Republic

SocratesI went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon, son of Ariston, to offer my prayers to the goddess, and also because I wanted to see how they would conduct the festival, since this was the first time they were holding it. I thought the procession of the local people was a fine one, but the one the Thracians sent looked every bit as good. 327b When we had said our prayers and watched the show, we started back toward the city. Polemarchus, son of Cephalus, caught sight of us from a distance as we were setting off for home, and told his slave to run and ask us to wait for him. The slave caught hold of my cloak from behind and said, “Polemarchus wants you to wait.” I turned around and asked where Polemarchus himself was. “He’s coming up behind you,” he said. “Just wait.” “All right, we’ll wait,” said Glaucon. 327cnote

A little later Polemarchus arrived, with Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus, son of Nicias, and a few others, apparently on their way from the procession.

Polemarchus said, “Socrates, it looks to me as if you two are off to town and leaving us.”

“Not a bad guess,” I said.

“Well, do you see how many of us there are?” he said.

“Of course.”

“Then either prove yourselves stronger than all these,” he said, “or stay here.”

“Isn’t there one other possibility,” I said: “that we persuade you to let us go?”

“But could you persuade people who won’t listen?” he said.

“Certainly not,” said Glaucon.

“Then you’d better assume we won’t be listening.”

And Adeimantus said, “Don’t you even know that there’s going to be a torch race on horseback this evening, for the goddess?”

“On horseback?” I said. “That’s something new. Will they carry torches and hand them on to one another as they race their horses? Or what do you mean?”

“Just that,” said Polemarchus. “And on top of that they’ll hold an all-night festival that’s worth seeing. We’ll get up after dinner and go and watch it. We’ll meet lots of the young men there and have some conversation. So stay, 328b and don’t say no.”

And Glaucon said, “It looks as though we’ll have to stay.”

“Well, if you think so,” I said, “that’s what we should do.”

So we went to Polemarchus’ house, and there we found Lysias and Euthydemus, Polemarchus’ brothers, and also Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, Charmantides of Paeania, and Clitophon, son of Aristonymus. Polemarchus’ father Cephalus was at home too. He looked very old to me, since it had been a long time since 328c I’d seen him. He was sitting on a cushioned chair, wearing a garland, because he had just been offering a sacrifice in the courtyard. So we sat down beside him, since there were some chairs set out there in a circle.note

As soon as Cephalus saw me he greeted me and said, “Socrates, you don’t often come down to the Piraeus to see us. You really should. If I still had the strength to walk up to town easily, there’d be no need for you to come here; 328d we would come to you. But as things are, you ought to come here more often. I can tell you that for me, as the other pleasures, the bodily ones, wither away, my desire for conversation and my pleasure in it grow in equal measure. So don’t say no. Spend time with these young men, and come and visit us here regularly, as you would friends who are very close to you.”

“Well, Cephalus,” I said, “I really do enjoy talking 328e with the very old. I think we ought to learn from them, since they’ve gone ahead of us down a road that we too will probably have to travel, what kind of road it is—rough and hard, or easy and smooth. And I’d especially like to hear from you how it looks to you, since you’ve now reached the time of life the poets call ‘the threshold of old age.’ Is it a hard part of life, or how would you describe it?”

I admired him for saying this, and wanting him to keep 329e talking, I prodded him and said, “Cephalus, I imagine that when you say this, most people don’t accept it. They think you bear old age easily not because of your character but because you’ve acquired a great deal of wealth. The rich, they say, have many consolations.”

“That’s true,” he said. “They don’t accept it. And they have a point, though not as much of one as they think. What Themistocles said fits well here. When a man from Seriphus was abusing him and saying 330a that his fame was due not to himself but to his city, he answered that he wouldn’t have become famous if he’d been a Seriphian, and neither would the other man if he’d been an Athenian. The same principle applies well to people who aren’t rich and find old age hard. A decent man wouldn’t find old age altogether easy to bear if he were poor, but an indecent one, even if he became rich, would never be at peace with himself.”note

“Cephalus,” I said, “did you inherit most of what you own, or did you make it yourself?” 330b

“Make it, Socrates?” he said. “As a moneymaker I’ve come out somewhere between my grandfather and my father. My grandfather, whose name I share, inherited about as much property as I own now and multiplied it many times over, while my father Lysanias reduced it to even less than it is now. I’m content if I leave these boys not less, but a little more than I inherited.”

“The reason I asked,” I said, “is that you didn’t seem to me especially 330c attached to money. That’s usually the way with people who didn’t make it themselves. Those who did make it love it twice as much as anyone else. Just as poets love their own poems and fathers their children, so people who have made money care about it as their own work, as well as for its usefulness, as others do. That makes them hard even to be around: they won’t praise anything but wealth.”

“That’s true,” he said. 330d

“It certainly is,” I said. “But tell me one more thing. What do you think is the greatest good you’ve enjoyed from owning great wealth?”

“Something,” he said, “that I probably couldn’t persuade many people of if I said it. You should know, Socrates,” he said, “that when a man comes close to thinking he’s going to die, fear and worry come over him about things that never troubled him before. The stories told about what happens in Hades—that someone who has done wrong here must pay 330e the penalty there—which he used to laugh at, now torment his soul with the fear that they might be true. And he himself—whether because of the weakness of old age, or because he’s closer now to what’s there and sees it more clearly—at any rate he’s filled with suspicion and dread, and begins to reckon up and examine whether he has wronged anyone.

“The man who finds many wrongs in his life wakes up often from his sleep in terror, like children, 331a and lives with bad expectations. But the man who knows of no wrong he’s done always has sweet hope beside him, a good ‘nurse of old age,’ as Pindar puts it. He said it beautifully, Socrates: whoever lives his life justly and piously, ‘sweet hope goes with him, cherishing his heart, the nurse of his old age—hope, which most of all steers the twisting minds of mortals.’ That’s wonderfully well said. And it’s with this in view that I count owning money most valuable—not 331b for every man, but for one who is decent and orderly.note

“Beautifully put, Cephalus,” I said. “But this very thing, justice—are we to say it’s simply telling the truth and giving back whatever you’ve received from someone? Or is it sometimes just and sometimes unjust to do these very things? Here’s the kind of case I mean. Surely everyone would agree that if you took weapons from a friend when he was in his right mind, and he went mad and asked for them back, you shouldn’t return them, and whoever returned them wouldn’t be just—nor would someone who was willing to tell the whole truth to a man in that state.” 331d

“You’re right,” he said.

“Then this isn’t the definition of justice: telling the truth and giving back what you’ve received.”

“Yes, it is, Socrates,” said Polemarchus, breaking in, “if we’re to believe Simonides at all.”

“Well, in any case,” said Cephalus, “I’m handing the argument over to you. It’s time for me to see to the sacrifices.”

“So I’m your heir, am I?” said Polemarchus.

“Certainly,” he said with a laugh, and went off to the sacrifices. 331enote

“Tell me, then,” I said, “you, the heir of the argument: what is it that Simonides says about justice that you think is right?”

“That it’s just to give back to each person what is owed to him,” he said. “In saying that, I think he speaks well.”

“Well, it isn’t easy to disbelieve Simonides,” I said—“he’s a wise and godlike man. But what on earth he means by this, Polemarchus, you may know; I don’t. Clearly he doesn’t mean what we were just talking about: that when someone has left something in your keeping and asks for it back when he’s not in his right mind, you 332a return it. And yet what he left in your keeping is owed to him, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s not to be returned under any circumstances when the person asking for it isn’t in his right mind?”

“True,” he said.

“Then it seems Simonides means something different when he says it’s just to give back what is owed.”

“Something different, by Zeus,” he said. “He thinks friends owe it to friends to do them some good, and nothing bad.”

“I understand,” I said. “A man isn’t giving back what is owed if he returns gold to someone who deposited it with him, when the returning 332b and receiving turn out to be harmful and the one who receives and the one who returns are friends. Isn’t that what you say Simonides means?”

“Certainly.”

“What about enemies? Should we give them back whatever we happen to owe them?”

“Absolutely,” he said, “what is owed to them. And what an enemy owes an enemy, I think, is just what’s fitting: something bad.”

“So it seems,” I said, “that Simonides was speaking in riddles, the way poets do, 332c about what justice is. What he had in mind, apparently, was that justice is giving each person what is fitting for him, and he called this ‘what is owed.’”

“Well, what do you think?” he said.

“By Zeus,” I said, “suppose someone had asked him, ‘Simonides, the craft called medicine gives what, owed and fitting, to what?’ What do you think he’d have answered us?”

“Obviously,” he said, “it’s the one that gives drugs, food and drink to bodies.”

“And the craft called cookery gives what, owed and fitting, to what?” 332d

“The one that gives seasonings to dishes.”

“Very well. Then the craft that would be called justice gives what to whom?”

“If we’re to follow what was said before, Socrates,” he said, “it’s the one that gives benefits and harms to friends and enemies.”

“So by justice he means doing good to friends and harm to enemies?”

“I think so.”

“Then who is most able to do good to sick friends and harm to enemies where disease and health are concerned?”

“A doctor.” 332e

“And to people at sea, when it comes to the dangers of the sea?”

“A ship’s captain.”

“What about the just man? In what activity and for what work is he most able to help friends and harm enemies?”

“In making war on the one and fighting alongside the other, I think.”

“Very well. But to people who aren’t sick, my dear Polemarchus, a doctor is useless.”

“True.”

“And a captain to people who aren’t sailing.”

“Yes.”

“Then is the just man useless to people who aren’t at war?”

“I really don’t think so.”

“So justice is useful in peacetime too?”

“It is.”

“So is farming, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“For getting crops?”

“Yes.”

“And shoemaking too?”

“Yes.”

“For getting shoes, I suppose you’d say?”

“Certainly.”

“Well then, justice—for the use or acquisition of what would you say it’s useful in peacetime?”

“For contracts, Socrates.”

“By contracts do you mean partnerships, or something else?”

“Partnerships, of course.” 333b

“Then is it the just man who is a good and useful partner in placing the pieces in a board game, or the skilled player?”

“The skilled player.”

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

“Not at all.”

“Then in what kind of partnership is the just man a better partner than the builder or the lyre player, the way the lyre player is better than the just man at striking notes?”

“In money matters, I think.”

“Except perhaps, Polemarchus, when it comes to using money—when you and a partner need to buy or sell a horse with it. Then, 333c I think, it’s the horseman. Isn’t it?”

“Apparently.”

“And when it’s a boat, the shipbuilder or the captain?”

“It seems so.”

“Then when silver or gold has to be used jointly, when is the just man more useful than the others?”

“When it’s to be deposited and kept safe, Socrates.”

“You mean when there’s no need to use it, just to let it lie?”

“Exactly.”

“So when money is useless, that’s when justice is useful 333d for it?”

“It may be.”

“And when a pruning knife has to be kept safe, justice is useful, both in public and in private life; but when it has to be used, the vinedresser’s craft is?”

“Apparently.”

“And you’ll say that when a shield or a lyre has to be kept safe and not used at all, justice is useful, but when they have to be used, it’s the soldier’s craft and the musician’s?”

“Necessarily.”

“And so with everything else: justice is useless when each thing is in use, and useful when it isn’t?”

“It may be.” 333e

“Then justice can’t be anything very important, my friend, if it’s only useful for things that aren’t being used. But let’s look at this. Isn’t the man most skilled at landing a blow in a fight, whether boxing or any other kind, also the most skilled at guarding against one?”

“Certainly.”

“And whoever is skilled at guarding against disease is also the most skilled at secretly producing it?”

“I think so.”

“And the man who is a good guardian of an army camp is the same one who is good at stealing the enemy’s plans and their other operations?”

“Certainly.”

“So whatever someone is a skilled guardian of, he’s also a skilled thief of.”

“It seems so.”

“Then if the just man is skilled at guarding money, he’s also skilled at stealing it.”

“That’s where the argument points, anyway,” he said.

“So the just man has turned out to be a kind of thief, it seems. And you probably learned that from Homer. He admires 334b Autolycus, Odysseus’ grandfather on his mother’s side, and says he ‘outdid all men in thieving and in oaths.’ So according to you, and Homer, and Simonides, justice seems to be a kind of art of stealing—but for the benefit of friends and the harm of enemies. Isn’t that what you meant?”note

“No, by Zeus,” he said. “I don’t know anymore what I meant. But this much I still believe: justice is helping friends and harming enemies.” 334c

“By friends, do you mean those who seem good to a given person, or those who really are good, even if they don’t seem so? And the same with enemies?”

“It’s natural,” he said, “to love those you think are good and hate those you think are bad.”

“But don’t people make mistakes about this, so that many seem good to them who aren’t, and many the reverse?”

“They do.”

“So for them the good are enemies and the bad are friends?”

“Certainly.”

“And all the same, it’s just for them in that case to help the bad 334d and harm the good?”

“Apparently.”

“And yet the good are just and the sort who don’t do wrong?”

“True.”

“Then by your account it’s just to harm those who do no wrong.”

“Not at all, Socrates,” he said. “That seems a bad account.”

“Then it’s just,” I said, “to harm the unjust and help the just?”

“That seems finer than the other.”

“Then for many people, Polemarchus—all who have misjudged 334e others—it will turn out to be just to harm their friends, since to them those friends are bad, and to help their enemies, since they’re good. And so we’ll be saying the very opposite of what we said Simonides meant.”

“That’s certainly how it turns out,” he said. “But let’s make a change. It looks as though we didn’t define friend and enemy correctly.”

“How did we define them, Polemarchus?”

“That whoever seems good is a friend.”

“And how should we change it now?” I said.

“That a friend is someone who both seems good and is good,” he said. 335a “Someone who seems good but isn’t only seems to be a friend and isn’t one. And the same goes for an enemy.”

“Then by this account, it seems, the good man will be a friend and the bad man an enemy.”

“Yes.”

“So you want us to add to what we said about the just at first. We said it was just to do good to a friend and harm to an enemy; now you want us to add that it’s just to do good to a friend who is good, and to harm an enemy who is bad?” 335b

“Certainly,” he said. “Put that way, I think it would be well said.”

“Then is it the part of a just man,” I said, “to harm anyone at all?”

“Of course,” he said. “He has to harm those who are bad and are his enemies.”

“When horses are harmed, do they become better or worse?”

“Worse.”

“With respect to the excellence of dogs, or of horses?”

“Of horses.”

“And dogs, when they’re harmed, become worse with respect to the excellence of dogs, not of horses?”

“Necessarily.” 335c

“And shouldn’t we say the same of human beings, my friend—that when they’re harmed they become worse with respect to human excellence?”

“Certainly.”

“But isn’t justice human excellence?”

“That’s necessary too.”

“Then, my friend, people who are harmed necessarily become more unjust.”

“It seems so.”

“Now can musicians, by music, make people unmusical?”

“Impossible.”

“Or horsemen, by horsemanship, make people bad at riding?”

“They can’t.”

“Then can just people, by justice, make people unjust? Or, 335d to sum up, can good people, by excellence, make people bad?”

“No, that’s impossible.”

“It isn’t the work of heat, I suppose, to cool things, but of its opposite.”

“Yes.”

“Nor the work of dryness to make things wet, but of its opposite.”

“Certainly.”

“Nor, then, the work of the good to harm, but of its opposite.”

“Apparently.”

“And the just man is good?”

“Certainly.”

“Then it isn’t the work of the just man to harm, Polemarchus, whether a friend or anyone else, but of his opposite, the unjust man.”

“I think what you say is entirely true, Socrates,” he said. 335e

“So if anyone says that it’s just to give each person what is owed, and by this he means that the just man owes harm to his enemies and help to his friends, whoever said it wasn’t wise. What he said wasn’t true: it has become clear to us that it’s never just to harm anyone.”

“I agree,” he said.

“Then you and I will fight side by side,” I said, “against anyone who claims that Simonides said it, or Bias or Pittacus or any other of the wise and blessed men.”

“I, for one,” he said, “am ready to join the fight.”

“But do you know whose saying I think it is,” I said, “that it’s just to help friends and harm enemies?”

“Whose?” he said.

“I think it’s a saying of Periander, or Perdiccas, or Xerxes, or Ismenias of Thebes, or some other rich man who thought he had great power.”

“That’s very true,” he said.note

“Very well,” I said. “Since it has become clear that justice and the just aren’t this either, what else could anyone say it is?” 336b

Now Thrasymachus had several times, while we were talking, started to break in and take over the argument, but he’d been held back by the people sitting near him, who wanted to hear it through. When we paused and I said this, he couldn’t keep quiet any longer. He gathered himself like a wild beast and sprang at us as if to tear us to pieces.

Polemarchus and I were terrified and flustered. He shouted out into our midst: “What’s this nonsense that has had hold of you two 336c all this time, Socrates? Why are you playing the simpleton with each other, bowing and deferring to one another? If you really want to know what the just is, don’t just ask questions and show off by refuting whatever answer anyone gives—you know perfectly well that it’s easier to ask than to answer. Give an answer yourself, and say what you claim the just is. And don’t you dare tell me that it’s 336d what’s needful, or what’s beneficial, or profitable, or gainful, or advantageous. Tell me clearly and precisely whatever you mean. I won’t accept it if you talk drivel like that.”

When I heard this I was stunned, and I looked at him in fear. I think that if I hadn’t seen him before he saw me, I’d have been struck dumb. As it was, when the argument began to drive him wild, I had looked at him first, 336e so I was able to answer him, and I said, trembling a little, “Thrasymachus, don’t be hard on us. If he and I are making some mistake in examining the arguments, you can be sure we’re making it unwillingly. If we were looking for gold, you surely don’t think we’d ever willingly defer to each other in the search and ruin our chances of finding it. So don’t think that when we’re looking for justice, a thing more precious than a great deal of gold, we’d then give way to each other so mindlessly, and not make every effort to bring it to light.note

“No, my friend, you should believe we’re in earnest. But I don’t think we’re able. So it’s surely far 337a more fitting for clever people like you to pity us than to be harsh with us.”

When he heard this he burst out in a loud, sardonic laugh and said, “Heracles! Here it is, Socrates’ usual irony. I knew it, and I told these people beforehand that you’d refuse to answer, that you’d play the innocent and do anything rather than answer if someone asked you something.”

“That’s because you’re wise, Thrasymachus,” I said. “So you knew very well that if you asked someone how much twelve is, and when you asked him you warned him in advance, 337b ‘And don’t you tell me, man, that twelve is two times six, or three times four, or six times two, or four times three, because I won’t accept that kind of drivel from you’—it was clear to you, I think, that nobody would answer a person who asked that way. But suppose he said to you, ‘Thrasymachus, what do you mean? Am I not to give any of the answers you ruled out? Even, you amazing man, if one of them happens to be right? Am I to say something other 337c than the truth? Or what do you mean?’ What would you say to him?”

“Oh, of course,” he said. “As if this case were like that one!”

“Nothing stops it from being,” I said. “But even if it isn’t alike, and yet it seems so to the person being asked, do you think he’s any less likely to answer as it seems to him, whether we forbid him or not?”

“So that’s what you’re going to do too?” he said. “You’re going to give one of the answers I ruled out?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said, “if that’s how it seemed to me once I’d looked into it.” 337d

“Well then,” he said, “what if I show you a different answer about justice, besides all these, and better than them? What penalty do you think you deserve?”note

“What else,” I said, “but the penalty that’s fitting for someone who doesn’t know? And what’s fitting, I suppose, is to learn from someone who does. So that’s the penalty I propose for myself.”

“You’re delightful,” he said. “But on top of learning, you’ll pay a fine in cash too.”

“I will, once I have some,” I said.

“But he has it,” said Glaucon. “If it’s a question of money, Thrasymachus, speak. We’ll all chip in for Socrates.” 337e

“Oh yes, of course,” he said, “so that Socrates can do what he always does: not answer himself, but take up someone else’s answer and refute it.”

“But my excellent friend,” I said, “how could anyone answer when, first, he doesn’t know and doesn’t claim to know, and second, even if he does have some view about these things, he’s been forbidden by no ordinary man to say any of what he believes? No, it’s more 338a reasonable for you to speak, since you’re the one who claims to know and to have something to say. So don’t refuse. Do me a favor and answer, and don’t begrudge your teaching to Glaucon here and the others.”

When I’d said this, Glaucon and the others begged him not to refuse. It was obvious that Thrasymachus wanted to speak so as to win a good name, since he thought he had a splendid answer; but he pretended to insist that I be the one to answer. In the end he gave in, 338b and then he said, “So this is Socrates’ wisdom: he refuses to teach anything himself, but goes around learning from others, and doesn’t even thank them for it.”

“I will, once I understand what you mean,” I said. “Right now I don’t yet know. You say that the advantage of the stronger is just. What on earth do you mean by that, Thrasymachus? Surely you don’t mean something like this: if Polydamas the pancratiast is stronger than we are, and beef is good for his body, then this 338d food is also advantageous, and just as well, for us who are weaker than he is.”

“You’re disgusting, Socrates,” he said. “You take up the argument in whatever way lets you do it the most damage.”

“Not at all, my excellent friend,” I said. “Just tell me more clearly what you mean.”note

“Well, don’t you know,” he said, “that some cities are ruled by tyrants, some are democracies, and some are aristocracies?”

“Of course.”

“And in each city it’s the ruling element that holds power?”

“Certainly.” 338e

“And each ruling body makes laws for its own advantage: a democracy makes democratic laws, a tyranny tyrannical ones, and the others the same way. Having made them, they declare that this—what’s to their own advantage—is just for their subjects, and they punish anyone who departs from it as a lawbreaker and a wrongdoer.

“This, then, my excellent friend, is what I mean: in all 339a cities the same thing is just, the advantage of the established rule. And that rule, I take it, holds power, so that anyone who reasons correctly concludes that everywhere the just is the same thing, the advantage of the stronger.”

“Now I understand what you mean,” I said. “Whether it’s true or not, I’ll try to find out. So you too, Thrasymachus, have answered that the just is the advantageous—though you forbade me to give that answer. But you’ve added ‘of the stronger’ to it.” 339b

“A small addition, perhaps,” he said.

“It isn’t clear yet whether it’s even a big one. But it is clear that we have to examine whether what you say is true. I too agree that the just is something advantageous; but you add to it and say it’s the advantage of the stronger, and that I don’t know. So we have to examine it.”

“Examine away,” he said.

“I will,” I said. “Tell me: you also say, don’t you, that obeying the rulers is just?”

“I do.” 339c

“And are the rulers in each city infallible, or are they capable of making mistakes too?”

“Of course,” he said, “they’re capable of making mistakes too.”

“So when they set about making laws, some they make correctly, but some incorrectly?”

“I suppose so.”

“And making them correctly means making them to their own advantage, and incorrectly to their disadvantage? Or how would you put it?”

“That way.”

“And whatever they lay down, the subjects must do, and that is what’s just?”

“Of course.” 339d

“Then according to your argument it’s just to do not only what’s to the advantage of the stronger but also the opposite, what isn’t to his advantage.”

“What are you saying?” he said.

“What you’re saying, I think. But let’s look at it more carefully. Haven’t we agreed that when rulers order their subjects to do something they sometimes miss what’s best for themselves, and that whatever the rulers order, it’s just for the subjects to do? Haven’t we agreed on that?”

“I suppose so,” he said. 339e

“Then you must realize,” I said, “that you’ve also agreed it’s just to do what’s to the disadvantage of the rulers, the stronger, whenever the rulers unintentionally order what’s bad for themselves, since you say it’s just for the others to do whatever the rulers have ordered. In that case, my most wise Thrasymachus, doesn’t it necessarily follow that it’s just to do the opposite of what you say? For the weaker are then ordered, surely, to do what’s to the disadvantage of the stronger.”

“Yes, by Zeus, Socrates,” said Polemarchus, “that’s perfectly clear.”

“If you’re his witness, anyway,” Clitophon broke in.

“And what need is there of a witness?” he said. “Thrasymachus himself agrees that rulers sometimes order what’s bad for themselves, and that it’s just for the others to do it.”

“Yes, Polemarchus, because what Thrasymachus laid down as just was doing what the rulers command.”

“Yes, Clitophon, and he also laid down that the advantage of the stronger 340b is just. And having laid down both, he agreed in turn that the stronger sometimes order the weaker, their subjects, to do what’s to the stronger’s own disadvantage. From these agreements it follows that the advantage of the stronger would be no more just than what isn’t to their advantage.”

“But,” said Clitophon, “by the advantage of the stronger he meant what the stronger believes to be to his advantage. That’s what the weaker must do, and that’s what he laid down as just.”

“But that’s not what was said,” said Polemarchus. 340c

“It makes no difference, Polemarchus,” I said. “If that’s how Thrasymachus puts it now, let’s accept it from him. Tell me, Thrasymachus: is this what you meant by the just—what seems to the stronger to be to the stronger’s advantage, whether it actually is or not? Shall we say that’s what you mean?”

“Not in the least,” he said. “Do you think I call someone who makes a mistake ‘stronger’ at the very moment he’s making it?”

