Republic

I went down yesterday to the Peiraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to pay my devotions to the Goddess, and also because I wished to see how they would conduct the festival since this was its inauguration. I thought the procession of the citizens very fine, but it was no better than the show, made by the marching of the Thracian contingent. After we had said our prayers and seen the spectacle we were starting for town when Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, caught sight of us from a distance as we were hastening homeward and ordered his boy run and bid us to wait for him, and the boy caught hold of my himation from behind and said, Polemarchus wants you to wait. And I turned around and asked where his master was. There he is, he said, behind you, coming this way. Wait for him. So we will, said Glaucon, and shortly after Polemarchus came up and Adeimantus, the brother of Glaucon, and Niceratus, the son of Nicias, and a few others apparently from the procession. Whereupon Polemarchus said, Socrates, you appear to have turned your faces townward and to be going to leave us. Not a bad guess, said I. But you see how many we are? he said. Surely. You must either then prove yourselves the better men or stay here. Why, is there not left, said I, the alternative of our persuading you that you ought to let us go? But could you persuade us, said he, if we refused to listen? Nohow, said Glaucon. Well, we won’t listen, and you might as well make up your minds to it.

Do you mean to say, interposed Adeimantus, that you haven’t heard that there is to be a torchlight race this evening on horseback in honor of the Goddess? On horseback? said I. That is a new idea. Will they carry torches and pass them along to one another as they race with the horses, or how do you mean? That’s the way of it, said Polemarchus, and, besides, there is to be a night festival which will be worth seeing. For after dinner we will get up and go out and see the sights and meet a lot of the lads there and have good talk. So stay and do as we ask. It looks as if we should have to stay, said Glaucon. Well, said I, if it so be, so be it. So we went with them to Polemarchus’s house, and there we found Lysias and Euthydemus, the brothers of Polemarchus, yes, and Thrasymachus, too, of Chalcedon, and Charmantides of the deme of Paeania, and Kleitophon the son of Aristonymus. And the father of Polemarchus, Cephalus, was also at home. And I thought him much aged, for it was a long time since I had seen him. He was sitting on a sort of couch with cushions and he had a chaplet on his head, for he had just finished sacrificing in the court. So we went and sat down beside him, for there were seats there disposed in a circle. As soon as he saw me Cephalus greeted me and said, You are not a very frequent visitor, Socrates. You don’t often come down to the Peiraeus to see us. That is not right. For if I were still able to make the journey up to town easily there would be no need of your resorting hither, but we would go to visit you. But as it is you should not space too widely your visits here. For I would have you know that, for my part, as the satisfactions of the body decay, in the same measure my desire for the pleasures of good talk and my delight in them increase. Don’t refuse then, but be yourself a companion to these lads and make our house your resort and regard us as your very good friends and intimates. Why, yes, Cephalus, said I, and I enjoy talking with the very aged. For to my thinking we have to learn of them as it were from wayfarers who have preceded us on a road on which we too, it may be, must some time fare—what it is like—is it rough and hard going or easy and pleasant to travel. And so now I would fain learn of you what you think of this thing, now that your time has come to it, the thing that the poets call the threshold of old age. Is it a hard part of life to bear or what report have you to make of it?

Yes, indeed, Socrates, he said, I will tell you my own feeling about it. For it often happens that some of us elders of about the same age come together and verify the old saw of like to like. At these reunions most of us make lament, longing for the lost joys of youth and recalling to mind the pleasures of wine, women, and feasts, and other things thereto appertaining, and they repine in the belief that the greatest things have been taken from them and that then they lived well and now it is no life at all. And some of them complain of the indignities that friends and kinsmen put upon old age and thereto recite a doleful litany of all the miseries for which they blame old age. But in my opinion, Socrates, they do not put the blame on the real cause. For if it were the cause I too should have had the same experience so far as old age is concerned, and so would all others who have come to this time of life. But in fact I have ere now met with others who do not feel in this way, and in particular I remember hearing Sophocles the poet greeted by a fellow who asked, How about your service of Aphrodite, Sophocles—is your natural force still unabated? And he replied, Hush, man, most gladly have I escaped this thing you talk of, as if I had run away from a raging and savage beast of a master. I thought it a good answer then and now I think so still more. For in very truth there comes to old age a great tranquillity in such matters and a blessed release. When the fierce tensions of the passions and desires relax, then is the word of Sophocles approved, and we are rid of many and mad masters. But indeed in respect of these complaints and in the matter of our relations with kinsmen and friends there is just one cause, Socrates—not old age, but the character of the man. For if men are temperate and cheerful even old age is only moderately burdensome. But if the reverse, old age, Socrates, and youth are hard for such dispositions. And I was filled with admiration for the man by these words, and desirous of hearing more I tried to draw him out and said, I fancy, Cephalus, that most people, when they hear you talk in this way, are not convinced but think that you bear old age lightly not because of your character but because of your wealth. For the rich, they say, have many consolations.

