will be
of the same nature?
POLUS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: Then you would agree generally to the universal proposition which I was just
now asserting: that the affection of the patient answers to the affection of the agent?
POLUS: I agree.
SOCRATES: Then, as this is admitted, let me ask whether being punished is suffering or
acting?
POLUS: Suffering, Socrates; there can be no doubt of that. 
SOCRATES: And suffering implies an agent?
POLUS: Certainly, Socrates; and he is the punisher.
SOCRATES: And he who punishes rightly, punishes justly?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And therefore he acts justly?
POLUS: Justly.
SOCRATES: Then he who is punished and suffers retribution, suffers justly?
POLUS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: And that which is just has been admitted to be honourable?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then the punisher does what is honourable, and the punished suffers what
is honourable?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And if what is honourable, then what is good, for the honourable is either
pleasant or useful?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then he who is punished suffers what is good?
POLUS: That is true.
SOCRATES: Then he is benefited? 
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Do I understand you to mean what I mean by the term ‘benefited’? I mean,
that if he be justly punished his soul is improved.
POLUS: Surely.
SOCRATES: Then he who is punished is delivered from the evil of his soul?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is he not then delivered from the greatest evil? Look at the matter in
this way:—In respect of a man’s estate, do you see any greater evil than poverty?
POLUS: There is no greater evil.
SOCRATES: Again, in a man’s bodily frame, you would say that the evil is weakness and
disease and deformity?
POLUS: I should.
SOCRATES: And do you not imagine that the soul likewise has some evil of her own?
POLUS: Of course.
SOCRATES: And this you would call injustice and ignorance and cowardice, and the like?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: So then, in mind, body, and estate, which are three, you have pointed out
three corresponding evils—injustice, disease, poverty?
POLUS: True. 
SOCRATES: And which of the evils is the most disgraceful?—Is not the most disgraceful
of them injustice, and in general the evil of the soul?
POLUS: By far the most.
SOCRATES: And if the most disgraceful, then also the worst?
POLUS: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I mean to say, that is most disgraceful has been already admitted to be most
painful or hurtful, or both.
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And now injustice and all evil in the soul has been admitted by us to be
most disgraceful?
POLUS: It has been admitted.
SOCRATES: And most disgraceful either because most painful and causing excessive
pain, or most hurtful, or both?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And therefore to be unjust and intemperate, and cowardly and ignorant, is
more painful than to be poor and sick?
POLUS: Nay, Socrates; the painfulness does not appear to me to follow from your
premises.
SOCRATES: Then, if, as you would argue, not more painful, the evil of the soul is of all
evils the most disgraceful; and the excess of disgrace must be caused by some
preternatural greatness, or extraordinary hurtfulness of the evil. 
POLUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And that which exceeds most in hurtfulness will be the greatest of evils?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then injustice and intemperance, and in general the depravity of the soul,
are the greatest of evils?
POLUS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: Now, what art is there which delivers us from poverty? Does not the art of
making money?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And what art frees us from disease? Does not the art of medicine?
POLUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And what from vice and injustice? If you are not able to answer at once, ask
yourself whither we go with the sick, and to whom we take them.
POLUS: To the physicians, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And to whom do we go with the unjust and intemperate?
POLUS: To the judges, you mean.
SOCRATES: —Who are to punish them?
POLUS: Yes. 
SOCRATES: And do not those who rightly punish others, punish them in accordance with
a certain rule of justice?
POLUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: Then the art of money-making frees a man from poverty; medicine from
disease; and justice from intemperance and injustice?
POLUS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: Which, then, is the best of these three?
POLUS: Will you enumerate them?
SOCRATES: Money-making, medicine, and justice.
POLUS: Justice, Socrates, far excels the two others.
SOCRATES: And justice, if the best, gives the greatest pleasure or advantage or both?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: But is the being healed a pleasant thing, and are those who are being healed
pleased?
POLUS: I think not.
SOCRATES: A useful thing, then?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Yes, because the patient is delivered from a great evil; and this is the
advantage of enduring the pain—that you get well? 
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And would he be the happier man in his bodily condition, who is healed, or
who never was out of health?
POLUS: Clearly he who was never out of health.
SOCRATES: Yes; for happiness surely does not consist in being delivered from evils, but
in never having had them.
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And suppose the case of two persons who have some evil in their bodies,
and that one of them is healed and delivered from evil, and another is not healed, but
retains the evil—which of them is the most miserable?
POLUS: Clearly he who is not healed.
SOCRATES: And was not punishment said by us to be a deliverance from the greatest of
evils, which is vice?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And justice punishes us, and makes us more just, and is the medicine of our
vice?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: He, then, has the first place in the scale of happiness who has never had vice
in his soul; for this has been shown to be the greatest of evils.
POLUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And he has the second place, who is delivered from vice? 
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: That is to say, he who receives admonition and rebuke and punishment?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then he lives worst, who, having been unjust, has no deliverance from
injustice?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: That is, he lives worst who commits the greatest crimes, and who, being the
most unjust of men, succeeds in escaping rebuke or correction or punishment; and this,
as you say, has been accomplished by Archelaus and other tyrants and rhetoricians and
potentates? (Compare Republic.)
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: May not their way of proceeding, my friend, be compared to the conduct of
a person who is afflicted with the worst of diseases and yet contrives not to pay the
penalty to the physician for his sins against his constitution, and will not be cured,
because, like a child, he is afraid of the pain of being burned or cut:—Is not that a
parallel case?
POLUS: Yes, truly.
SOCRATES: He would seem as if he did not know the nature of health and bodily vigour;
and if we are right, Polus, in our previous conclusions, they are in a like case who strive
to evade justice, which they see to be painful, but are blind to the advantage which
ensues from it, not knowing how far more miserable a companion a diseased soul is
than a diseased body; a soul, I say, which is corrupt and unrighteous and unholy. And
hence they do all that they can to avoid punishment and to avoid being released from 
the greatest of evils; they provide themselves with money and friends, and cultivate to
the utmost their powers of persuasion. But if we, Polus, are right, do you see what
follows, or shall we draw out the consequences in form?
POLUS: If you please.
SOCRATES: Is it not a fact that injustice, and the doing of injustice, is the greatest of
evils?
POLUS: That is quite clear.
SOCRATES: And further, that to suffer punishment is the way to be released from this
evil?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And not to suffer, is to perpetuate the evil?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: To do wrong, then, is second only in the scale of evils; but to do wrong and
not to be punished, is first and greatest of all?
POLUS: That is true.
SOCRATES: Well, and was not this the point in dispute, my friend? You deemed
Archelaus happy, because he was a very great criminal and unpunished: I, on the other
hand, maintained that he or any other who like him has done wrong and has not been
punished, is, and ought to be, the most miserable of all men; and that the doer of
injustice is more miserable than the sufferer; and he who escapes punishment, more
miserable than he who suffers.—Was not that what I said?
POLUS: Yes. 
SOCRATES: And it has been proved to be true?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Well, Polus, but if this is true, where is the great use of rhetoric? If we admit
what has been just now said, every man ought in every way to guard himself against
doing wrong, for he will thereby suffer great evil?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And if he, or any one about whom he cares, does wrong, he ought of his
own accord to go where he will be immediately punished; he will run to the judge, as he
would to the physician, in order that the disease of injustice may not be rendered
chronic and become the incurable cancer of the soul; must we not allow this
consequence, Polus, if our former admissions are to stand:—is any other inference
consistent with them?
POLUS: To that, Socrates, there can be but one answer.
SOCRATES: Then rhetoric is of no use to us, Polus, in helping a man to excuse his own
injustice, that of his parents or friends, or children or country; but may be of use to any
one who holds that instead of excusing he ought to accuse—himself above all, and in
the next degree his family or any of his friends who may be doing wrong; he should
bring to light the iniquity and not conceal it, that so the wrong-doer may suffer and be
made whole; and he should even force himself and others not to shrink, but with closed
eyes like brave men to let the physician operate with knife or searing iron, not regarding
the pain, in the hope of attaining the good and the honourable; let him who has done
things worthy of stripes, allow himself to be scourged, if of bonds, to be bound, if of a
fine, to be fined, if of exile, to be exiled, if of death, to die, himself being the first to
accuse himself and his own relations, and using rhetoric to this end, that his and their
unjust actions may be made manifest, and that they themselves may be delivered from 
injustice, which is the greatest evil. Then, Polus, rhetoric would indeed be useful. Do you
say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to that?
POLUS: To me, Socrates, what you are saying appears very strange, though probably in
agreement with your premises.
SOCRATES: Is not this the conclusion, if the premises are not disproven?
POLUS: Yes; it certainly is.
SOCRATES: And from the opposite point of view, if indeed it be our duty to harm
another, whether an enemy or not—I except the case of self-defence— then I have to be
upon my guard—but if my enemy injures a third person, then in every sort of way, by
word as well as deed, I should try to prevent his being punished, or appearing before
the judge; and if he appears, I should contrive that he should escape, and not suffer
punishment: if he has stolen a sum of money, let him keep what he has stolen and
spend it on him and his, regardless of religion and justice; and if he have done things
worthy of death, let him not die, but rather be immortal in his wickedness; or, if this is
not possible, let him at any rate be allowed to live as long as he can. For such purposes,
Polus, rhetoric may be useful, but is of small if of any use to him who is not intending to
commit injustice; at least, there was no such use discovered by us in the previous
discussion.
CALLICLES: Tell me, Chaerephon, is Socrates in earnest, or is he joking?
CHAEREPHON: I should say, Callicles, that he is in most profound earnest; but you may
well ask him.
CALLICLES: By the gods, and I will. Tell me, Socrates, are you in earnest, or only in jest?
For if you are in earnest, and what you say is true, is not the whole of human life turned 
upside down; and are we not doing, as would appear, in everything the opposite of
what we ought to be doing?
SOCRATES: O Callicles, if there were not some community of feelings among mankind,
however varying in different persons—I mean to say, if every man’s feelings were
peculiar to himself and were not shared by the rest of his species—I do not see how we
could ever communicate our impressions to one another. I make this remark because I
perceive that you and I have a common feeling. For we are lovers both, and both of us
have two loves apiece:—I am the lover of Alcibiades, the son of Cleinias, and of
philosophy; and you of the Athenian Demus, and of Demus the son of Pyrilampes. Now,
I observe that you, with all your cleverness, do not venture to contradict your favourite
in any word or opinion of his; but as he changes you change, backwards and forwards.
When the Athenian Demus denies anything that you are saying in the assembly, you go
over to his opinion; and you do the same with Demus, the fair young son of Pyrilampes.
For you have not the power to resist the words and ideas of your loves; and if a person
were to express surprise at the strangeness of what you say from time to time when
under their influence, you would probably reply to him, if you were honest, that you
cannot help saying what your loves say unless they are prevented; and that you can only
be silent when they are. Now you must understand that my words are an echo too, and
therefore you need not wonder at me; but if you want to silence me, silence philosophy,
who is my love, for she is always telling me what I am now telling you, my friend; neither
is she capricious like my other love, for the son of Cleinias says one thing to-day and
another thing to-morrow, but philosophy is always true. She is the teacher at whose
words you are now wondering, and you have heard her yourself. Her you must refute,
and either show, as I was saying, that to do injustice and to escape punishment is not
the worst of all evils; or, if you leave her word unrefuted, by the dog the god of Egypt, I
declare, O Callicles, that Callicles will never be at one with himself, but that his whole life
will be a discord. And yet, my friend, I would rather that my lyre should be
inharmonious, and that there should be no music in the chorus which I provided; aye, or 
that the whole world should be at odds with me, and oppose me, rather than that I
myself should be at odds with myself, and contradict myself.
CALLICLES: O Socrates, you are a regular declaimer, and seem to be running riot in the
argument. And now you are declaiming in this way because Polus has fallen into the
same error himself of which he accused Gorgias:—for he said that when Gorgias was
asked by you, whether, if some one came to him who wanted to learn rhetoric, and did
not know justice, he would teach him justice, Gorgias in his modesty replied that he
would, because he thought that mankind in general would be displeased if he answered
‘No’; and then in consequence of this admission, Gorgias was compelled to contradict
himself, that being just the sort of thing in which you delight. Whereupon Polus laughed
at you deservedly, as I think; but now he has himself fallen into the same trap. I cannot
say very much for his wit when he conceded to you that to do is more dishonourable
than to suffer injustice, for this was the admission which led to his being entangled by
you; and because he was too modest to say what he thought, he had his mouth
stopped. For the truth is, Socrates, that you, who pretend to be engaged in the pursuit
of truth, are appealing now to the popular and vulgar notions of right, which are not
natural, but only conventional. Convention and nature are generally at variance with one
another: and hence, if a person is too modest to say what he thinks, he is compelled to
contradict himself; and you, in your ingenuity perceiving the advantage to be thereby
gained, slyly ask of him who is arguing conventionally a question which is to be
determined by the rule of nature; and if he is talking of the rule of nature, you slip away
to custom: as, for instance, you did in this very discussion about doing and suffering
injustice. When Polus was speaking of the conventionally dishonourable, you assailed
him from the point of view of nature; for by the rule of nature, to suffer injustice is the
greater disgrace because the greater evil; but conventionally, to do evil is the more
disgraceful. For the suffering of injustice is not the part of a man, but of a slave, who
indeed had better die than live; since when he is wronged and trampled upon, he is
unable to help himself, or any other about whom he cares. The reason, as I conceive, is 
that the makers of laws are the majority who are weak; and they make laws and
distribute praises and censures with a view to themselves and to their own interests; and
they terrify the stronger sort of men, and those who are able to get the better of them,
in order that they may not get the better of them; and they say, that dishonesty is
shameful and unjust; meaning, by the word injustice, the desire of a man to have more
than his neighbours; for knowing their own inferiority, I suspect that they are too glad of
equality. And therefore the endeavour to have more than the many, is conventionally
said to be shameful and unjust, and is called injustice (compare Republic), whereas
nature herself intimates that it is just for the better to have more than the worse, the
more powerful than the weaker; and in many ways she shows, among men as well as
among animals, and indeed among whole cities and races, that justice consists in the
superior ruling over and having more than the inferior. For on what principle of justice
did Xerxes invade Hellas, or his father the Scythians? (not to speak of numberless other
examples). Nay, but these are the men who act according to nature; yes, by Heaven, and
according to the law of nature: not, perhaps, according to that artificial law, which we
invent and impose upon our fellows, of whom we take the best and strongest from their
youth upwards, and tame them like young lions,— charming them with the sound of the
voice, and saying to them, that with equality they must be content, and that the equal is
the honourable and the just. But if there were a man who had sufficient force, he would
shake off and break through, and escape from all this; he would trample under foot all
our formulas and spells and charms, and all our laws which are against nature: the slave
would rise in rebellion and be lord over us, and the light of natural justice would shine
forth. And this I take to be the sentiment of Pindar, when he says in his poem, that
‘Law is the king of all, of mortals as well as of immortals;’
this, as he says,
‘Makes might to be right, doing violence with highest hand; as I infer from the deeds of
Heracles, for without buying them—’ (Fragm. Incert. 151 (Bockh).) 