“I did think,” I said, “that that was what you meant, when you agreed that rulers aren’t infallible but do make some mistakes.” 340d

“That’s because you argue in bad faith, Socrates,” he said, “like a malicious prosecutor. For instance, do you call someone who makes mistakes about the sick a doctor with respect to the very mistake he’s making? Or someone who makes an error in calculation an accountant at the moment he makes it, with respect to that error? We talk that way, I think—we say the doctor made a mistake, and the accountant made a mistake, and the schoolteacher. But in fact, I think, each of these, insofar as he is what 340e we call him, never makes mistakes. So, speaking precisely—since you insist on precision—no craftsman ever makes a mistake. The one who errs errs when his knowledge fails him, and in that respect he isn’t a craftsman. So no craftsman or wise man or ruler makes mistakes at the moment he’s a ruler, even though everyone would say that the doctor made a mistake and the ruler made a mistake.

“Take my answer just now in that sense too. But the most precise version of it is this: the ruler, insofar 341a as he is a ruler, makes no mistakes; and making no mistakes, he lays down what’s best for himself, and this is what his subject must do. So, as I said at the start, what I call just is doing what’s to the advantage of the stronger.”

“Very well, Thrasymachus,” I said. “So you think I argue in bad faith?”

“I certainly do,” he said.

“You think I asked the questions I did as a deliberate plot to do you harm in the argument?”

“I don’t think it, I know it,” he said. “And it won’t get you anywhere. 341b You can’t do me harm without my noticing, and once I’ve noticed, you can’t overpower me in argument.”

“I wouldn’t even try, my dear fellow,” I said. “But so that nothing like this happens to us again, make clear which you mean by the ruler and the stronger: the one who is so called in ordinary speech, or the one in the precise sense you were just talking about, whose advantage, since he’s stronger, it will be just for the weaker to carry out.”

“The ruler in the most precise sense,” he said. “Do your worst against that with your tricks and bad-faith arguments, if you can—I’m not asking for any mercy. But you won’t be able to.” 341c

“Do you think I’m so mad,” I said, “as to try to shave a lion, or to argue in bad faith against Thrasymachus?”

“You tried just now, anyway,” he said, “useless as you are at it.”

“Enough of this sort of thing,” I said. “But tell me: the doctor in the precise sense, whom you mentioned just now—is he a moneymaker or someone who takes care of the sick? And speak of the one who really is a doctor.”

“Someone who takes care of the sick,” he said.note

“And what about a ship’s captain? Is the captain, properly speaking, a ruler of sailors or a sailor?”

“A ruler of sailors.” 341d

“I don’t suppose we should take into account the fact that he sails in the ship; that doesn’t mean he should be called a sailor. It isn’t for sailing that he’s called a captain, but for his craft and his rule over the sailors.”

“True,” he said.

“Now, is there something that’s to the advantage of each of these?”

“Certainly.”

“And isn’t the craft,” I said, “by its nature aimed at just this—seeking out and providing for each what’s to its advantage?”

“Yes, at that,” he said.

“Then is there something to the advantage of each of the crafts too, other than being as perfect as possible?” 341e

“What do you mean by that question?”

“It’s as if,” I said, “you asked me whether it’s enough for a body to be a body, or whether it needs something more. I’d say: ‘It certainly needs something more. That’s why the craft of medicine has now been discovered: because a body is defective, and it isn’t enough for it to be as it is. So the craft was developed to provide it with what’s to its advantage.’ Do you think I’d be right to say that, or not?”

“Right,” he said. 342a

“Well then: is medicine itself defective? Is there any other craft that needs some further excellence—the way eyes need sight and ears hearing, so that they need some craft over them to consider and provide what’s to their advantage? Is there some defect in the craft itself too, so that each craft needs another craft to consider what’s to its advantage, and the one doing the considering needs yet another like it, and so on without end? 342b Or will each craft consider its own advantage for itself?

“It appears to be so,” he said. 342c

“Then medicine,” I said, “doesn’t consider what’s to the advantage of medicine, but of the body.”

“Yes,” he said.

“And horsemanship doesn’t consider what’s to the advantage of horsemanship, but of horses. No other craft considers its own advantage either—it doesn’t need anything—but that of what it’s the craft of.”

“So it appears,” he said.

“But surely, Thrasymachus, the crafts rule and hold power over what they’re the crafts of.”

He conceded this too, though very reluctantly.

“Then no kind of knowledge considers or orders what’s to the advantage of the stronger, but what’s to the advantage of the weaker, which is ruled 342d by it.”

In the end he agreed to this too, though he tried to put up a fight over it. When he had agreed, I said, “Then isn’t it also true that no doctor, insofar as he’s a doctor, considers or orders what’s to the doctor’s advantage, but what’s to the patient’s? For we’ve agreed that the doctor in the precise sense is a ruler of bodies and not a moneymaker. Or haven’t we?”

He agreed.

“And that the captain in the precise sense is a ruler of sailors, not a sailor?” 342e

“We have.”

“Then a captain and ruler of that kind won’t consider or order what’s to the captain’s advantage, but what’s to the advantage of the sailor, the one he rules.”

He agreed, reluctantly.

“Then, Thrasymachus,” I said, “no one else in any position of rule either, insofar as he’s a ruler, considers or orders what’s to his own advantage, but what’s to the advantage of the one he rules, the one for whom he practices his craft. It’s to that he looks, and to what’s advantageous and fitting for it, in everything he says and everything he does.”

When we had reached this point in the argument and it was plain to everyone that the account of the just had been turned into its opposite, Thrasymachus, instead of answering, said, “Tell me, Socrates, do you have a nurse?”

“Why?” I said. “Shouldn’t you be answering rather than asking questions like that?”

“Because she lets you go around with a runny nose,” he said, “and doesn’t wipe it when you need it—seeing that, thanks to her, you can’t even tell sheep from shepherd.”

“And why exactly do you say that?” I said. 343b

Because you think that shepherds and cowherds consider the good of their sheep or cattle, and fatten them and look after them, with an eye to something other than their masters’ good and their own. And you suppose that rulers in cities too—the ones who truly rule—think about their subjects differently from the way a man would regard his sheep, and that night and day they consider anything other than this: 343c how they themselves will profit.

I mean 344a the man I was talking about just now, the one with the power to take more than his share on a large scale. Look at him, if you want to judge how much more it profits him personally to be unjust than to be just. You’ll see it most easily of all if you go to the most complete injustice, which makes the wrongdoer happiest, and those who are wronged, and who wouldn’t be willing to do wrong themselves, most miserable.

Having said this, Thrasymachus meant to leave, like a bath attendant who had drenched our ears with his speech in one great flood. But those present wouldn’t let him; they made him stay and give an account of what he’d said. I myself begged him hard as well, and said, “Thrasymachus, you extraordinary man, after hurling a speech like that at us, do you mean to leave before properly teaching us, or learning, whether it’s so or otherwise? 344e Or do you think it’s a small matter you’re trying to settle—the conduct of a whole life, the way each of us can live the most profitable life?”

“And do you suppose I think otherwise?” said Thrasymachus.

“You seem to,” I said. “Or else you don’t care about us at all, and aren’t the least bit concerned whether we’ll live worse or better in our ignorance of what you claim to know.

“Come on, my good man, be willing to show us too—it won’t 345a be a bad investment for you, whatever favor you do for so many of us. For I’ll tell you where I stand: I’m not persuaded, and I don’t believe that injustice is more profitable than justice, not even if it’s given free rein and not prevented from doing what it wants. My good man, let someone be unjust, and let him have the power to do wrong, either by going undetected or by fighting it out: still, he doesn’t convince me that it’s more profitable than justice. Perhaps 345b someone else here feels the same way, not just me. So convince us properly, my dear fellow, that we’re wrong to value justice more than injustice.”

“And how am I to convince you?” he said. “If you aren’t convinced by what I said just now, what more can I do for you? Am I to take the argument and stuff it into your soul?”

“By Zeus, no, don’t do that!” I said. “But first, stick to whatever you say—or if you change position, change it openly and don’t deceive us. As it is, Thrasymachus, you see—let’s 345c go back over what came before—that although you first defined the true doctor, you didn’t think you needed to keep strictly to the true shepherd later on. You think that he, insofar as he’s a shepherd, fattens his sheep not with an eye to what’s best for the sheep but, like a dinner guest about to be treated to a banquet, with an eye to the feast—or else to 345d selling them, like a moneymaker and not a shepherd.

“By Zeus, I don’t think it,” he said. “I know it.”

“Really, Thrasymachus?” I said. “Don’t you notice that in the other kinds of office no one is willing to rule of his own accord? They ask for pay, on the assumption that the benefit from ruling will go not to themselves but 346a to those they rule. Tell me this much: don’t we say that each of the crafts is different from the others in having a different power? And, my dear fellow, don’t answer against what you really think, so that we can get somewhere.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s what makes it different.”

“And each of them provides us with some particular benefit, not a common one—medicine health, for instance, navigation safety at sea, and the others likewise?”

“Certainly.” 346b

“And wage-earning provides wages? That’s its power. Or do you call medicine and navigation the same thing? Or rather, if you want to make precise distinctions, as you proposed, and a captain becomes healthy because sailing on the sea is good for him, would you call his craft medicine on that account?”

“Of course not,” he said.

“Nor, I think, would you call wage-earning medicine if someone is healthy while earning wages.”

“Of course not.”

“Well then, would you call medicine wage-earning if someone earns wages while healing?” 346c

He said no.

“And we agreed that the benefit of each craft is particular to it?”

“Granted,” he said.

“Then whatever benefit all craftsmen receive in common, they clearly get from making additional use of some one thing that’s common to them all.”

“It seems so,” he said.

“And we say that craftsmen benefit by earning wages because they make additional use of the craft of wage-earning.”

He agreed, reluctantly. 346d

“Then this benefit, receiving wages, doesn’t come to each of them from his own craft. If we’re to examine it precisely, medicine produces health, and wage-earning wages; building produces a house, and wage-earning, which goes along with it, wages; and all the others likewise each do their own work and benefit what they’ve been put in charge of. But if no wage is added, does the craftsman get any benefit from his craft?”

“It doesn’t appear so,” he said. 346e

“Then does he confer no benefit either, when he works for nothing?”

“I think he does confer benefit.”

“So, Thrasymachus, this much is now clear: no craft and no kind of rule provides what’s beneficial to itself. As we’ve been saying for some time, it provides and orders what’s beneficial to the one it rules, considering the advantage of the weaker, not of the stronger.

“That’s exactly why, my dear Thrasymachus, I said just now that no one is willing to rule of his own accord and take other people’s troubles in hand to set them right, 347a but asks for pay: anyone who is going to practice his craft well never does or orders what’s best for himself, when he gives orders according to his craft, but what’s best for the one he rules. That’s why, it seems, there has to be pay for those who are going to be willing to rule—money, or honor, or a penalty if he doesn’t rule.”

“What do you mean by that, Socrates?” said Glaucon. “The two kinds of pay I recognize, but I don’t understand what this penalty is, or how you can count it as a kind of pay.”

“Then you don’t understand the pay of the best people,” I said, “the pay for which 347b the most decent people rule, when they’re willing to rule. Don’t you know that loving honor and loving money are called disgraceful, and are?”

“I do,” he said.

“That’s why,” I said, “good people aren’t willing to rule for the sake of money or honor. They don’t want to be called hirelings for openly taking pay for ruling, or thieves for secretly helping themselves from their office. Nor will they rule for honor, since they don’t love honor. So compulsion 347c and a penalty have to be applied to them if they’re going to be willing to rule—which is probably why going to rule willingly, instead of waiting to be compelled, has come to be thought shameful. And the greatest penalty is to be ruled by someone worse, if one isn’t willing to rule oneself. It’s from fear of this, it seems to me, that decent people rule, when they do rule. And then they go to it not as to something good, or expecting to enjoy themselves in it, but 347d as to something necessary, since they have no one better than themselves, or even as good, to entrust it to.

“For my part, I think the just man’s life is more profitable.”

“Did you hear,” I said, “all the good things Thrasymachus just listed for the unjust man’s life?”

“I heard,” he said, “but I’m not persuaded.”

“Then do you want us to persuade him, if we can find some way, that what he says isn’t true?”

“Of course I want to,” he said.

“Well then,” I said, “if we match him speech for speech, setting out in our turn all the good things there are in being just, and then he replies, and then we give another speech, we’ll have to count 348b the good things and measure how many each side mentions in each speech, and then we’ll need some judges to decide between us. But if we examine the matter as we did just now, by reaching agreement with each other, we’ll be judges and advocates ourselves at the same time.”

“Certainly,” he said.

“So which way do you prefer?” I said.

“This way,” he said.

“Come on, then, Thrasymachus,” I said, “answer us from the beginning. You say that perfect injustice is more profitable than perfect justice?” 348c

“I certainly do say so,” he said, “and I’ve told you why.”

“Well then, how would you put the following about them? I suppose you call one of the two an excellence and the other a badness?”

“Of course.”

“Justice the excellence, and injustice the badness?”

“Oh, very likely, my sweet friend,” he said, “when I’m saying that injustice pays and justice doesn’t!”

“Then what?”

“The opposite,” he said.

“You mean justice is a badness?”

“No, but a thoroughly noble good-naturedness.” 348d

“Then you call injustice ill-naturedness?”

“No—good judgment,” he said.

“Do you actually think the unjust are intelligent and good, Thrasymachus?”

“The ones who can do wrong to perfection, at any rate,” he said, “who are able to bring whole cities and nations of people under their power. You probably think I mean purse-snatchers. Not that that sort of thing doesn’t pay too,” he said, “so long as you don’t get caught. But it isn’t worth mentioning next to what I was just describing.” 348e

“I know what you mean,” I said. “What surprised me was that you rank injustice with excellence and wisdom, and justice with their opposites.”

“But that’s exactly how I rank them.”

“Now that’s a tougher position, my friend,” I said, “and it’s no longer easy to know what to say.

“If you had held that injustice pays, but admitted, as some others do, that it’s a badness or something shameful, we could have said something by appealing to conventional views. But as it is, you’ll obviously call it both fine and strong, and credit it with all the other qualities 349a we used to credit to the just, since you’ve dared to rank it with excellence and wisdom.”

“Your prophecy is perfectly true,” he said.

“All the same,” I said, “I mustn’t shrink from following the argument through and examining it, as long as I take you to be saying what you really think. Because it seems to me, Thrasymachus, that you’re honestly not joking now, but saying what you believe to be the truth.”

“What difference does it make to you,” he said, “whether I believe it or not? Why don’t you just refute the argument?” 349b

“None,” I said. “But try to answer me this as well. Do you think a just man would want to have more than another just man?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t be the charming, good-natured fellow he is.”

“What about more than the just action?”

“Not more than the just action either,” he said.

“And would he think it right to outdo the unjust man, and consider that just, or wouldn’t he?”

“He’d consider it just,” he said, “and think it right, but he wouldn’t be able to.”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” I said. “I’m asking whether the just man doesn’t think it right, and doesn’t want, to have more than 349c the just man, but does want to have more than the unjust.”

“That’s how it is,” he said.

“And what about the unjust man? Does he think it right to outdo the just man and the just action?”

“Of course,” he said, “since he thinks it right to have more than everybody.”

“So the unjust man will outdo an unjust person and an unjust action too, and will compete to take the most of everything for himself?”

“That’s right.”

“Then let’s put it this way,” I said. “The just man doesn’t outdo his like, but only his unlike, while the unjust man outdoes both his like and 349d his unlike?”

“Excellently put,” he said.

“And the unjust man,” I said, “is intelligent and good, and the just man neither?”

“That’s well put too,” he said.

“So,” I said, “the unjust man also resembles the intelligent and the good, and the just man doesn’t?”

“How could it be otherwise?” he said. “Someone of that kind must resemble people of that kind, and the other must not.”

“Fine. So each of them is of the same kind as those he resembles?”

“What else would he be?” he said.

“Very well, Thrasymachus. You call one man musical, and another 349e unmusical?”

“I do.”

“Which of them is intelligent, and which unintelligent?”

“The musical one is intelligent, surely, and the unmusical one unintelligent.”

“And good in the things he’s intelligent in, and bad in the things he’s unintelligent in?”

“Yes.”

“And the same with a doctor?”

“The same.”

“Now do you think, my excellent friend, that a musician tuning his lyre would want to outdo another musician in tightening and loosening the strings, or think it right to have more?”

“I don’t.”

“What about outdoing an unmusical man?”

“Necessarily,” he said.

“And a doctor? In prescribing food or drink, would he want to outdo a doctor, or medical practice?”

“Certainly not.”

“But a non-doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Now look at every kind of knowledge and ignorance, and see whether you think anyone with knowledge, whoever he is, would want to choose to do or say more than another person with knowledge, rather than the same as someone like himself in the same action.”

“Well, perhaps,” he said, “it has to be that way.”

“And what about the ignorant man? Wouldn’t he outdo the knowledgeable 350b and the ignorant alike?”

“Perhaps.”

“And the knowledgeable man is wise?”

“I say so.”

“And the wise man is good?”

“I say so.”

“So the man who is good and wise won’t want to outdo his like, but only his unlike and opposite.”

“So it seems,” he said.

“While the bad and ignorant man will outdo both his like and his opposite.”

“Apparently.”

“Now, Thrasymachus,” I said, “our unjust man outdoes both his unlike and his like? Isn’t that what you said?”

“I did,” he said. 350c

“And the just man won’t outdo his like, but will outdo his unlike?”

“Yes.”

“So the just man resembles the wise and good man,” I said, “and the unjust man resembles the bad and ignorant one.”

“It looks that way.”

“But we agreed that each is of the same kind as the one he resembles.”

“Yes, we did.”

“Then the just man has turned out to be good and wise, and the unjust man ignorant and bad.”

Now Thrasymachus agreed to all this, not 350d easily, the way I’m telling it now, but dragged along, reluctantly, sweating an amazing amount, since it was summer as well—and it was then that I saw something I had never seen before: Thrasymachus blushing. But once we had agreed that justice is excellence and wisdom, and injustice badness and ignorance, I said, “All right, let’s take that as settled. But we also said that injustice was strong. Or don’t you remember, Thrasymachus?”

“I remember,” he said. “But I’m not happy with what you’re saying now either, and I have something to say about it. Only, if I said it, I know perfectly well 350e you’d say I was making a public speech. So either let me say as much as I like, or, if you want to ask questions, ask them, and I’ll say ‘very well’ to you, the way people do to old women telling stories, and nod yes and shake my head no.”

“Not against your own opinion, please,” I said.

“Just to please you,” he said, “since you won’t let me speak. What else do you want?”

“Nothing, by Zeus,” I said. “If that’s what you’re going to do, do it. I’ll ask the questions.”

“Ask away, then.”

“Well, I’m asking the same thing I asked just now, so that we can pursue 351a the argument in order: what sort of thing justice is, compared with injustice. It was said, I think, that injustice is more powerful and stronger than justice. But now,” I said, “if justice is wisdom and excellence, it will easily turn out, I think, to be stronger than injustice too, since injustice is ignorance—nobody could fail to see that any longer. Still, I don’t want to look at it quite so simply, Thrasymachus; I’d rather look at it this way. 351b Would you say that a city can be unjust, and try to enslave other cities unjustly, and succeed in enslaving them, and hold many of them enslaved under itself?”

“Of course,” he said. “And it’s the best city, the one that is most perfectly unjust, that will do this most of all.”

“I understand,” I said, “that this was your position. But here’s the point I’m examining: will a city that becomes stronger than another have this power without justice, or must it have it with justice?” 351c

“If it’s as you were saying just now,” he said, “that justice is wisdom, then with justice; but if it’s as I was saying, with injustice.”

“I’m delighted, Thrasymachus,” I said, “that you aren’t just nodding and shaking your head, but giving very fine answers.”

“That’s to please you,” he said.

“And very kind of you. But please me in this too, and tell me: do you think a city, or an army, or a band of robbers or thieves, or any other group that sets out together to do something unjustly, could accomplish anything if its members wronged one another?” 351d

“Certainly not,” he said.

“And if they didn’t wrong one another? Wouldn’t they be better able to?”

“Certainly.”

“Because injustice, Thrasymachus, produces factions and hatreds and fights among people, while justice produces unity of mind and friendship. Isn’t that so?”

“Let it be so,” he said, “so as not to quarrel with you.”

“That’s good of you, my excellent friend. Now tell me this: if it’s the work of injustice to produce hatred wherever it is, then whenever it arises among free men or slaves, won’t it make them hate one another and split into factions and be unable to act together with 351e one another?”

“Certainly.”

“And what if it arises in two people? Won’t they be at odds and hate each other, and be enemies both to each other and to the just?”

“They will,” he said.

“And if injustice arises in a single person, my remarkable friend, surely it won’t lose its power? Or will it keep it just the same?”

“Let it keep it just the same,” he said.

“Then it apparently has a power of this kind: whatever it arises in, whether a city or a clan or an army or 352a anything else at all, it first makes that thing unable to act together with itself, because of faction and disagreement, and then makes it an enemy both to itself and to everything opposed to it, including the just. Isn’t that so?”

“Certainly.”

“And when it’s in a single person too, I suppose, it will do the very things it naturally produces. First it will make him unable to act, being at odds and not of one mind with himself, and then an enemy both to himself and to the just. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

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

“Let it be so,” he said. 352b

“Then the unjust man will be an enemy to the gods as well, Thrasymachus, and the just man their friend.”

“Feast on your argument,” he said, “and enjoy it. I won’t oppose you, so as not to make enemies of the people here.”

“Come on, then,” I said, “fill up the rest of my banquet by answering the way you have been. We’ve seen that the just are wiser and better and more capable of acting, while the unjust can’t even act together— 352c and in fact, when we say that people who are unjust have ever vigorously accomplished anything together, what we’re saying isn’t entirely true. For if they had been completely unjust, they wouldn’t have kept their hands off one another. Clearly there was some justice in them, which kept them from wronging one another at the same time as the people they were attacking, and it was through this that they did what they did. They set out on their unjust deeds only half-corrupted by injustice, since the utterly wicked and perfectly unjust are perfectly incapable of acting as well. That this 352d is how things are, I understand, and not as you first proposed. But whether the just also live better than the unjust and are happier—the question we proposed to examine next—is something we must examine.

“Look into it, then,” he said.

“I am,” I said. “Tell me: do you think a horse has some function?” 352e

“I do.”

“And would you take the function of a horse, or of anything else, to be what one can do only with it, or best with it?”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Look at it this way: is there anything you could see with except eyes?”

“Certainly not.”

“Or hear with, except ears?”

“Not at all.”

“So we’d be right to say that these are their functions?”

“Certainly.”

“And what about this: you could cut off a vine shoot with a knife or a chisel or many other things?”

“Of course.”

“But with nothing, I imagine, as well as with a pruning hook made for the purpose.”

“True.”

“So shall we take this to be its function?”

“Yes, we shall.”

“Now I think you’ll better understand what I was asking just now, when I wanted to know whether the function of each thing isn’t what it alone accomplishes, or accomplishes better than anything else.”

“Yes,” he said, “I understand, and I think that is the function of each 353b thing.”

“Very well,” I said. “And do you think there is also an excellence for each thing to which some function is assigned? Let’s go back to the same examples. Eyes, we say, have a function?”

“They do.”

“So do eyes have an excellence too?”

“An excellence too.”

“And ears had a function?”

“Yes.”

“And so an excellence too?”

“An excellence too.”

“And what about all the other things? Isn’t it the same?”

“It is.”

“Hold on, then. Could eyes ever perform their function well 353c if they lacked their own proper excellence and had badness instead of excellence?”

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

“Whatever their excellence may be,” I said. “I’m not asking about that yet, only whether things that have a function perform it well through their own proper excellence, and badly through badness.”

“That much is true,” he said.

“So ears too, deprived of their own excellence, will perform their function badly?”

“Certainly.” 353d

“And do we apply the same argument to everything else?”

“I think so.”

“Come on, then, and consider this next. Does the soul have a function that you couldn’t perform with anything else there is? Something like this: taking care of things, ruling, deliberating, and everything of that sort—is there anything other than a soul to which we could rightly assign these and say they were its own?”

“Nothing else.”

“And what about living? Won’t we say that’s a function of the soul?”

“Most certainly,” he said.

“And we also say the soul has an excellence?”

“We do.” 353e

“Then will a soul ever perform its functions well, Thrasymachus, if it’s deprived of its own proper excellence, or is that impossible?”

“Impossible.”

“So a bad soul must rule and take care of things badly, and a good one do all these things well.”

“It must.”

“And we agreed that justice is the soul’s excellence, and injustice its badness?”

“We did.”

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

“So it appears,” he said, “by your argument.”

“And surely whoever lives well is blessed and happy, and whoever doesn’t is the opposite.”

“Of course.”

“So the just man is happy, and the unjust man miserable.”

“Let it be so,” he said.

“But it doesn’t pay to be miserable; it pays to be happy.”

“Of course.”

“Then injustice, my blessed Thrasymachus, is never more profitable than justice.”