You are right, he said. They don’t accept my view and there is something in their objection, though not so much as they suppose. But the retort of Themistocles comes in pat here, who, when a man from the little island of Seriphus grew abusive and told him that he owed his fame not to himself but to the city from which he came, replied that neither would he himself ever have made a name if he had been born in Seriphus nor the other if he had been an Athenian. And the same principle applies excellently to those who not being rich take old age hard; for neither would the reasonable man find it altogether easy to endure old age conjoined with poverty, nor would the unreasonable man by the attainment of riches ever attain to self-contentment and a cheerful temper. May I ask, Cephalus, said I, whether you inherited most of your possessions or acquired them yourself? Acquired, eh? he said. As a moneymaker, I hold a place somewhere halfway between my grandfather and my father. For my grandfather and namesake inherited about as much property as I now possess and multiplied it many times, my father Lysanias reduced it below the present amount, and I am content if I shall leave the estate to these boys not less but by some slight measure more than my inheritance. The reason I asked, I said, is that you appear to me not to be over-fond of money. And that is generally the case with those who have not earned it themselves. But those who have themselves acquired it have a double reason in comparison with other men for loving it. For just as poets feel complacency about their own poems and fathers about their own sons, so men who have made money take this money seriously as their own creation and they also value it for its uses as other people do. So they are hard to talk to since they are unwilling to commend anything except wealth. You are right, he replied. I assuredly am, said I. But tell me further this. What do you regard as the greatest benefit you have enjoyed from the possession of property? Something, he said, which I might not easily bring many to believe if I told them. For let me tell you, Socrates, he said, that when a man begins to realize that he is going to die, he is filled with apprehensions and concern about matters that before did not occur to him. The tales that are told of the world below and how the men who have done wrong here must pay the penalty there, though he may have laughed them down hitherto, then begin to torture his soul with the doubt that there may be some truth in them. And apart from that the man himself either from the weakness of old age or possibly as being now nearer to the things beyond has a somewhat clearer view of them. Be that as it may, he is filled with doubt, surmises, and alarms and begins to reckon up and consider whether he has ever wronged anyone.

Now he to whom the ledger of his life shows an account of many evil deeds starts up even from his dreams like children again and again in affright and his days are haunted by anticipations of worse to come. But on him who is conscious of no wrong that he has done a sweet hope ever attends and a goodly to be nurse of his old age, as Pindar too says. For a beautiful saying it is, Socrates, of the poet that when a man lives out his days in justice and pietysweet companion with him, to cheer his heart and nurse his old age, accompanies Hope, who chiefly rules the changeful mind of mortals. Pindar Frag. 214, Loeb That is a fine saying and an admirable. It is for this, then, that I affirm that the possession of wealth is of most value not it may be to every man but to the good man. Not to cheat any man even unintentionally or play him false, not remaining in debt to a god for some sacrifice or to a man for money, so to depart in fear to that other world—to this result the possession of property contributes not a little. It has also many other uses. But, setting one thing against another, I would lay it down, Socrates, that for a man of sense this is the chief service of wealth. An admirable sentiment, Cephalus, said I. But speaking of this very thing, justice, are we to affirm thus without qualification that it is truth-telling and paying back what one has received from anyone, or may these very actions sometimes be just and sometimes unjust? I mean, for example, as everyone I presume would admit, if one took over weapons from a friend who was in his right mind and then the lender should go mad and demand them back, that we ought not to return them in that case and that he who did so return them would not be acting justly—nor yet would he who chose to speak nothing but the truth to one who was in that state. You are right, he replied. Then this is not the definition of justice: to tell the truth and return what one has received. Nay, but it is, Socrates, said Polemarchus breaking in, if indeed we are to put any faith in Simonides. Very well, said Cephalus, indeed I make over the whole argument to you. For it is time for me to attend the sacrifices. Well, said I, is not Polemarchus the heir of everything that is yours? Certainly, said he with a laugh, and at the same time went out to the sacred rites. Tell me, then, you the inheritor of the argument, what it is that you affirm that Simonides says and rightly says about justice. That it is just, he replied, to render to each his due. In saying this I think he speaks well.