—I do not remember the exact words, but the meaning is, that without buying them,
and without their being given to him, he carried off the oxen of Geryon, according to
the law of natural right, and that the oxen and other possessions of the weaker and
inferior properly belong to the stronger and superior. And this is true, as you may
ascertain, if you will leave philosophy and go on to higher things: for philosophy,
Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment,
but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life. Even if a man has good parts, still, if
he carries philosophy into later life, he is necessarily ignorant of all those things which a
gentleman and a person of honour ought to know; he is inexperienced in the laws of the
State, and in the language which ought to be used in the dealings of man with man,
whether private or public, and utterly ignorant of the pleasures and desires of mankind
and of human character in general. And people of this sort, when they betake
themselves to politics or business, are as ridiculous as I imagine the politicians to be,
when they make their appearance in the arena of philosophy. For, as Euripides says,
‘Every man shines in that and pursues that, and devotes the greatest portion of the day
to that in which he most excels,’ (Antiope, fragm. 20 (Dindorf).)
but anything in which he is inferior, he avoids and depreciates, and praises the opposite
from partiality to himself, and because he thinks that he will thus praise himself. The true
principle is to unite them. Philosophy, as a part of education, is an excellent thing, and
there is no disgrace to a man while he is young in pursuing such a study; but when he is
more advanced in years, the thing becomes ridiculous, and I feel towards philosophers
as I do towards those who lisp and imitate children. For I love to see a little child, who is
not of an age to speak plainly, lisping at his play; there is an appearance of grace and
freedom in his utterance, which is natural to his childish years. But when I hear some
small creature carefully articulating its words, I am offended; the sound is disagreeable,
and has to my ears the twang of slavery. So when I hear a man lisping, or see him
playing like a child, his behaviour appears to me ridiculous and unmanly and worthy of
stripes. And I have the same feeling about students of philosophy; when I see a youth 
thus engaged,—the study appears to me to be in character, and becoming a man of
liberal education, and him who neglects philosophy I regard as an inferior man, who will
never aspire to anything great or noble. But if I see him continuing the study in later life,
and not leaving off, I should like to beat him, Socrates; for, as I was saying, such a one,
even though he have good natural parts, becomes effeminate. He flies from the busy
centre and the market-place, in which, as the poet says, men become distinguished; he
creeps into a corner for the rest of his life, and talks in a whisper with three or four
admiring youths, but never speaks out like a freeman in a satisfactory manner. Now I,
Socrates, am very well inclined towards you, and my feeling may be compared with that
of Zethus towards Amphion, in the play of Euripides, whom I was mentioning just now:
for I am disposed to say to you much what Zethus said to his brother, that you, Socrates,
are careless about the things of which you ought to be careful; and that you
‘Who have a soul so noble, are remarkable for a puerile exterior; Neither in a court of
justice could you state a case, or give any reason or proof, Or offer valiant counsel on
another’s behalf.’
And you must not be offended, my dear Socrates, for I am speaking out of good-will
towards you, if I ask whether you are not ashamed of being thus defenceless; which I
affirm to be the condition not of you only but of all those who will carry the study of
philosophy too far. For suppose that some one were to take you, or any one of your
sort, off to prison, declaring that you had done wrong when you had done no wrong,
you must allow that you would not know what to do:—there you would stand giddy and
gaping, and not having a word to say; and when you went up before the Court, even if
the accuser were a poor creature and not good for much, you would die if he were
disposed to claim the penalty of death. And yet, Socrates, what is the value of
‘An art which converts a man of sense into a fool,’ 
who is helpless, and has no power to save either himself or others, when he is in the
greatest danger and is going to be despoiled by his enemies of all his goods, and has to
live, simply deprived of his rights of citizenship?—he being a man who, if I may use the
expression, may be boxed on the ears with impunity. Then, my good friend, take my
advice, and refute no more:
‘Learn the philosophy of business, and acquire the reputation of wisdom. But leave to
others these niceties,’
whether they are to be described as follies or absurdities:
‘For they will only Give you poverty for the inmate of your dwelling.’
Cease, then, emulating these paltry splitters of words, and emulate only the man of
substance and honour, who is well to do.
SOCRATES: If my soul, Callicles, were made of gold, should I not rejoice to discover one
of those stones with which they test gold, and the very best possible one to which I
might bring my soul; and if the stone and I agreed in approving of her training, then I
should know that I was in a satisfactory state, and that no other test was needed by me.
CALLICLES: What is your meaning, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I will tell you; I think that I have found in you the desired touchstone.
CALLICLES: Why?
SOCRATES: Because I am sure that if you agree with me in any of the opinions which my
soul forms, I have at last found the truth indeed. For I consider that if a man is to make a
complete trial of the good or evil of the soul, he ought to have three qualities—
knowledge, good-will, outspokenness, which are all possessed by you. Many whom I
meet are unable to make trial of me, because they are not wise as you are; others are 
wise, but they will not tell me the truth, because they have not the same interest in me
which you have; and these two strangers, Gorgias and Polus, are undoubtedly wise men
and my very good friends, but they are not outspoken enough, and they are too
modest. Why, their modesty is so great that they are driven to contradict themselves,
first one and then the other of them, in the face of a large company, on matters of the
highest moment. But you have all the qualities in which these others are deficient,
having received an excellent education; to this many Athenians can testify. And you are
my friend. Shall I tell you why I think so? I know that you, Callicles, and Tisander of
Aphidnae, and Andron the son of Androtion, and Nausicydes of the deme of Cholarges,
studied together: there were four of you, and I once heard you advising with one
another as to the extent to which the pursuit of philosophy should be carried, and, as I
know, you came to the conclusion that the study should not be pushed too much into
detail. You were cautioning one another not to be overwise; you were afraid that too
much wisdom might unconsciously to yourselves be the ruin of you. And now when I
hear you giving the same advice to me which you then gave to your most intimate
friends, I have a sufficient evidence of your real good- will to me. And of the frankness
of your nature and freedom from modesty I am assured by yourself, and the assurance
is confirmed by your last speech. Well then, the inference in the present case clearly is,
that if you agree with me in an argument about any point, that point will have been
sufficiently tested by us, and will not require to be submitted to any further test. For you
could not have agreed with me, either from lack of knowledge or from superfluity of
modesty, nor yet from a desire to deceive me, for you are my friend, as you tell me
yourself. And therefore when you and I are agreed, the result will be the attainment of
perfect truth. Now there is no nobler enquiry, Callicles, than that which you censure me
for making,—What ought the character of a man to be, and what his pursuits, and how
far is he to go, both in maturer years and in youth? For be assured that if I err in my own
conduct I do not err intentionally, but from ignorance. Do not then desist from advising
me, now that you have begun, until I have learned clearly what this is which I am to
practise, and how I may acquire it. And if you find me assenting to your words, and 
hereafter not doing that to which I assented, call me ‘dolt,’ and deem me unworthy of
receiving further instruction. Once more, then, tell me what you and Pindar mean by
natural justice: Do you not mean that the superior should take the property of the
inferior by force; that the better should rule the worse, the noble have more than the
mean? Am I not right in my recollection?
CALLICLES: Yes; that is what I was saying, and so I still aver.
SOCRATES: And do you mean by the better the same as the superior? for I could not
make out what you were saying at the time—whether you meant by the superior the
stronger, and that the weaker must obey the stronger, as you seemed to imply when
you said that great cities attack small ones in accordance with natural right, because
they are superior and stronger, as though the superior and stronger and better were the
same; or whether the better may be also the inferior and weaker, and the superior the
worse, or whether better is to be defined in the same way as superior:—this is the point
which I want to have cleared up. Are the superior and better and stronger the same or
different?
CALLICLES: I say unequivocally that they are the same.
SOCRATES: Then the many are by nature superior to the one, against whom, as you
were saying, they make the laws?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then the laws of the many are the laws of the superior?
CALLICLES: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then they are the laws of the better; for the superior class are far better, as
you were saying? 
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And since they are superior, the laws which are made by them are by nature
good?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And are not the many of opinion, as you were lately saying, that justice is
equality, and that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice?—is that so or not?
Answer, Callicles, and let no modesty be found to come in the way; do the many think,
or do they not think thus?—I must beg of you to answer, in order that if you agree with
me I may fortify myself by the assent of so competent an authority.
CALLICLES: Yes; the opinion of the many is what you say.
SOCRATES: Then not only custom but nature also affirms that to do is more disgraceful
than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality; so that you seem to have been wrong
in your former assertion, when accusing me you said that nature and custom are
opposed, and that I, knowing this, was dishonestly playing between them, appealing to
custom when the argument is about nature, and to nature when the argument is about
custom?
CALLICLES: This man will never cease talking nonsense. At your age, Socrates, are you
not ashamed to be catching at words and chuckling over some verbal slip? do you not
see—have I not told you already, that by superior I mean better: do you imagine me to
say, that if a rabble of slaves and nondescripts, who are of no use except perhaps for
their physical strength, get together, their ipsissima verba are laws?
SOCRATES: Ho! my philosopher, is that your line?
CALLICLES: Certainly. 
SOCRATES: I was thinking, Callicles, that something of the kind must have been in your
mind, and that is why I repeated the question,—What is the superior? I wanted to know
clearly what you meant; for you surely do not think that two men are better than one, or
that your slaves are better than you because they are stronger? Then please to begin
again, and tell me who the better are, if they are not the stronger; and I will ask you,
great Sir, to be a little milder in your instructions, or I shall have to run away from you.
CALLICLES: You are ironical.
SOCRATES: No, by the hero Zethus, Callicles, by whose aid you were just now saying
many ironical things against me, I am not:—tell me, then, whom you mean, by the
better?
CALLICLES: I mean the more excellent.
SOCRATES: Do you not see that you are yourself using words which have no meaning
and that you are explaining nothing?—will you tell me whether you mean by the better
and superior the wiser, or if not, whom?
CALLICLES: Most assuredly, I do mean the wiser.
SOCRATES: Then according to you, one wise man may often be superior to ten
thousand fools, and he ought to rule them, and they ought to be his subjects, and he
ought to have more than they should. This is what I believe that you mean (and you
must not suppose that I am word-catching), if you allow that the one is superior to the
ten thousand?
CALLICLES: Yes; that is what I mean, and that is what I conceive to be natural justice—
that the better and wiser should rule and have more than the inferior.
SOCRATES: Stop there, and let me ask you what you would say in this case: Let us
suppose that we are all together as we are now; there are several of us, and we have a 
large common store of meats and drinks, and there are all sorts of persons in our
company having various degrees of strength and weakness, and one of us, being a
physician, is wiser in the matter of food than all the rest, and he is probably stronger
than some and not so strong as others of us—will he not, being wiser, be also better
than we are, and our superior in this matter of food?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Either, then, he will have a larger share of the meats and drinks, because he
is better, or he will have the distribution of all of them by reason of his authority, but he
will not expend or make use of a larger share of them on his own person, or if he does,
he will be punished; —his share will exceed that of some, and be less than that of
others, and if he be the weakest of all, he being the best of all will have the smallest
share of all, Callicles:—am I not right, my friend?
CALLICLES: You talk about meats and drinks and physicians and other nonsense; I am
not speaking of them.
SOCRATES: Well, but do you admit that the wiser is the better? Answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And ought not the better to have a larger share?
CALLICLES: Not of meats and drinks.
SOCRATES: I understand: then, perhaps, of coats—the skilfullest weaver ought to have
the largest coat, and the greatest number of them, and go about clothed in the best and
finest of them?
CALLICLES: Fudge about coats! 
SOCRATES: Then the skilfullest and best in making shoes ought to have the advantage
in shoes; the shoemaker, clearly, should walk about in the largest shoes, and have the
greatest number of them?
CALLICLES: Fudge about shoes! What nonsense are you talking?
SOCRATES: Or, if this is not your meaning, perhaps you would say that the wise and
good and true husbandman should actually have a larger share of seeds, and have as
much seed as possible for his own land?
CALLICLES: How you go on, always talking in the same way, Socrates!
SOCRATES: Yes, Callicles, and also about the same things.
CALLICLES: Yes, by the Gods, you are literally always talking of cobblers and fullers and
cooks and doctors, as if this had to do with our argument.
SOCRATES: But why will you not tell me in what a man must be superior and wiser in
order to claim a larger share; will you neither accept a suggestion, nor offer one?
CALLICLES: I have already told you. In the first place, I mean by superiors not cobblers or
cooks, but wise politicians who understand the administration of a state, and who are
not only wise, but also valiant and able to carry out their designs, and not the men to
faint from want of soul.
SOCRATES: See now, most excellent Callicles, how different my charge against you is
from that which you bring against me, for you reproach me with always saying the
same; but I reproach you with never saying the same about the same things, for at one
time you were defining the better and the superior to be the stronger, then again as the
wiser, and now you bring forward a new notion; the superior and the better are now
declared by you to be the more courageous: I wish, my good friend, that you would tell 
me, once for all, whom you affirm to be the better and superior, and in what they are
better?
CALLICLES: I have already told you that I mean those who are wise and courageous in
the administration of a state—they ought to be the rulers of their states, and justice
consists in their having more than their subjects.
SOCRATES: But whether rulers or subjects will they or will they not have more than
themselves, my friend?
CALLICLES: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: I mean that every man is his own ruler; but perhaps you think that there is
no necessity for him to rule himself; he is only required to rule others?
CALLICLES: What do you mean by his ‘ruling over himself’?
SOCRATES: A simple thing enough; just what is commonly said, that a man should be
temperate and master of himself, and ruler of his own pleasures and passions.
CALLICLES: What innocence! you mean those fools,—the temperate?
SOCRATES: Certainly:—any one may know that to be my meaning.
CALLICLES: Quite so, Socrates; and they are really fools, for how can a man be happy
who is the servant of anything? On the contrary, I plainly assert, that he who would truly
live ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost, and not to chastise them; but
when they have grown to their greatest he should have courage and intelligence to
minister to them and to satisfy all his longings. And this I affirm to be natural justice and
nobility. To this however the many cannot attain; and they blame the strong man
because they are ashamed of their own weakness, which they desire to conceal, and
hence they say that intemperance is base. As I have remarked already, they enslave the 
nobler natures, and being unable to satisfy their pleasures, they praise temperance and
justice out of their own cowardice. For if a man had been originally the son of a king, or
had a nature capable of acquiring an empire or a tyranny or sovereignty, what could be
more truly base or evil than temperance—to a man like him, I say, who might freely be
enjoying every good, and has no one to stand in his way, and yet has admitted custom
and reason and the opinion of other men to be lords over him?—must not he be in a
miserable plight whom the reputation of justice and temperance hinders from giving
more to his friends than to his enemies, even though he be a ruler in his city? Nay,
Socrates, for you profess to be a votary of the truth, and the truth is this:—that luxury
and intemperance and licence, if they be provided with means, are virtue and
happiness—all the rest is a mere bauble, agreements contrary to nature, foolish talk of
men, nothing worth. (Compare Republic.)
SOCRATES: There is a noble freedom, Callicles, in your way of approaching the
argument; for what you say is what the rest of the world think, but do not like to say.
And I must beg of you to persevere, that the true rule of human life may become
manifest. Tell me, then:—you say, do you not, that in the rightly-developed man the
passions ought not to be controlled, but that we should let them grow to the utmost
and somehow or other satisfy them, and that this is virtue?
CALLICLES: Yes; I do.
SOCRATES: Then those who want nothing are not truly said to be happy?
CALLICLES: No indeed, for then stones and dead men would be the happiest of all.