“Well, Socrates,” he said, “let that be your feast for the Bendidea.”note

“Provided by you, Thrasymachus,” I said, “since you’ve turned gentle with me and stopped being harsh. Still, I haven’t feasted 354b well—through my own fault, not yours. Gluttons snatch a taste of each dish as it’s carried round before they’ve properly enjoyed the one before, and I think I’ve done the same. Before finding what we were first looking into—what justice is—I let go of that and rushed off to examine whether it is badness and ignorance, or wisdom and excellence. Then later, when the argument that injustice is more profitable than justice burst in, I couldn’t keep from leaving the other question and going after this one. So now the upshot of our discussion is that I know 354c nothing. For when I don’t know what justice is, I’ll hardly know whether it is in fact an excellence or not, or whether the person who has it is unhappy or happy.”

SocratesWhen I’d said this, I thought I was done with the discussion. But it turned out, apparently, to have been only a prelude. Glaucon is always extremely bold in everything, and on this occasion too he wouldn’t accept Thrasymachus’ giving up, but said, “Socrates, do you want to seem to have persuaded us, or to 357b truly persuade us, that it’s better in every way to be just than unjust?”

“Truly,” I said, “I’d choose that, if it were up to me.”

“Then you’re not doing what you want,” he said. “Tell me: do you think there is a kind of good that we’d welcome having not because we want what results from it, but because we value it for its own sake—like enjoyment, and all the harmless pleasures that bring nothing later on except the enjoyment of having them?”

“I think there is something of that kind,” I said. 357c

“And what about the kind we love both for its own sake and for what comes from it—like understanding, and seeing, and being healthy? We welcome things like these, I suppose, for both reasons.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And do you see a third kind of good,” he said, “which includes exercising, and being treated when you’re sick, and practicing medicine, and money-making generally? These we’d call burdensome but beneficial to us, and we wouldn’t welcome having them for their own sake, 357d but for the sake of the pay and whatever else comes from them.”

“Yes, there is this third kind too,” I said. “But what of it?”

“In which of these kinds,” he said, “do you place justice?”

“I think,” I said, “in the finest kind—the one that anyone who is going to be blessed must love both for its own sake and for what comes from it.”

“That’s not what most people think,” he said. “They put it in the burdensome kind, which has to be practiced for the sake of pay and the good name that comes from reputation, but in itself is to be avoided as hard.”

“I know that’s what they think,” I said, “and Thrasymachus has been disparaging it as that sort of thing for some time now, and praising injustice. But I seem to be a slow learner.” 358b

“Come on, then,” he said, “listen to me too, and see if you still think the same. Thrasymachus seems to me to have been charmed by you, like a snake, sooner than he should have been. But I’m not yet satisfied with the demonstration on either side. I want to hear what each of them is, and what power each has, itself by itself, when it’s present in the soul, and to say goodbye to the rewards and what comes from them. So here’s what I’ll do, if you agree. I’ll revive 358c Thrasymachus’ argument. First I’ll say what sort of thing people say justice is, and where it came from. Second, that all who practice it do so unwillingly, as something necessary, not as something good. Third, that it’s reasonable for them to act this way, since the life of the unjust man is, it turns out, far better than the life of the just man—so they say.

“More than anything,” I said. “What subject could a person with any sense be happier to talk and hear about again and again?” 358e

“Beautifully put,” he said. “Then listen to what I said I’d speak about first: what justice is, and where it came from.”

As he sat with the others, he happened to turn the bezel of the ring toward himself, to the inside of his hand, and when this happened 360a he became invisible to those sitting beside him, and they talked about him as if he’d gone away. He was amazed, and fingering the ring again he turned the bezel outward, and as he turned it he became visible. Noticing this, he tested the ring to see whether it really had this power, and it turned out that way: when he turned the bezel inward he became invisible, and when he turned it outward, visible. As soon as he realized this, he arranged to be one of the messengers sent to the king. When he got 360b there, he committed adultery with the king’s wife, and with her help attacked the king, killed him, and so took over the kingdom.

As for the actual judgment between the lives we’re discussing, we’ll be able to judge correctly only if we set the most just man and the most unjust man apart from each other; if not, we won’t. So how do we set them apart? Like this: let’s take nothing away from the unjust man’s injustice, or from the just man’s justice, but make each of them complete in his own way of life.

First, then, let the unjust man act the way skilled craftsmen do. An expert ship’s captain or doctor, say, can tell what’s impossible in his craft and what’s possible, 361a and attempts the one and leaves the other alone; and if he does slip up somewhere, he’s able to put it right. In the same way, let the unjust man go about his wrongdoing properly and escape notice, if he’s going to be thoroughly unjust. Anyone who gets caught must be regarded as a poor practitioner, since the height of injustice is to seem just when you aren’t.

“Goodness, my dear Glaucon,” I said, “how vigorously you’re scouring each of the two men clean for judging, as if they were statues!”

As best I can, he said. And with the two of them like this, I don’t think it’s hard any more to go through in words what sort of life awaits each 361e of them. So it must be said. And if it’s said rather crudely, Socrates, don’t think it’s me speaking, but those who praise injustice above justice.

What they’ll say is this: that the just man, being so disposed, will be whipped, racked, put in chains, 362a and have his eyes burned out, and finally, after suffering every evil, he’ll be impaled, and he’ll realize that one should want not to be just but to seem so. And Aeschylus’ line, it turns out, would have been far more correctly said of the unjust man.

When Glaucon had said this, I had it in mind to say something in reply, but his brother Adeimantus said, “Surely, Socrates, you don’t think the case has been adequately stated?”

“Why, what else would I think?” I said.

“The very thing that most needed saying,” he said, “hasn’t been said.”

“Well then,” I said, “as the saying goes, let a brother stand by his man. So if Glaucon here is leaving anything out, you come to his aid. And yet what he’s said is already enough to throw me flat and leave me unable to help justice.” 362e

And he said: Nonsense. Listen to this as well. We need to go through the arguments opposed to the ones he stated, the ones that praise justice and blame injustice, so that what I take Glaucon to mean will be clearer.

Fathers, I suppose, tell their sons, and urge them, as do all who have anyone in 363a their care, that one must be just. They don’t praise justice itself, but the good name that comes from it, so that someone who seems just may get from that reputation the offices and marriages and everything else Glaucon went through just now, which come to the just man from being well thought of. But these people make even more of reputations. They throw in good standing with the gods, and then they have endless goods to describe, which they say the gods give to the pious. So the noble Hesiod and Homer say. Hesiod says the gods make the oaks 363b for the just “bear acorns at the top and bees in the middle,” and “the woolly sheep,” he says, “are weighed down with fleece,” and many other good things of that kind.

Besides this, Socrates, consider yet another kind of talk about justice and injustice, heard both from private people 364a and from poets. They all hymn with one voice that moderation and justice are fine things, but hard and laborious, while self-indulgence and injustice are pleasant and easy to acquire, and shameful only in people’s opinion and by convention. They say that unjust deeds are, for the most part, more profitable than just ones. They’re quite ready to call bad people happy and to honor them, in public and in private, when they’re rich or have other kinds of power, and to dishonor and look down on those who happen to be weak 364b and poor, even though they agree that these are better than the others.

And they produce a clamor of books by Musaeus and Orpheus, offspring, so they say, of the Moon and the Muses, and by these they perform their rites. They persuade not only individuals but whole cities that there are releases and purifications from wrongdoing, through sacrifices and 365a pleasant games, for the living and for the dead alike. These they call “initiations”: they free us from the evils down there, while terrible things await those who haven’t sacrificed.note

All these things, my dear Socrates, he said, so many and of such a kind, that are said about excellence and badness, and about how men and gods value them: what do we think they do to the souls of the young who hear them? I mean those who are naturally gifted and able, as it were, to flit over everything they hear and gather from it what sort of person 365b one should be, and what path one should take, to get through life as well as possible. In all likelihood such a young man would say to himself, in Pindar’s words, “Shall I by justice climb the higher wall, or by crooked deceits,” and so fence myself in and live out my life? For what they say is that if I’m just but don’t also seem so, there’s no benefit in it, only obvious troubles and penalties; but for the unjust man who has provided himself with a reputation for justice, a godlike life is promised.

And if we must believe them, then we should do wrong and offer sacrifices 366a from the proceeds. If we’re just, we’ll merely go unpunished by the gods, and we’ll forgo the gains from injustice; if we’re unjust, we’ll make our gains, and by our pleas as we overstep and do wrong we’ll persuade them and get off unpunished. “But in Hades we’ll pay the penalty for the wrongs we’ve done here, either we ourselves or our children’s children.” But my friend, he’ll say, doing his calculations, the initiations have great power, and so do the gods of release, as the 366b greatest cities say, and the children of gods who became poets and prophets of the gods, who reveal that this is how things are.

So on what argument would we still choose justice over the greatest injustice? If we get injustice along with a counterfeit show of decency, we’ll fare as we please with gods and men, in life and in death: so goes the account given by the many and by the best authorities. After all that’s been said, 366c Socrates, what way is there for anyone with any power, of soul or money or body or birth, to be willing to honor justice, and not laugh when he hears it praised?

“If you’d all been talking like this from the start and persuading us of it from our youth, we wouldn’t be guarding one another against wrongdoing; each would be his own best guardian, afraid that by doing wrong he’d be living with the greatest evil.”

That, Socrates, and perhaps even more than that, is what Thrasymachus, and maybe someone else too, would say about justice and injustice, crudely turning their powers upside down, as it seems to me. But I, for I’ve no need to hide anything 367b from you, am speaking with all the force I can because I want to hear you argue the opposite. So don’t just show us in argument that justice is better than injustice; show us what each of them does, itself through itself, to the one who has it, that makes the one bad and the other good. And take away the reputations, as Glaucon urged.

When I heard this, though I’d always admired the natures of Glaucon and Adeimantus, I was especially 368a delighted on this occasion, and I said, “Sons of that man, it wasn’t badly said of you when Glaucon’s lover began his elegy, after you’d distinguished yourselves at the battle of Megara, with the words ‘Sons of Ariston, godlike offspring of a famous man.’ That seems to me well put, my friends. Something truly godlike has happened to you, if you aren’t convinced that injustice is better than justice when you can speak for it like that. And I really do believe you 368b aren’t convinced. I judge from the rest of your character, since from your words alone I wouldn’t trust you. But the more I trust you, the more I’m at a loss what to do.note

“Certainly,” said Adeimantus. “But what do you see in our search for justice that’s like this, 368e Socrates?”

“I’ll tell you,” I said. “There’s justice, we say, of a single man, but surely also of a whole city?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“And a city is bigger than a single man?”

“Bigger,” he said.

“Then perhaps there’ll be more justice in the bigger thing, and it will be easier to understand. So if you like, let’s first look for what it’s like in 369a cities, and then examine it in each individual as well, looking for the likeness of the bigger in the form of the smaller.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” he said.

“Then if we watched a city coming into being in argument,” I said, “would we also see its justice coming into being, and its injustice?”

“Probably,” he said.

“And once that’s done, can we hope to see what we’re looking for more easily?” 369b

“Much more easily.”

“Do you think we should try to carry it through, then? I don’t think it’s a small job. So think it over.”

“We have,” said Adeimantus. “Go ahead and do it.”

“Well then,” I said, “a city comes into being, I think, because none of us happens to be self-sufficient; each of us needs many things. Or do you think a city is founded on any other principle?”

“None,” he said. 369c

“So one person takes on another for one need, and another for another; and since they need many things, they gather many people into one place to live as partners and helpers, and to this settlement we’ve given the name ‘city.’ Isn’t that so?”

“Certainly.”

“And whenever they share things with one another, giving or taking, each does it thinking it’s better for himself?”

“Certainly.”

“Come on, then,” I said, “let’s make a city in argument from the beginning. And what will make it, it seems, is our need.”

“Of course.” 369d

“Now the first and greatest of our needs is the provision of food, so that we can exist and live.”

“Absolutely.”

“The second is housing, and the third clothing and that sort of thing.”

“That’s right.”

“Well then,” I said, “how will the city be able to provide so much? Won’t one be a farmer, another a builder, and another a weaver? Or shall we add a shoemaker too, or someone else who looks after the needs of the body?”

“Certainly.”

“So the barest necessary city would consist of four or five men.” 369e

“Apparently.”

“What next? Should each of them contribute his own work for all of them in common? Should the farmer, for example, being one man, provide food for four, spending four times the time and labor on providing food and sharing it with the others? Or should he not bother about them, and produce a quarter of this 370a food for himself alone in a quarter of the time, and spend the other three quarters providing a house, a cloak and shoes, not having the trouble of sharing with others but minding his own business by himself and for himself?”

And Adeimantus said, “Maybe, Socrates, the first way is easier than the other.”

“By Zeus,” I said, “that’s not at all surprising. Now that you say it, it occurs to me too that, first of all, each of us is born not at all 370b like anyone else, but different in nature, one suited to one job and another to another. Don’t you think so?”

“I do.”

“Well then, would someone do better working at many crafts on his own, or when one person works at one?”

“When one works at one,” he said.

“And this too is clear, I think: if someone misses the right moment for a job, it’s ruined.”

“Yes, that’s clear.”

“For the work, I think, isn’t willing to wait until the worker has time; the worker has to keep up with the work 370c and not treat it as a sideline.”

“He has to.”

“So from this it follows that more of each thing gets done, and better and more easily, when one person does one thing, in accordance with his nature and at the right time, free of other tasks.”

“Absolutely.”

“Then we need more citizens than four, Adeimantus, to provide the things we mentioned. For the farmer, it seems, won’t make his own plow, if it’s to be a good one, 370d or his hoe, or any of the other tools for farming. Nor will the builder, who also needs many things. The same goes for the weaver and the shoemaker, doesn’t it?”

“True.”

“So carpenters and smiths and many other craftsmen of that sort will join our little city and make it quite populous.”

“Certainly.”

“But it still wouldn’t be very big if we added cowherds and shepherds and other herdsmen, so that 370e the farmers would have oxen for plowing, the builders, along with the farmers, would have draft animals for hauling, and the weavers and shoemakers would have hides and wool.”

“It wouldn’t be a small city either,” he said, “if it had all that.”

“And yet,” I said, “it’s practically impossible to found the city itself in a place where it won’t need imports.”

“Yes, it’s impossible.”

“So it will need still others, who’ll bring it what it needs from another city.”

“It will.”

“And if the one who serves it goes empty-handed, taking nothing that those people 371a need from whom they’re getting what they need themselves, he’ll come back empty-handed, won’t he?”

“I think so.”

“So at home they must produce not only enough for themselves, but also goods of the kind and in the quantity those others need.”

“They must.”

“Then our city needs more farmers and other craftsmen.”

“Yes, more.”

“And also, surely, other servants, to import and export each kind of goods. These are merchants, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“So we’ll need merchants too.”

“Certainly.”

“And if the trade goes by sea, it will need a good many 371b others as well, who know about work at sea.”

“A good many, yes.”

“And what about in the city itself? How will they share with one another what each of them produces? It was for this, after all, that we formed a partnership and founded a city.”

“Clearly,” he said, “by selling and buying.”

“So from this we’ll get a marketplace, and money as a token for the sake of exchange.”

“Certainly.” 371c

“Then if the farmer, or any other craftsman, brings some of his produce to the marketplace and doesn’t arrive at the same time as those who need to exchange with him, will he sit in the marketplace idle, neglecting his own craft?”

“Not at all,” he said. “There are people who see this and appoint themselves to this service. In well-run cities they’re usually those who are weakest in body and no use for any other work. They have to stay 371d right there around the marketplace and give money in exchange for goods to those who need to sell something, and goods in exchange for money to all who need to buy something.”

“So this need,” I said, “brings shopkeepers into being in our city. Or don’t we call those who provide the service of buying and selling, set up in the marketplace, shopkeepers, and those who travel from city to city merchants?”

“Certainly.” 371e

“And there are still other servants, I think, who wouldn’t be very worthwhile partners where the mind is concerned, but have enough bodily strength for hard labor. They sell the use of their strength and call the price a wage, and so they’re called, I think, wage earners. Isn’t that so?”

“Certainly.”

“So wage earners too, it seems, help make up the full complement of a city.”

“I think so.”

“Well, Adeimantus, has our city now grown to completion?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then where in it would justice and injustice be? And along with which of the things we’ve looked at did they come into it?”

“I can’t think, Socrates,” he said, “unless perhaps it’s somewhere in the need these very people have of one another.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” I said. “We must look into it and not shrink from it.”

“First, then, let’s look at how people provided for in this way will live. Won’t they produce grain and wine and clothes and shoes? They’ll build houses, and in summer they’ll mostly work stripped and barefoot, and in 372b winter adequately clothed and shod. For food they’ll make barley meal from their barley and flour from their wheat, baking some and kneading some, and they’ll set out fine barley cakes and loaves on reeds or clean leaves. Reclining on beds strewn with bryony and myrtle, they’ll feast, they and their children, drinking wine afterwards, wearing garlands and singing hymns to the gods. They’ll enjoy one another’s company, and won’t have more 372c children than their means allow, guarding against poverty or war.”

And Glaucon broke in. “Your men seem to be feasting on plain bread,” he said, “with nothing to go with it.”

“That’s true,” I said. “I forgot that they’ll have things to go with it: salt, obviously, and olives and cheese, and they’ll boil onions and greens, the sort of things people boil in the country. And we’ll set out desserts for them, of figs and chickpeas and beans, and they’ll roast myrtle-berries and acorns 372d in the fire, drinking in moderation. And so, living out their lives in peace and good health, as you’d expect, they’ll die old and hand on another life just like it to their descendants.”

“Very well,” I said. “I understand. It seems we’re examining not only how a city comes into being, but how a luxurious city does. Perhaps that’s no bad thing: by examining a city like that too, we might well see how justice and injustice take root in cities. Now the true city, I think, is the one we’ve described, the healthy one, as it were. But if you want, let’s also look at a city with a fever. Nothing stops us.

“For some people, it seems, these things won’t be enough, and neither will this way of life. Couches will be added, and tables and other furniture, and dishes too, and perfumes and incense, and courtesans and pastries, and every one of these in every variety. And the things we mentioned first, houses and clothes and shoes, can no longer be counted as the necessities; we’ll have to set painting and embroidery going, and acquire gold and ivory and everything of that kind. Isn’t that so?” 373b

“Yes,” he said.

“Then we have to make the city bigger again. The healthy one is no longer adequate; now it has to be filled with a mass and multitude of things that are no longer in cities because they’re needed. All the hunters, for instance, and the imitators: many concerned with shapes and colors, many with music; poets and their assistants, rhapsodes, actors, chorus-dancers, contractors; and makers of all kinds of goods, including those 373c for women’s adornment. We’ll need more servants too. Or don’t you think we’ll need children’s attendants, wet nurses, nannies, hairdressers, barbers, and cooks and butchers as well? And we’ll need swineherds besides. There were none in our earlier city, since there was no need of them, but in this one we’ll need them too.note

“Of course.” 373d

“And living like this, we’ll have far more need of doctors than before?”

“Far more.”

“And the land, I suppose, which was enough to feed the people back then, will now be too small instead of enough. Or what do we say?”

“Just that,” he said.

“Then we’ll have to cut off a slice of our neighbors’ land, if we’re going to have enough for pasture and plowing, and they’ll want a slice of ours, if they too give themselves over to the unlimited acquisition of wealth and overstep the limit of what’s necessary?” 373e

“That’s quite inevitable, Socrates,” he said.

“So next we’ll go to war, Glaucon? Or how will it be?”

“Like that,” he said.

“And let’s not say yet,” I said, “whether war does any harm or any good, but only this much: that we’ve now found the origin of war too. It comes from the very things that, whenever they arise, are the chief source of evils in cities, both for individuals and for the community.”

“Certainly.”

“Then the city needs to be bigger still, my friend, and not by a little, 374a but by a whole army, which will march out and fight off invaders in defense of all its property and of everything we were just talking about.”

“Why?” he said. “Aren’t the citizens themselves enough?”

“No,” I said, “not if you and the rest of us were right in what we agreed when we were shaping the city. We agreed, if you remember, that it’s impossible for one person to practice many crafts well.”

“That’s true,” he said. 374b

“Well then,” I said, “doesn’t fighting a war seem to be a matter of skill?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Should we care more about shoemaking than about the art of war?”

“Not at all.”

“Yet we wouldn’t let the shoemaker try to be a farmer at the same time, or a weaver or a builder; he was to be a shoemaker, so that our shoemaking would be done well. And in the same way we gave each of the others one job, the one he was naturally suited for, which he was to work at all his life, free 374c of the others, not letting the right moments slip by, and so do it well. Now isn’t it of the greatest importance that the business of war be done well? Or is it so easy that someone who farms, or makes shoes, or practices any other craft whatever, can be a soldier at the same time, when nobody could become even a competent player of board games or dice if he didn’t practice that very thing from childhood but treated it as a sideline?

“If that were so,” he said, “tools would be worth a great deal.”

“Then,” I said, “the more important the guardians’ work is, 374e the more it would need freedom from other occupations, and the greatest skill and care.”

“I certainly think so,” he said.

“And won’t it also need a nature suited to that very pursuit?”

“Of course.”

“Then it would be our job, it seems, if we’re up to it, to pick out which natures, and what sort, are suited to guarding a city.”

“It is our job, yes.”

“By Zeus,” I said, “it’s no small task we’ve taken on. Still, we mustn’t lose heart, as far as our strength allows.”

“No, we mustn’t,” he said.

“Do you think,” I said, “that when it comes to guarding, the nature of a well-bred puppy is any different from that of a well-born young man?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, each of them has to be sharp at noticing things, quick at chasing down what he’s noticed, and strong as well, if he has to fight once he’s caught it.”

“Yes,” he said, “they need all of these.”

“And brave too, surely, if he’s going to fight well.”

“Of course.”

“But will a horse or a dog or any other animal be willing to be brave if it isn’t spirited? Haven’t you noticed how 375b irresistible and invincible spirit is? When it’s present, every soul is fearless and unconquerable in the face of anything.”

“I have noticed.”

“Then it’s clear what the guardian must be like in body.”

“Yes.”

“And in soul too: he must be spirited.”

“That too.”

“Then how, Glaucon,” I said, “will people with natures like that keep from being savage to one another and to the rest of the citizens?”

“By Zeus,” he said, “it won’t be easy.” 375c

“And yet they have to be gentle toward their own people and harsh toward their enemies. Otherwise they won’t wait for others to destroy them; they’ll get there first and do it themselves.”

“True,” he said.

“What are we to do, then?” I said. “Where will we find a character that is gentle and high-spirited at once? A gentle nature is surely the opposite of a spirited one.”

“So it seems.”

“But if he lacks either of these, he’ll never be a good guardian. And having both looks impossible, and so 375d it turns out that a good guardian can’t exist.”

“It looks that way,” he said.

I was at a loss too, but after thinking over what we’d said before, I said, “We deserve to be at a loss, my friend. We’ve abandoned the comparison we put forward.”

“What do you mean?”

“We didn’t notice that there are natures of the kind we thought didn’t exist, with both these opposite qualities.”

“Where?”

“You could see it in other animals too, but not least 375e in the one we compared with the guardian. You know, I’m sure, that this is the natural character of well-bred dogs: to be as gentle as can be toward the people they’re used to and know, and the opposite toward strangers.”

“Yes, I know.”

“So it’s possible,” I said, “and it’s not against nature to look for a guardian like that.”

“It seems not.”

“Then do you think the one who’s going to be a guardian needs something more as well: to be not only spirited but also philosophical by nature?”

“How so?” he said. “I don’t follow.”

“You’ll see this in dogs too,” I said, “and it’s something in the animal that deserves our admiration.”

“What’s that?”

“When it sees someone it doesn’t know, it gets angry, though it has never suffered any harm from him; but when it sees someone it knows, it welcomes him, even if it has never had anything good from him. Haven’t you ever marveled at that?”

“I’ve never really paid attention to it until now,” he said. “But obviously they do that.”

“Well, this trait of its nature looks like a clever one, 376b and truly philosophical.”

“In what way?”

“In that it tells a friendly face from a hostile one by nothing else than that it has come to know the one and doesn’t know the other,” I said. “And surely a creature that marks off what’s its own from what’s foreign by knowledge and ignorance must be a lover of learning?”

“It can’t be otherwise,” he said.

“But surely,” I said, “the love of learning and philosophy are the same thing?”

“The same,” he said.

“Then may we confidently lay it down for a human being too, that if he’s going to 376c be gentle toward his own people and those he knows, he must be philosophical and a lover of learning by nature?”

“Let’s lay it down,” he said.note

“So the one who’s going to be a fine, good guardian of our city will be philosophical, spirited, fast and strong by nature.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Then that’s what he’ll be to begin with. But how are they to be brought up and educated? And will looking into that help us see what 376d our whole inquiry is aimed at, how justice and injustice come to be in a city? We don’t want to leave out anything that matters, or go through a long, drawn-out discussion.”

And Glaucon’s brother said, “Certainly. I fully expect this inquiry will help with that.”