SOCRATES: But surely life according to your view is an awful thing; and indeed I think
that Euripides may have been right in saying,
‘Who knows if life be not death and death life;’ 
and that we are very likely dead; I have heard a philosopher say that at this moment we
are actually dead, and that the body (soma) is our tomb (sema (compare Phaedr.)), and
that the part of the soul which is the seat of the desires is liable to be tossed about by
words and blown up and down; and some ingenious person, probably a Sicilian or an
Italian, playing with the word, invented a tale in which he called the soul—because of its
believing and make-believe nature—a vessel (An untranslatable pun,—dia to pithanon
te kai pistikon onomase pithon.), and the ignorant he called the uninitiated or leaky, and
the place in the souls of the uninitiated in which the desires are seated, being the
intemperate and incontinent part, he compared to a vessel full of holes, because it can
never be satisfied. He is not of your way of thinking, Callicles, for he declares, that of all
the souls in Hades, meaning the invisible world (aeides), these uninitiated or leaky
persons are the most miserable, and that they pour water into a vessel which is full of
holes out of a colander which is similarly perforated. The colander, as my informer
assures me, is the soul, and the soul which he compares to a colander is the soul of the
ignorant, which is likewise full of holes, and therefore incontinent, owing to a bad
memory and want of faith. These notions are strange enough, but they show the
principle which, if I can, I would fain prove to you; that you should change your mind,
and, instead of the intemperate and insatiate life, choose that which is orderly and
sufficient and has a due provision for daily needs. Do I make any impression on you, and
are you coming over to the opinion that the orderly are happier than the intemperate?
Or do I fail to persuade you, and, however many tales I rehearse to you, do you continue
of the same opinion still?
CALLICLES: The latter, Socrates, is more like the truth.
SOCRATES: Well, I will tell you another image, which comes out of the same school:—Let
me request you to consider how far you would accept this as an account of the two lives
of the temperate and intemperate in a figure:— There are two men, both of whom have
a number of casks; the one man has his casks sound and full, one of wine, another of
honey, and a third of milk, besides others filled with other liquids, and the streams which 
fill them are few and scanty, and he can only obtain them with a great deal of toil and
difficulty; but when his casks are once filled he has no need to feed them any more, and
has no further trouble with them or care about them. The other, in like manner, can
procure streams, though not without difficulty; but his vessels are leaky and unsound,
and night and day he is compelled to be filling them, and if he pauses for a moment, he
is in an agony of pain. Such are their respective lives:—And now would you say that the
life of the intemperate is happier than that of the temperate? Do I not convince you that
the opposite is the truth?
CALLICLES: You do not convince me, Socrates, for the one who has filled himself has no
longer any pleasure left; and this, as I was just now saying, is the life of a stone: he has
neither joy nor sorrow after he is once filled; but the pleasure depends on the
superabundance of the influx.
SOCRATES: But the more you pour in, the greater the waste; and the holes must be large
for the liquid to escape.
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: The life which you are now depicting is not that of a dead man, or of a
stone, but of a cormorant; you mean that he is to be hungering and eating?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he is to be thirsting and drinking?
CALLICLES: Yes, that is what I mean; he is to have all his desires about him, and to be
able to live happily in the gratification of them.
SOCRATES: Capital, excellent; go on as you have begun, and have no shame; I, too, must
disencumber myself of shame: and first, will you tell me whether you include itching and 
scratching, provided you have enough of them and pass your life in scratching, in your
notion of happiness?
CALLICLES: What a strange being you are, Socrates! a regular mob-orator.
SOCRATES: That was the reason, Callicles, why I scared Polus and Gorgias, until they
were too modest to say what they thought; but you will not be too modest and will not
be scared, for you are a brave man. And now, answer my question.
CALLICLES: I answer, that even the scratcher would live pleasantly.
SOCRATES: And if pleasantly, then also happily?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: But what if the itching is not confined to the head? Shall I pursue the
question? And here, Callicles, I would have you consider how you would reply if
consequences are pressed upon you, especially if in the last resort you are asked,
whether the life of a catamite is not terrible, foul, miserable? Or would you venture to
say, that they too are happy, if they only get enough of what they want?
CALLICLES: Are you not ashamed, Socrates, of introducing such topics into the
argument?
SOCRATES: Well, my fine friend, but am I the introducer of these topics, or he who says
without any qualification that all who feel pleasure in whatever manner are happy, and
who admits of no distinction between good and bad pleasures? And I would still ask,
whether you say that pleasure and good are the same, or whether there is some
pleasure which is not a good?
CALLICLES: Well, then, for the sake of consistency, I will say that they are the same. 
SOCRATES: You are breaking the original agreement, Callicles, and will no longer be a
satisfactory companion in the search after truth, if you say what is contrary to your real
opinion.
CALLICLES: Why, that is what you are doing too, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then we are both doing wrong. Still, my dear friend, I would ask you to
consider whether pleasure, from whatever source derived, is the good; for, if this be true,
then the disagreeable consequences which have been darkly intimated must follow, and
many others.
CALLICLES: That, Socrates, is only your opinion.
SOCRATES: And do you, Callicles, seriously maintain what you are saying?
CALLICLES: Indeed I do.
SOCRATES: Then, as you are in earnest, shall we proceed with the argument?
CALLICLES: By all means. (Or, ‘I am in profound earnest.’)
SOCRATES: Well, if you are willing to proceed, determine this question for me:—There is
something, I presume, which you would call knowledge?
CALLICLES: There is.
SOCRATES: And were you not saying just now, that some courage implied knowledge?
CALLICLES: I was.
SOCRATES: And you were speaking of courage and knowledge as two things different
from one another?
CALLICLES: Certainly I was. 
SOCRATES: And would you say that pleasure and knowledge are the same, or not the
same?
CALLICLES: Not the same, O man of wisdom.
SOCRATES: And would you say that courage differed from pleasure?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Well, then, let us remember that Callicles, the Acharnian, says that pleasure
and good are the same; but that knowledge and courage are not the same, either with
one another, or with the good.
CALLICLES: And what does our friend Socrates, of Foxton, say—does he assent to this, or
not?
SOCRATES: He does not assent; neither will Callicles, when he sees himself truly. You will
admit, I suppose, that good and evil fortune are opposed to each other?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if they are opposed to each other, then, like health and disease, they
exclude one another; a man cannot have them both, or be without them both, at the
same time?
CALLICLES: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: Take the case of any bodily affection:—a man may have the complaint in his
eyes which is called ophthalmia?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: But he surely cannot have the same eyes well and sound at the same time? 
CALLICLES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And when he has got rid of his ophthalmia, has he got rid of the health of
his eyes too? Is the final result, that he gets rid of them both together?
CALLICLES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: That would surely be marvellous and absurd?
CALLICLES: Very.
SOCRATES: I suppose that he is affected by them, and gets rid of them in turns?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he may have strength and weakness in the same way, by fits?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Or swiftness and slowness?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And does he have and not have good and happiness, and their opposites,
evil and misery, in a similar alternation? (Compare Republic.)
CALLICLES: Certainly he has.
SOCRATES: If then there be anything which a man has and has not at the same time,
clearly that cannot be good and evil—do we agree? Please not to answer without
consideration.
CALLICLES: I entirely agree. 
SOCRATES: Go back now to our former admissions.—Did you say that to hunger, I mean
the mere state of hunger, was pleasant or painful?
CALLICLES: I said painful, but that to eat when you are hungry is pleasant.
SOCRATES: I know; but still the actual hunger is painful: am I not right?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And thirst, too, is painful?
CALLICLES: Yes, very.
SOCRATES: Need I adduce any more instances, or would you agree that all wants or
desires are painful?
CALLICLES: I agree, and therefore you need not adduce any more instances.
SOCRATES: Very good. And you would admit that to drink, when you are thirsty, is
pleasant?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And in the sentence which you have just uttered, the word ‘thirsty’ implies
pain?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the word ‘drinking’ is expressive of pleasure, and of the satisfaction of
the want?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: There is pleasure in drinking? 
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: When you are thirsty?
SOCRATES: And in pain?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Do you see the inference:—that pleasure and pain are simultaneous, when
you say that being thirsty, you drink? For are they not simultaneous, and do they not
affect at the same time the same part, whether of the soul or the body?—which of them
is affected cannot be supposed to be of any consequence: Is not this true?
CALLICLES: It is.
SOCRATES: You said also, that no man could have good and evil fortune at the same
time?
CALLICLES: Yes, I did.
SOCRATES: But you admitted, that when in pain a man might also have pleasure?
CALLICLES: Clearly.
SOCRATES: Then pleasure is not the same as good fortune, or pain the same as evil
fortune, and therefore the good is not the same as the pleasant?
CALLICLES: I wish I knew, Socrates, what your quibbling means.
SOCRATES: You know, Callicles, but you affect not to know.
CALLICLES: Well, get on, and don’t keep fooling: then you will know what a wiseacre you
are in your admonition of me. 
SOCRATES: Does not a man cease from his thirst and from his pleasure in drinking at the
same time?
CALLICLES: I do not understand what you are saying.
GORGIAS: Nay, Callicles, answer, if only for our sakes;—we should like to hear the
argument out.
CALLICLES: Yes, Gorgias, but I must complain of the habitual trifling of Socrates; he is
always arguing about little and unworthy questions.
GORGIAS: What matter? Your reputation, Callicles, is not at stake. Let Socrates argue in
his own fashion.
CALLICLES: Well, then, Socrates, you shall ask these little peddling questions, since
Gorgias wishes to have them.
SOCRATES: I envy you, Callicles, for having been initiated into the great mysteries before
you were initiated into the lesser. I thought that this was not allowable. But to return to
our argument:—Does not a man cease from thirsting and from the pleasure of drinking
at the same moment?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: And if he is hungry, or has any other desire, does he not cease from the
desire and the pleasure at the same moment?
CALLICLES: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then he ceases from pain and pleasure at the same moment?
CALLICLES: Yes. 
SOCRATES: But he does not cease from good and evil at the same moment, as you have
admitted: do you still adhere to what you said?
CALLICLES: Yes, I do; but what is the inference?
SOCRATES: Why, my friend, the inference is that the good is not the same as the
pleasant, or the evil the same as the painful; there is a cessation of pleasure and pain at
the same moment; but not of good and evil, for they are different. How then can
pleasure be the same as good, or pain as evil? And I would have you look at the matter
in another light, which could hardly, I think, have been considered by you when you
identified them: Are not the good good because they have good present with them, as
the beautiful are those who have beauty present with them?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And do you call the fools and cowards good men? For you were saying just
now that the courageous and the wise are the good—would you not say so?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And did you never see a foolish child rejoicing?
CALLICLES: Yes, I have.
SOCRATES: And a foolish man too?
CALLICLES: Yes, certainly; but what is your drift?
SOCRATES: Nothing particular, if you will only answer.
CALLICLES: Yes, I have.
SOCRATES: And did you ever see a sensible man rejoicing or sorrowing? 
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Which rejoice and sorrow most—the wise or the foolish?
CALLICLES: They are much upon a par, I think, in that respect.
SOCRATES: Enough: And did you ever see a coward in battle?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And which rejoiced most at the departure of the enemy, the coward or the
brave?
CALLICLES: I should say ‘most’ of both; or at any rate, they rejoiced about equally.
SOCRATES: No matter; then the cowards, and not only the brave, rejoice?
CALLICLES: Greatly.
SOCRATES: And the foolish; so it would seem?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And are only the cowards pained at the approach of their enemies, or are
the brave also pained?
CALLICLES: Both are pained.
SOCRATES: And are they equally pained?
CALLICLES: I should imagine that the cowards are more pained.
SOCRATES: And are they not better pleased at the enemy’s departure?
CALLICLES: I dare say. 
SOCRATES: Then are the foolish and the wise and the cowards and the brave all pleased
and pained, as you were saying, in nearly equal degree; but are the cowards more
pleased and pained than the brave?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: But surely the wise and brave are the good, and the foolish and the
cowardly are the bad?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then the good and the bad are pleased and pained in a nearly equal
degree?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then are the good and bad good and bad in a nearly equal degree, or have
the bad the advantage both in good and evil? (i.e. in having more pleasure and more
pain.)
CALLICLES: I really do not know what you mean.
SOCRATES: Why, do you not remember saying that the good were good because good
was present with them, and the evil because evil; and that pleasures were goods and
pains evils?
CALLICLES: Yes, I remember.
SOCRATES: And are not these pleasures or goods present to those who rejoice—if they
do rejoice?
CALLICLES: Certainly. 
SOCRATES: Then those who rejoice are good when goods are present with them?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And those who are in pain have evil or sorrow present with them?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And would you still say that the evil are evil by reason of the presence of
evil?
CALLICLES: I should.
SOCRATES: Then those who rejoice are good, and those who are in pain evil?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: The degrees of good and evil vary with the degrees of pleasure and of pain?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Have the wise man and the fool, the brave and the coward, joy and pain in
nearly equal degrees? or would you say that the coward has more?
CALLICLES: I should say that he has.
SOCRATES: Help me then to draw out the conclusion which follows from our
admissions; for it is good to repeat and review what is good twice and thrice over, as
they say. Both the wise man and the brave man we allow to be good?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the foolish man and the coward to be evil? 
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And he who has joy is good?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he who is in pain is evil?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: The good and evil both have joy and pain, but, perhaps, the evil has more of
them?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then must we not infer, that the bad man is as good and bad as the good,
or, perhaps, even better?—is not this a further inference which follows equally with the
preceding from the assertion that the good and the pleasant are the same:—can this be
denied, Callicles?
CALLICLES: I have been listening and making admissions to you, Socrates; and I remark
that if a person grants you anything in play, you, like a child, want to keep hold and will
not give it back. But do you really suppose that I or any other human being denies that
some pleasures are good and others bad?
SOCRATES: Alas, Callicles, how unfair you are! you certainly treat me as if I were a child,
sometimes saying one thing, and then another, as if you were meaning to deceive me.
And yet I thought at first that you were my friend, and would not have deceived me if
you could have helped. But I see that I was mistaken; and now I suppose that I must
make the best of a bad business, as they said of old, and take what I can get out of
you.—Well, then, as I understand you to say, I may assume that some pleasures are
good and others evil? 
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: The beneficial are good, and the hurtful are evil?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And the beneficial are those which do some good, and the hurtful are those
which do some evil?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Take, for example, the bodily pleasures of eating and drinking, which we
were just now mentioning—you mean to say that those which promote health, or any
other bodily excellence, are good, and their opposites evil?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And in the same way there are good pains and there are evil pains?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And ought we not to choose and use the good pleasures and pains?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: But not the evil?
CALLICLES: Clearly.
SOCRATES: Because, if you remember, Polus and I have agreed that all our actions are to
be done for the sake of the good;—and will you agree with us in saying, that the good is
the end of all our actions, and that all our actions are to be done for the sake of the
good, and not the good for the sake of them?—will you add a third vote to our two? 
CALLICLES: I will.
SOCRATES: Then pleasure, like everything else, is to be sought for the sake of that which
is good, and not that which is good for the sake of pleasure?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: But can every man choose what pleasures are good and what are evil, or
must he have art or knowledge of them in detail?
CALLICLES: He must have art.
SOCRATES: Let me now remind you of what I was saying to Gorgias and Polus; I was
saying, as you will not have forgotten, that there were some processes which aim only at
pleasure, and know nothing of a better and worse, and there are other processes which
know good and evil. And I considered that cookery, which I do not call an art, but only
an experience, was of the former class, which is concerned with pleasure, and that the
art of medicine was of the class which is concerned with the good. And now, by the god
of friendship, I must beg you, Callicles, not to jest, or to imagine that I am jesting with
you; do not answer at random and contrary to your real opinion—for you will observe
that we are arguing about the way of human life; and to a man who has any sense at all,
what question can be more serious than this?—whether he should follow after that way
of life to which you exhort me, and act what you call the manly part of speaking in the
assembly, and cultivating rhetoric, and engaging in public affairs, according to the
principles now in vogue; or whether he should pursue the life of philosophy;—and in
what the latter way differs from the former. But perhaps we had better first try to
distinguish them, as I did before, and when we have come to an agreement that they
are distinct, we may proceed to consider in what they differ from one another, and
which of them we should choose. Perhaps, however, you do not even now understand
what I mean? 