“By Zeus, my dear Adeimantus,” I said, “then we mustn’t drop it, even if it turns out rather long.”

“No, we mustn’t.”

“Come on, then. Let’s educate these men in our discussion, as if we were telling a story and had time on our hands.” 376e

“We should.”

“So what will their education be? Or is it hard to find a better one than the one discovered over a long time? That, I suppose, is physical training for the body and music for the soul.”

“Yes, it is.”note

“And won’t we begin educating them in music before physical training?”

“Of course.”

“Do you count stories as part of music,” I said, “or not?”

“I do.”

“And stories are of two kinds, true and false?”

“Yes.”

“And they must be educated in both, but first in the false ones?”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said.

“Don’t you understand,” I said, “that the first thing we do is tell children tales? Taken as a whole, these are false, though there’s some truth in them too. And we use tales with children before we use exercise.”

“That’s so.”

“That’s what I meant when I said we must take up music before physical training.”

“Rightly,” he said.

“Now you know that the beginning is the most important part of any task, 377b especially with anything young and tender? That’s when it’s most easily shaped, and takes on whatever stamp one wants to impress on it.”

“Exactly.”

“Then shall we just casually let the children hear any old tales made up by any old people, and take into their souls opinions that are mostly the opposite of the ones we’ll think they ought to have when they’re grown up?”

“We won’t allow that at all.”

“I do,” he said. “But I don’t see which ones you mean by the greater either.”

“The ones Hesiod and Homer told us,” I said, “and the other poets. They made up false tales and told them to people, and still do.”

“Which ones do you mean,” he said, “and what fault do you find with them?”

“The fault one should find first and foremost,” I said, “especially when the lie isn’t a fine one.”

“What’s that?” 377enote

“When someone gives a bad likeness in words of what gods and heroes are like, like a painter whose picture looks nothing like the things he means to paint.”

“Yes,” he said, “it’s right to find fault with things like that. But what do we mean, and what sort of things?”

“First,” I said, “the greatest lie, about the greatest matters, and not a fine lie either: the story that Uranus did what Hesiod says he did, and that Cronus 378a took his revenge on him. As for what Cronus did, and what he suffered at the hands of his son, even if it were true I wouldn’t think it should be told so casually to young people who don’t know any better. It would be best to keep quiet about it, and if there were some need to tell it, as few people as possible should hear it, in secret, after sacrificing not a pig but some huge victim that’s hard to come by, so that as few as possible would get to hear it.”note

“Yes,” he said, “those stories are hard ones.” 378b

“And they mustn’t be told in our city, Adeimantus,” I said. “Nor must a young person be told, as he listens, that if he committed the worst crimes he’d be doing nothing remarkable, or if he punished his father for wrongdoing by any means he could, but would only be doing what the first and greatest of the gods did.”

“No, by Zeus,” he said, “I don’t think those things are fit to be told either.”

“Nor, in fact,” I said, “that gods make war on gods 378c and plot against them and fight them, since it isn’t even true, if the people who are going to guard our city are to think it utterly shameful to fall out with one another lightly. The last thing we should do is tell them tales of the battles of the giants, or embroider them on robes, or the many feuds of every kind between gods and heroes and their own kin and families. No, if we’re somehow going to persuade them that no citizen has ever hated another, and that doing so is impious, then that’s the kind of thing old men and old women should tell 378d the children from the very start, and as they grow older, the poets too must be made to compose stories along these lines. But Hera’s being tied up by her son, and Hephaestus’ being hurled out of heaven by his father when he was going to defend his mother from a beating, and all the battles of the gods that Homer composed, must not be admitted into the city, whether they were composed with hidden meanings or without.note

“That makes sense,” he said. “But if someone were to ask us about this too, what these things are and which tales we mean, what would we say?”

And I said, “Adeimantus, you and I aren’t poets 379a at the moment, but founders of a city. Founders ought to know the patterns the poets must follow when they tell their tales, and not permit them to depart from those patterns in what they compose; but it isn’t the founders’ job to make up tales themselves.”

“Right,” he said. “But that’s exactly the question: what would the patterns be for talk about the gods?”

“Something like this, I suppose,” I said. “God must always be portrayed as he really is, whether in epic, in lyric, or in tragedy.”

“He must.” 379b

“Now god really is good, and must be described that way?”

“Of course.”

“But nothing good is harmful, is it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“And does what isn’t harmful do harm?”

“Not at all.”

“And does what does no harm do anything bad?”

“No, not that either.”

“And what does nothing bad can’t be the cause of anything bad?”

“How could it be?”

“Well then: is the good beneficial?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s the cause of doing well?”

“Yes.”

“Then the good isn’t the cause of everything. It’s the cause of things that are as they should be, but not responsible for bad things.” 379c

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Then god, since he’s good,” I said, “can’t be the cause of everything either, as most people say. He’s the cause of a few things in human life, and not responsible for many, since we have far fewer good things than bad. The good things we must attribute to no one else, but for the bad things we have to look for some other causes, not god.”

“What you say seems to me entirely true,” he said.

“Then we mustn’t accept from Homer or any other 379d poet this foolish mistake about the gods, when he says that ‘two jars stand on the floor of Zeus’s house, full of fates, one of good ones and the other of bad,’ and that the man to whom Zeus gives a mixture of both ‘meets sometimes with bad fortune, sometimes with good,’ while the man to whom he gives not a mixture but one kind unmixed, ‘him evil hunger drives over the shining earth’; 379e nor that Zeus is for us the ‘dispenser of both good and evil.’note

“And if anyone says that the breaking of the oaths and the truce, which Pandarus brought about, happened through Athena and Zeus, we won’t approve; nor that strife and judgment among the gods 380a came about through Themis and Zeus. Nor again must we let the young hear what Aeschylus says, that ‘god makes guilt grow among mortals when he wants to ruin a house entirely.’note

“I’ll vote with you for this law,” he said. “I like it.”

“Then this,” I said, “would be one of the laws and patterns about the gods, which speakers must follow in what they say and poets in what they compose: that god is not the cause of everything, but only of good things.”

“That’s quite enough,” he said. 380d

“Now what about this second one? Do you think god is a sorcerer, who shows himself by design in different forms at different times, sometimes actually changing, altering his own form into many shapes, and sometimes deceiving us and making us believe such things about him? Or is he simple, and less likely than anything to depart from his own form?”

“I can’t say,” he said, “at least not offhand.”

“Well, what about this? If anything departs from its own 380e form, isn’t it necessarily changed either by itself or by something else?”

“Necessarily.”

“Now aren’t things in the best condition the least altered and moved by something else?

“For instance, a body is affected by food and drink and exertion, and every plant by the sun’s heat and winds and things of that kind. Isn’t the healthiest and strongest 381a least altered?”

“Of course.”

“And the soul that is bravest and has the most understanding: wouldn’t it be least disturbed and altered by anything outside it?”

“Yes.”

“And the same reasoning surely applies to everything that’s put together, furniture and buildings and clothes: those that are well made and in good condition are least altered by time and other influences.”

“That’s so.” 381b

“So everything in good condition, whether by nature or by craft or both, is least open to change by something else.”

“So it seems.”

“But god and what belongs to god are in the best condition in every way.”

“Of course.”

“So in this respect god would be the least likely to take many shapes.”

“The least likely, certainly.”

“But would he change and alter himself?”

“Obviously,” he said, “if he’s altered at all.”

“Then does he change himself into something better and more beautiful, or into something worse and uglier than himself?” 381c

“It must be into something worse,” he said, “if he’s altered at all. For surely we won’t say that god is lacking in beauty or excellence.”

“You’re quite right,” I said. “And that being so, Adeimantus, do you think anyone, god or human, would willingly make himself worse in any way?”

“Impossible,” he said.

“Then it’s impossible,” I said, “even for a god to want to alter himself. Each of them, it seems, being as beautiful and as good as can be, remains forever and simply in his own shape.”

“That seems to me absolutely necessary,” he said. 381d

“Then, my excellent friend,” I said, “let none of the poets tell us that ‘the gods, in the likeness of strangers from other lands, taking every kind of shape, go roaming through cities’; and let no one tell lies about Proteus and Thetis, or bring Hera onstage, in tragedy or any other poetry, transformed into a priestess collecting alms ‘for the life-giving children of Inachus, the river of Argos’; 381e and let them not tell us many other lies like these. And mothers mustn’t be won over by the poets and frighten their children by telling the tales badly, saying that certain gods go around at night looking like all sorts of strangers from everywhere. That way they won’t blaspheme against the gods and make their children more cowardly at the same time.”note

“No, they mustn’t,” he said.

“But perhaps,” I said, “while the gods themselves can’t change, they make us think they appear in all sorts of forms, deceiving us and casting spells on us?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Well then,” I said, “would a god be willing to lie, either in words or by holding out an illusion in action?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Don’t you know,” I said, “that the true lie, if one can call it that, is hated by all gods and humans?”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“This,” I said: “no one is willing to be deceived in the most important part of himself about the most important things. That’s where he’s most afraid of all to have falsehood lodged.”

“I still don’t understand,” he said. 382b

“That’s because you think I’m saying something profound,” I said. “All I’m saying is that to be deceived in one’s soul about the things that are, to be misled and ignorant, and to have and hold falsehood there, is what everyone would least accept. That’s where people hate falsehood most.”

“Very much so,” he said.

“But as I was just saying, this is what would most rightly be called the true lie: the ignorance in the soul of someone who has been deceived. The lie in words is a kind of imitation of that condition in the soul, an image that comes after it, not a completely 382c pure lie. Isn’t that so?”

“Certainly.”

“So the real lie is hated not only by gods but by human beings too.”

“I think so.”

“But what about the lie in words? When is it useful, and to whom, so that it doesn’t deserve to be hated? Isn’t it useful against enemies, and with so-called friends when madness or some folly leads them to try to do something bad? Then it becomes useful as a medicine to turn them away from it. And in the tales we were just 382d talking about, since we don’t know the truth about ancient events, don’t we make it useful by making the falsehood as much like the truth as we can?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Then for which of these reasons would a lie be useful to god? Would he lie, making up likenesses of the truth, because he doesn’t know about ancient events?”

“That would be ridiculous,” he said.

“So there’s no lying poet in god.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then would he lie because he’s afraid of his enemies?” 382e

“Far from it.”

“Because of the folly or madness of his friends, then?”

“But no one foolish or mad is dear to the gods,” he said.

“Then there’s no reason why a god would lie.”

“There isn’t.”

“Then everything divine, whether spirit or god, is entirely free of lies.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Then god is entirely simple and true in deed and in word. He doesn’t change himself, and he doesn’t deceive others—not by apparitions, not by words, not by sending signs, whether waking or dreaming.” 383a

“That’s how it looks to me too,” he said, “now that you say it.”

“So do you agree,” I said, “that this is the second pattern within which we must speak and compose poetry about gods: that they are not sorcerers who transform themselves, and they don’t mislead us with falsehoods in word or deed?”

“I agree.”

“So although we praise much in Homer, this we won’t praise: Zeus sending the dream to Agamemnon. Nor will we praise Aeschylus when his Thetis says that Apollo, singing at her 383b wedding, dwelt on her happiness in her children: ‘Lives long and untouched by sickness, and calling my fortunes in every way dear to the gods, he raised a song of triumph and gladdened my heart. And I believed the holy mouth of Phoebus, brimming with the prophetic art, was free of lies. Yet he who sang, he who sat at the feast, he who said these things—he himself is the one who killed my son.’ 383c When anyone says such things about gods, we’ll be angry and won’t grant him a chorus, and we won’t let teachers use it to educate the young—if our guardians are to become god-fearing and godlike, as far as a human being possibly can.”note

“I agree with these patterns completely,” he said, “and I would treat them as laws.”

Socrates“So where the gods are concerned,” I said, “these, it seems, are the sorts of things that people should and shouldn’t hear from childhood on, if they’re going to honor the gods and their parents and not think lightly of their friendship with one another.”

“And I think,” he said, “we’re right about that.”

“What if they’re to be courageous? Mustn’t we tell them these things, and also things that will make them least afraid of death? 386b Or do you think anyone could ever become courageous with this terror inside him?”

“No, by Zeus,” he said, “I don’t.”

“And what about this? If someone believes that the things in Hades are real and terrible, do you think he’ll be fearless of death and choose death in battle over defeat and slavery?”

“Not at all.”

“Then it seems we must supervise those who undertake to tell these stories too, and ask them not simply to disparage the things in Hades like this but rather to praise them, since what they say is 386c neither true nor beneficial to those who are going to be fighters.”

“Yes, we must,” he said.

“Then we’ll strike out,” I said, “all passages like this, starting with this verse: ‘I would rather be a laborer on the land, serving another man, some man with no land and not much to live on, than be king over all the dead who have perished.’ And this: 386d ‘and lest his house be revealed to mortals and immortals, dreadful and moldering, which even the gods abhor.’ And: ‘Ah me, so there is something even in the house of Hades, a soul and a phantom, but no mind in it at all.’ And this: ‘He alone has his wits; the others flit about as shadows.’ And: ‘His soul flew from his limbs and went to Hades, bewailing its fate, leaving manhood and youth behind.’note

“And this: ‘His soul went beneath the earth like smoke, shrieking.’ And: ‘As when bats in the depths of an eerie cave flit about shrieking, when one has fallen from the cluster off the rock and they cling to one another, so they went together, shrieking.’ 387b We’ll ask Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we cross out these and all such passages—not because they aren’t poetic and pleasant for most people to hear, but because the more poetic they are, the less they should be heard by boys and men who are meant to be free and to fear slavery more than death.”

“Absolutely.”

“Then we must also throw out all the terrible and frightening names connected with these things—Cocytus and Styx, 387c ‘those below’ and ‘the withered dead,’ and all the other names of this sort which make everyone who hears them shudder—or so the poet supposes. Perhaps they’re fine for some other purpose. But we’re afraid for our guardians: that shudders like these will make them more heated and softer than they should be.”

“And we’re right to be afraid,” he said.

“So they must be removed?”

“Yes.”

“And the opposite pattern must be used in speaking and in poetry?”

“Obviously.” 387dnote

“Then we’ll also remove the wailing and lamentation of famous men?”

“We must,” he said, “if we removed the earlier things.”

“Consider, then,” I said, “whether we’ll be right to remove them or not. We say that a decent man won’t think death a terrible thing for another decent man whose friend he is.”

“We do say that.”

“Then he wouldn’t lament for him as though he had suffered something terrible.”

“Certainly not.”

“And we also say this: that such a man is, more than anyone, sufficient in himself for living well, and that he, above all 387e others, has the least need of anyone else.”

“True,” he said.

“So for him it’s least terrible of all to be deprived of a son or a brother, or money, or anything else of that kind.”

“Least of all, certainly.”

“Then he laments least, too, and bears it as calmly as he can when some such misfortune overtakes him.”

“Very much so.”

“So we’d be right to remove the dirges of famous men and give them to women—and not to the serious ones at that— 388a and to men of poor character, so that those we say we’re raising to guard the country will be disgusted at the idea of behaving like them.”

“Right,” he said.

“Once again, then, we’ll ask Homer and the other poets not to portray Achilles, the son of a goddess, ‘lying now on his side, now on his back, and now on his face, then getting up and wandering distraught along 388b the shore of the barren sea,’ nor ‘taking the sooty dust in both hands and pouring it over his head,’ nor weeping and lamenting in all the ways and as often as Homer made him do; nor Priam, a near descendant of the gods, begging and ‘rolling in the dung, calling on each man by name.’note

“What you say is very true,” he said.

“But that mustn’t happen, as our argument just showed us—and we must be persuaded by it until someone persuades us with a better one.”

“No, it mustn’t.”

“Nor should they be fond of laughter. For when someone gives in to violent laughter, it tends to bring on a violent swing the other way.”

“So it seems to me,” he said.

“Then if anyone portrays people of any account overcome by 389a laughter, we mustn’t accept it—much less if it’s gods.”

“Much less,” he said.

“Then we won’t accept things like this from Homer about the gods either: ‘Unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods when they saw Hephaestus bustling through the hall.’ By your argument we mustn’t accept it.”

“If you want to call it mine,” he said. “Anyway, it mustn’t 389b be accepted.”

“But we must also value truth highly. If we were right just now, and falsehood really is useless to gods but useful to human beings as a kind of medicine, then clearly something like that must be left to doctors, and private individuals mustn’t touch it.”

“Clearly,” he said.note

“Then if anyone is entitled to lie, it’s the rulers of the city, in dealing with enemies or citizens for the city’s benefit; nobody else may touch such a thing. 389c For a private individual to lie to such rulers, we’ll say, is as great a mistake as—no, a greater one than—for a patient not to tell his doctor the truth about the condition of his own body, or an athlete his trainer, or for a sailor not to tell the captain the facts about the ship and the crew, and how he himself or one of his shipmates is doing.”

“Very true,” he said. 389d

“So if the ruler catches anyone else in the city lying—‘any of those who are craftsmen, a prophet, or healer of ills, or joiner of timber’—he’ll punish him for introducing a practice that capsizes and destroys a city just as it would a ship.”

“He will,” he said, “if deeds are to follow words.”

“What next? Won’t our young people need moderation?”

“Of course.”

“And for most people, aren’t these the most important parts of moderation: to obey the rulers, 389e and themselves to rule over the pleasures of drink, sex and food?”

“I think so.”

“Then we’ll say, I think, that things like what Diomedes says in Homer are well said: ‘Friend, sit in silence and do as I say,’ and the lines that go with it: ‘The Achaeans marched breathing fury, in silence, fearing their commanders,’ and everything else like that.”

“Well said.”

“What about things like this: ‘Heavy with wine, with a dog’s eyes and a deer’s heart,’ 390a and the lines after it? Are they well said—or any other insolence toward rulers from people under them that anyone has uttered in prose or verse?”

“No, they’re not.”note

“No, because I don’t think they’re fit for young people to hear—not for the sake of moderation, anyway. That they provide some other pleasure is no surprise. How does it look to you?”

“Just so,” he said.

“And what about making the wisest of men say that the finest thing of all, in his view, is when ‘the tables beside them are loaded 390b with bread and meat, and the wine-server draws wine from the mixing bowl and carries it round and pours it into the cups’? Do you think that’s fit for a young man to hear, for his self-control? Or this: ‘To die of hunger and meet one’s fate is the most pitiful thing’? Or Zeus—while the other gods and men were asleep and he alone was awake—easily 390c forgetting everything he’d planned because of his sexual desire, and so overwhelmed at the sight of Hera that he isn’t even willing to go to their bedroom but wants to lie with her right there on the ground, saying he’s gripped by desire as never before—not even when they first went to each other ‘without their parents knowing’? Or Hephaestus binding Ares and Aphrodite for similar reasons?”note

“No, by Zeus,” he said, “it doesn’t seem fit to me.” 390d

“But where famous men show endurance in the face of everything, in word or deed,” I said, “that should be watched and heard—like this: ‘He struck his chest and rebuked his heart: Endure, my heart; you’ve endured worse before now.’”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“And we certainly mustn’t let our men take bribes or love money.” 390e

“Not at all.”

“Nor must they sing to them, ‘Gifts persuade gods, gifts persuade revered kings.’ Nor must we praise Achilles’ tutor Phoenix as speaking sensibly when he advised him to take gifts and defend the Achaeans, but not to give up his wrath without gifts.

“Nor will we think it right, or agree, that Achilles himself was such a lover of money that he took gifts from Agamemnon, and again that he accepted payment for a corpse 391a and released it, but otherwise refused.”

“Well, it’s certainly not right,” he said, “to praise things like that.”note

“Out of respect for Homer,” I said, “I hesitate to say that it isn’t even pious to say these things against Achilles, or to believe others who say them. But these things mustn’t be believed either: that he said to Apollo, ‘You’ve thwarted me, Far-shooter, most destructive of all the gods; I’d pay you back, if only I had the power’; 391b that he defied the river, a god, and was ready to fight it; and that of the locks of hair consecrated to the other river, the Spercheus, he said, ‘Let me give my hair to the hero Patroclus to take with him’—who was a corpse—and that he did it. And Hector dragged around Patroclus’ tomb, and the captives slaughtered on the pyre: we’ll say that none of this is truly told, and we won’t let 391c our people believe that Achilles—son of a goddess and of Peleus, the most moderate of men and third in descent from Zeus, and brought up by the wise Chiron—was so full of turmoil that he had in him two diseases opposed to each other: a meanness that went with love of money, and at the same time arrogance toward gods and men.”note

“You’re right,” he said.

“Then let’s not believe this either,” I said, “or allow it to be said: that Theseus son of Poseidon and Pirithous son of Zeus 391d set out on terrible abductions, or that any other child of a god, any hero, would have dared to do the terrible and impious deeds people now falsely tell of them. Let’s compel the poets either to deny that these deeds were theirs or to deny that they were children of gods, and not to say both—and not to try to persuade our young people that the gods produce evil and that heroes are no better than human beings. As we said earlier, 391e these things are neither pious nor true; for we showed, I think, that evil can’t come from gods.”note

“Of course not.”

“What’s more, they’re harmful to those who hear them. Everyone will excuse himself for being bad once he’s persuaded that such things are done, and were done, by ‘the gods’ close kin, near to Zeus, whose altar of ancestral Zeus stands high in the air on Ida’s peak,’ and ‘in whom the blood of divinities has not yet faded.’

“For these reasons such stories must be stopped, in case they breed in our young people a great 392a readiness for wickedness.”

“Absolutely,” he said.note

“Then what kind of speech is still left for us,” I said, “as we lay down what may and may not be said? We’ve said how gods should be spoken of, and divinities, heroes and the things in Hades.”

“Certainly.”

“Then what remains would be about human beings?”

“Obviously.”

“But we can’t settle that at present, my friend.”

“Why not?”

“Because I think we’ll say that poets and prose writers alike 392b speak badly about human beings on the most important matters: that many unjust people are happy and many just people wretched, that injustice pays if it goes undetected, and that justice is someone else’s good and one’s own loss. We’ll forbid them to say such things and order them to sing and tell stories of the opposite. Don’t you think so?”

“I know it well,” he said.

“Then if you agree that I’m right, shall I say you’ve agreed to what we’ve been looking for all along?”

“You’ve understood rightly,” he said. 392c

“So we’ll agree that such stories must be told about human beings only when we’ve discovered what justice is, and how by nature it benefits its possessor, whether he seems just or not?”

“Very true,” he said.

“Then let that be the end of what concerns content. Next, I think, we must examine style, and then we’ll have fully examined both what must be said and how.”

And Adeimantus said, “I don’t understand what you mean by that.” 392d

“Well, you should,” I said. “Maybe you’ll understand better this way. Isn’t everything told by storytellers or poets a narration of things past, present or future?”

“What else could it be?” he said.

“And don’t they carry it out by plain narration, or by narration that works through imitation, or by both?”

“This too,” he said, “I need to understand more clearly.”

“I seem to be a ridiculous and unclear teacher,” I said. “So, like people who are bad at explaining, I won’t take the whole thing, but I’ll take 392e one part and try to show you in it what I mean.

“Tell me: do you know the beginning of the Iliad, where the poet says that Chryses begged Agamemnon to release his daughter, that Agamemnon was angry, and that Chryses, since 393a he didn’t get what he asked, prayed to the god against the Achaeans?”

“I do.”note

“Then you know that up to these lines—‘and he begged all the Achaeans, and most of all the two sons of Atreus, marshals of the people’—the poet himself is speaking, and doesn’t even try to turn our minds elsewhere, as if the speaker were someone other than himself. But after that he speaks as though he himself were Chryses, and tries as hard as he can 393b to make us think that the speaker isn’t Homer but the priest, an old man. And he’s composed nearly all the rest of his narration this way, about what happened at Troy, and in Ithaca, and in the whole Odyssey.”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Now it’s narration both when he gives the speeches and when he gives what comes between the speeches?”

“Of course.” 393c

“But when he gives a speech as though he were someone else, won’t we say that he then makes his own style as much like each speaker he introduces as he can?”

“We will—what else?”

“And isn’t making oneself like someone else, in voice or in bearing, imitating the person one makes oneself like?”

“Of course.”

“In a case like that, then, it seems, he and the other poets produce their narration through imitation.”

“Certainly.”

“But if the poet never hid himself anywhere, his whole poem and narration 393d would have come about without imitation. And so you won’t say again that you don’t understand, I’ll explain how that would happen. If Homer, after saying that Chryses came bringing a ransom for his daughter, as a suppliant to the Achaeans and especially the kings, had gone on speaking not as though he had become Chryses but still as Homer, you know it wouldn’t be imitation but plain narration. It would go something like this—I’ll put it without meter, since I’m no poet: The priest came 393e and prayed that the gods would grant that they capture Troy and come home safe themselves, and that they would release his daughter to him, accepting the ransom and respecting the god.

“When he had said this, the others were respectful and agreed, but Agamemnon grew savage, ordering him to leave now and not come back, or the staff and the god’s wreaths would be no help to him. Before his daughter was set free, he said, she would grow old with him in Argos. He told him to go away and not provoke him, 394a if he wanted to get home safe. When the old man heard this he was afraid and left in silence. But once he had withdrawn from the camp he prayed at length to Apollo, calling on the god by his titles and reminding him, and asking for a return if he had ever given him a gift that pleased him, whether in building temples or in sacrificing victims. In return for these, he prayed, let the Achaeans pay for his tears with the god’s arrows. That, my friend,” I said, “is how plain narration without 394b imitation comes about.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Then understand,” I said, “that the opposite of this comes about when someone takes out the poet’s words between the speeches and leaves only the exchanges.”

“I understand this too,” he said. “That’s the way it is with tragedy.”

“You’ve taken it exactly right,” I said, “and I think I can now make clear to you what I couldn’t before: that one kind of poetry and storytelling 394c works entirely through imitation—tragedy and comedy, as you say; another through the report of the poet himself—you’d find it mostly, I suppose, in dithyrambs; and another through both, in epic poetry and in many other places too, if you follow me.”

“Yes, now I see,” he said, “what you meant then.”note

“Then remember what came before this too: we said that what must be said had already been discussed, but how it must be said was still to be examined.”

“I remember.” 394d

“Well, this is exactly what I meant: that we have to come to an agreement whether we’ll let the poets produce their narrations for us by imitating, or by imitating in some parts and not in others—and which parts in each case—or not imitating at all.”

“I have a hunch,” he said, “you’re considering whether or not we’ll admit tragedy and comedy into the city.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “and perhaps even more than that. I don’t know yet myself; but wherever the argument carries us, like a wind, that’s where we must go.”

“And you’re right,” he said. 394e

“Then consider this, Adeimantus: should our guardians be imitators or not? Or does this too follow from what we said before—that each person would practice one pursuit well, but not many, and if he tried, by dabbling in many he would fail at them all, and never make a name for himself in any?”

“Of course it follows.”

“And doesn’t the same argument hold for imitation—that the same person can’t imitate many things as well as he can one?”

“No, he can’t.”

“Then he’ll hardly practice any pursuit worth mentioning while at the same time imitating many things and being an imitator. After all, even with two kinds of imitation that seem close to each other, the same people can’t do both well—writing comedy and tragedy, for instance. Didn’t you just call these two imitations?”

“I did. And you’re right that the same people can’t do both.”

“Nor can they be rhapsodes and actors at once.”

“True.”

“And the same actors don’t even perform comedy and 395b tragedy. Yet all these are imitations, aren’t they?”

“Imitations.”

“And human nature, Adeimantus, seems to me to be minted into even smaller change than this, so that it can’t imitate many things well, or do the very things of which the imitations are likenesses.”

“Very true,” he said.

“Then if we’re to preserve our first argument—that our guardians must be released from all other crafts and be very exact 395c craftsmen of the city’s freedom, pursuing nothing that doesn’t contribute to it—then they shouldn’t do or imitate anything else. And if they do imitate, they should imitate from childhood what suits them—people who are courageous, moderate, pious, free, and everything of that kind. What is unfree they should neither do nor be clever at imitating, nor anything else shameful, so that they don’t get a taste of the real thing 395d from the imitation. Or haven’t you noticed that imitations, if they’re kept up from youth on for a long time, settle into habits and nature—in the body, the voice and the mind?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Then we won’t allow those we say we care for,” I said, “and who must become good men, to imitate a woman, since they are men—whether young or older, whether railing at her husband, or quarreling with gods and boasting because she thinks 395e she’s happy, or caught up in misfortunes, grief and lamentation. Still less one who’s sick, or in love, or in labor.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Nor female and male slaves doing what slaves do.”

“Not that either.”

“Nor bad men, it seems, cowards who do the opposite of what we just described—insulting and mocking one another and using foul language, drunk or 396a even sober—or any of the other ways such people offend in word and deed against themselves and others. And I don’t think they should get used to making themselves like madmen in word or deed either. For one has to recognize madmen and wicked people, both men and women, but must not do or imitate anything of theirs.”

“Very true,” he said.

“What about this?” I said. “Should they imitate smiths or other craftsmen at work, 396b or men rowing triremes or calling the stroke for them, or anything else connected with these?”

“How could they,” he said, “when they won’t even be allowed to pay attention to any of these things?”

“And what about horses neighing and bulls bellowing, rivers roaring and the sea crashing, and thunder, and all such things—will they imitate them?”

“No,” he said. “They’ve been forbidden to be mad or to make themselves like madmen.”note

“Then if I understand what you mean,” I said, “there is one kind of style and narration that a truly fine and good man 396c would use whenever he had to say something, and another kind, unlike it, that a man of the opposite nature and upbringing would always keep to and use in his narration.”

“What are they?” he said.

“I think,” I said, “that when a moderate man comes in his narration to some speech or action of a good man, he’ll be willing to report it as if he himself were that man, and won’t be ashamed of that kind of imitation. He’ll imitate the good man most 396d when he is acting steadily and sensibly, and less, and less readily, when he’s been tripped up by illness or love, or by drink or some other misfortune. But when he comes to someone unworthy of himself, he won’t be willing to model himself seriously on someone worse than he is—except briefly, when that person does something good. Instead he’ll be ashamed, both because he has no practice in imitating such people and because he can’t stand molding himself on the patterns of worse men and 396e fitting himself into them. He holds it in contempt in his mind—except as play.”

“Likely enough,” he said.

“So he’ll use the kind of narration we went through a little while ago in connection with Homer’s epics. His style will share in both, imitation and plain narration, but with only a small portion of imitation in a long stretch of speech. Or am I talking nonsense?”

“Not at all,” he said. “That’s exactly the pattern such a speaker must follow.”

“And the one who isn’t like that,” I said, “will narrate anything at all, the more so the worse he is, and think nothing beneath him. So he’ll undertake to imitate everything, in earnest and in front of a crowd, including the things we were just mentioning: thunder, the noise of wind and hail, of axles and pulleys, the voices of trumpets and pipes and panpipes and every instrument, and even the cries of dogs, sheep and birds. 397b His whole style will be imitation, by voice and gesture, with perhaps a little narration in it?”

“That must follow too,” he said.

“These, then,” I said, “are the two kinds of style I meant.”

“Yes, they are,” he said.

“Now one of the two involves only small variations. If you give the style a fitting mode and rhythm, someone speaking it correctly ends up speaking in pretty much the same mode throughout—a single mode, since the variations are small—and likewise in 397c a rhythm that stays roughly the same. Isn’t that so?”

“That’s exactly how it is,” he said.

“What about the other kind? Doesn’t it need the opposite—every mode and every rhythm—if it’s to be delivered in a way that suits it, since it contains every sort of variation?”

“Very much so.”

“Then do all poets, and everyone who says anything, hit on one or the other of these patterns of style, or on some mixture of the two?”

“Necessarily,” he said. 397d

“So what shall we do?” I said. “Shall we admit all of these into the city, or one of the unmixed kinds, or the mixed one?”

“If my vote wins,” he said, “the unmixed imitator of the decent man.”

“And yet, Adeimantus, the mixed kind is pleasant too. And by far the most pleasant, to children and their attendants and to the great mass of people, is the opposite of the one you choose.”

“Yes, it’s the most pleasant.”

“But perhaps,” I said, “you’d say it doesn’t suit our 397e constitution, because among us there’s no double man, nor a manifold one, since each person does one thing.”

“No, it doesn’t suit it.”

“So that’s why it’s only in a city like ours that we’ll find the shoemaker a shoemaker, and not a ship’s pilot on top of his shoemaking; the farmer a farmer, and not a juror on top of his farming; the soldier a soldier, and not a moneymaker on top of his soldiering; and so with everyone?”

“True,” he said.

“So it seems that if a man whose wisdom let him become every sort of thing and imitate anything at all were to arrive in our city, wanting to put himself and his poems on show, we would bow down to him as someone holy, wonderful and delightful. But we’d tell him that there’s no such man in our city, and that it isn’t lawful for one to arise there; and we’d send him off to another city, after pouring myrrh over his head and crowning him with wool. For ourselves, for our own benefit, we’d employ a harsher and less pleasing poet 398b and storyteller, one who would imitate the style of the decent man and would say what he says in the patterns we laid down at the start, when we set out to educate our soldiers.”note

“We certainly would,” he said, “if it were up to us.”

“And now, my friend,” I said, “it looks as though we’ve completely finished with the part of music that concerns speeches and stories. We’ve said both what must be said and how.”

“I think so too,” he said. 398c

“So what’s left after this is the manner of song and melody?”

“Obviously.”

“Couldn’t anyone at all work out by now what we have to say about them—what they must be like—if we’re going to be consistent with what we’ve said already?”

Glaucon laughed and said, “Well, Socrates, I’m afraid your ‘anyone at all’ leaves me out. At the moment I can’t quite infer what sort of thing we ought to say—though I have my suspicions.”

“Well, at any rate,” I said, “you can surely say this much 398d to begin with: that a song is composed of three things—words, mode and rhythm.”

“Yes,” he said, “that much I can.”

“And as far as it’s words, it surely doesn’t differ at all from words that aren’t sung, in having to be spoken according to the same patterns we laid down just now, and in the same way?”

“True,” he said.

“And the mode and the rhythm must follow the words.”

“Of course.”

“But we said we had no need of dirges and laments in our speeches.”

“No, we don’t.” 398e

“Which modes are the mournful ones, then? Tell me—you’re the musician.”

“Mixolydian,” he said, “and Tense Lydian, and others like them.”

“Then these must be removed?” I said. “They’re useless even for women who are meant to be decent, let alone for men.”

“Certainly.”

“And drunkenness is utterly unfitting for guardians, and so are softness and idleness.”

“Of course.”note

“Which of the modes are soft and suited to drinking parties?”

“Ionian,” he said, “and some Lydian ones, the kind called ‘slack.’”

“Then will you have any use for these, my friend, with men who are warriors?”

“None at all,” he said. “It looks as if you’re left with Dorian and Phrygian.”

“I don’t know the modes,” I said, “but leave that mode which would fittingly imitate the voice and the accents of a brave man engaged in warfare, or in any forced undertaking—a man who, when he fails, whether he’s going to meet wounds or 399b death or has fallen into some other misfortune, in all these cases wards off his fortune steadily and with endurance. And leave another for a man engaged in peaceful action, not forced but voluntary: persuading someone of something and making a request of them—a god in prayer, or a human being by teaching and advice—or, conversely, submitting himself to someone else who makes a request of him, or teaches him, or tries to change his mind; and who, having achieved what he intended as a result, doesn’t become arrogant, but in all this 399c acts with moderation and measure and is content with how things turn out.

“Well,” he said, “the ones you’re asking me to leave are none other than the ones I just mentioned.”

“Then,” I said, “we won’t need a multitude of strings, or instruments that play in every mode, for our songs and melodies.”

“It seems not to me,” he said.

“Then we won’t support craftsmen who make triangular harps and lutes and all the instruments that are 399d many-stringed and many-moded.”

“Apparently not.”

“Well then, will you admit pipe-makers or pipers into the city? Isn’t the pipe the most ‘many-stringed’ of all, and aren’t the all-mode instruments themselves really imitations of the pipe?”

“Clearly,” he said.note

“So you’re left with the lyre and the cithara, for use in the city,” I said, “and in the countryside there might be some sort of panpipe for the shepherds.”

“That, at any rate, is what our argument indicates,” he said. 399e

“We’re doing nothing new, my friend,” I said, “in preferring Apollo and Apollo’s instruments to Marsyas and his.”

“No, by Zeus,” he said, “I don’t think we are.”

“And by the dog,” I said, “without noticing it we’ve been purging once again the city we called luxurious a little while ago.”

“That shows our moderation,” he said.note

“Come on, then,” I said, “let’s purge the rest too.”

“Next after modes we’d have rhythms. We shouldn’t go after intricate ones, or every kind of metrical foot, but should see which rhythms belong to an orderly and courageous life. Once we’ve seen them, we must make the 400a foot and the melody follow the words of such a life, not make the words follow the foot and the melody. As for which rhythms these are, it’s your job to tell us, just as you did with the modes.”

“No, by Zeus,” he said, “I can’t tell you. That there are some three kinds from which the feet are woven, just as there are four among the notes from which all the modes arise—that I could tell you, since I’ve studied it. But which are imitations of which sort of life, I can’t say.” 400b

“Well,” I said, “we’ll consult Damon about this too: which feet suit meanness and insolence, or madness and other badness, and which rhythms must be left for their opposites. I think I heard him—not clearly—naming a composite ‘enoplion,’ and a ‘dactyl,’ and a ‘heroic,’ arranging it in some way I don’t understand, making it equal up and down as it passes into short and long; and, I think, he named an ‘iamb,’ and another a ‘trochee,’ and attached longs and 400c shorts to them. And in some of these, I think, he blamed or praised the tempo of the foot no less than the rhythms themselves—or some combination of the two; I can’t say. But, as I said, let’s refer these matters to Damon. Sorting them out would take no small discussion. Or do you think otherwise?”note

“By Zeus, not I.”

“But this much you can determine: that grace and gracelessness follow good rhythm and bad rhythm?”

“Of course.” 400d

“And good rhythm follows fine style and becomes like it, and bad rhythm the opposite; and likewise with being in tune and out of tune—if, that is, rhythm and mode follow the words, as we were saying just now, and not the words them.”

“Yes, certainly,” he said, “these must follow the words.”

“What about the manner of the style,” I said, “and the words? Don’t they follow the character of the soul?”

“Of course.”

“And everything else follows the style?”

“Yes.”

“So good speech, being in tune, grace and good rhythm 400e follow good-heartedness—not the kind that’s really foolishness, which we politely call ‘good-hearted,’ but a mind that has truly been furnished with a good and fine character.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Then mustn’t the young pursue these qualities everywhere, if they’re to do their own work?”

“They must.”note

“And surely painting is full of them, and every craft of that kind; so is weaving, and embroidery, and building, and all the manufacture of other furnishings; and so too is the nature of bodies and of other living things. In all of these there is grace or gracelessness. And gracelessness, bad rhythm and being out of tune are sisters of bad speech and bad character, while their opposites are sisters and imitations of the opposite—a moderate and good character.”

“Entirely so,” he said. 401b

“Then is it only the poets we must supervise, compelling them to put the image of good character into their poems or else not compose among us? Or must we supervise the other craftsmen too, and prevent them from putting this bad character—licentious, mean and graceless—into images of living things, or into buildings, or into anything else they make, and not allow anyone who can’t comply to practice his craft among us? That way our 401c guardians won’t be raised among images of badness, as if in bad pasture,

“Yes,” he said, “that would be by far the finest way to raise them.”

“Then isn’t that why, Glaucon,” I said, “upbringing in music is most decisive? Because rhythm and mode sink deepest into the inner part of the soul and take the strongest hold on it, bringing grace with them and making a person graceful, 401e if he’s brought up rightly, and if not, the opposite?

“And also because someone brought up in it as he should be would be quickest to perceive what has been left out, or badly crafted, or has grown badly; and, feeling a proper distaste, he would praise fine things, and delight in them, and take them into his soul, and be nourished by them and 402a become fine and good himself; while ugly things he would rightly blame and hate while he’s still young, before he’s able to grasp the reason. And when reason comes, the person brought up this way would welcome it most of all, recognizing it through its kinship with him?”

“It seems to me, at least,” he said, “that it’s for reasons like these that upbringing is in music.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s just as it was with learning to read. We were competent only when the letters didn’t escape us—few as they are—in all the words where they turn up, and when we didn’t dismiss them, in small words 402b or large, as not needing to be noticed, but were eager to recognize them everywhere, knowing we’d never be literate until we could do that—”

“True.”

“And we won’t recognize images of letters, either, if they appear in water or in mirrors, until we know the letters themselves—doesn’t that belong to the same skill and practice?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then, by the gods, isn’t it as I say? In the same way we won’t be educated in music either, 402c neither we ourselves nor the guardians we say we must educate, until we recognize the forms of moderation, courage, generosity, magnificence, and all their kin, and their opposites too, turning up everywhere; and perceive them in whatever they’re present in, both the things themselves and their images; and don’t dismiss them in small things or in large, but believe it all belongs to the same skill and practice?”

“That’s absolutely necessary,” he said. 402d

“Then,” I said, “when someone has a fine character in his soul, and in his appearance features that agree and harmonize with it, sharing the same stamp, wouldn’t that be the most beautiful sight for anyone able to see it?”

“By far.”

“And what is most beautiful is most lovable?”

“Of course.”

“Then the person educated in music would love people of this kind above all; but if someone were out of harmony, he wouldn’t love him.”

“Not if he were lacking something in his soul,” he said. “But if it were something in his body, he’d put up with it and be willing 402e to embrace him.”

“I understand,” I said. “You have, or had, a beloved like that, and I’ll grant the point. But tell me this: does moderation have anything in common with excessive pleasure?”

“How could it,” he said, “when such pleasure drives people out of their minds no less than pain does?”

“With the rest of excellence, then?”

“Not at all.”

“Well, with wantonness and licentiousness?”

“More than anything.”

“Can you name any pleasure greater or keener than sexual pleasure?”

“No,” he said, “nor any more insane.”

“And isn’t right love, by its nature, a moderate and musical love of what is orderly and beautiful?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Then nothing mad or akin to licentiousness should come near right love?”

“It shouldn’t.” 403b

“Then this pleasure mustn’t come near it, and lover and beloved who love and are loved rightly must have no part in it?”

“No, by Zeus, Socrates,” he said, “it certainly mustn’t come near it.”

“So it seems you’ll lay down a law in the city we’re founding: a lover may kiss his beloved, spend time with him and touch him as he would a son, for the sake of what is fine, if the boy consents; but in all other respects he must associate with the one he cares for in such a way that he’ll never seem to go further 403c than this. Otherwise he’ll be open to reproach for being unmusical and lacking in taste.”

“Just so,” he said.

“Then does it seem to you as well,” I said, “that our discussion of music has reached its end? It has ended, at any rate, where it ought to end, since music surely ought to end in the love of the beautiful.”

“I agree,” he said.

“After music, the young men must be brought up on physical training.”

“Of course.”

“In this too they must be carefully trained, from childhood throughout 403d their lives. And here’s how it is, I think—but you consider it too. It doesn’t seem to me that a sound body, by its own excellence, makes the soul good; it’s the other way around: a good soul, by its own excellence, makes the body as good as it can be. How does it seem to you?”

“The same to me,” he said.

“Then if we took adequate care of the mind and handed over to it the detailed care of the body, while we ourselves only outlined the 403e patterns, so as not to talk at length, would we be doing right?”

“Certainly.”

“Now we said they must keep away from drunkenness. Anyone rather than a guardian can be allowed to get drunk and not know where on earth he is.”

“Yes,” he said, “it would be ridiculous for a guardian to need a guardian.”

“And what about food? These men are athletes in the greatest of contests, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Then would the condition of today’s athletes be suitable for them?”

“Perhaps.”

“But,” I said, “it’s a sleepy sort of condition, and precarious for health. Don’t you see that these athletes sleep their lives away, and if they depart even a little from their prescribed regimen, they fall seriously and violently ill?”

“I do see that.”

“Then our warrior-athletes need a more refined kind of training,” I said. “Like dogs, they must be wakeful and see and hear as sharply as possible; and on campaign, going through many changes of water 404b and other food, of summer heat and winter storms, they mustn’t be precariously balanced in their health.”

“So it seems to me.”

“Then would the best physical training be a sister of the simple music we described a little earlier?”

“What do you mean?”

“A simple and decent physical training, especially the kind for war.”

“How so?”

“One could learn such things even from Homer,” I said. “You know that when his heroes feast on campaign he doesn’t treat them to fish, even though they’re 404c by the sea at the Hellespont, or to boiled meat, but only to roasted, which is what soldiers could most easily come by. Just about everywhere it’s easier to use the fire itself than to carry pots around.”

“Very much so.”

“Nor, I think, did Homer ever mention sauces. Or is this something even other athletes know, that a body meant to be in good condition must keep away from all such things?”

“Yes,” he said, “and they’re right to know it and keep away.” 404d

“Then it seems you don’t approve, my friend, of a Syracusan table and the Sicilian variety of dishes, if you think this is right.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Then you also disapprove of men who mean to be in good physical condition having a Corinthian girl as a mistress.”

“Absolutely.”

“And of the supposed delights of Attic pastries?”

“Necessarily.”

“Yes, for I think we’d be right to compare such food and such a way of life as a whole to melody and song composed in every mode and in every 404e rhythm.”note

“Of course.”

“There, variety bred licentiousness, and here it breeds disease; whereas simplicity in music produces moderation in souls, and in physical training, health in bodies?”

“Very true,” he said.

“And when licentiousness and diseases multiply in a city, don’t many law courts and doctors’ offices open up, and don’t the arts of the courtroom and of medicine give themselves airs, once even many free men take them very seriously?”

“How could they not?”

“And could you find any greater proof of bad and shameful education in a city than the need for first-rate doctors and judges, not only among the lowly and the manual workers, but also among those who pretend to have been brought up as free men? 405b Don’t you think it shameful, and a great proof of lack of education, to be forced to rely on a justice imported from others, as if they were your masters and judges, for lack of any of your own?”

“That’s the most shameful thing of all,” he said.

“Or do you think this is even more shameful,” I said, “when someone not only wears away the greater part of his life in the courts, as defendant and prosecutor, but through lack of taste is even persuaded to pride himself on this very thing—on being clever 405c at doing wrong and able to twist through every turn, slip out through every loophole and wriggle his way free, so as not to pay the penalty—and all for small and worthless things, not knowing how much finer and better it is to arrange his life so that he has no need of a drowsy juror?”

“No, the other isn’t the most shameful,” he said. “This is more shameful still.”

“And needing medicine,” I said, “not for wounds, or because some seasonal illness has come along, but because of 405d idleness and the sort of regimen we described, filling up with fluids and gases like a marsh, and forcing the clever sons of Asclepius to give diseases names like ‘flatulence’ and ‘catarrh’—don’t you think that’s shameful?”

“Very,” he said. “Those really are strange, newfangled names for diseases.”note

“The kind that didn’t exist in Asclepius’ day, I think,” I said. 405e “My evidence is that at Troy his sons didn’t find fault with the woman who gave the wounded Eurypylus Pramnian wine to drink, with plenty of barley meal sprinkled on it 406a and cheese grated over it—things thought to produce phlegm—nor did they criticize Patroclus, who was treating him.”

“It certainly is a strange drink for someone in that state,” he said.note

“Not if you bear in mind,” I said, “that before Herodicus came along, the sons of Asclepius, so they say, made no use of today’s medicine, which tends diseases like a child’s attendant. Herodicus was a physical trainer who became sickly, and by mixing physical training 406b with medicine he wore out first and foremost himself, and later many others as well.”

“How so?” he said.note

“By making his death a long one,” I said. “He dogged his disease, which was fatal, but I don’t think he was able to cure himself. So he spent his whole life doctoring himself, with no time for anything else, in torment whenever he departed at all from his usual regimen; and, finding it hard to die thanks to his wisdom, he reached old age.”

“A fine prize his skill won him, then,” he said. 406c

“A fitting one,” I said, “for someone who didn’t know that it wasn’t out of ignorance or inexperience of this kind of medicine that Asclepius didn’t reveal it to his descendants. It was because he knew that among all well-governed peoples each person has been assigned a particular task in the city, which he has to do, and nobody has the leisure to spend his life being ill and doctoring himself. Ridiculously, we recognize this in the case of craftsmen, but don’t recognize it in the case of the rich and supposedly happy.”

“How so?” he said. 406d

“A carpenter,” I said, “when he’s ill, expects the doctor to give him a drug to drink so he can vomit up the illness, or else to be purged from below, or to be rid of it by cautery or surgery. But if someone prescribes a long regimen for him, putting little felt caps on his head and all that goes with them, he quickly says he has no time to be ill, and that it doesn’t pay to live like that, paying attention to an illness and neglecting the work in front of him. And after that he says goodbye 406e to that sort of doctor, goes back to his usual regimen, gets healthy and lives doing his own work. Or if his body can’t bear up, he dies and is rid of his troubles.”

“Yes,” he said, “and for a person like that it seems fitting to use medicine in this way.”

“Is that because,” I said, “he had some work to do, and if he didn’t do it, life wasn’t worth living?”

“Obviously,” he said.

“But the rich man, we say, has no such work set before him that would make life unlivable if he were forced to keep away from it.”

“So it’s said, at any rate.”

“That’s because you haven’t been listening to Phocylides,” I said, “who says that once a person has a livelihood, he ought to practice excellence.”

“I think he ought to before that too,” he said.note

“Let’s not fight with him about that,” I said, “but let’s teach ourselves whether the rich man must practice this, and whether life is unlivable for one who doesn’t, 407b or whether nursing illness is a hindrance to attending to carpentry and the other crafts, but no hindrance at all to following Phocylides’ advice.”

“Yes, by Zeus,” he said. “Just about the greatest hindrance of all is this excessive care of the body that goes beyond physical training. It’s a nuisance for running a household, for going on campaign, and for holding a settled office in the city.”