CALLICLES: No, I do not.
SOCRATES: Then I will explain myself more clearly: seeing that you and I have agreed
that there is such a thing as good, and that there is such a thing as pleasure, and that
pleasure is not the same as good, and that the pursuit and process of acquisition of the
one, that is pleasure, is different from the pursuit and process of acquisition of the other,
which is good—I wish that you would tell me whether you agree with me thus far or
not—do you agree?
CALLICLES: I do.
SOCRATES: Then I will proceed, and ask whether you also agree with me, and whether
you think that I spoke the truth when I further said to Gorgias and Polus that cookery in
my opinion is only an experience, and not an art at all; and that whereas medicine is an
art, and attends to the nature and constitution of the patient, and has principles of
action and reason in each case, cookery in attending upon pleasure never regards either
the nature or reason of that pleasure to which she devotes herself, but goes straight to
her end, nor ever considers or calculates anything, but works by experience and routine,
and just preserves the recollection of what she has usually done when producing
pleasure. And first, I would have you consider whether I have proved what I was saying,
and then whether there are not other similar processes which have to do with the soul—
some of them processes of art, making a provision for the soul’s highest interest—
others despising the interest, and, as in the previous case, considering only the pleasure
of the soul, and how this may be acquired, but not considering what pleasures are good
or bad, and having no other aim but to afford gratification, whether good or bad. In my
opinion, Callicles, there are such processes, and this is the sort of thing which I term
flattery, whether concerned with the body or the soul, or whenever employed with a
view to pleasure and without any consideration of good and evil. And now I wish that
you would tell me whether you agree with us in this notion, or whether you differ. 
CALLICLES: I do not differ; on the contrary, I agree; for in that way I shall soonest bring
the argument to an end, and shall oblige my friend Gorgias.
SOCRATES: And is this notion true of one soul, or of two or more?
CALLICLES: Equally true of two or more.
SOCRATES: Then a man may delight a whole assembly, and yet have no regard for their
true interests?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Can you tell me the pursuits which delight mankind—or rather, if you would
prefer, let me ask, and do you answer, which of them belong to the pleasurable class,
and which of them not? In the first place, what say you of flute-playing? Does not that
appear to be an art which seeks only pleasure, Callicles, and thinks of nothing else?
CALLICLES: I assent.
SOCRATES: And is not the same true of all similar arts, as, for example, the art of playing
the lyre at festivals?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And what do you say of the choral art and of dithyrambic poetry?—are not
they of the same nature? Do you imagine that Cinesias the son of Meles cares about
what will tend to the moral improvement of his hearers, or about what will give pleasure
to the multitude?
CALLICLES: There can be no mistake about Cinesias, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And what do you say of his father, Meles the harp-player? Did he perform
with any view to the good of his hearers? Could he be said to regard even their 
pleasure? For his singing was an infliction to his audience. And of harp-playing and
dithyrambic poetry in general, what would you say? Have they not been invented wholly
for the sake of pleasure?
CALLICLES: That is my notion of them.
SOCRATES: And as for the Muse of Tragedy, that solemn and august personage—what
are her aspirations? Is all her aim and desire only to give pleasure to the spectators, or
does she fight against them and refuse to speak of their pleasant vices, and willingly
proclaim in word and song truths welcome and unwelcome?—which in your judgment is
her character?
CALLICLES: There can be no doubt, Socrates, that Tragedy has her face turned towards
pleasure and the gratification of the audience.
SOCRATES: And is not that the sort of thing, Callicles, which we were just now describing
as flattery?
CALLICLES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: Well now, suppose that we strip all poetry of song and rhythm and metre,
there will remain speech? (Compare Republic.)
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And this speech is addressed to a crowd of people?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then poetry is a sort of rhetoric?
CALLICLES: True. 
SOCRATES: And do not the poets in the theatres seem to you to be rhetoricians?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then now we have discovered a sort of rhetoric which is addressed to a
crowd of men, women, and children, freemen and slaves. And this is not much to our
taste, for we have described it as having the nature of flattery.
CALLICLES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: Very good. And what do you say of that other rhetoric which addresses the
Athenian assembly and the assemblies of freemen in other states? Do the rhetoricians
appear to you always to aim at what is best, and do they seek to improve the citizens by
their speeches, or are they too, like the rest of mankind, bent upon giving them
pleasure, forgetting the public good in the thought of their own interest, playing with
the people as with children, and trying to amuse them, but never considering whether
they are better or worse for this?
CALLICLES: I must distinguish. There are some who have a real care of the public in what
they say, while others are such as you describe.
SOCRATES: I am contented with the admission that rhetoric is of two sorts; one, which is
mere flattery and disgraceful declamation; the other, which is noble and aims at the
training and improvement of the souls of the citizens, and strives to say what is best,
whether welcome or unwelcome, to the audience; but have you ever known such a
rhetoric; or if you have, and can point out any rhetorician who is of this stamp, who is
he?
CALLICLES: But, indeed, I am afraid that I cannot tell you of any such among the orators
who are at present living. 
SOCRATES: Well, then, can you mention any one of a former generation, who may be
said to have improved the Athenians, who found them worse and made them better,
from the day that he began to make speeches? for, indeed, I do not know of such a
man.
CALLICLES: What! did you never hear that Themistocles was a good man, and Cimon
and Miltiades and Pericles, who is just lately dead, and whom you heard yourself?
SOCRATES: Yes, Callicles, they were good men, if, as you said at first, true virtue consists
only in the satisfaction of our own desires and those of others; but if not, and if, as we
were afterwards compelled to acknowledge, the satisfaction of some desires makes us
better, and of others, worse, and we ought to gratify the one and not the other, and
there is an art in distinguishing them,—can you tell me of any of these statesmen who
did distinguish them?
CALLICLES: No, indeed, I cannot.
SOCRATES: Yet, surely, Callicles, if you look you will find such a one. Suppose that we
just calmly consider whether any of these was such as I have described. Will not the
good man, who says whatever he says with a view to the best, speak with a reference to
some standard and not at random; just as all other artists, whether the painter, the
builder, the shipwright, or any other look all of them to their own work, and do not
select and apply at random what they apply, but strive to give a definite form to it? The
artist disposes all things in order, and compels the one part to harmonize and accord
with the other part, until he has constructed a regular and systematic whole; and this is
true of all artists, and in the same way the trainers and physicians, of whom we spoke
before, give order and regularity to the body: do you deny this?
CALLICLES: No; I am ready to admit it. 
SOCRATES: Then the house in which order and regularity prevail is good; that in which
there is disorder, evil?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the same is true of a ship?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the same may be said of the human body?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And what would you say of the soul? Will the good soul be that in which
disorder is prevalent, or that in which there is harmony and order?
CALLICLES: The latter follows from our previous admissions.
SOCRATES: What is the name which is given to the effect of harmony and order in the
body?
CALLICLES: I suppose that you mean health and strength?
SOCRATES: Yes, I do; and what is the name which you would give to the effect of
harmony and order in the soul? Try and discover a name for this as well as for the other.
CALLICLES: Why not give the name yourself, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Well, if you had rather that I should, I will; and you shall say whether you
agree with me, and if not, you shall refute and answer me. ‘Healthy,’ as I conceive, is the
name which is given to the regular order of the body, whence comes health and every
other bodily excellence: is that true or not?
CALLICLES: True. 
SOCRATES: And ‘lawful’ and ‘law’ are the names which are given to the regular order
and action of the soul, and these make men lawful and orderly:—and so we have
temperance and justice: have we not?
CALLICLES: Granted.
SOCRATES: And will not the true rhetorician who is honest and understands his art have
his eye fixed upon these, in all the words which he addresses to the souls of men, and in
all his actions, both in what he gives and in what he takes away? Will not his aim be to
implant justice in the souls of his citizens and take away injustice, to implant temperance
and take away intemperance, to implant every virtue and take away every vice? Do you
not agree?
CALLICLES: I agree.
SOCRATES: For what use is there, Callicles, in giving to the body of a sick man who is in
a bad state of health a quantity of the most delightful food or drink or any other
pleasant thing, which may be really as bad for him as if you gave him nothing, or even
worse if rightly estimated. Is not that true?
CALLICLES: I will not say No to it.
SOCRATES: For in my opinion there is no profit in a man’s life if his body is in an evil
plight—in that case his life also is evil: am I not right?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: When a man is in health the physicians will generally allow him to eat when
he is hungry and drink when he is thirsty, and to satisfy his desires as he likes, but when
he is sick they hardly suffer him to satisfy his desires at all: even you will admit that?
CALLICLES: Yes. 
SOCRATES: And does not the same argument hold of the soul, my good sir? While she is
in a bad state and is senseless and intemperate and unjust and unholy, her desires
ought to be controlled, and she ought to be prevented from doing anything which does
not tend to her own improvement.
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Such treatment will be better for the soul herself?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And to restrain her from her appetites is to chastise her?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then restraint or chastisement is better for the soul than intemperance or
the absence of control, which you were just now preferring?
CALLICLES: I do not understand you, Socrates, and I wish that you would ask some one
who does.
SOCRATES: Here is a gentleman who cannot endure to be improved or to subject
himself to that very chastisement of which the argument speaks!
CALLICLES: I do not heed a word of what you are saying, and have only answered
hitherto out of civility to Gorgias.
SOCRATES: What are we to do, then? Shall we break off in the middle?
CALLICLES: You shall judge for yourself. 
SOCRATES: Well, but people say that ‘a tale should have a head and not break off in the
middle,’ and I should not like to have the argument going about without a head
(compare Laws); please then to go on a little longer, and put the head on.
CALLICLES: How tyrannical you are, Socrates! I wish that you and your argument would
rest, or that you would get some one else to argue with you.
SOCRATES: But who else is willing?—I want to finish the argument.
CALLICLES: Cannot you finish without my help, either talking straight on, or questioning
and answering yourself?
SOCRATES: Must I then say with Epicharmus, ‘Two men spoke before, but now one shall
be enough’? I suppose that there is absolutely no help. And if I am to carry on the
enquiry by myself, I will first of all remark that not only I but all of us should have an
ambition to know what is true and what is false in this matter, for the discovery of the
truth is a common good. And now I will proceed to argue according to my own notion.
But if any of you think that I arrive at conclusions which are untrue you must interpose
and refute me, for I do not speak from any knowledge of what I am saying; I am an
enquirer like yourselves, and therefore, if my opponent says anything which is of force, I
shall be the first to agree with him. I am speaking on the supposition that the argument
ought to be completed; but if you think otherwise let us leave off and go our ways.
GORGIAS: I think, Socrates, that we should not go our ways until you have completed
the argument; and this appears to me to be the wish of the rest of the company; I myself
should very much like to hear what more you have to say.
SOCRATES: I too, Gorgias, should have liked to continue the argument with Callicles, and
then I might have given him an ‘Amphion’ in return for his ‘Zethus’; but since you,
Callicles, are unwilling to continue, I hope that you will listen, and interrupt me if I seem 
to you to be in error. And if you refute me, I shall not be angry with you as you are with
me, but I shall inscribe you as the greatest of benefactors on the tablets of my soul.
CALLICLES: My good fellow, never mind me, but get on.
SOCRATES: Listen to me, then, while I recapitulate the argument:—Is the pleasant the
same as the good? Not the same. Callicles and I are agreed about that. And is the
pleasant to be pursued for the sake of the good? or the good for the sake of the
pleasant? The pleasant is to be pursued for the sake of the good. And that is pleasant at
the presence of which we are pleased, and that is good at the presence of which we are
good? To be sure. And we are good, and all good things whatever are good when some
virtue is present in us or them? That, Callicles, is my conviction. But the virtue of each
thing, whether body or soul, instrument or creature, when given to them in the best way
comes to them not by chance but as the result of the order and truth and art which are
imparted to them: Am I not right? I maintain that I am. And is not the virtue of each
thing dependent on order or arrangement? Yes, I say. And that which makes a thing
good is the proper order inhering in each thing? Such is my view. And is not the soul
which has an order of her own better than that which has no order? Certainly. And the
soul which has order is orderly? Of course. And that which is orderly is temperate?
Assuredly. And the temperate soul is good? No other answer can I give, Callicles dear;
have you any?
CALLICLES: Go on, my good fellow.
SOCRATES: Then I shall proceed to add, that if the temperate soul is the good soul, the
soul which is in the opposite condition, that is, the foolish and intemperate, is the bad
soul. Very true.
And will not the temperate man do what is proper, both in relation to the gods and to
men;—for he would not be temperate if he did not? Certainly he will do what is proper.
In his relation to other men he will do what is just; and in his relation to the gods he will 
do what is holy; and he who does what is just and holy must be just and holy? Very true.
And must he not be courageous? for the duty of a temperate man is not to follow or to
avoid what he ought not, but what he ought, whether things or men or pleasures or
pains, and patiently to endure when he ought; and therefore, Callicles, the temperate
man, being, as we have described, also just and courageous and holy, cannot be other
than a perfectly good man, nor can the good man do otherwise than well and perfectly
whatever he does; and he who does well must of necessity be happy and blessed, and
the evil man who does evil, miserable: now this latter is he whom you were
applauding—the intemperate who is the opposite of the temperate. Such is my position,
and these things I affirm to be true. And if they are true, then I further affirm that he
who desires to be happy must pursue and practise temperance and run away from
intemperance as fast as his legs will carry him: he had better order his life so as not to
need punishment; but if either he or any of his friends, whether private individual or city,
are in need of punishment, then justice must be done and he must suffer punishment, if
he would be happy. This appears to me to be the aim which a man ought to have, and
towards which he ought to direct all the energies both of himself and of the state, acting
so that he may have temperance and justice present with him and be happy, not
suffering his lusts to be unrestrained, and in the never-ending desire satisfy them
leading a robber’s life. Such a one is the friend neither of God nor man, for he is
incapable of communion, and he who is incapable of communion is also incapable of
friendship. And philosophers tell us, Callicles, that communion and friendship and
orderliness and temperance and justice bind together heaven and earth and gods and
men, and that this universe is therefore called Cosmos or order, not disorder or misrule,
my friend. But although you are a philosopher you seem to me never to have observed
that geometrical equality is mighty, both among gods and men; you think that you
ought to cultivate inequality or excess, and do not care about geometry.—Well, then,
either the principle that the happy are made happy by the possession of justice and
temperance, and the miserable miserable by the possession of vice, must be refuted, or,
if it is granted, what will be the consequences? All the consequences which I drew 
before, Callicles, and about which you asked me whether I was in earnest when I said
that a man ought to accuse himself and his son and his friend if he did anything wrong,
and that to this end he should use his rhetoric—all those consequences are true. And
that which you thought that Polus was led to admit out of modesty is true, viz., that, to
do injustice, if more disgraceful than to suffer, is in that degree worse; and the other
position, which, according to Polus, Gorgias admitted out of modesty, that he who
would truly be a rhetorician ought to be just and have a knowledge of justice, has also
turned out to be true.
And now, these things being as we have said, let us proceed in the next place to
consider whether you are right in throwing in my teeth that I am unable to help myself
or any of my friends or kinsmen, or to save them in the extremity of danger, and that I
am in the power of another like an outlaw to whom any one may do what he likes,—he
may box my ears, which was a brave saying of yours; or take away my goods or banish
me, or even do his worst and kill me; a condition which, as you say, is the height of
disgrace. My answer to you is one which has been already often repeated, but may as
well be repeated once more. I tell you, Callicles, that to be boxed on the ears wrongfully
is not the worst evil which can befall a man, nor to have my purse or my body cut open,
but that to smite and slay me and mine wrongfully is far more disgraceful and more evil;
aye, and to despoil and enslave and pillage, or in any way at all to wrong me and mine,
is far more disgraceful and evil to the doer of the wrong than to me who am the
sufferer. These truths, which have been already set forth as I state them in the previous
discussion, would seem now to have been fixed and riveted by us, if I may use an
expression which is certainly bold, in words which are like bonds of iron and adamant;
and unless you or some other still more enterprising hero shall break them, there is no
possibility of denying what I say. For my position has always been, that I myself am
ignorant how these things are, but that I have never met any one who could say
otherwise, any more than you can, and not appear ridiculous. This is my position still,
and if what I am saying is true, and injustice is the greatest of evils to the doer of 
injustice, and yet there is if possible a greater than this greatest of evils (compare
Republic), in an unjust man not suffering retribution, what is that defence of which the
want will make a man truly ridiculous? Must not the defence be one which will avert the
greatest of human evils? And will not the worst of all defences be that with which a man
is unable to defend himself or his family or his friends? —and next will come that which
is unable to avert the next greatest evil; thirdly that which is unable to avert the third
greatest evil; and so of other evils. As is the greatness of evil so is the honour of being
able to avert them in their several degrees, and the disgrace of not being able to avert
them. Am I not right Callicles?
CALLICLES: Yes, quite right.
SOCRATES: Seeing then that there are these two evils, the doing injustice and the
suffering injustice—and we affirm that to do injustice is a greater, and to suffer injustice
a lesser evil—by what devices can a man succeed in obtaining the two advantages, the
one of not doing and the other of not suffering injustice? must he have the power, or
only the will to obtain them? I mean to ask whether a man will escape injustice if he has
only the will to escape, or must he have provided himself with the power?
CALLICLES: He must have provided himself with the power; that is clear.
SOCRATES: And what do you say of doing injustice? Is the will only sufficient, and will
that prevent him from doing injustice, or must he have provided himself with power and
art; and if he have not studied and practised, will he be unjust still? Surely you might say,
Callicles, whether you think that Polus and I were right in admitting the conclusion that
no one does wrong voluntarily, but that all do wrong against their will?
CALLICLES: Granted, Socrates, if you will only have done.
SOCRATES: Then, as would appear, power and art have to be provided in order that we
may do no injustice? 
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And what art will protect us from suffering injustice, if not wholly, yet as far
as possible? I want to know whether you agree with me; for I think that such an art is the
art of one who is either a ruler or even tyrant himself, or the equal and companion of
the ruling power.
CALLICLES: Well said, Socrates; and please to observe how ready I am to praise you
when you talk sense.
SOCRATES: Think and tell me whether you would approve of another view of mine: To
me every man appears to be most the friend of him who is most like to him—like to like,
as ancient sages say: Would you not agree to this?
CALLICLES: I should.
SOCRATES: But when the tyrant is rude and uneducated, he may be expected to fear any
one who is his superior in virtue, and will never be able to be perfectly friendly with him.
CALLICLES: That is true.
SOCRATES: Neither will he be the friend of any one who is greatly his inferior, for the
tyrant will despise him, and will never seriously regard him as a friend.
CALLICLES: That again is true.
SOCRATES: Then the only friend worth mentioning, whom the tyrant can have, will be
one who is of the same character, and has the same likes and dislikes, and is at the same
time willing to be subject and subservient to him; he is the man who will have power in
the state, and no one will injure him with impunity:—is not that so?
CALLICLES: Yes. 
SOCRATES: And if a young man begins to ask how he may become great and
formidable, this would seem to be the way—he will accustom himself, from his youth
upward, to feel sorrow and joy on the same occasions as his master, and will contrive to
be as like him as possible?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And in this way he will have accomplished, as you and your friends would
say, the end of becoming a great man and not suffering injury?
CALLICLES: Very true.
SOCRATES: But will he also escape from doing injury? Must not the very opposite be
true,—if he is to be like the tyrant in his injustice, and to have influence with him? Will
he not rather contrive to do as much wrong as possible, and not be punished?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: And by the imitation of his master and by the power which he thus acquires
will not his soul become bad and corrupted, and will not this be the greatest evil to him?
CALLICLES: You always contrive somehow or other, Socrates, to invert everything: do
you not know that he who imitates the tyrant will, if he has a mind, kill him who does
not imitate him and take away his goods?
SOCRATES: Excellent Callicles, I am not deaf, and I have heard that a great many times
from you and from Polus and from nearly every man in the city, but I wish that you
would hear me too. I dare say that he will kill him if he has a mind—the bad man will kill
the good and true.
CALLICLES: And is not that just the provoking thing? 
SOCRATES: Nay, not to a man of sense, as the argument shows: do you think that all our
cares should be directed to prolonging life to the uttermost, and to the study of those
arts which secure us from danger always; like that art of rhetoric which saves men in
courts of law, and which you advise me to cultivate?
CALLICLES: Yes, truly, and very good advice too.
SOCRATES: Well, my friend, but what do you think of swimming; is that an art of any
great pretensions?
CALLICLES: No, indeed.
SOCRATES: And yet surely swimming saves a man from death, and there are occasions
on which he must know how to swim. And if you despise the swimmers, I will tell you of
another and greater art, the art of the pilot, who not only saves the souls of men, but
also their bodies and properties from the extremity of danger, just like rhetoric. Yet his
art is modest and unpresuming: it has no airs or pretences of doing anything
extraordinary, and, in return for the same salvation which is given by the pleader,
demands only two obols, if he brings us from Aegina to Athens, or for the longer
voyage from Pontus or Egypt, at the utmost two drachmae, when he has saved, as I was
just now saying, the passenger and his wife and children and goods, and safely
disembarked them at the Piraeus,—this is the payment which he asks in return for so
great a boon; and he who is the master of the art, and has done all this, gets out and
walks about on the sea-shore by his ship in an unassuming way. For he is able to reflect
and is aware that he cannot tell which of his fellow-passengers he has benefited, and
which of them he has injured in not allowing them to be drowned. He knows that they
are just the same when he has disembarked them as when they embarked, and not a
whit better either in their bodies or in their souls; and he considers that if a man who is
afflicted by great and incurable bodily diseases is only to be pitied for having escaped,
and is in no way benefited by him in having been saved from drowning, much less he 
who has great and incurable diseases, not of the body, but of the soul, which is the
more valuable part of him; neither is life worth having nor of any profit to the bad man,
whether he be delivered from the sea, or the law-courts, or any other devourer;—and so
he reflects that such a one had better not live, for he cannot live well. (Compare
Republic.)
And this is the reason why the pilot, although he is our saviour, is not usually conceited,
any more than the engineer, who is not at all behind either the general, or the pilot, or
any one else, in his saving power, for he sometimes saves whole cities. Is there any
comparison between him and the pleader? And if he were to talk, Callicles, in your
grandiose style, he would bury you under a mountain of words, declaring and insisting
that we ought all of us to be engine-makers, and that no other profession is worth
thinking about; he would have plenty to say. Nevertheless you despise him and his art,
and sneeringly call him an engine-maker, and you will not allow your daughters to
marry his son, or marry your son to his daughters. And yet, on your principle, what
justice or reason is there in your refusal? What right have you to despise the enginemaker,
and the others whom I was just now mentioning? I know that you will say, ‘I am
better, and better born.’ But if the better is not what I say, and virtue consists only in a
man saving himself and his, whatever may be his character, then your censure of the
engine-maker, and of the physician, and of the other arts of salvation, is ridiculous. O my
friend! I want you to see that the noble and the good may possibly be something
different from saving and being saved:—May not he who is truly a man cease to care
about living a certain time?—he knows, as women say, that no man can escape fate, and
therefore he is not fond of life; he leaves all that with God, and considers in what way he
can best spend his appointed term;—whether by assimilating himself to the constitution
under which he lives, as you at this moment have to consider how you may become as
like as possible to the Athenian people, if you mean to be in their good graces, and to
have power in the state; whereas I want you to think and see whether this is for the
interest of either of us;—I would not have us risk that which is dearest on the acquisition 
of this power, like the Thessalian enchantresses, who, as they say, bring down the moon
from heaven at the risk of their own perdition. But if you suppose that any man will
show you the art of becoming great in the city, and yet not conforming yourself to the
ways of the city, whether for better or worse, then I can only say that you are mistaken,
Callides; for he who would deserve to be the true natural friend of the Athenian Demus,
aye, or of Pyrilampes’ darling who is called after them, must be by nature like them, and
not an imitator only. He, then, who will make you most like them, will make you as you
desire, a statesman and orator: for every man is pleased when he is spoken to in his own
language and spirit, and dislikes any other. But perhaps you, sweet Callicles, may be of
another mind. What do you say?
CALLICLES: Somehow or other your words, Socrates, always appear to me to be good
words; and yet, like the rest of the world, I am not quite convinced by them. (Compare
Symp.: 1 Alcib.)
SOCRATES: The reason is, Callicles, that the love of Demus which abides in your soul is
an adversary to me; but I dare say that if we recur to these same matters, and consider
them more thoroughly, you may be convinced for all that. Please, then, to remember
that there are two processes of training all things, including body and soul; in the one,
as we said, we treat them with a view to pleasure, and in the other with a view to the
highest good, and then we do not indulge but resist them: was not that the distinction
which we drew?
CALLICLES: Very true.
SOCRATES: And the one which had pleasure in view was just a vulgar flattery:—was not
that another of our conclusions?
CALLICLES: Be it so, if you will have it. 
SOCRATES: And the other had in view the greatest improvement of that which was
ministered to, whether body or soul?
CALLICLES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: And must we not have the same end in view in the treatment of our city and
citizens? Must we not try and make them as good as possible? For we have already
discovered that there is no use in imparting to them any other good, unless the mind of
those who are to have the good, whether money, or office, or any other sort of power,
be gentle and good. Shall we say that?
CALLICLES: Yes, certainly, if you like.
SOCRATES: Well, then, if you and I, Callicles, were intending to set about some public
business, and were advising one another to undertake buildings, such as walls, docks or
temples of the largest size, ought we not to examine ourselves, first, as to whether we
know or do not know the art of building, and who taught us?—would not that be
necessary, Callicles?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: In the second place, we should have to consider whether we had ever
constructed any private house, either of our own or for our friends, and whether this
building of ours was a success or not; and if upon consideration we found that we had
had good and eminent masters, and had been successful in constructing many fine
buildings, not only with their assistance, but without them, by our own unaided skill—in
that case prudence would not dissuade us from proceeding to the construction of public
works. But if we had no master to show, and only a number of worthless buildings or
none at all, then, surely, it would be ridiculous in us to attempt public works, or to advise
one another to undertake them. Is not this true? 
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And does not the same hold in all other cases? If you and I were physicians,
and were advising one another that we were competent to practise as state-physicians,
should I not ask about you, and would you not ask about me, Well, but how about
Socrates himself, has he good health? and was any one else ever known to be cured by
him, whether slave or freeman? And I should make the same enquiries about you. And if
we arrived at the conclusion that no one, whether citizen or stranger, man or woman,
had ever been any the better for the medical skill of either of us, then, by Heaven,
Callicles, what an absurdity to think that we or any human being should be so silly as to
set up as state-physicians and advise others like ourselves to do the same, without
having first practised in private, whether successfully or not, and acquired experience of
the art! Is not this, as they say, to begin with the big jar when you are learning the
potter’s art; which is a foolish thing?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: And now, my friend, as you are already beginning to be a public character,
and are admonishing and reproaching me for not being one, suppose that we ask a few
questions of one another. Tell me, then, Callicles, how about making any of the citizens
better? Was there ever a man who was once vicious, or unjust, or intemperate, or
foolish, and became by the help of Callicles good and noble? Was there ever such a
man, whether citizen or stranger, slave or freeman? Tell me, Callicles, if a person were to
ask these questions of you, what would you answer? Whom would you say that you had
improved by your conversation? There may have been good deeds of this sort which
were done by you as a private person, before you came forward in public. Why will you
not answer?
CALLICLES: You are contentious, Socrates. 
SOCRATES: Nay, I ask you, not from a love of contention, but because I really want to
know in what way you think that affairs should be administered among us—whether,
when you come to the administration of them, you have any other aim but the
improvement of the citizens? Have we not already admitted many times over that such
is the duty of a public man? Nay, we have surely said so; for if you will not answer for
yourself I must answer for you. But if this is what the good man ought to effect for the
benefit of his own state, allow me to recall to you the names of those whom you were
just now mentioning, Pericles, and Cimon, and Miltiades, and Themistocles, and ask
whether you still think that they were good citizens.
CALLICLES: I do.
SOCRATES: But if they were good, then clearly each of them must have made the
citizens better instead of worse?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And, therefore, when Pericles first began to speak in the assembly, the
Athenians were not so good as when he spoke last?
CALLICLES: Very likely.
SOCRATES: Nay, my friend, ‘likely’ is not the word; for if he was a good citizen, the
inference is certain.
CALLICLES: And what difference does that make?
SOCRATES: None; only I should like further to know whether the Athenians are
supposed to have been made better by Pericles, or, on the contrary, to have been
corrupted by him; for I hear that he was the first who gave the people pay, and made
them idle and cowardly, and encouraged them in the love of talk and money. 
CALLICLES: You heard that, Socrates, from the laconising set who bruise their ears.
SOCRATES: But what I am going to tell you now is not mere hearsay, but well known
both to you and me: that at first, Pericles was glorious and his character unimpeached
by any verdict of the Athenians—this was during the time when they were not so
good—yet afterwards, when they had been made good and gentle by him, at the very
end of his life they convicted him of theft, and almost put him to death, clearly under
the notion that he was a malefactor.
CALLICLES: Well, but how does that prove Pericles’ badness?
SOCRATES: Why, surely you would say that he was a bad manager of asses or horses or
oxen, who had received them originally neither kicking nor butting nor biting him, and
implanted in them all these savage tricks? Would he not be a bad manager of any
animals who received them gentle, and made them fiercer than they were when he
received them? What do you say?
CALLICLES: I will do you the favour of saying ‘yes.’
SOCRATES: And will you also do me the favour of saying whether man is an animal?
CALLICLES: Certainly he is.
SOCRATES: And was not Pericles a shepherd of men?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if he was a good political shepherd, ought not the animals who were his
subjects, as we were just now acknowledging, to have become more just, and not more
unjust?
CALLICLES: Quite true. 
SOCRATES: And are not just men gentle, as Homer says?—or are you of another mind?
CALLICLES: I agree.
SOCRATES: And yet he really did make them more savage than he received them, and
their savageness was shown towards himself; which he must have been very far from
desiring.
CALLICLES: Do you want me to agree with you?
SOCRATES: Yes, if I seem to you to speak the truth.
CALLICLES: Granted then.
SOCRATES: And if they were more savage, must they not have been more unjust and
inferior?
CALLICLES: Granted again.
SOCRATES: Then upon this view, Pericles was not a good statesman?
CALLICLES: That is, upon your view.
SOCRATES: Nay, the view is yours, after what you have admitted. Take the case of Cimon
again. Did not the very persons whom he was serving ostracize him, in order that they
might not hear his voice for ten years? and they did just the same to Themistocles,
adding the penalty of exile; and they voted that Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, should
be thrown into the pit of death, and he was only saved by the Prytanis. And yet, if they
had been really good men, as you say, these things would never have happened to
them. For the good charioteers are not those who at first keep their place, and then,
when they have broken-in their horses, and themselves become better charioteers, are
thrown out—that is not the way either in charioteering or in any profession.—What do
you think? 
CALLICLES: I should think not.