“And most important of all, it makes any kind of learning, 407c reflection or private study difficult. It’s always suspecting headaches and dizziness and blaming philosophy for them, so that wherever excellence is practiced and tested in this way, it’s a hindrance in every respect. It makes a person always think he’s ill, and never stop agonizing over his body.”

“Likely enough,” he said.

“Then shall we say that Asclepius knew this too? For people whose bodies were healthy by nature and regimen, 407d but who had some specific disease in them—for them and for this condition he revealed the art of medicine, driving out their diseases with drugs and surgery and prescribing their usual regimen, so as not to harm their life as citizens. But with bodies diseased through and through inside, he didn’t try, by regimens that drain off and pour in a little at a time, to make a long and miserable life for the person, and to let him father offspring likely to be the same. Instead, he thought that someone unable to live in the established 407e course of life shouldn’t be treated, since he’s of no use either to himself or to the city?”

“You’re making Asclepius a statesman,” he said.

“Clearly,” I said. “And his sons, because he was that kind of man— 408a don’t you see how they too proved good at war at Troy, and practiced medicine the way I describe? Don’t you remember how, with the wound Pandarus gave Menelaus, ‘they sucked out the blood and sprinkled soothing drugs on it’? But what he should drink or eat afterward they no more prescribed for him than for Eurypylus, since they thought drugs were enough to heal men who before their wounds had been healthy and 408b orderly in their way of life, even if they happened to drink a heavy mixed drink on the spot. But a man sickly by nature and undisciplined, they thought, profited neither himself nor anyone else by living. Their art wasn’t meant for such people, and they shouldn’t be treated, not even if they were richer than Midas.”note

“They were very sophisticated, these sons of Asclepius you describe,” he said.

“As was fitting,” I said. “And yet the tragic poets and Pindar, refusing to obey us, say that Asclepius was the son of Apollo, and that he was bribed with gold to heal a rich man who was already 408c dying, and that this is why he was struck by lightning. But we, in keeping with what we said before, won’t believe them on both counts. If he was the son of a god, we’ll say, he wasn’t greedy for gain; and if he was greedy for gain, he wasn’t the son of a god.”

“That much is quite right,” he said. “But what do you say about this, Socrates? Don’t we need to have good doctors in our city? And the best would presumably be those who 408d have handled the most healthy people and the most sick ones; and likewise with judges, those who have dealt with every sort of nature.”

“Good ones, certainly,” I said. “But do you know whom I consider such?”

“If you tell me,” he said.

“I’ll try,” I said. “But you asked about two dissimilar things in the same question.”

“How so?” he said.

“Doctors,” I said, “would become most skilled if, starting from childhood, besides learning their art, they had dealings with as many bodies as possible, and the most unhealthy ones, and if they themselves suffered every 408e disease and weren’t very healthy by nature. For it’s not with the body, I think, that they treat the body—if it were, their own bodies could never be allowed to be or become bad—but with the soul; and a soul that has become bad, and is bad, can’t treat anything well.”

“Right,” he said.

“But a judge, my friend, rules soul with soul. And it won’t do for his soul to have been brought up from youth among wicked souls, to have kept company with them, and to have gone through every kind of wrongdoing itself, so that it can sharply infer other people’s wrongdoings from its own, as one infers diseases in the body. No: if it’s to be fine and good and judge soundly what is just, it must have been inexperienced in bad characters and untouched by them while young. That’s why decent people seem simple when they’re young, and are easily deceived 409b by the unjust: they have no models within themselves of what the wicked feel.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s certainly what happens to them.”

“That’s why,” I said, “a good judge must be not young but old. He must have learned late what injustice is like, not perceiving it as something of his own, present in his own soul, but having studied it for a long time as something alien in the souls of others, so as to discern what sort of evil it naturally is—using knowledge, not 409c his own experience.”

“Such a judge, at any rate, seems the most noble,” he said.

“And good as well,” I said, “which is what you were asking, since the man with a good soul is good. But that clever, suspicious man, who has done much wrong himself and thinks himself cunning and wise, seems clever when he associates with his own kind, because he’s on his guard, looking to the models within himself. But when he comes among good people and his elders, he looks foolish 409d in his turn, distrusting them at the wrong moment and failing to recognize a sound character, since he has no model of one. Yet because he meets the wicked more often than the decent, he seems wise rather than ignorant, both to himself and to others.”

“That’s entirely true,” he said.

“Then it’s not this sort of man,” I said, “that we should look for as the good and wise judge, but the earlier one. For wickedness could never know both excellence and itself, whereas excellence, in a nature educated over time, will come to have knowledge 409e of both itself and wickedness. So it’s this man, in my view, who becomes wise, and not the bad one.”

“I agree,” he said.

“Then will you establish by law in the city both medicine of the kind we described and judging of this kind? They will care for 410a those of your citizens whose bodies and souls are naturally good; as for those who aren’t, they’ll let die those whose bodies are that way, while those whose souls are naturally bad and incurable they’ll put to death themselves.”

“That at least has been shown to be best,” he said, “both for those who suffer it and for the city.”

“And your young people,” I said, “will obviously be careful not to need the law courts, since they’ll practice that simple music which, we said, engenders moderation.”

“Of course,” he said. 410b

“And won’t the musical man, following these same tracks, pursue physical training and catch it, if he wants to, so that he won’t need medicine except when he must?”

“I think so.”

“And in his exercises and exertions themselves he’ll look to the spirited part of his nature and work to rouse it, rather than to strength. He won’t manage his diet and his exertions for the sake of strength, as other athletes do.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“Then, Glaucon,” I said, “those who established 410c education in music and physical training didn’t do it for the reason some people suppose, did they—to care for the body with the one and the soul with the other?”

“What was it for, then?” he said.

“It looks as if they established both mainly for the sake of the soul,” I said.

“How so?”

“Haven’t you noticed,” I said, “the cast of mind of those who spend their lives in physical training and never touch music? Or of those who are disposed the opposite way?”

“What are you talking about?” he said. 410d

“Savagery and harshness,” I said, “and on the other side softness and gentleness—”

“I have noticed,” he said. “Those who practice physical training unmixed turn out more savage than they should, while those who practice only music become softer than is good for them.”

“And yet,” I said, “the savagery would come from the spirited part of their nature. Rightly nurtured, it would be courage; but strung tighter than it should be, it would likely become harsh and difficult.”

“I think so,” he said. 410e

“And what about gentleness? Wouldn’t the philosophic nature have it? If it were relaxed too much it would be softer than it should be, but if well nurtured it would be gentle and orderly.”

“That’s so.”

“And we say the guardians must have both these natures.”

“They must.”

“Then mustn’t the two be harmonized with each other?”

“Of course.”

“And when they’re harmonized, the 411a soul is moderate and courageous?”

“Certainly.”

“And when they aren’t, it’s cowardly and boorish?”

“Very much so.”

“Now when someone lets music play the pipe over him and pour into his soul through his ears, as through a funnel, those sweet, soft, mournful modes we were just speaking of, and he spends his whole life humming and bright with the delight of song, at first, if he had any spirit, he softens it like iron and makes it useful 411b instead of useless and brittle. But when he keeps at it without letting up and is spellbound, then he begins to melt and dissolve it, until he has melted his spirit away, cut it out of his soul like a sinew, and made himself ‘a feeble spearman.’”note

“Certainly,” he said.

“And if,” I said, “he was spiritless by nature from the start, this happens quickly. But if he was spirited, it weakens his spirit and makes it volatile, quickly roused by small things 411c and quickly quenched. Such people become irritable and quick-tempered instead of spirited, full of bad temper.”

“Exactly.”

“And what if, instead, he works hard at physical training and eats very well, but never touches music or philosophy? First, being in good bodily condition, won’t he be filled with confidence and spirit, and become braver than he was?”

“Very much so.”

“And what if he does nothing else and has nothing to do with the Muse 411d at all? Even if there was some love of learning in his soul, since it never tastes any learning or inquiry, and never takes part in discussion or the rest of music, doesn’t it become weak, deaf and blind, because it’s never awakened or nourished and its perceptions are never purified?”

“Just so,” he said.

“Such a man, I think, becomes a hater of argument and unmusical. He no longer makes any use of persuasion through words, but gets everything done by force and 411e savagery, like a wild beast, and lives in ignorance and clumsiness, without rhythm or grace.”

“That’s exactly how it is,” he said.

“So it seems that for these two things, I for one would say, some god has given human beings two arts, music and physical training—for the spirited part and the philosophic part, not for the soul and the body, except incidentally, but for those two, so that 412a they may be harmonized with each other, tightened and relaxed to the proper degree.”

“So it seems,” he said.

“Then the one who blends physical training with music most finely and applies them to the soul in the best measure is the one we’d most rightly call perfectly musical and well harmonized—far more than the man who tunes strings to one another.”

“Reasonably so, Socrates,” he said.

“Then in our city too, Glaucon, won’t we always need some such overseer, if the constitution is to be preserved?” 412b

“We certainly will, as much as possible.”

“These, then, would be the outlines of their education and upbringing. Why go through their dances, their hunting, their chasing with hounds, their athletic contests and horse races? It’s pretty clear that these must follow the outlines, and they’re no longer hard to discover.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “they aren’t hard.”

“Very well,” I said. “What’s the next thing we must determine? Isn’t it which of these people will rule and which be ruled?” 412c

“Of course.”

“Isn’t it clear that the rulers must be older and the ruled younger?”

“It’s clear.”

“And that they must be the best of them?”

“That too.”

“And the best farmers are the ones most skilled at farming, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“And now, since they must be the best of the guardians, mustn’t they be the most skilled at guarding the city?”

“Yes.”

“Then for this they must be sensible and capable, and must also care for the city?” 412d

“That’s so.”

“And one cares most for what one happens to love.”

“Necessarily.”

“And one would love something most when one believes that the same things benefit it and oneself, and thinks that when it does well one does well oneself, and when it doesn’t, the opposite.”

“Just so,” he said.

“Then we must select from among the other guardians men of this sort: men who, when we examine them, appear most of all, throughout their 412e lives, to do with complete eagerness whatever they think benefits the city, and to be unwilling by any means to do what doesn’t.”

“Yes, they’d be the suitable ones,” he said.

“Then I think they must be watched at every age, to see whether they guard this conviction, and never, under bewitchment or force, forget and cast out the opinion that they must do what is best for the city.”

“What do you mean by casting out?” he said.

“I’ll tell you,” I said. “It seems to me that an opinion departs from the mind either willingly or unwillingly: willingly, when it’s a false one 413a and a person learns better; unwillingly, whenever it’s a true one.”

“I understand the willing case,” he said, “but I need to learn about the unwilling one.”

“What? Don’t you too believe,” I said, “that people are deprived of good things unwillingly and of bad things willingly? Isn’t being deceived about the truth a bad thing, and having the truth a good one? Or don’t you think that believing what is, is having the truth?”

“You’re right,” he said, “and I do think people are deprived of true opinion unwillingly.” 413b

“And don’t they suffer this by being robbed, bewitched, or forced?”

“I don’t understand this either,” he said.

“I’m afraid I’m talking like a tragedian,” I said. “By ‘robbed’ I mean those who are talked out of their opinions and those who forget: in the one case argument, in the other time, takes the opinion away without their noticing. Now I take it you understand?”

“Yes.”

“And by ‘forced’ I mean those whom some pain or suffering makes change their opinion.”

“I understand that too,” he said, “and you’re right.” 413c

“And the ‘bewitched,’ I think you’d agree, are those who change their opinion because they’re charmed by pleasure or frightened by some fear.”

“Yes,” he said, “everything that deceives seems to bewitch.”

“Well then, as I was saying just now, we must look for those who are the best guardians of their own conviction that they must do whatever they think, at any time, is best for the city. We must watch them right from childhood, setting them tasks in which a person would be most likely to forget such a conviction or be deceived out of it. The one who remembers 413d and is hard to deceive we must select; the one who isn’t, we must reject. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“And again, we must set them labors, pains and contests, and watch for these same things in them.”

“Right,” he said.

“Then,” I said, “we must also hold a contest for them in the third kind, bewitchment, and watch them. Just as people lead colts into noise and commotion to see whether they’re skittish, so we must bring these while they’re young among terrors, and then switch 413e them to pleasures, testing them much more thoroughly than gold is tested in fire, to see whether someone proves hard to bewitch and graceful in everything, a good guardian of himself and of the music he learned, showing himself rhythmical and harmonious in all these things—the kind of man who would be most useful both to himself and to the city.

“And the one who is tested again and again, as a child, as a youth and as a man, 414a and comes through unblemished, must be appointed ruler and guardian of the city and be given honors both in life and after death, receiving the greatest privileges of tombs and other memorials. The one who isn’t like that must be rejected. Something like this, Glaucon,” I said, “seems to me to be how the rulers and guardians are to be selected and appointed—described in outline, not in precise detail.”

“It seems that way to me too, more or less,” he said. 414b

“Nothing new,” I said, “but a sort of Phoenician tale—something that has happened in many places before, as the poets say, and they’ve made people believe it; but it hasn’t happened in our time, and I don’t know if it could, and it would take a lot of persuasion to make it believed.”

“You seem reluctant to tell it,” he said.

“You’ll think my reluctance quite reasonable,” I said, “once I’ve told it.”

“Tell it,” he said, “and don’t be afraid.” 414dnote

“I’ll tell it, then—though I don’t know what daring or what words I’ll use in the telling. I’ll try to persuade first the rulers themselves and the soldiers, and then the rest of the city, that the upbringing and education we gave them—all of it—they only seemed to experience and undergo, as in dreams; that in truth they were at that time under the earth, being formed and nurtured within it, themselves and their 414e weapons, and the rest of their equipment being crafted; and that when they were completely finished, the earth, being their mother, sent them up. And now they must plan for and defend the land they live in as their mother and nurse, if anyone attacks it, and think of the other citizens as their brothers, born of the earth.”

“No wonder,” he said, “you were so ashamed all this time to tell the falsehood.”

“With good reason,” I said. “But still, hear the rest of the story. ‘All of you in the city are brothers,’ we’ll tell them in our tale, ‘but the god, when he formed you, mixed gold into the making of those of you who are fit to rule, which is why they are the most honored; silver into the auxiliaries; and iron and bronze into the farmers and the other craftsmen. Since you’re all related, you’ll mostly beget children like yourselves, 415b but sometimes a silver child may be born from gold, or a golden one from silver, and so on, all of them from one another.

“None,” he said, “for these people themselves; but for their sons, and those who come after, and the rest of humanity later on, perhaps.”

“Well, even that,” I said, “would do some good in making them care more for the city and for one another. I think I pretty much understand what you mean.

“Now this will go wherever rumor carries it. But let’s arm these earthborn men and lead them forward, with the rulers at their head. When they get there, let them look for the best place in the city to make camp, from which they could best 415e restrain those within, if anyone refused to obey the laws, and ward off those without, if an enemy should come like a wolf upon the flock. And when they’ve made camp and sacrificed to the proper gods, let them make their beds. Or how should it be?”

“Like that,” he said.

“And these must be adequate to shelter them in winter and summer?”

“Of course. You seem to me to mean dwellings,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “soldiers’ dwellings, not moneymakers’.”

“And what difference do you mean between them?” he said.

“I’ll try to tell you,” I said. “Surely the most terrible and shameful thing of all is for shepherds to rear dogs to help guard their flocks in such a way, and of such a kind, that from lack of discipline, or hunger, or some other bad habit, the dogs themselves set about harming the sheep and become like wolves instead of dogs.”

“Terrible,” he said. “Of course it is.” 416b

“Then mustn’t we guard in every way against our auxiliaries doing anything like that to the citizens, since they’re stronger than them, and becoming like savage masters instead of kindly allies?”

“We must,” he said.

“And wouldn’t they have the greatest safeguard in place, if they’ve really been finely educated?”

“But they have been,” he said.

And I said, “That’s not worth insisting on, my dear Glaucon. What is worth insisting on is what we were saying just now: that they must 416c get the right education, whatever it is, if they’re to have what matters most for being gentle toward one another and toward those they guard.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“Now anyone with sense would say that, besides this education, their dwellings and other property must be arranged so as not to stop them from being the best possible guardians 416d or provoke them to do harm to the other citizens.”

“And he’d be right to say so.”

“Then see,” I said, “whether they should live and dwell in some such way as this, if they’re to be the kind of people we said. First, none of them is to own any private property unless it’s absolutely necessary. Next, no one is to have any dwelling or storeroom that anyone who wishes can’t enter. As for provisions—whatever moderate and 416e courageous athletes of war need—they are to receive them from the other citizens by agreed assessment, as wages for their guardianship, in such amount that they have neither surplus at the end of the year nor shortfall. They are to go to common meals and live together, like soldiers in camp.

“As for gold and silver, we’ll tell them that they have divine gold and silver from the gods always in their souls and have no further need of the human kind; and that it isn’t holy to pollute their possession of the divine by mixing it with the possession of mortal gold, because many unholy deeds have been done over the 417a currency of the many, while theirs is pure. For them alone of all in the city it is forbidden to handle or touch gold and silver, or to go under the same roof with it, or wear it as an ornament, or drink from silver or gold.

“Certainly,” said Glaucon.

SocratesAdeimantus broke in here. “What will you say in your defense, Socrates,” he said, “if someone says you’re not making these men very happy at all, and that it’s their own doing? The city really belongs to them, and yet they enjoy nothing good from it, as others do who own lands, build fine big houses and acquire furnishings to match, offer private sacrifices to the gods, entertain guests, and, above all, as you were just saying, own gold and silver and everything that’s thought necessary for anyone who is going to be blessed.

“Instead, he might say, they seem simply to sit around like hired auxiliaries in 420a the city, doing nothing but standing guard.”

“Yes,” I said, “and for their keep alone, without even getting wages on top of their food like the others, so that they can’t travel abroad privately if they want to, or give gifts to courtesans, or spend money wherever else they might wish, the way people who are thought happy spend it. These and many other points like them you’re leaving out of the charge.”

“Well,” he said, “let these be added to the charge too.” 420b

“Then you’re asking what our defense will be?”

“Yes.”

“If we follow the same path,” I said, “we’ll find, I think, what to say. We’ll say that it wouldn’t be surprising if these men too were happiest as they are; but that we aren’t founding the city with an eye to making any one group in it exceptionally happy, but the whole city as happy as possible. For we thought that we’d be most likely to find justice in a city like this, and injustice, again, in the worst-governed 420c one, and that by observing them we could decide what we’ve long been looking for. For now, then, we’re shaping what we take to be the happy city—not picking out a few people in it and making them happy, but the whole. Shortly we’ll look at its opposite.

“‘But don’t advise us to do that. For if we listen to you, the farmer won’t be a farmer, 421a nor the potter a potter, nor will anyone else keep any of the roles that make up a city. With the others it matters less: if cobblers become bad and corrupt and pretend to be what they aren’t, it’s nothing terrible for a city. But guardians of the laws and of the city who aren’t really guardians but only seem to be—you see that they destroy the whole city utterly, while they alone, in turn, hold the key to its being well governed and happy.’ Now if we are making true guardians, 421b the least likely to harm the city, while the one who says that other thing is talking about some sort of farmers, happy banqueters as if at a festival rather than in a city, he’d be talking about something other than a city.

“Well,” he said, “I think you put that well.”

“Then will you think I’m speaking reasonably,” I said, “if I say something closely related to this as well?”

“What exactly?” 421d

“Consider whether the following things corrupt the other craftsmen too, so that they actually become bad.”

“What things are these?”

“Wealth,” I said, “and poverty.”

“How so?”

“Like this. Once a potter gets rich, do you think he’ll still be willing to attend to his craft?”

“Not at all,” he said.

“Won’t he become lazier and more careless than he used to be?”

“Much.”

“So he becomes a worse potter?”

“Yes,” he said, “much worse.”

“And then again, if poverty leaves him unable to provide himself with tools or anything else his craft needs, the work he turns out will be shoddier, 421e and he’ll teach his sons, or whoever else he teaches, to be worse craftsmen.”

“Of course.”

“So from both of them, poverty and wealth, the products of the crafts get worse, and so do the craftsmen themselves.”

“Evidently.”

“Then it seems we’ve found other things for the guardians, which they must guard against in every way, so that these never slip into the city without their noticing.”

“What are they?”

“Wealth,” I said, “and poverty. The one produces luxury, idleness, and revolution; the other, meanness and bad workmanship, as well as revolution.”

“Certainly,” he said. “But consider this, Socrates. How will our city be able to wage war when it has no money, especially if it’s forced to fight a large and wealthy city?”

“Clearly,” I said, “against one such city it’s harder, 422b but against two it’s easier.”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“First of all,” I said, “if they have to fight, won’t they be fighting against rich men, while they themselves are athletes of war?”

“Yes, that much is true,” he said.

“Well then, Adeimantus,” I said, “don’t you think one boxer, trained as well as possible for the job, could easily fight two men who aren’t boxers but are rich and fat?”

“Maybe not both at once,” he said.

“Not even,” I said, “if he could retreat and then turn and strike whichever one 422c came at him first, and did this again and again in the blazing sun and stifling heat? Wouldn’t a man like that overpower even more than two of them?”

“No doubt,” he said. “That would be nothing surprising.”

“And don’t you think the rich have more share, in knowledge and experience, in boxing than in warfare?”

“I do,” he said.

“Then in all likelihood our athletes will easily fight twice or three times their own number.”

“I’ll grant you that,” he said, “since I think you’re right.” 422d

“And what if they send an embassy to the other city and tell the truth: ‘We have no use for gold or silver, nor is it lawful for us, though it is for you. So join us in the war, and keep what belongs to the other side’? Do you think anyone who heard that would choose to make war on hard, lean dogs rather than join the dogs against fat, tender sheep?”

“I don’t think so. But if the wealth of all the others,” he said, “is gathered into a single city, 422e watch out that it doesn’t pose a danger to the city that isn’t wealthy.”

“How fortunate you are,” I said, “to think anything deserves to be called a city other than the sort we’ve been founding.”

“Why, what else?” he said.

“The others,” I said, “need a bigger name. Each of them is a great many cities, not a city, as in the game.note

“Whatever else is true, each contains two, at war with each other, 423a one of the poor and one of the rich, and within each of these there are a great many. If you treat them as one, you’ll miss the mark entirely; but if you treat them as many, handing over the money and power, or even the persons, of one group to the others, you’ll always have many allies and few enemies. And as long as your city is governed with moderation, in the way it was just now arranged, it will be the greatest—I don’t mean in reputation, but truly the greatest—even if it has only a thousand men to fight for it. You won’t easily find a single city so great among either Greeks or non-Greeks, 423b though you’ll find many that seem to be, and many times its size. Or do you think otherwise?”

“No, by Zeus,” he said.

“Then this would also be the best limit for our rulers,” I said, “on how large they should make the city, and how much land they should mark off for a city of that size, letting the rest go.”

“What limit?” he said.

“I think,” I said, “this one: let it grow as far as it can while still being one, and no further.” 423c

“And a fine one,” he said.

“Then we’ll give the guardians this further order as well: to guard in every way against the city’s being either small or great in appearance only; it must be adequate, and one.”

“And a trivial order, I suppose,” he said, “that we’ll be giving them.”

“And here’s one still more trivial,” I said, “which we mentioned earlier, when we said that if an inferior child is born to the guardians, it must be sent off 423d to the others, and if a good one is born to the others, it must go to the guardians. This was meant to show that the other citizens too must each be brought to the one job each is naturally suited for, so that each, practicing his own single pursuit, may become not many but one, and so the whole city may grow to be one and not many.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s a smaller matter than the other.”

“Really, my good Adeimantus,” I said, “these orders we’re giving them aren’t, as someone might think, many and great; 423e they’re all trivial, provided they guard the one great thing, as the saying goes—or rather, not great but sufficient.”

“What’s that?” he said.

“Education,” I said, “and upbringing. If they’re well educated and become reasonable men, they’ll easily see through all this, and other things we’re passing over now: the possession of women, marriage, and having children—that 424a all these must be made, as far as possible, ‘common among friends,’ as the proverb has it.”

“Yes,” he said, “that would be the most correct way.”

“What’s more,” I said, “once a constitution gets off to a good start, it keeps growing, like a circle. Good upbringing and education, when preserved, produce good natures, and good natures in turn, taking hold of such an education, grow up better than those before them, in other respects and also in 424b producing offspring, just as with other animals.”

“That’s likely,” he said.

“To put it briefly, then, those in charge of the city must hold fast to this, and guard it above everything, so that it isn’t corrupted without their noticing: there must be no innovation in gymnastics and music contrary to the established order; they must guard it as closely as they can. And whenever someone says that people care most for the song ‘that circles newest among the singers,’ they must be afraid 424c that people may take the poet to mean not new songs but a new manner of song, and praise that. One shouldn’t praise such a thing, or take the poet that way. For one must beware of changing to a new form of music, since this puts everything at risk: the modes of music are never disturbed without the greatest laws of the city being disturbed too, as Damon says and as I’m convinced.”note

“Count me among the convinced as well,” said Adeimantus. 424d

“So it seems,” I said, “that the guardians must build their guardhouse somewhere here, in music.”