SOCRATES: Well, but if so, the truth is as I have said already, that in the Athenian State
no one has ever shown himself to be a good statesman— you admitted that this was
true of our present statesmen, but not true of former ones, and you preferred them to
the others; yet they have turned out to be no better than our present ones; and
therefore, if they were rhetoricians, they did not use the true art of rhetoric or of flattery,
or they would not have fallen out of favour.
CALLICLES: But surely, Socrates, no living man ever came near any one of them in his
performances.
SOCRATES: O, my dear friend, I say nothing against them regarded as the serving-men
of the State; and I do think that they were certainly more serviceable than those who are
living now, and better able to gratify the wishes of the State; but as to transforming
those desires and not allowing them to have their way, and using the powers which they
had, whether of persuasion or of force, in the improvement of their fellow citizens, which
is the prime object of the truly good citizen, I do not see that in these respects they
were a whit superior to our present statesmen, although I do admit that they were more
clever at providing ships and walls and docks, and all that. You and I have a ridiculous
way, for during the whole time that we are arguing, we are always going round and
round to the same point, and constantly misunderstanding one another. If I am not
mistaken, you have admitted and acknowledged more than once, that there are two
kinds of operations which have to do with the body, and two which have to do with the
soul: one of the two is ministerial, and if our bodies are hungry provides food for them,
and if they are thirsty gives them drink, or if they are cold supplies them with garments,
blankets, shoes, and all that they crave. I use the same images as before intentionally, in
order that you may understand me the better. The purveyor of the articles may provide
them either wholesale or retail, or he may be the maker of any of them,— the baker, or
the cook, or the weaver, or the shoemaker, or the currier; and in so doing, being such as 
he is, he is naturally supposed by himself and every one to minister to the body. For
none of them know that there is another art—an art of gymnastic and medicine which is
the true minister of the body, and ought to be the mistress of all the rest, and to use
their results according to the knowledge which she has and they have not, of the real
good or bad effects of meats and drinks on the body. All other arts which have to do
with the body are servile and menial and illiberal; and gymnastic and medicine are, as
they ought to be, their mistresses. Now, when I say that all this is equally true of the
soul, you seem at first to know and understand and assent to my words, and then a little
while afterwards you come repeating, Has not the State had good and noble citizens?
and when I ask you who they are, you reply, seemingly quite in earnest, as if I had asked,
Who are or have been good trainers?—and you had replied, Thearion, the baker,
Mithoecus, who wrote the Sicilian cookery-book, Sarambus, the vintner: these are
ministers of the body, first-rate in their art; for the first makes admirable loaves, the
second excellent dishes, and the third capital wine;—to me these appear to be the exact
parallel of the statesmen whom you mention. Now you would not be altogether pleased
if I said to you, My friend, you know nothing of gymnastics; those of whom you are
speaking to me are only the ministers and purveyors of luxury, who have no good or
noble notions of their art, and may very likely be filling and fattening men’s bodies and
gaining their approval, although the result is that they lose their original flesh in the
long run, and become thinner than they were before; and yet they, in their simplicity,
will not attribute their diseases and loss of flesh to their entertainers; but when in after
years the unhealthy surfeit brings the attendant penalty of disease, he who happens to
be near them at the time, and offers them advice, is accused and blamed by them, and if
they could they would do him some harm; while they proceed to eulogize the men who
have been the real authors of the mischief. And that, Callicles, is just what you are now
doing. You praise the men who feasted the citizens and satisfied their desires, and
people say that they have made the city great, not seeing that the swollen and ulcerated
condition of the State is to be attributed to these elder statesmen; for they have filled
the city full of harbours and docks and walls and revenues and all that, and have left no 
room for justice and temperance. And when the crisis of the disorder comes, the people
will blame the advisers of the hour, and applaud Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles,
who are the real authors of their calamities; and if you are not careful they may assail
you and my friend Alcibiades, when they are losing not only their new acquisitions, but
also their original possessions; not that you are the authors of these misfortunes of
theirs, although you may perhaps be accessories to them. A great piece of work is
always being made, as I see and am told, now as of old; about our statesmen. When the
State treats any of them as malefactors, I observe that there is a great uproar and
indignation at the supposed wrong which is done to them; ‘after all their many services
to the State, that they should unjustly perish,’—so the tale runs. But the cry is all a lie; for
no statesman ever could be unjustly put to death by the city of which he is the head.
The case of the professed statesman is, I believe, very much like that of the professed
sophist; for the sophists, although they are wise men, are nevertheless guilty of a
strange piece of folly; professing to be teachers of virtue, they will often accuse their
disciples of wronging them, and defrauding them of their pay, and showing no gratitude
for their services. Yet what can be more absurd than that men who have become just
and good, and whose injustice has been taken away from them, and who have had
justice implanted in them by their teachers, should act unjustly by reason of the injustice
which is not in them? Can anything be more irrational, my friends, than this? You,
Callicles, compel me to be a mob-orator, because you will not answer.
CALLICLES: And you are the man who cannot speak unless there is some one to answer?
SOCRATES: I suppose that I can; just now, at any rate, the speeches which I am making
are long enough because you refuse to answer me. But I adjure you by the god of
friendship, my good sir, do tell me whether there does not appear to you to be a great
inconsistency in saying that you have made a man good, and then blaming him for
being bad?
CALLICLES: Yes, it appears so to me. 
SOCRATES: Do you never hear our professors of education speaking in this inconsistent
manner?
CALLICLES: Yes, but why talk of men who are good for nothing?
SOCRATES: I would rather say, why talk of men who profess to be rulers, and declare
that they are devoted to the improvement of the city, and nevertheless upon occasion
declaim against the utter vileness of the city: —do you think that there is any difference
between one and the other? My good friend, the sophist and the rhetorician, as I was
saying to Polus, are the same, or nearly the same; but you ignorantly fancy that rhetoric
is a perfect thing, and sophistry a thing to be despised; whereas the truth is, that
sophistry is as much superior to rhetoric as legislation is to the practice of law, or
gymnastic to medicine. The orators and sophists, as I am inclined to think, are the only
class who cannot complain of the mischief ensuing to themselves from that which they
teach others, without in the same breath accusing themselves of having done no good
to those whom they profess to benefit. Is not this a fact?
CALLICLES: Certainly it is.
SOCRATES: If they were right in saying that they make men better, then they are the
only class who can afford to leave their remuneration to those who have been benefited
by them. Whereas if a man has been benefited in any other way, if, for example, he has
been taught to run by a trainer, he might possibly defraud him of his pay, if the trainer
left the matter to him, and made no agreement with him that he should receive money
as soon as he had given him the utmost speed; for not because of any deficiency of
speed do men act unjustly, but by reason of injustice.
CALLICLES: Very true. 
SOCRATES: And he who removes injustice can be in no danger of being treated unjustly:
he alone can safely leave the honorarium to his pupils, if he be really able to make them
good—am I not right? (Compare Protag.)
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then we have found the reason why there is no dishonour in a man
receiving pay who is called in to advise about building or any other art?
CALLICLES: Yes, we have found the reason.
SOCRATES: But when the point is, how a man may become best himself, and best
govern his family and state, then to say that you will give no advice gratis is held to be
dishonourable?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: And why? Because only such benefits call forth a desire to requite them, and
there is evidence that a benefit has been conferred when the benefactor receives a
return; otherwise not. Is this true?
CALLICLES: It is.
SOCRATES: Then to which service of the State do you invite me? determine for me. Am I
to be the physician of the State who will strive and struggle to make the Athenians as
good as possible; or am I to be the servant and flatterer of the State? Speak out, my
good friend, freely and fairly as you did at first and ought to do again, and tell me your
entire mind.
CALLICLES: I say then that you should be the servant of the State.
SOCRATES: The flatterer? well, sir, that is a noble invitation. 
CALLICLES: The Mysian, Socrates, or what you please. For if you refuse, the
consequences will be—
SOCRATES: Do not repeat the old story—that he who likes will kill me and get my
money; for then I shall have to repeat the old answer, that he will be a bad man and will
kill the good, and that the money will be of no use to him, but that he will wrongly use
that which he wrongly took, and if wrongly, basely, and if basely, hurtfully.
CALLICLES: How confident you are, Socrates, that you will never come to harm! you
seem to think that you are living in another country, and can never be brought into a
court of justice, as you very likely may be brought by some miserable and mean person.
SOCRATES: Then I must indeed be a fool, Callicles, if I do not know that in the Athenian
State any man may suffer anything. And if I am brought to trial and incur the dangers of
which you speak, he will be a villain who brings me to trial—of that I am very sure, for
no good man would accuse the innocent. Nor shall I be surprised if I am put to death.
Shall I tell you why I anticipate this?
CALLICLES: By all means.
SOCRATES: I think that I am the only or almost the only Athenian living who practises
the true art of politics; I am the only politician of my time. Now, seeing that when I
speak my words are not uttered with any view of gaining favour, and that I look to what
is best and not to what is most pleasant, having no mind to use those arts and graces
which you recommend, I shall have nothing to say in the justice court. And you might
argue with me, as I was arguing with Polus:—I shall be tried just as a physician would be
tried in a court of little boys at the indictment of the cook. What would he reply under
such circumstances, if some one were to accuse him, saying, ‘O my boys, many evil
things has this man done to you: he is the death of you, especially of the younger ones
among you, cutting and burning and starving and suffocating you, until you know not
what to do; he gives you the bitterest potions, and compels you to hunger and thirst. 
How unlike the variety of meats and sweets on which I feasted you!’ What do you
suppose that the physician would be able to reply when he found himself in such a
predicament? If he told the truth he could only say, ‘All these evil things, my boys, I did
for your health,’ and then would there not just be a clamour among a jury like that? How
they would cry out!
CALLICLES: I dare say.
SOCRATES: Would he not be utterly at a loss for a reply?
CALLICLES: He certainly would.
SOCRATES: And I too shall be treated in the same way, as I well know, if I am brought
before the court. For I shall not be able to rehearse to the people the pleasures which I
have procured for them, and which, although I am not disposed to envy either the
procurers or enjoyers of them, are deemed by them to be benefits and advantages. And
if any one says that I corrupt young men, and perplex their minds, or that I speak evil of
old men, and use bitter words towards them, whether in private or public, it is useless
for me to reply, as I truly might:—‘All this I do for the sake of justice, and with a view to
your interest, my judges, and to nothing else.’ And therefore there is no saying what
may happen to me.
CALLICLES: And do you think, Socrates, that a man who is thus defenceless is in a good
position?
SOCRATES: Yes, Callicles, if he have that defence, which as you have often
acknowledged he should have—if he be his own defence, and have never said or done
anything wrong, either in respect of gods or men; and this has been repeatedly
acknowledged by us to be the best sort of defence. And if any one could convict me of
inability to defend myself or others after this sort, I should blush for shame, whether I
was convicted before many, or before a few, or by myself alone; and if I died from want 
of ability to do so, that would indeed grieve me. But if I died because I have no powers
of flattery or rhetoric, I am very sure that you would not find me repining at death. For
no man who is not an utter fool and coward is afraid of death itself, but he is afraid of
doing wrong. For to go to the world below having one’s soul full of injustice is the last
and worst of all evils. And in proof of what I say, if you have no objection, I should like to
tell you a story.
CALLICLES: Very well, proceed; and then we shall have done.
SOCRATES: Listen, then, as story-tellers say, to a very pretty tale, which I dare say that
you may be disposed to regard as a fable only, but which, as I believe, is a true tale, for I
mean to speak the truth. Homer tells us (Il.), how Zeus and Poseidon and Pluto divided
the empire which they inherited from their father. Now in the days of Cronos there
existed a law respecting the destiny of man, which has always been, and still continues
to be in Heaven,—that he who has lived all his life in justice and holiness shall go, when
he is dead, to the Islands of the Blessed, and dwell there in perfect happiness out of the
reach of evil; but that he who has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the house of
vengeance and punishment, which is called Tartarus. And in the time of Cronos, and
even quite lately in the reign of Zeus, the judgment was given on the very day on which
the men were to die; the judges were alive, and the men were alive; and the
consequence was that the judgments were not well given. Then Pluto and the
authorities from the Islands of the Blessed came to Zeus, and said that the souls found
their way to the wrong places. Zeus said: ‘I shall put a stop to this; the judgments are not
well given, because the persons who are judged have their clothes on, for they are alive;
and there are many who, having evil souls, are apparelled in fair bodies, or encased in
wealth or rank, and, when the day of judgment arrives, numerous witnesses come
forward and testify on their behalf that they have lived righteously. The judges are awed
by them, and they themselves too have their clothes on when judging; their eyes and
ears and their whole bodies are interposed as a veil before their own souls. All this is a
hindrance to them; there are the clothes of the judges and the clothes of the judged.—
What is to be done? I will tell you:—In the first place, I will deprive men of the
foreknowledge of death, which they possess at present: this power which they have
Prometheus has already received my orders to take from them: in the second place, they
shall be entirely stripped before they are judged, for they shall be judged when they are
dead; and the judge too shall be naked, that is to say, dead—he with his naked soul
shall pierce into the other naked souls; and they shall die suddenly and be deprived of
all their kindred, and leave their brave attire strewn upon the earth—conducted in this
manner, the judgment will be just. I knew all about the matter before any of you, and
therefore I have made my sons judges; two from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and
one from Europe, Aeacus. And these, when they are dead, shall give judgment in the
meadow at the parting of the ways, whence the two roads lead, one to the Islands of the
Blessed, and the other to Tartarus. Rhadamanthus shall judge those who come from
Asia, and Aeacus those who come from Europe. And to Minos I shall give the primacy,
and he shall hold a court of appeal, in case either of the two others are in any doubt:—
then the judgment respecting the last journey of men will be as just as possible.’
From this tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe, I draw the following
inferences:—Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of
two things, soul and body; nothing else. And after they are separated they retain their
several natures, as in life; the body keeps the same habit, and the results of treatment or
accident are distinctly visible in it: for example, he who by nature or training or both,
was a tall man while he was alive, will remain as he was, after he is dead; and the fat man
will remain fat; and so on; and the dead man, who in life had a fancy to have flowing
hair, will have flowing hair. And if he was marked with the whip and had the prints of the
scourge, or of wounds in him when he was alive, you might see the same in the dead
body; and if his limbs were broken or misshapen when he was alive, the same
appearance would be visible in the dead. And in a word, whatever was the habit of the
body during life would be distinguishable after death, either perfectly, or in a great
measure and for a certain time. And I should imagine that this is equally true of the soul, 
Callicles; when a man is stripped of the body, all the natural or acquired affections of the
soul are laid open to view.— And when they come to the judge, as those from Asia
come to Rhadamanthus, he places them near him and inspects them quite impartially,
not knowing whose the soul is: perhaps he may lay hands on the soul of the great king,
or of some other king or potentate, who has no soundness in him, but his soul is
marked with the whip, and is full of the prints and scars of perjuries and crimes with
which each action has stained him, and he is all crooked with falsehood and imposture,
and has no straightness, because he has lived without truth. Him Rhadamanthus
beholds, full of all deformity and disproportion, which is caused by licence and luxury
and insolence and incontinence, and despatches him ignominiously to his prison, and
there he undergoes the punishment which he deserves.
Now the proper office of punishment is twofold: he who is rightly punished ought either
to become better and profit by it, or he ought to be made an example to his fellows,
that they may see what he suffers, and fear and become better. Those who are improved
when they are punished by gods and men, are those whose sins are curable; and they
are improved, as in this world so also in another, by pain and suffering; for there is no
other way in which they can be delivered from their evil. But they who have been guilty
of the worst crimes, and are incurable by reason of their crimes, are made examples; for,
as they are incurable, the time has passed at which they can receive any benefit. They
get no good themselves, but others get good when they behold them enduring for ever
the most terrible and painful and fearful sufferings as the penalty of their sins—there
they are, hanging up as examples, in the prison-house of the world below, a spectacle
and a warning to all unrighteous men who come thither. And among them, as I
confidently affirm, will be found Archelaus, if Polus truly reports of him, and any other
tyrant who is like him. Of these fearful examples, most, as I believe, are taken from the
class of tyrants and kings and potentates and public men, for they are the authors of the
greatest and most impious crimes, because they have the power. And Homer witnesses
to the truth of this; for they are always kings and potentates whom he has described as 
suffering everlasting punishment in the world below: such were Tantalus and Sisyphus
and Tityus. But no one ever described Thersites, or any private person who was a villain,
as suffering everlasting punishment, or as incurable. For to commit the worst crimes, as I
am inclined to think, was not in his power, and he was happier than those who had the
power. No, Callicles, the very bad men come from the class of those who have power
(compare Republic). And yet in that very class there may arise good men, and worthy of
all admiration they are, for where there is great power to do wrong, to live and to die
justly is a hard thing, and greatly to be praised, and few there are who attain to this.
Such good and true men, however, there have been, and will be again, at Athens and in
other states, who have fulfilled their trust righteously; and there is one who is quite
famous all over Hellas, Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus. But, in general, great men are
also bad, my friend.
As I was saying, Rhadamanthus, when he gets a soul of the bad kind, knows nothing
about him, neither who he is, nor who his parents are; he knows only that he has got
hold of a villain; and seeing this, he stamps him as curable or incurable, and sends him
away to Tartarus, whither he goes and receives his proper recompense. Or, again, he
looks with admiration on the soul of some just one who has lived in holiness and truth;
he may have been a private man or not; and I should say, Callicles, that he is most likely
to have been a philosopher who has done his own work, and not troubled himself with
the doings of other men in his lifetime; him Rhadamanthus sends to the Islands of the
Blessed. Aeacus does the same; and they both have sceptres, and judge; but Minos
alone has a golden sceptre and is seated looking on, as Odysseus in Homer declares
that he saw him:
‘Holding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.’
Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth of these things, and I consider how I shall
present my soul whole and undefiled before the judge in that day. Renouncing the
honours at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I 
can, and, when I die, to die as well as I can. And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all
other men to do the same. And, in return for your exhortation of me, I exhort you also
to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every
other earthly conflict. And I retort your reproach of me, and say, that you will not be
able to help yourself when the day of trial and judgment, of which I was speaking,
comes upon you; you will go before the judge, the son of Aegina, and, when he has got
you in his grip and is carrying you off, you will gape and your head will swim round, just
as mine would in the courts of this world, and very likely some one will shamefully box
you on the ears, and put upon you any sort of insult.
Perhaps this may appear to you to be only an old wife’s tale, which you will contemn.
And there might be reason in your contemning such tales, if by searching we could find
out anything better or truer: but now you see that you and Polus and Gorgias, who are
the three wisest of the Greeks of our day, are not able to show that we ought to live any
life which does not profit in another world as well as in this. And of all that has been
said, nothing remains unshaken but the saying, that to do injustice is more to be
avoided than to suffer injustice, and that the reality and not the appearance of virtue is
to be followed above all things, as well in public as in private life; and that when any one
has been wrong in anything, he is to be chastised, and that the next best thing to a man
being just is that he should become just, and be chastised and punished; also that he
should avoid all flattery of himself as well as of others, of the few or of the many: and
rhetoric and any other art should be used by him, and all his actions should be done
always, with a view to justice.
Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be happy in life and after death, as
the argument shows. And never mind if some one despises you as a fool, and insults
you, if he has a mind; let him strike you, by Zeus, and do you be of good cheer, and do
not mind the insulting blow, for you will never come to any harm in the practice of
virtue, if you are a really good and true man. When we have practised virtue together,
we will apply ourselves to politics, if that seems desirable, or we will advise about 
whatever else may seem good to us, for we shall be better able to judge then. In our
present condition we ought not to give ourselves airs, for even on the most important
subjects we are always changing our minds; so utterly stupid are we! Let us, then, take
the argument as our guide, which has revealed to us that the best way of life is to
practise justice and every virtue in life and death. This way let us go; and in this exhort
all men to follow, not in the way to which you trust and in which you exhort me to
follow you; for that way, Callicles, is nothing worth.
                                                               THE END
PROTAGORAS
By
Plato
Translated by
Benjamin jowett 
INTRODUCTION.
The Protagoras, like several of the Dialogues of Plato, is put into the mouth of Socrates,
who describes a conversation which had taken place between himself and the great
Sophist at the house of Callias—‘the man who had spent more upon the Sophists than
all the rest of the world’—and in which the learned Hippias and the grammarian
Prodicus had also shared, as well as Alcibiades and Critias, both of whom said a few
words—in the presence of a distinguished company consisting of disciples of
Protagoras and of leading Athenians belonging to the Socratic circle. The dialogue
commences with a request on the part of Hippocrates that Socrates would introduce
him to the celebrated teacher. He has come before the dawn had risen—so fervid is his
zeal. Socrates moderates his excitement and advises him to find out ‘what Protagoras
will make of him,’ before he becomes his pupil.
They go together to the house of Callias; and Socrates, after explaining the purpose of
their visit to Protagoras, asks the question, ‘What he will make of Hippocrates.’
Protagoras answers, ‘That he will make him a better and a wiser man.’ ‘But in what will
he be better?’—Socrates desires to have a more precise answer. Protagoras replies, ‘That
he will teach him prudence in affairs private and public; in short, the science or
knowledge of human life.’
This, as Socrates admits, is a noble profession; but he is or rather would have been
doubtful, whether such knowledge can be taught, if Protagoras had not assured him of
the fact, for two reasons: (1) Because the Athenian people, who recognize in their
assemblies the distinction between the skilled and the unskilled in the arts, do not
distinguish between the trained politician and the untrained; (2) Because the wisest and
best Athenian citizens do not teach their sons political virtue. Will Protagoras answer
these objections? 
Protagoras explains his views in the form of an apologue, in which, after Prometheus
had given men the arts, Zeus is represented as sending Hermes to them, bearing with
him Justice and Reverence. These are not, like the arts, to be imparted to a few only, but
all men are to be partakers of them. Therefore the Athenian people are right in
distinguishing between the skilled and unskilled in the arts, and not between skilled and
unskilled politicians. (1) For all men have the political virtues to a certain degree, and are
obliged to say that they have them, whether they have them or not. A man would be
thought a madman who professed an art which he did not know; but he would be
equally thought a madman if he did not profess a virtue which he had not. (2) And that
the political virtues can be taught and acquired, in the opinion of the Athenians, is
proved by the fact that they punish evil-doers, with a view to prevention, of course —
mere retribution is for beasts, and not for men. (3) Again, would parents who teach her
sons lesser matters leave them ignorant of the common duty of citizens? To the doubt
of Socrates the best answer is the fact, that the education of youth in virtue begins
almost as soon as they can speak, and is continued by the state when they pass out of
the parental control. (4) Nor need we wonder that wise and good fathers sometimes
have foolish and worthless sons. Virtue, as we were saying, is not the private possession
of any man, but is shared by all, only however to the extent of which each individual is
by nature capable. And, as a matter of fact, even the worst of civilized mankind will
appear virtuous and just, if we compare them with savages. (5) The error of Socrates lies
in supposing that there are no teachers of virtue, whereas all men are teachers in a
degree. Some, like Protagoras, are better than others, and with this result we ought to
be satisfied.
Socrates is highly delighted with the explanation of Protagoras. But he has still a doubt
lingering in his mind. Protagoras has spoken of the virtues: are they many, or one? are
they parts of a whole, or different names of the same thing? Protagoras replies that they
are parts, like the parts of a face, which have their several functions, and no one part is 
like any other part. This admission, which has been somewhat hastily made, is now taken
up and cross-examined by Socrates:—
‘Is justice just, and is holiness holy? And are justice and holiness opposed to one
another?’—‘Then justice is unholy.’ Protagoras would rather say that justice is different
from holiness, and yet in a certain point of view nearly the same. He does not, however,
escape in this way from the cunning of Socrates, who inveigles him into an admission
that everything has but one opposite. Folly, for example, is opposed to wisdom; and
folly is also opposed to temperance; and therefore temperance and wisdom are the
same. And holiness has been already admitted to be nearly the same as justice.
Temperance, therefore, has now to be compared with justice.
Protagoras, whose temper begins to get a little ruffled at the process to which he has
been subjected, is aware that he will soon be compelled by the dialectics of Socrates to
admit that the temperate is the just. He therefore defends himself with his favourite
weapon; that is to say, he makes a long speech not much to the point, which elicits the
applause of the audience.
Here occurs a sort of interlude, which commences with a declaration on the part of
Socrates that he cannot follow a long speech, and therefore he must beg Protagoras to
speak shorter. As Protagoras declines to accommodate him, he rises to depart, but is
detained by Callias, who thinks him unreasonable in not allowing Protagoras the liberty
which he takes himself of speaking as he likes. But Alcibiades answers that the two cases
are not parallel. For Socrates admits his inability to speak long; will Protagoras in like
manner acknowledge his inability to speak short?
Counsels of moderation are urged first in a few words by Critias, and then by Prodicus in
balanced and sententious language: and Hippias proposes an umpire. But who is to be
the umpire? rejoins Socrates; he would rather suggest as a compromise that Protagoras 
shall ask and he will answer, and that when Protagoras is tired of asking he himself will
ask and Protagoras shall answer. To this the latter yields a reluctant assent.
Protagoras selects as his thesis a poem of Simonides of Ceos, in which he professes to
find a contradiction. First the poet says,
‘Hard is it to become good,’
and then reproaches Pittacus for having said, ‘Hard is it to be good.’ How is this to be
reconciled? Socrates, who is familiar with the poem, is embarrassed at first, and invokes
the aid of Prodicus, the countryman of Simonides, but apparently only with the intention
of flattering him into absurdities. First a distinction is drawn between (Greek) to be, and
(Greek) to become: to become good is difficult; to be good is easy. Then the word
difficult or hard is explained to mean ‘evil’ in the Cean dialect. To all this Prodicus
assents; but when Protagoras reclaims, Socrates slily withdraws Prodicus from the fray,
under the pretence that his assent was only intended to test the wits of his adversary.
He then proceeds to give another and more elaborate explanation of the whole
passage. The explanation is as follows:—
The Lacedaemonians are great philosophers (although this is a fact which is not
generally known); and the soul of their philosophy is brevity, which was also the style of
primitive antiquity and of the seven sages. Now Pittacus had a saying, ‘Hard is it to be
good:’ and Simonides, who was jealous of the fame of this saying, wrote a poem which
was designed to controvert it. No, says he, Pittacus; not ‘hard to be good,’ but ‘hard to
become good.’ Socrates proceeds to argue in a highly impressive manner that the whole
composition is intended as an attack upon Pittacus. This, though manifestly absurd, is
accepted by the company, and meets with the special approval of Hippias, who has
however a favourite interpretation of his own, which he is requested by Alcibiades to
defer. 
The argument is now resumed, not without some disdainful remarks of Socrates on the
practice of introducing the poets, who ought not to be allowed, any more than flutegirls,
to come into good society. Men’s own thoughts should supply them with the
materials for discussion. A few soothing flatteries are addressed to Protagoras by Callias
and Socrates, and then the old question is repeated, ‘Whether the virtues are one or
many?’ To which Protagoras is now disposed to reply, that four out of the five virtues
are in some degree similar; but he still contends that the fifth, courage, is unlike the rest.
Socrates proceeds to undermine the last stronghold of the adversary, first obtaining
from him the admission that all virtue is in the highest degree good:—
The courageous are the confident; and the confident are those who know their business
or profession: those who have no such knowledge and are still confident are madmen.
This is admitted. Then, says Socrates, courage is knowledge—an inference which
Protagoras evades by drawing a futile distinction between the courageous and the
confident in a fluent speech.
Socrates renews the attack from another side: he would like to know whether pleasure is
not the only good, and pain the only evil? Protagoras seems to doubt the morality or
propriety of assenting to this; he would rather say that ‘some pleasures are good, some
pains are evil,’ which is also the opinion of the generality of mankind. What does he
think of knowledge? Does he agree with the common opinion that knowledge is
overcome by passion? or does he hold that knowledge is power? Protagoras agrees that
knowledge is certainly a governing power.
This, however, is not the doctrine of men in general, who maintain that many who know
what is best, act contrary to their knowledge under the influence of pleasure. But this
opposition of good and evil is really the opposition of a greater or lesser amount of
pleasure. Pleasures are evils because they end in pain, and pains are goods because they
end in pleasures. Thus pleasure is seen to be the only good; and the only evil is the
preference of the lesser pleasure to the greater. But then comes in the illusion of 
distance. Some art of mensuration is required in order to show us pleasures and pains in
their true proportion. This art of mensuration is a kind of knowledge, and knowledge is
thus proved once more to be the governing principle of human life, and ignorance the
origin of all evil: for no one prefers the less pleasure to the greater, or the greater pain
to the less, except from ignorance. The argument is drawn out in an imaginary ‘dialogue
within a dialogue,’ conducted by Socrates and Protagoras on the one part, and the rest
of the world on the other. Hippias and Prodicus, as well as Protagoras, admit the
soundness of the conclusion.
Socrates then applies this new conclusion to the case of courage—the only virtue which
still holds out against the assaults of the Socratic dialectic. No one chooses the evil or
refuses the good except through ignorance. This explains why cowards refuse to go to
war:—because they form a wrong estimate of good, and honour, and pleasure. And why
are the courageous willing to go to war?—because they form a right estimate of
pleasures and pains, of things terrible and not terrible. Courage then is knowledge, and
cowardice is ignorance. And the five virtues, which were originally maintained to have
five different natures, after having been easily reduced to two only, at last coalesce in
one. The assent of Protagoras to this last position is extracted with great difficulty.
Socrates concludes by professing his disinterested love of the truth, and remarks on the
singular manner in which he and his adversary had changed sides. Protagoras began by
asserting, and Socrates by denying, the teachableness of virtue, and now the latter ends
by affirming that virtue is knowledge, which is the most teachable of all things, while
Protagoras has been striving to show that virtue is not knowledge, and this is almost
equivalent to saying that virtue cannot be taught. He is not satisfied with the result, and
would like to renew the enquiry with the help of Protagoras in a different order, asking
(1) What virtue is, and (2) Whether virtue can be taught. Protagoras declines this offer,
but commends Socrates’ earnestness and his style of discussion. 
The Protagoras is often supposed to be full of difficulties. These are partly imaginary and
partly real. The imaginary ones are (1) Chronological,—which were pointed out in
ancient times by Athenaeus, and are noticed by Schleiermacher and others, and relate to
the impossibility of all the persons in the Dialogue meeting at any one time, whether in
the year 425 B.C., or in any other. But Plato, like all writers of fiction, aims only at the
probable, and shows in many Dialogues (e.g. the Symposium and Republic, and already
in the Laches) an extreme disregard of the historical accuracy which is sometimes
demanded of him. (2) The exact place of the Protagoras among the Dialogues, and the
date of composition, have also been much disputed. But there are no criteria which
afford any real grounds for determining the date of composition; and the affinities of
the Dialogues, when they are not indicated by Plato himself, must always to a great
extent remain uncertain. (3) There is another class of difficulties, which may be ascribed
to preconceived notions of commentators, who imagine that Protagoras the Sophist
ought always to be in the wrong, and his adversary Socrates in the right; or that in this
or that passage—e.g. in the explanation of good as pleasure—Plato is inconsistent with
himself; or that the Dialogue fails in unity, and has not a proper beginning, middle, and
ending. They seem to forget that Plato is a dramatic writer who throws his thoughts into
both sides of the argument, and certainly does not aim at any unity which is inconsistent
with freedom, and with a natural or even wild manner of treating his subject; also that
his mode of revealing the truth is by lights and shadows, and far-off and opposing
points of view, and not by dogmatic statements or definite results.