“Lawlessness of this kind, anyway,” he said, “easily slips in unnoticed.”

“Yes,” I said, “as if it were just a form of play and did no harm.”

“And it doesn’t do any,” he said, “except that, having settled in little by little, it quietly seeps into people’s characters and ways of life. From these it emerges, grown larger, into their dealings with one another; and from their dealings, Socrates, it advances on 424e the laws and constitutions with great insolence, until in the end it overturns everything, private and public.”

“Well,” I said, “is that really how it is?”

“I think so,” he said.

“Then, as we said at the start, mustn’t our children take part in more lawful play right from the beginning, since if play becomes lawless, and the children too, it’s impossible for them to grow up into law-abiding and serious 425a men?”

“Of course,” he said.

“So when children make a good start in their play and take in good order through music, then—the reverse of the others—it goes with them in everything and makes them grow, setting right anything in the city that had fallen before.”

“That’s true,” he said.

“And so these people also rediscover the seemingly minor customs that their predecessors had entirely lost.”

“What sort?” 425b

“Things like these: the silence the young should keep in the presence of their elders; giving up their places to them and standing up when they come in; taking care of parents; and also haircuts, clothes, shoes, and the whole bearing of the body, and everything else of the kind. Don’t you think so?”

“I do.”

“But I think it’s naive to legislate about them. Such rules surely don’t come about, and wouldn’t last, if they’re laid down in words and in writing.”

“How could they?”

“It looks, at any rate, Adeimantus,” I said, “as if the direction someone sets out in from education 425c determines what follows. Doesn’t like always summon like?”

“Of course.”

“And in the end, I think, we’d say it turns out as one complete and vigorous whole, either good or the opposite.”

“Why not?” he said.

“That’s why,” I said, “I wouldn’t try any longer to legislate about such things.”

“Reasonably enough,” he said.

“And, for heaven’s sake,” I said, “what about business matters: the contracts people make with one another in the marketplace, 425d and, if you like, contracts for manual work, slander and assault, the filing of lawsuits and the appointment of jurors, and any tolls that may need to be collected or imposed in markets or harbors, and in general all the regulations of markets, city, and harbors, and everything else of the kind—shall we venture to legislate about any of that?”

“No,” he said, “it isn’t worth dictating to men who are fine and good. 425e They’ll easily find out for themselves, I imagine, most of what needs to be legislated.”

“Yes, my friend,” I said, “if a god grants them the preservation of the laws we went through before.”

“If not,” he said, “they’ll spend their lives constantly laying down many such rules and amending them, thinking they’ll hit on the best.”

“You mean,” I said, “that such people will live like those who are sick but, from intemperance, unwilling to give up a bad way of life.”

“Exactly.” 426a

“And a charming life they lead! For all their doctoring they achieve nothing, except to make their illnesses more complicated and worse, and they’re always hoping that whatever drug someone recommends will make them healthy.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s just how people ill in that way behave.”

“Well,” I said, “and isn’t this charming of them: they regard as their worst enemy the person who tells them the truth—that until they stop drinking, gorging, indulging in sex, and idling, 426b neither drugs nor cautery nor surgery, nor spells or amulets or anything else of the kind, will do them any good?”

“Not charming at all,” he said. “There’s nothing charming about being angry with someone who gives good advice.”

“You don’t seem to be an admirer of such men,” I said.

“No, by Zeus, I’m not.”

“Then you won’t admire the city either, as we were just saying, if as a whole it does this sort of thing. Or don’t you think the badly governed cities are doing the same as these men, when they warn 426c their citizens not to disturb the city’s whole established order, on pain of death for anyone who does, while whoever serves them most pleasantly as they’re governed this way, and gratifies them by fawning on them, anticipating their wishes and being clever at fulfilling them—he’s the one who’ll be a good man and wise in great matters, and honored by them?”

“Yes,” he said, “I think they do the same, and I don’t approve of it in the least.” 426d

“And what about those who are willing, even eager, to serve such cities? Don’t you admire their courage and readiness?”

“I do,” he said, “except for those who’ve been taken in by them and think they’re truly statesmen because the many praise them.”

“What do you mean? Don’t you forgive the men?” I said. “Or do you think it’s possible for a man who doesn’t know how to measure, when many others 426e like him tell him he’s six feet tall, not to believe it about himself?”

“No,” he said, “not that, anyway.”

“Then don’t be hard on them. Surely such people are the most charming of all: they legislate on the sort of things we just went through and keep amending them, always thinking they’ll find some end to the wrongdoing in contracts and the other things I was just talking about, not knowing that in reality they’re cutting at a Hydra.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s exactly what they’re doing.”

“So I, for my part,” I said, “wouldn’t have thought the true lawgiver should trouble himself with this kind of law and constitution, whether the city is badly governed or well—in the one because it’s useless and achieves nothing, in the other because some of it anyone at all could discover, and the rest follows of its own accord from the practices already established.” 427b

“Then what,” he said, “would still be left for us in the way of legislation?”

And I said, “For us, nothing; but for Apollo at Delphi, the greatest, finest, and first of laws.”

“What are they?” he said.

“The founding of temples, sacrifices, and other forms of service to gods, divinities, and heroes; and again, the burial of the dead, and all the services we must render to those in the other world to keep them gracious. We ourselves know nothing about such things, and in founding a city 427c we won’t trust anyone else, if we have any sense, or use any interpreter but our ancestral one. For surely this god is the ancestral interpreter of such matters for all mankind, and he gives his interpretations seated at the navel, in the center of the earth.”

“You’re right,” he said, “and that’s what we must do.”note

“Well, son of Ariston,” I said, “your city 427d may now be considered founded. Next, get yourself enough light from somewhere and look inside it—you yourself, and call in your brother and Polemarchus and the others—to see if we can somehow discover where justice might be and where injustice, how they differ from each other, and which of the two a person must have if he’s going to be happy, whether or not all gods and men are aware of it.”

“Nonsense,” said Glaucon. “You promised to search yourself, 427e saying it would be impious of you not to come to justice’s aid in every way you could.”

“That’s a true reminder,” I said, “and I must do so; but you must all help too.”

“We will,” he said.

“Then I hope,” I said, “to find it this way. I think our city, if it’s been rightly founded, is completely good.”

“It must be,” he said.

“Clearly, then, it is wise, courageous, moderate, and just.”

“Clearly.”

“Then whichever of these we find in it, what’s left will be the one not yet found?”

“Of course.”

“It’s as with any other four things: if we were looking for one of them in something, and recognized that one first, that would be enough for us; but if we recognized the other three first, by that very fact the one we were looking for would have been identified, since clearly it could be nothing but the one left over.”

“You’re right,” he said.

“So with these too, since there happen to be four, we should search in the same way?”

“Clearly.”

“Well, the first thing I think is plainly visible in it 428b is wisdom, and there’s something odd about it.”

“What?” he said.

“The city we’ve described really does seem wise to me, since it’s good at deliberating, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And this very thing, good deliberation, is clearly a kind of knowledge, since it’s surely not by ignorance but by knowledge that people deliberate well.”

“Clearly.”

“But there are many kinds of knowledge, of every sort, in the city.”

“Of course.”

“Then is it because of the carpenters’ knowledge that the city should be called wise and good at deliberating?” 428c

“Not at all,” he said. “Because of that it would be called good at carpentry.”

“So it isn’t because of its knowledge about wooden articles, when it deliberates how they’d be best, that a city should be called wise.”

“Certainly not.”

“What about knowledge of bronze articles, or anything else of that kind?”

“None of them,” he said.

“Nor the knowledge of growing crops from the earth: because of that it’s good at farming.”

“I think so.”

“Well then,” I said, “is there some knowledge in the city we’ve just founded, among some of the citizens, by which it deliberates not about some particular thing 428d in the city, but about the city itself as a whole, how it can best conduct its relations both with itself and with other cities?”

“There certainly is.”

“What is it,” I said, “and in whom?”

“It’s guardianship,” he said, “and it’s in those rulers we just now called complete guardians.”

“Then because of this knowledge, what do you call the city?”

“Good at deliberating,” he said, “and truly wise.”

“Now do you think,” I said, “there’ll be more smiths 428e in our city, or more of these true guardians?”

“Far more smiths,” he said.

“And of all the others who have some knowledge and get a name from it, these would be the fewest?”

“By far.”

“So it’s because of its smallest group and part, and the knowledge in it—the part that leads and rules—that a city founded according to nature would be wise as a whole. And this, it seems, is by nature 429a the smallest class, the one whose place it is to share in this knowledge, which alone of all kinds of knowledge should be called wisdom.”

“Very true,” he said.

“So we’ve found—I don’t know quite how—this one of the four, both what it is and where in the city it has its seat.”

“I think, anyway,” he said, “it’s been found well enough.”

“And courage, too—both what it is and where in the city it lies, making the city deserve to be called courageous—isn’t very hard to see.”

“How so?” 429b

“Who,” I said, “would call a city cowardly or courageous by looking to anything but the part that fights for it and goes to war on its behalf?”

“No one,” he said, “would look to anything else.”

“No, for I don’t think,” I said, “that the others in it, whether cowardly or courageous, would decide whether it is one or the other.”

“No, they wouldn’t.”

“So a city is courageous, too, by a certain part of itself, because in that part it has a power that will preserve through everything its opinion about 429c what is to be feared: that these are the things, and things of this kind, that the lawgiver proclaimed in their education. Or don’t you call this courage?”

“I didn’t quite understand what you said,” he said. “Say it again.”

“I’m saying,” I said, “that courage is a kind of preservation.”

“What kind of preservation?”

“Preservation of the opinion, produced by law through education, about what things, and what kinds of things, are to be feared. And by preserving it ‘through everything’ I meant keeping it safe and not throwing it out, whether one is in pains or in 429d pleasures, in desires or in fears. If you like, I’m willing to show you what I think it resembles.”

“I’d like that.”

“You know,” I said, “that dyers, when they want to dye wool purple, first pick out, from all the many colors, the one kind that is white; then they prepare it beforehand, treating it with no small preparation so that it will take the color as well as possible, and only then do they dye it. 429e Whatever is dyed in this way becomes colorfast, and no washing, with cleansers or without, can take the color out of it. But you know what happens to things that aren’t, whether someone dyes other colors or dyes these without treating them first.”

“I know,” he said. “They wash out and look ridiculous.”

“Then suppose,” I said, “that we too were doing something like this, as far as we could, when we selected our soldiers and 430a educated them in music and gymnastics. Don’t think we were contriving anything but this: that, persuaded by us, they would take in the laws as well as possible, like a dye, so that their opinion about what is to be feared, and about everything else, would become colorfast, because they had the right nature and upbringing; and so that those cleansers wouldn’t wash the dye out of them, formidable as they are at scouring—pleasure, more formidable at this than any soda 430b or lye, and pain, fear, and desire, more than any other cleanser. This power, then, this preservation through everything of right and lawful opinion about what is and isn’t to be feared, is what I call courage, and set down as such, unless you have something else to say.”

“No, I have nothing else to say,” he said. “For I take it that right opinion about these same things that arises without education—the kind found in beasts and slaves—you don’t consider altogether lawful, and you call it something other than courage.” 430c

“Very true,” I said.

“Then I accept that this is courage.”

“Yes, accept it,” I said, “as civic courage, anyway, and you’ll be right to. We’ll go through it more thoroughly another time, if you like. At present it isn’t this we’re looking for, but justice; and for the search for that, I think, this is enough.”

“You’re right,” he said.

“Now two things are still left,” I said, “that we must make out in the 430d city: moderation, and the thing for whose sake we’re looking for them all, justice.”

“Certainly.”

“How could we find justice, so as not to have to bother any more about moderation?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said, “and I wouldn’t want justice to come to light first, if we’re not going to look into moderation after all. If you want to do me a favor, look at this one before that one.” 430e

“I’m certainly willing,” I said, “unless it would be wrong of me.”

“Then look,” he said.

“We must look,” I said. “And seen from here, it resembles a kind of concord and harmony more than the others did.”

“How?”

“Moderation,” I said, “is surely a kind of order, a mastery of certain pleasures and desires. People speak of someone as ‘stronger than himself,’ though I don’t know quite what they mean by it, and other such expressions are used that are like traces of it. Isn’t that so?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“But isn’t ‘stronger than himself’ ridiculous? The one who is stronger than himself would also, I suppose, be weaker than himself, and the weaker would be stronger, 431a since it’s the same person spoken of in all these expressions.”

“Of course.”

“But it seems to me,” I said, “that this expression means that in the person himself, in his soul, there’s a better part and a worse; and when the naturally better part is in control of the worse, that’s what is meant by ‘stronger than himself’—it’s praise, at any rate. But when, through bad upbringing or bad company, the better part, being smaller, 431b is overpowered by the mass of the worse, this is criticized as something shameful, and the person in that condition is called weaker than himself and undisciplined.”

“Yes, that seems right,” he said.

“Now look at our new city,” I said, “and you’ll find the first of these in it. You’ll say it’s rightly called stronger than itself, if what has its better part ruling its worse is to be called moderate and stronger than itself.”

“I’m looking,” he said, “and what you say is true.”

“And again, the many desires of every kind, 431c and pleasures and pains, are found above all in children, women, and household slaves, and, among the so-called free, in the many and inferior.”

“Certainly.”

“But the simple and measured ones, which are guided by reasoning with the help of intelligence and right opinion, you’ll meet only in a few, those with the best natures and the best education.”

“True,” he said.

“And don’t you see that these too are present in your city, and that there the desires in the many and 431d inferior are mastered by the desires and the understanding in the fewer and more decent?”

“I do,” he said.

“So if any city is to be called stronger than its pleasures and desires, and than itself, this one should be.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“And isn’t it also moderate, on all these counts?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“And again, if in any other city rulers 431e and ruled share the same opinion about who should rule, that would be present in this one too. Don’t you think so?”

“Very much so,” he said, “absolutely.”

“Then in which of the citizens will you say moderation is present, when they’re in this condition? In the rulers or the ruled?”

“In both, I suppose,” he said.

“So do you see,” I said, “that we guessed pretty well just now when we said moderation resembles a kind of harmony?”

“Why is that?”

“Because it doesn’t work the way courage and wisdom do. Each of those resided in one part of the city 432a and made it wise or courageous respectively. Moderation doesn’t act like that. It stretches straight through the whole city, across the entire scale, and makes the weakest, the strongest and those in between all sing the same tune together—whether you rank them by understanding, or by strength, or, if you like, by numbers or wealth or anything else of the sort. So we’d be quite right to say that this unanimity is moderation: the natural concord between worse and better about which of them should rule, both in a city and in each individual.” 432b

“I entirely agree,” he said.

“Well then,” I said, “we’ve spotted three of them in our city, at least as far as it looks at this stage. So what could the remaining form be, the one that would give the city a further share in excellence? Obviously it’s justice.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, Glaucon, now’s the time for us to station ourselves in a circle around the thicket like hunters, and keep our wits about us, so that justice doesn’t slip away somewhere and vanish from sight. 432c It’s clearly somewhere around here. So look, and do your best to catch sight of it—maybe you’ll see it before I do and can point it out to me.”

“If only I could,” he said. “But you’ll be making quite reasonable use of me if you treat me as a follower who can see what’s pointed out to him.”

“Follow, then,” I said, “once you’ve said a prayer with me.”

“I will,” he said. “Just lead the way.”

“The place certainly looks hard going,” I said, “and overgrown. It’s dark, at any rate, and difficult to search. Still, we have to go on.” 432d

“We do,” he said.

Then I caught sight of something. “Aha! Aha, Glaucon!” I said. “It looks as though we’ve found a track, and I don’t think it’s going to get away from us now.”

“Good news,” he said.

“Honestly,” I said, “we’ve been behaving like dullards.”

“How so?”

“It’s been rolling around at our feet all along, my dear fellow, right from the start, and we never saw it. We were utterly ridiculous. Like people who sometimes go looking for what they’re holding 432e in their hands, we didn’t look at the thing itself but gazed off somewhere into the distance—which is probably just why it escaped us.”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“This,” I said: “I think we’ve been talking about it and hearing about it for a long time without realizing that we ourselves were, in a way, describing it.”

“That’s a long preamble,” he said, “for someone who’s eager to hear.”

“Then this, my friend,” I said, “doing one’s own work, when it comes about in a certain way, looks as if it’s justice. Do you know what my evidence is?”

“No—tell me,” he said.

“I think,” I said, “that what’s left in the city, beyond the things we’ve examined—moderation, courage and understanding—is the thing that gave all of them the power to arise in the first place, and that preserves them once they’ve arisen, as long as it’s 433c present. And we did say that justice would be what was left over once we’d found the three.”

“It must be,” he said.

“And yet,” I said, “if we had to decide which of these would do most to make our city good by its presence, it would be hard to judge. Is it the agreement in opinion between rulers and ruled? Or the preservation, in the soldiers, of the lawful opinion about what is and isn’t to be feared? Or the understanding and vigilance present in 433d the rulers? Or is what most makes the city good the fact, present in child and woman, slave and free, craftsman, ruler and ruled, that each did his own work as one person and didn’t meddle?”

“Hard to judge,” he said. “Of course it is.”

“So it seems that, when it comes to a city’s excellence, the power of each person in it to do his own work rivals its wisdom, moderation and courage.”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Then wouldn’t you count justice as the thing that rivals these in contributing to the excellence 433e of a city?”

“Absolutely.”

“Now look at it this way too and see whether you’ll agree. Will you assign the rulers in the city to judge lawsuits?”

“Of course.”

“And will their aim in judging be anything other than this: that no one should have what belongs to others or be deprived of what’s his own?”

“No, just that.”

“Because that’s just?”

“Yes.”

“So in this way too, the having and 434a doing of what is one’s own and belongs to oneself would be agreed to be justice.”

“That’s right.”

“Now see whether you agree with me. Suppose a carpenter tries to do a shoemaker’s work, or a shoemaker a carpenter’s; or they swap tools or honors; or the same man tries to do both jobs—with all the rest swapped around like that, do you think it would do the city much harm?”

“Not much,” he said.

“But when someone who is by nature a craftsman or some other kind of moneymaker 434b gets carried away by wealth or numbers or strength or something like that and tries to move into the class of warriors, or one of the warriors tries to move into the class of counselors and guardians when he’s unworthy of it, and these people swap each other’s tools and honors—or when the same man tries to do all these things at once—then, I think you’ll agree too, this interchange and meddling among them is the ruin of the city.”

“Absolutely.”

“So when there are three classes, meddling among them and interchange from one 434c to another is the greatest harm to the city, and would quite rightly be called the worst of crimes.”

“Exactly.”

“And won’t you say that the worst crime against one’s own city is injustice?”

“Of course.”

“So that is injustice. Now let’s put it the other way round. The opposite of that—when the moneymaking, auxiliary and guardian classes each mind their own business, each doing its own work in the city—wouldn’t that be justice, and make the city just?” 434d

“I think it’s that,” he said, “and nothing else.”

“Let’s not state it with complete confidence just yet,” I said. “If this form, when we apply it to each individual human being as well, is agreed to be justice there too, then we’ll grant it—what else could we say? If not, we’ll look into something else. For now, let’s finish the inquiry we undertook in the belief that, if we first tried to observe justice in some larger thing that has it, it would be easier to see what it’s like in a single person. And 434e we decided that this larger thing was a city, and so we founded the best one we could, knowing well that justice would be found in the good one, at any rate. So let’s apply what came to light there to the individual. If it agrees, well and good.

“But if something different shows up in the individual, we’ll go back to the city and test it there, and 435a perhaps, by looking at the two side by side and rubbing them together, we might make justice blaze out, as fire does from fire-sticks. And once it’s come to light, we’ll confirm it for ourselves.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s a sound way to proceed, and we should do it.”

“Now,” I said, “when you call two things, one bigger and one smaller, by the same name, are they unlike in the respect in which they’re called the same, or alike?”

“Alike,” he said. 435b

“Then a just man won’t differ at all from a just city with respect to the form of justice itself; he’ll be like it.”

“Like it,” he said.

“But the city seemed to be just when the three kinds of natures present in it each did their own work; and it was moderate, courageous and wise because of certain other conditions and states of those same classes.”

“True,” he said.

“In that case, my friend, we’ll expect the individual to have these same 435c forms in his own soul, and to be rightly called by the same names as the city because they’re in the same conditions.”

“It has to be so,” he said.

“Well, my remarkable friend,” I said, “here we’ve stumbled on another trivial little question about the soul: does it have these three forms in it or not?”

“It doesn’t look trivial to me at all,” he said. “Perhaps the saying is true, Socrates, that fine things are hard.”

“Evidently,” I said. “And you should know, Glaucon, that in my 435d opinion we’ll never get an exact grasp of this by methods like the ones we’re now using in our discussion—the road that leads there is a different one, longer and fuller. But perhaps we can manage it in a way that lives up to what we’ve already said and examined.”

“Isn’t that enough to be content with?” he said. “For me, at present anyway, it would be enough.”

“Well,” I said, “it will certainly do for me too.”

“Then don’t lose heart,” he said. “Carry on with the inquiry.” 435e

“Well,” I said, “aren’t we absolutely bound to agree that the same forms and characteristics are present in each of us as in the city? They surely didn’t get there from anywhere else.

“It would be absurd for anyone to think that the spirited part didn’t come into cities from the individuals who are credited with it—the people of Thrace and Scythia, for instance, and pretty much the whole northern region—or the love of learning, which one would chiefly credit to our part 436a of the world, or the love of money, which one might say is found especially among the Phoenicians and the people of Egypt.”

“Very much so,” he said.

“So that’s how that is,” I said, “and it’s not hard to recognize.”

“Certainly not.”note

“But this is hard: whether we do each of these things with the same thing, or with three different things, one for each. Do we learn with one of the things in us, get angry with another, and with a third have appetites for the pleasures of food and procreation and whatever is akin to 436b them? Or do we act with the whole soul in each case, whenever we set about them? That’s what will be hard to determine in a way that does the question justice.”

“I think so too,” he said.

“Then let’s try to settle whether they’re the same as one another or different, in this way.”

“How?”

“Let’s make our agreement still more precise, so that we don’t end up disputing it as we go on. If someone said of a man who is standing still but moving his hands and head that the same man is standing still and moving at the same time, we wouldn’t, I think, accept that as the right 436d way to put it; we’d say that one part of him is standing still and another part is moving. Isn’t that so?”

“It is.”

“And if the person saying this got even more playful and argued ingeniously that spinning tops, at least, stand still and move as wholes at the same time, when they spin with the peg fixed in one spot—or that anything else that goes around in a circle in the same place does the same—we wouldn’t accept it, since in such cases it isn’t in the same parts 436e of themselves that they’re at rest and in motion. We’d say they have in them an axis and a circumference, and that with respect to the axis they’re standing still, since it doesn’t tilt at all, while with respect to the circumference they’re moving in a circle; and when the axis tilts to the right or the left, forward or backward, while it’s spinning, then it isn’t standing still in any way.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“So none of these objections will throw us, or do anything more to persuade us that the same thing could ever, at the same time, in the same 437a respect and in relation to the same thing, undergo or be or do opposite things.”

“They won’t persuade me, anyway,” he said.

“All the same,” I said, “so that we’re not forced to spend a long time going through all these objections and proving them false, let’s assume that this is so and move on—agreeing that if it ever turns out otherwise, everything we’ve concluded from it will be void.”

“Yes, that’s what we should do,” he said. 437b

“Then would you put nodding yes and shaking one’s head no, reaching out to take something and refusing it, drawing something toward oneself and pushing it away—all such things—among opposites, whether as things one does or things one undergoes? That won’t make any difference here.”

“Yes,” he said, “among opposites.”

“Well then,” I said, “thirst and hunger and the appetites in general, and again wishing and wanting—wouldn’t you put all these 437c somewhere among the kinds we just mentioned? For instance, won’t you say that the soul of someone with an appetite always either reaches out for what it has an appetite for, or draws toward itself what it wants to have; or again, insofar as it wishes something to be provided for it, nods yes to it, as if someone had asked, in its longing for it to come about?”

“I will.”

“And what about not wanting, not wishing and not having an appetite? Won’t we put these under pushing away and driving off from the soul, and among all the opposites of the others?” 437d

“Of course.”

“Since that’s so, shall we say that the appetites form a kind, and that the most conspicuous of them are what we call thirst and hunger?”

“We shall,” he said.

“One for drink, the other for food?”

“Yes.”

“Now insofar as it’s thirst, would it be an appetite in the soul for anything more than what we’ve said? For instance, is thirst thirst for hot drink or cold, or much or little—in a word, for some particular kind of drink? Or rather, if some heat is added to 437e the thirst, that would bring in an appetite for something cold as well, and if coldness, for something hot; and if the thirst is great because greatness is present, it will bring in the appetite for a lot, and if small, for a little? But thirst itself will never be an appetite for anything other than its natural object, drink itself—and hunger, likewise, for food?”