The real difficulties arise out of the extreme subtlety of the work, which, as Socrates says
of the poem of Simonides, is a most perfect piece of art. There are dramatic contrasts
and interests, threads of philosophy broken and resumed, satirical reflections on
mankind, veils thrown over truths which are lightly suggested, and all woven together in
a single design, and moving towards one end.
In the introductory scene Plato raises the expectation that a ‘great personage’ is about
to appear on the stage; perhaps with a further view of showing that he is destined to be 
overthrown by a greater still, who makes no pretensions. Before introducing
Hippocrates to him, Socrates thinks proper to warn the youth against the dangers of
‘influence,’ of which the invidious nature is recognized by Protagoras himself.
Hippocrates readily adopts the suggestion of Socrates that he shall learn of Protagoras
only the accomplishments which befit an Athenian gentleman, and let alone his
‘sophistry.’ There is nothing however in the introduction which leads to the inference
that Plato intended to blacken the character of the Sophists; he only makes a little merry
at their expense.
The ‘great personage’ is somewhat ostentatious, but frank and honest. He is introduced
on a stage which is worthy of him—at the house of the rich Callias, in which are
congregated the noblest and wisest of the Athenians. He considers openness to be the
best policy, and particularly mentions his own liberal mode of dealing with his pupils, as
if in answer to the favourite accusation of the Sophists that they received pay. He is
remarkable for the good temper which he exhibits throughout the discussion under the
trying and often sophistical cross-examination of Socrates. Although once or twice
ruffled, and reluctant to continue the discussion, he parts company on perfectly good
terms, and appears to be, as he says of himself, the ‘least jealous of mankind.’
Nor is there anything in the sentiments of Protagoras which impairs this pleasing
impression of the grave and weighty old man. His real defect is that he is inferior to
Socrates in dialectics. The opposition between him and Socrates is not the opposition of
good and bad, true and false, but of the old art of rhetoric and the new science of
interrogation and argument; also of the irony of Socrates and the self-assertion of the
Sophists. There is quite as much truth on the side of Protagoras as of Socrates; but the
truth of Protagoras is based on common sense and common maxims of morality, while
that of Socrates is paradoxical or transcendental, and though full of meaning and
insight, hardly intelligible to the rest of mankind. Here as elsewhere is the usual contrast
between the Sophists representing average public opinion and Socrates seeking for 
increased clearness and unity of ideas. But to a great extent Protagoras has the best of
the argument and represents the better mind of man.
For example: (1) one of the noblest statements to be found in antiquity about the
preventive nature of punishment is put into his mouth; (2) he is clearly right also in
maintaining that virtue can be taught (which Socrates himself, at the end of the
Dialogue, is disposed to concede); and also (3) in his explanation of the phenomenon
that good fathers have bad sons; (4) he is right also in observing that the virtues are not
like the arts, gifts or attainments of special individuals, but the common property of all:
this, which in all ages has been the strength and weakness of ethics and politics, is
deeply seated in human nature; (5) there is a sort of half- truth in the notion that all
civilized men are teachers of virtue; and more than a half-truth (6) in ascribing to man,
who in his outward conditions is more helpless than the other animals, the power of
self-improvement; (7) the religious allegory should be noticed, in which the arts are said
to be given by Prometheus (who stole them), whereas justice and reverence and the
political virtues could only be imparted by Zeus; (8) in the latter part of the Dialogue,
when Socrates is arguing that ‘pleasure is the only good,’ Protagoras deems it more in
accordance with his character to maintain that ‘some pleasures only are good;’ and
admits that ‘he, above all other men, is bound to say “that wisdom and knowledge are
the highest of human things.”’
There is no reason to suppose that in all this Plato is depicting an imaginary Protagoras;
he seems to be showing us the teaching of the Sophists under the milder aspect under
which he once regarded them. Nor is there any reason to doubt that Socrates is equally
an historical character, paradoxical, ironical, tiresome, but seeking for the unity of virtue
and knowledge as for a precious treasure; willing to rest this even on a calculation of
pleasure, and irresistible here, as everywhere in Plato, in his intellectual superiority.
The aim of Socrates, and of the Dialogue, is to show the unity of virtue. In the
determination of this question the identity of virtue and knowledge is found to be 
involved. But if virtue and knowledge are one, then virtue can be taught; the end of the
Dialogue returns to the beginning. Had Protagoras been allowed by Plato to make the
Aristotelian distinction, and say that virtue is not knowledge, but is accompanied with
knowledge; or to point out with Aristotle that the same quality may have more than one
opposite; or with Plato himself in the Phaedo to deny that good is a mere exchange of a
greater pleasure for a less—the unity of virtue and the identity of virtue and knowledge
would have required to be proved by other arguments.
The victory of Socrates over Protagoras is in every way complete when their minds are
fairly brought together. Protagoras falls before him after two or three blows. Socrates
partially gains his object in the first part of the Dialogue, and completely in the second.
Nor does he appear at any disadvantage when subjected to ‘the question’ by
Protagoras. He succeeds in making his two ‘friends,’ Prodicus and Hippias, ludicrous by
the way; he also makes a long speech in defence of the poem of Simonides, after the
manner of the Sophists, showing, as Alcibiades says, that he is only pretending to have a
bad memory, and that he and not Protagoras is really a master in the two styles of
speaking; and that he can undertake, not one side of the argument only, but both, when
Protagoras begins to break down. Against the authority of the poets with whom
Protagoras has ingeniously identified himself at the commencement of the Dialogue,
Socrates sets up the proverbial philosophers and those masters of brevity the
Lacedaemonians. The poets, the Laconizers, and Protagoras are satirized at the same
time.
Not having the whole of this poem before us, it is impossible for us to answer certainly
the question of Protagoras, how the two passages of Simonides are to be reconciled.
We can only follow the indications given by Plato himself. But it seems likely that the
reconcilement offered by Socrates is a caricature of the methods of interpretation which
were practised by the Sophists—for the following reasons: (1) The transparent irony of
the previous interpretations given by Socrates. (2) The ludicrous opening of the speech
in which the Lacedaemonians are described as the true philosophers, and Laconic 
brevity as the true form of philosophy, evidently with an allusion to Protagoras’ long
speeches. (3) The manifest futility and absurdity of the explanation of (Greek), which is
hardly consistent with the rational interpretation of the rest of the poem. The opposition
of (Greek) and (Greek) seems also intended to express the rival doctrines of Socrates
and Protagoras, and is a facetious commentary on their differences. (4) The general
treatment in Plato both of the Poets and the Sophists, who are their interpreters, and
whom he delights to identify with them. (5) The depreciating spirit in which Socrates
speaks of the introduction of the poets as a substitute for original conversation, which is
intended to contrast with Protagoras’ exaltation of the study of them— this again is
hardly consistent with the serious defence of Simonides. (6) the marked approval of
Hippias, who is supposed at once to catch the familiar sound, just as in the previous
conversation Prodicus is represented as ready to accept any distinctions of language
however absurd. At the same time Hippias is desirous of substituting a new
interpretation of his own; as if the words might really be made to mean anything, and
were only to be regarded as affording a field for the ingenuity of the interpreter.
This curious passage is, therefore, to be regarded as Plato’s satire on the tedious and
hypercritical arts of interpretation which prevailed in his own day, and may be compared
with his condemnation of the same arts when applied to mythology in the Phaedrus,
and with his other parodies, e.g. with the two first speeches in the Phaedrus and with
the Menexenus. Several lesser touches of satire may be observed, such as the claim of
philosophy advanced for the Lacedaemonians, which is a parody of the claims advanced
for the Poets by Protagoras; the mistake of the Laconizing set in supposing that the
Lacedaemonians are a great nation because they bruise their ears; the far-fetched
notion, which is ‘really too bad,’ that Simonides uses the Lesbian (?) word, (Greek),
because he is addressing a Lesbian. The whole may also be considered as a satire on
those who spin pompous theories out of nothing. As in the arguments of the
Euthydemus and of the Cratylus, the veil of irony is never withdrawn; and we are left in 
doubt at last how far in this interpretation of Simonides Socrates is ‘fooling,’ how far he
is in earnest.
All the interests and contrasts of character in a great dramatic work like the Protagoras
are not easily exhausted. The impressiveness of the scene should not be lost upon us, or
the gradual substitution of Socrates in the second part for Protagoras in the first. The
characters to whom we are introduced at the beginning of the Dialogue all play a part
more or less conspicuous towards the end. There is Alcibiades, who is compelled by the
necessity of his nature to be a partisan, lending effectual aid to Socrates; there is Critias
assuming the tone of impartiality; Callias, here as always inclining to the Sophists, but
eager for any intellectual repast; Prodicus, who finds an opportunity for displaying his
distinctions of language, which are valueless and pedantic, because they are not based
on dialectic; Hippias, who has previously exhibited his superficial knowledge of natural
philosophy, to which, as in both the Dialogues called by his name, he now adds the
profession of an interpreter of the Poets. The two latter personages have been already
damaged by the mock heroic description of them in the introduction. It may be
remarked that Protagoras is consistently presented to us throughout as the teacher of
moral and political virtue; there is no allusion to the theories of sensation which are
attributed to him in the Theaetetus and elsewhere, or to his denial of the existence of
the gods in a well-known fragment ascribed to him; he is the religious rather than the
irreligious teacher in this Dialogue. Also it may be observed that Socrates shows him as
much respect as is consistent with his own ironical character; he admits that the dialectic
which has overthrown Protagoras has carried himself round to a conclusion opposed to
his first thesis. The force of argument, therefore, and not Socrates or Protagoras, has
won the day.
But is Socrates serious in maintaining (1) that virtue cannot be taught; (2) that the
virtues are one; (3) that virtue is the knowledge of pleasures and pains present and
future? These propositions to us have an appearance of paradox—they are really
moments or aspects of the truth by the help of which we pass from the old conventional 
morality to a higher conception of virtue and knowledge. That virtue cannot be taught is
a paradox of the same sort as the profession of Socrates that he knew nothing. Plato
means to say that virtue is not brought to a man, but must be drawn out of him; and
cannot be taught by rhetorical discourses or citations from the poets. The second
question, whether the virtues are one or many, though at first sight distinct, is really a
part of the same subject; for if the virtues are to be taught, they must be reducible to a
common principle; and this common principle is found to be knowledge. Here, as
Aristotle remarks, Socrates and Plato outstep the truth—they make a part of virtue into
the whole. Further, the nature of this knowledge, which is assumed to be a knowledge of
pleasures and pains, appears to us too superficial and at variance with the spirit of Plato
himself. Yet, in this, Plato is only following the historical Socrates as he is depicted to us
in Xenophon’s Memorabilia. Like Socrates, he finds on the surface of human life one
common bond by which the virtues are united,—their tendency to produce happiness,—
though such a principle is afterwards repudiated by him.
It remains to be considered in what relation the Protagoras stands to the other
Dialogues of Plato. That it is one of the earlier or purely Socratic works—perhaps the
last, as it is certainly the greatest of them—is indicated by the absence of any allusion to
the doctrine of reminiscence; and also by the different attitude assumed towards the
teaching and persons of the Sophists in some of the later Dialogues. The Charmides,
Laches, Lysis, all touch on the question of the relation of knowledge to virtue, and may
be regarded, if not as preliminary studies or sketches of the more important work, at any
rate as closely connected with it. The Io and the lesser Hippias contain discussions of the
Poets, which offer a parallel to the ironical criticism of Simonides, and are conceived in a
similar spirit. The affinity of the Protagoras to the Meno is more doubtful. For there,
although the same question is discussed, ‘whether virtue can be taught,’ and the relation
of Meno to the Sophists is much the same as that of Hippocrates, the answer to the
question is supplied out of the doctrine of ideas; the real Socrates is already passing into
the Platonic one. At a later stage of the Platonic philosophy we shall find that both the 
paradox and the solution of it appear to have been retracted. The Phaedo, the Gorgias,
and the Philebus offer further corrections of the teaching of the Protagoras; in all of
them the doctrine that virtue is pleasure, or that pleasure is the chief or only good, is
distinctly renounced.
Thus after many preparations and oppositions, both of the characters of men and
aspects of the truth, especially of the popular and philosophical aspect; and after many
interruptions and detentions by the way, which, as Theodorus says in the Theaetetus, are
quite as agreeable as the argument, we arrive at the great Socratic thesis that virtue is
knowledge. This is an aspect of the truth which was lost almost as soon as it was found;
and yet has to be recovered by every one for himself who would pass the limits of
proverbial and popular philosophy. The moral and intellectual are always dividing, yet
they must be reunited, and in the highest conception of them are inseparable. The
thesis of Socrates is not merely a hasty assumption, but may be also deemed an
anticipation of some ‘metaphysic of the future,’ in which the divided elements of human
nature are reconciled. 
PROTAGORAS
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, who is the narrator of the Dialogue to his
Companion. Hippocrates, Alcibiades and Critias. Protagoras, Hippias and Prodicus
(Sophists). Callias, a wealthy Athenian.
SCENE: The House of Callias.
COMPANION: Where do you come from, Socrates? And yet I need hardly ask the
question, for I know that you have been in chase of the fair Alcibiades. I saw him the day
before yesterday; and he had got a beard like a man,—and he is a man, as I may tell you
in your ear. But I thought that he was still very charming.
SOCRATES: What of his beard? Are you not of Homer’s opinion, who says
‘Youth is most charming when the beard first appears’?
And that is now the charm of Alcibiades.
COMPANION: Well, and how do matters proceed? Have you been visiting him, and was
he gracious to you?
SOCRATES: Yes, I thought that he was very gracious; and especially to-day, for I have
just come from him, and he has been helping me in an argument. But shall I tell you a
strange thing? I paid no attention to him, and several times I quite forgot that he was
present.
COMPANION: What is the meaning of this? Has anything happened between you and
him? For surely you cannot have discovered a fairer love than he is; certainly not in this
city of Athens.
SOCRATES: Yes, much fairer. 
COMPANION: What do you mean—a citizen or a foreigner?
SOCRATES: A foreigner.
COMPANION: Of what country?
SOCRATES: Of Abdera.
COMPANION: And is this stranger really in your opinion a fairer love than the son of
Cleinias?
SOCRATES: And is not the wiser always the fairer, sweet friend?
COMPANION: But have you really met, Socrates, with some wise one?
SOCRATES: Say rather, with the wisest of all living men, if you are willing to accord that
title to Protagoras.
COMPANION: What! Is Protagoras in Athens?
SOCRATES: Yes; he has been here two days.
COMPANION: And do you just come from an interview with him?
SOCRATES: Yes; and I have heard and said many things.
COMPANION: Then, if you have no engagement, suppose that you sit down and tell me
what passed, and my attendant here shall give up his place to you.
SOCRATES: To be sure; and I shall be grateful to you for listening.
COMPANION: Thank you, too, for telling us.
SOCRATES: That is thank you twice over. Listen then:— 
Last night, or rather very early this morning, Hippocrates, the son of Apollodorus and
the brother of Phason, gave a tremendous thump with his staff at my door; some one
opened to him, and he came rushing in and bawled out: Socrates, are you awake or
asleep?
I knew his voice, and said: Hippocrates, is that you? and do you bring any news?
Good news, he said; nothing but good.