“Yes,” he said, “each appetite itself is only for its own natural object, and it’s what is added that makes it for this or that kind.”

“Then let no one catch us off our guard,” I said, “and throw us into confusion by saying that nobody has an appetite for drink but for good drink, and not for food but for good food—since everyone, after all, has an appetite for good things; so if thirst is an appetite, it would be for good drink, or good whatever it’s an appetite for, and the same with the others.”

“Well,” he said, “the person who says that might seem to have a point.”

“All the same,” I said, “among things that are such as to be relative to 438b something, those of a particular kind are relative to something of a particular kind, it seems to me, while those that are just themselves are relative only to things that are just themselves.”

“I don’t follow,” he said.

“Don’t you follow,” I said, “that the greater is such as to be greater than something?”

“Certainly.”

“Than the less?”

“Yes.”

“And the much greater than the much less, right?”

“Yes.”

“And the once greater than the once less, and what will be greater than what will be less?”

“What else?” he said. 438c

“And more in relation to fewer, double to half, and everything of that sort; and again heavier to lighter, faster to slower, and hot to cold as well, and everything like them—isn’t it the same with them?”

“Certainly.”

“And what about the kinds of knowledge? Isn’t it the same pattern? Knowledge itself is knowledge of learning itself, or of whatever it is we should take knowledge to be of; whereas a particular kind of knowledge 438d is of a particular kind of thing. I mean something like this. When there came to be a knowledge of making houses, didn’t it differ from the other kinds of knowledge, so that it was called housebuilding?”

“Of course.”

“Wasn’t that because it was of a particular kind, as none of the others was?”

“Yes.”

“And it became of a particular kind itself because it was of something of a particular kind? And the same goes for the other crafts and kinds of knowledge?”

“That’s so.”

“Then take this,” I said, “to be what I meant earlier, if you’ve understood it now: of things that are relative to something, those that are just themselves are relative only to things that are just themselves, while things of a particular kind are relative to things of a particular kind. 438e And I don’t mean that they’re of the same kind as the things they’re relative to—as if knowledge of what’s healthy and diseased were itself healthy and diseased, or knowledge of bad and good things were itself bad and good. I mean that when knowledge came to be not of the very thing knowledge is of, but of something of a particular kind—in this case the healthy and the diseased—it turned out to be of a particular kind itself; and that made it no longer be called simply knowledge but, with the particular kind added, medicine.”

“I understand,” he said, “and I think that’s so.”

“Then what about thirst?” I said. “Won’t you put it among the things that are what they are by being relative to something? Thirst is surely thirst for—”

“I will,” he said. “For drink.”

“So for a particular kind of drink there’s a particular kind of thirst; but thirst itself isn’t for much or little, or good or bad, or in a word for any particular kind, but thirst itself is naturally only for drink itself?”

“Absolutely.”

“So the soul of someone who is thirsty, insofar as it’s thirsty, wants nothing other 439b than to drink; that’s what it longs for and strives toward.”

“Clearly.”

“Then if something ever pulls it back when it’s thirsty, that would be something in it different from the thing that’s thirsty and drives it like a beast to drink? Because, we say, the same thing can’t do opposite things with the same part of itself, concerning the same thing, at the same time.”

“No, it can’t.”

“In the same way, I think, it isn’t right to say of an archer that his hands push the bow away and pull it toward him at the same time; rather, one hand pushes it away and the other draws it in.” 439c

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Now, shall we say that some people are sometimes thirsty and yet unwilling to drink?”

“Certainly,” he said, “many people, and often.”

“Then what should one say about them?” I said. “Isn’t it that there’s something in their soul urging them to drink and something forbidding them, something different that overpowers what’s urging them?”

“I think so,” he said.

“And doesn’t what forbids such things arise, when 439d it does arise, from reasoning, while what drives and drags them on comes through feelings and diseased states?”

“Evidently.”

“Then it won’t be unreasonable,” I said, “for us to claim that they are two, and different from each other, calling the part of the soul with which it reasons the reasoning part, and the part with which it loves and hungers and thirsts and is stirred up by the other appetites the unreasoning and appetitive part, companion of certain satisfactions and pleasures.” 439e

“No,” he said, “it would be quite reasonable for us to think so.”

“Well then,” I said, “let’s take it that these two forms present in the soul have been marked off. But what about spirit, the thing with which we get angry? Is it a third, or would it be of the same nature as one of these two?”

“Perhaps,” he said, “as one of them—the appetitive part.”

“Yes, it does,” he said.

“And in many other cases,” I said, “don’t we notice that when appetites 440b force someone against his reasoning, he reproaches himself and is angry at the thing in him that’s forcing him, and that, as if two factions were at war, the spirit of such a person becomes the ally of reason? But spirit making common cause with the appetites when reason has decided it mustn’t be opposed—I don’t think you’d say you had ever noticed that sort of thing happening in yourself, or, I imagine, in anyone else.”

“No, by Zeus,” he said. 440c

“And what about when someone thinks he’s in the wrong?” I said. “Isn’t it true that the nobler he is, the less able he is to be angry at suffering hunger or cold or anything else of the kind at the hands of someone he thinks is justly doing this to him—and his spirit, as I say, refuses to be roused against that person?”

“True,” he said.

“And what about when someone thinks he’s being wronged? Doesn’t he seethe and chafe in that case, and fight on the side of what seems just? And through hunger and cold and every suffering of that kind, 440d doesn’t he hold out and win, and not give up his noble efforts until he either succeeds, or dies, or is called back by the reason within him and calmed, like a dog by a shepherd?”

“It’s very like what you describe,” he said. “And in fact in our city we made the auxiliaries like dogs, obedient to the rulers, who are like the city’s shepherds.”

“You’ve understood very well what I mean,” I said. “But have you also taken note of this?” 440e

“What?”

“That what we’re now seeing about the spirited part is the opposite of what we thought just now. Then we supposed it was something appetitive; now we say it’s far from that, and that in the soul’s civil war it much rather takes up arms on the side of the reasoning part.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Then is it different from that as well, or a form of the reasoning part, so that there are two forms in the soul, not three—the reasoning and the appetitive? Or, just as three 441a classes held the city together—moneymaking, auxiliary and deliberative—is the spirited part a third thing in the soul too, by nature the auxiliary of the reasoning part, unless it’s corrupted by a bad upbringing?”

“It must be a third,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “provided it turns out to be something other than the reasoning part, as it turned out to be different from the appetitive.”

“But that’s not hard to show,” he said. “You can see it even in small children: they’re full of spirit right from birth, whereas some of them, it seems to me, never get a share of reason, 441b and most get one only late.”

“Yes, by Zeus,” I said, “well put. And you could also see in animals that what you say is so. Besides, the line of Homer that we quoted somewhere back there will bear witness: ‘He struck his breast and rebuked his heart with words.’ For here Homer has clearly represented 441c the part that has reasoned about better and worse as something different, rebuking the part that is unreasoningly angry.”

“You’re quite right,” he said.note

“So we’ve managed to swim through that, though barely,” I said, “and we’ve reached reasonable agreement that the same classes are present in the city and in the soul of each individual, and equal in number.”

“That’s so.”

“Then doesn’t it follow necessarily that the individual is wise in the same way, and by the same part, as the city was wise?”

“Of course.” 441d

“And that the city is courageous by the same part and in the same way as the individual is courageous, and that both stand alike in everything else that has to do with excellence?”

“Necessarily.”

“And so, Glaucon, I think we’ll say that a man is just in the same way that the city was just.”

“That too is entirely necessary.”

“But surely we haven’t forgotten that the city was just because each of the three classes in it did its own work.”

“I don’t think we’ve forgotten,” he said.

“Then we must remember that each of us, too, will be just and do his own work when each of the parts 441e within him does its own work.”

“Yes,” he said, “we must remember that.”

“So isn’t it fitting for the reasoning part to rule, since it’s wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul, and for the spirited part to obey it and be its ally?”

“Certainly.”

“Then, as we were saying, won’t a blend of music and gymnastics bring them into harmony, tightening the one and 442a nourishing it with fine words and studies, and loosening the other, soothing it and taming it with harmony and rhythm?”

“Exactly,” he said.

“And once these two have been reared like this, and have truly learned their own work and been educated in it, they will be put in charge of the appetitive part—which is the largest part of the soul in each of us, and by nature the most insatiable for money. They will watch over it, so that it doesn’t get filled up with the so-called pleasures of the body, grow large and strong, and then 442b stop doing its own work, and instead try to enslave and rule over things its kind has no business ruling, and so overturn the whole life of all of them.”

“Very much so,” he said.

“And wouldn’t these two,” I said, “also do the finest job of guarding against enemies from outside, on behalf of the whole soul and body—the one by deliberating, the other by fighting in front of it, following the ruler and carrying out its decisions through its courage?”

“That’s right.”

“And I think we call each individual 442c courageous because of this part, when his spirited part preserves, through pains and pleasures alike, what reason has declared is to be feared and what is not.”

“Rightly,” he said.

“And wise because of that small part, the one that ruled in him and issued those declarations—the part which, for its own share, has within it the knowledge of what benefits each part and the whole community of all three.”

“Certainly.”

“And what about this: isn’t he moderate because of the friendship and concord of these same parts, when the ruling part and the two that are ruled 442d share the opinion that the reasoning part should rule, and don’t rebel against it?”

“Moderation, at any rate,” he said, “is nothing other than that, in a city and in an individual.”

“And he’ll be just, surely, in the way and by the means we keep describing.”

“He has to be.”

“Well then,” I said, “is our picture of justice getting blurred at all, so that it seems to be something other than what it turned out to be in the city?”

“Not to me, it doesn’t,” he said.

“Here’s how we could make completely sure,” I said, 442e “if anything in our soul still has doubts: by testing it against commonplace cases.”

“What sort of cases?”

“For instance, suppose we had to agree about that city, and about the man who resembles it by nature and upbringing, whether such a man, if entrusted with a deposit of gold or silver, would make off with it. Who do you think would suppose 443a that he would do it, rather than people who aren’t like him?”

“No one would,” he said.

“And wouldn’t he have nothing to do with temple robbery, theft and betrayal, whether of friends in private life or of cities in public life?”

“Nothing to do with them.”

“And he wouldn’t break faith in any way at all, either over oaths or over any other agreements.”

“How could he?”

“And adultery, neglect of parents, and failure to serve the gods are more typical of anyone else than of a man like this.”

“Of anyone at all,” he said. 443b

“And isn’t the cause of all this that each of the parts within him does its own work, in ruling and in being ruled?”

“That’s the cause, and nothing else.”

“Then are you still looking for justice to be anything other than this power, which produces men and cities like these?”

“No, by Zeus,” he said, “I’m not.”

“So our dream has come completely true—our suspicion, as we said, that right at the start of founding the city, 443c with some god’s help, we had probably hit upon a first principle and a kind of outline of justice.”

“Absolutely.”

“In fact, Glaucon, that principle—and this is why it was useful—was a kind of image of justice: that the man who is by nature a shoemaker should rightly make shoes and do nothing else, the carpenter do carpentry, and so on.”

“Evidently.”

“But the truth, it seems, is that justice was something like this, though not concerned with someone’s outward doing of his own work but with 443d the inward: with what truly concerns himself and what is his own. The just man doesn’t allow each part within him to do the work of another, or the kinds in his soul to meddle with one another. Instead he truly puts his own house in good order, rules himself, sets himself in order and becomes his own friend. He harmonizes the three parts exactly like the three fixed notes of a musical scale—highest, lowest and middle—and any others that happen to lie in between.

“What you say is entirely true, Socrates,” he said.

“Very well,” I said. “If we claimed to have found the just man, the just city, and what justice actually is in them, I don’t think we’d seem to be lying at all.”

“By Zeus, we certainly wouldn’t,” he said.

“Shall we claim it, then?”

“Let’s claim it.”

“So be it,” I said. “Next, I think, we have to examine injustice.”

“Clearly.” 444b

“Mustn’t it, in turn, be a kind of civil war among these three parts—meddling, doing what belongs to others, the rebellion of one part against the whole of the soul so that it can rule in it when that isn’t its place? For that part is by nature fit to be a slave, while the other, belonging to the ruling kind, is fit not to be a slave. Something like this, I think, is what we’ll say: that the turmoil and wandering of these parts is injustice, and licentiousness, and cowardice, and ignorance—in a word, badness of every kind.”

“That’s exactly it,” he said. 444c

“Then,” I said, “doing unjust things and doing wrong, and again doing just things—aren’t all these perfectly clear by now, if injustice and justice are?”

“How so?”

“Because,” I said, “they’re no different from healthy and unhealthy things: what those are in the body, these are in the soul.”

“In what way?” he said.

“Healthy things, I take it, produce health, and unhealthy things disease.”

“Yes.”

“And doesn’t doing just things produce justice, 444d and doing unjust things injustice?”

“Necessarily.”

“To produce health is to arrange the parts of the body so that they master and are mastered by one another in accordance with nature, while to produce disease is to arrange them so that one rules and another is ruled contrary to nature.”

“So it is.”

“Then again,” I said, “to produce justice is to arrange the parts of the soul so that they master and are mastered by one another in accordance with nature, and to produce injustice is to arrange them so that one rules and another is ruled contrary to nature?”

“Exactly,” he said.

“Excellence, then, it seems, would be a kind of health, 444e beauty and good condition of the soul, and badness a disease, ugliness and weakness.”

“That’s so.”

“And don’t fine practices lead to the acquisition of excellence, and shameful ones to badness?”

“Necessarily.”

“So what remains for us to examine now, it seems, is 445a whether it pays to do just things, practice fine ones and be just, whether or not anyone knows you’re like that; or to do wrong and be unjust, provided you don’t pay the penalty and aren’t made better by being punished.”

“But Socrates,” he said, “to me the inquiry is starting to look ridiculous at this point. When the body’s nature is ruined, life doesn’t seem worth living, not even with every kind of food and drink and all the wealth and power in the world. Yet when the nature of the very thing we live by is thrown into turmoil and 445b ruined, is life going to be worth living—so long as a person can do whatever he likes, except the one thing that will rid him of badness and injustice and win him justice and excellence? That is, now that each of them has turned out to be the sort of thing we’ve described.”

“It is ridiculous,” I said. “But still, since we’ve come this far, we mustn’t grow weary before we see as clearly as we can that this is how things are.”

“By Zeus,” he said, “growing weary is the last thing we should do.” 445c

“Come along, then,” I said, “so that you can see how many forms badness has, as I see it—the ones, at least, that are worth looking at.”

“I’m following,” he said. “Just tell me.”

“Well,” I said, “now that we’ve climbed this high in the argument, I seem to see, as if from a lookout, that there is one form of excellence but countless forms of badness, and among them four worth mentioning.”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“There are probably as many types of soul,” I said, “as there are types of constitution with distinct forms.”

“How many is that?” 445d

“Five types of constitution,” I said, “and five of soul.”

“Tell me which they are,” he said.

“I say,” I said, “that one type of constitution is the one we’ve described, though it could be called by two names: if one outstanding man arises among the rulers, it would be called kingship; if more than one, aristocracy.”

“True,” he said.

“So I count this as one form,” I said. “Whether 445e there were several such men or one, none of them would alter any of the city’s laws worth mentioning, if they had the upbringing and education we described.”

“Not likely,” he said.

Socrates“So I call a city and constitution like this good and correct, and a man like this too. And if this one is correct, I call the others bad and mistaken, both in how they manage cities and in how they shape the character of individual souls. They fall into four forms of badness.”

“Which ones are those?” he said.

I was about to list them in order, as each seemed to me to develop 449b out of the one before. But Polemarchus—who was sitting a little way from Adeimantus—reached out his hand and took hold of Adeimantus’ cloak at the top, by the shoulder, drew him close, and leaning forward himself said something to him in a low voice. We didn’t catch any of it except this: “Shall we let it go,” he said, “or what shall we do?”

“Certainly not,” said Adeimantus, speaking aloud now.

And I said, “What exactly is it you’re not letting go?”

“You,” he said. 449c

“Why me,” I said, “exactly?”

“We think you’re shirking,” he said, “and cheating us out of a whole part of the argument, and not the smallest part, to avoid going through it. You thought you’d get away with it by saying, offhandedly, that where women and children are concerned it’s obvious to everyone that ‘what friends have will be held in common.’”

“Well, wasn’t that right, Adeimantus?” I said.note

“Yes,” he said. “But this ‘right,’ like everything else, needs explaining: what form will this sharing take? There could be many. 449d So don’t pass over the one you mean. We’ve been waiting a long time, expecting you to say something about producing children—how they’ll produce them, and how they’ll raise them once they’re born—and about this whole sharing of women and children you speak of. We think it makes a great difference, all the difference, to a constitution whether this is done rightly or not.

“So now, since you’re taking up another constitution before you’ve dealt with this adequately, we’ve decided what 450a you heard: not to let you go until you’ve gone through all of it, just as you did the rest.”

“Count me in on this vote too,” said Glaucon.

“Don’t worry, Socrates,” said Thrasymachus. “Take it that we’ve all decided this.”

“What a thing you’ve done,” I said, “seizing on me like this! What a huge argument about the constitution you’re starting up again, as if from the beginning. I was delighted to think I’d already finished with it, and glad if anyone would let it be and accept what was said at the time. By calling for it now, 450b you don’t know what a swarm of arguments you’re stirring up. I saw it then and passed it by, so as not to cause a great deal of trouble.”

“What?” said Thrasymachus. “Do you think these people came here to go prospecting for gold, and not to listen to arguments?”

“Yes,” I said, “but in moderate measure.”note

“For people with sense, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “the measure for listening to arguments like these is a whole lifetime. But never mind about us. Don’t grow weary of going through, in the way 450c that seems best to you, what we’re asking: what sharing of children and women there will be among our guardians, and how the children will be raised while they’re still young, in the period between birth and education, which seems to be the most demanding of all. So try to tell us how it should be done.”

“It isn’t easy to go through, my fortunate friend,” I said. “It raises many doubts, even more than what we discussed before. People might doubt that what’s proposed is possible; and even if it could be done perfectly, they’ll doubt, on that score too, that it would be for the best. 450d That’s why I hesitate to touch on it, my dear friend: I’m afraid the argument may seem to be mere wishful thinking.”

“Don’t hesitate,” he said. “Your audience won’t be unreasonable, or distrustful, or ill-disposed.”

And I said, “My excellent friend, are you saying that to encourage me?”

“I am,” he said.

“Then you’re doing just the opposite,” I said. “If I were confident that I knew what I was talking about, your encouragement would be fine. When you’re among sensible people who are your friends, it’s safe and reassuring to speak the truth you know about the most important and 450e dearest things;

but to make arguments while you’re still in doubt and searching, as 451a I’m doing, is frightening and risky. It isn’t that I’m afraid of being laughed at—that would be childish—but that I’ll slip from the truth and lie there fallen, dragging my friends down with me, in matters where slipping matters most. I bow to Adrasteia, Glaucon, for what I’m about to say. I really do think it a lesser offense to kill someone unintentionally than to deceive people about what is fine, good and just in laws and customs. That’s a risk better run among enemies than 451b among friends. So you’re a fine one to encourage me!”note

Glaucon laughed and said, “Well, Socrates, if the argument does us any harm, we’ll release you, as in a case of homicide: you’ll be clean, and not our deceiver. So take heart and speak.”

“Well,” I said, “in that case, too, the one who is released is clean, as the law says; and if it holds there, it likely holds here as well.”

“Then speak,” he said, “as far as that’s concerned.”

“Then let’s follow that up by giving them a birth and upbringing to match, and see whether it suits us or not.”

“How?” he said.

“Like this. Do we think the female guard dogs should guard what the males guard, hunt with them, and do everything else in common? Or should the females stay indoors, as if they were unfit because they bear and rear the puppies, while the males work and have the whole care of the flocks?” 451e

“Everything in common,” he said, “except that we treat the females as weaker and the males as stronger.”

“Is it possible,” I said, “to use any animal for the same things, if you don’t give it the same upbringing and education?”

“It isn’t possible.”

“So if we’re going to use the women for the same things as the men, we have to teach them the same things too.” 452a

“Yes.”

“Now, the men were given music and physical training.”

“Yes.”

“Then the women too must be given these two arts, and what pertains to war, and must be used in the same ways.”

“That’s what follows from what you say,” he said.

“Perhaps,” I said, “since it goes against custom, a lot of what we’re now saying would look ridiculous if it were carried out as we describe.”

“Very much so,” he said.

“What do you see as the most ridiculous part of it?” I said. “Isn’t it obviously the women exercising naked in the wrestling schools alongside 452b the men—not only the young ones, but the older ones too, like the old men in the gymnasiums who, wrinkled and unpleasant to look at, still love their exercise?”

“By Zeus, yes,” he said. “That would look ridiculous, at least as things are now.”

“Still,” I said, “since we’ve set out to speak, we mustn’t be afraid of the jokes of the wits—all the many things they’d say about such a change in physical training 452c and in music, and not least about women bearing arms and riding horses.”

“You’re right,” he said.

“But since we’ve begun to speak, we must press on to the rough part of the law. We’ll ask the wits to give up their usual business for once and be serious, and we’ll remind them that it wasn’t long ago that the Greeks thought it shameful and ridiculous, as most non-Greeks still do now, for men to be seen naked. When first the Cretans and then the Spartans began exercising naked, 452d the wits of that time were free to make a comedy of the whole thing. Don’t you think so?”

“I do.”

“But once it became clear, I think, to those who practiced it that stripping was better than covering up all such parts, what looked ridiculous to the eye melted away before what reason had shown to be best. And this showed that anyone is foolish who thinks anything ridiculous except what is bad; who tries to raise a laugh by looking to any sight as ridiculous except that of folly 452e and badness; and who, again, earnestly pursues the fine with his eye on any target other than the good.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Then mustn’t we first reach agreement on whether these things are possible or not, and let anyone who wants to dispute it, whether in jest or in earnest, argue the question: 453a is female human nature capable of sharing in all the tasks of the male kind, or in none, or in some but not others? And which group does war belong to? Isn’t that the finest way to start, and so, most likely, the finest way to finish?”

“By far,” he said.

“Would you like us, then,” I said, “to argue against ourselves on the others’ behalf, so that the opposing case doesn’t fall to a siege undefended?” 453b

“Nothing’s stopping us,” he said.

“Then let’s say on their behalf: ‘Socrates and Glaucon, there’s no need for anyone else to dispute with you. You yourselves, at the start of founding the city you were founding, agreed that each person must do the one job that is his own by nature.’”

“We did agree, I think. Of course we did.”

“‘Can it be that a woman doesn’t differ enormously from a man in nature?’”

“Of course she differs.”

“‘Then isn’t it right to assign each of them a different job too, 453c the one that suits its own nature?’”

“Certainly.”

“‘Then how can you not be making a mistake now, and contradicting yourselves, when you say that men and women must do the same things, though their natures are as far apart as can be?’ Will you have any defense to offer against that, my remarkable friend?”

“Not very easily, on the spur of the moment,” he said. “But I’ll ask you—I’m asking you now—to set out the argument on our side too, whatever it is.”

“These are the things, Glaucon,” I said, “and many others 453d like them, that I foresaw long ago; they’re why I was afraid and hesitated to touch the law about acquiring and raising women and children.”

“No, by Zeus,” he said, “it doesn’t look like an easy one.”

“It isn’t,” I said. “But here’s how things stand: whether you fall into a little swimming pool or into the middle of the vast sea, you have to swim all the same.”

“Certainly.”

“Then we too must swim and try to get safely out of the argument, hoping that a dolphin might pick us up, or for some other unlikely rescue.” 453e

“So it seems,” he said.

“Come on, then,” I said, “let’s see if we can find a way out. We agree that different natures should pursue different occupations, and that a woman’s nature and a man’s are different. Yet now we say that these different natures should pursue the same occupations. Is that the charge against us?”

“Exactly.”

“What a splendid power the art of contradiction has, Glaucon!” I said.

“Why do you say that?”note

“Because,” I said, “many people seem to me to fall into it even against their will, and to think they’re having a discussion, not a quarrel. That’s because they can’t examine what is said by dividing it into its kinds; instead they chase after contradictions of what was said by fastening on the mere word, and they use quarreling, not discussion, with one another.”

“That does happen to many people,” he said. “But surely it doesn’t apply to us at the moment?” 454b

“It certainly does,” I said. “At any rate, we’re in danger of getting into contradiction without meaning to.”

“How?”

“We’re very bravely and contentiously chasing after the literal words of the claim that a nature that isn’t the same shouldn’t have the same occupations. But we didn’t examine at all what kind of sameness or difference of nature we meant, or what it bore on, when we defined things back then, assigning different occupations to a different nature and the same ones to the same nature.”

“No,” he said, “we didn’t examine that.” 454c

“So it seems,” I said, “we might as well ask ourselves whether bald men and long-haired men have the same nature and not opposite ones; and then, once we agree that they’re opposite, if bald men are shoemakers, not to allow long-haired men to be, or if long-haired men are, not to allow the others.”

“That would be ridiculous,” he said.