I must admit, said I, that it is not easy to disbelieve Simonides. For he is a wise and inspired man. But just what he may mean by this you, Polemarchus, doubtless know, but I do not. Obviously he does not mean what we were just speaking of, this return of a deposit to anyone whatsoever even if he asks it back when not in his right mind. And yet what the man deposited is due to him in a sense, is it not? Yes. But rendered to him it ought not to be by any manner of means when he demands it not being his right mind. True, said he. It is then something other than this that Simonides must, as it seems, mean by the saying that it is just to render back what is due. Something else in very deed, he replied, for he believes that friends owe it to friends to do them some good and no evil. I see, said I; you mean that he does not render what is due or owing who returns a deposit of gold if this return and the acceptance prove harmful and the returner and the recipient are friends. Isn’t that what you say Simonides means? Quite so. But how about this—should one not render to enemies what is their due? By all means, he said, what is due and owing to them, and there is due and owing from an enemy to an enemy what also is proper for him, some evil. It was a riddling definition of justice, then, that Simonides gave after the manner of poets; for while his meaning, it seems, was that justice is rendering to each what befits him, the name that he gave to this was the due. What else do you suppose? said he. In heaven’s name! said I, suppose someone had questioned him thus: Tell me, Simonides, the art that renders what that is due and befitting to what is called the art of medicine. What do you take it would have been his answer? Obviously, he said, the art that renders to bodies drugs, foods, and drinks. And the art that renders to what things what that is due and befitting is called the culinary art? Seasoning to meats. Good. In the same way tell me the art that renders what to whom would be denominated justice. If we are to follow the previous examples, Socrates, it is that which renders benefits and harms to friends and enemies. To do good to friends and evil to enemies, then, is justice in his meaning? I think so. Who then is the most able when they are ill to benefit friends and harm enemies in respect to disease and health? The physician. And who navigators in respect of the perils of the sea? The pilot. Well then, the just man, in what action and for what work is he the most competent to benefit friends and harm enemies? In making war and as an ally, I should say. Very well. But now if they are not sick, friend Polemarchus, the physician is useless to them. True. And so to those who are not at sea the pilot. Yes. Shall we also say this that for those who are not at war the just man is useless?

By no means. There is a use then even in peace for justice? Yes, it is useful. But so is agriculture, isn’t it? Yes. Namely, for the getting of a harvest? Yes. But likewise the cobbler’s art? Yes. Namely, I presume you would say, for the getting of shoes. Certainly. Then tell me, for the service and getting of what would you say that justice is useful in time of peace? In engagements and dealings, Socrates. And by dealings do you mean associations, partnerships, or something else? Associations, of course. Is it the just man, then, who is a good and useful associate and partner in the placing of draughts or the draught-player? The player. And in the placing of bricks and stones is the just man a more useful and better associate than the builder? By no means. Then what is the association in which the just man is a better partner than the harpist as an harpist is better than the just man for striking the chords? For money-dealings, I think. Except, I presume, Polemarchus, for the use of money when there is occasion to buy in common or sell a horse. Then, I take it, the man who knows horses, isn’t it so? Apparently. And again, if it is a vessel, the shipwright or the pilot. It would seem so. What then is the use of money in common for which a just man is the better partner? When it is to be deposited and kept safe, Socrates. You mean when it is to be put to no use but is to lie idle? Quite so. Then it is when money is useless that justice is useful in relation to it? It looks that way. And similarly when a scythe is to be kept safe, then justice is useful both in public and private. But when it is to be used, the vinedresser’s art is useful? Apparently. And so you will have to say that when a shield and a lyre are to be kept and put to no use, justice is useful, but when they are to be made use of, the military art and music. Necessarily. And so in all other cases, in the use of each thing, justice is useless but in its uselessness useful? It looks that way. Then, my friend, justice cannot be a thing of much worth if it is useful only for things out of use and useless. But let us consider this point. Is not the man who is most skilful to strike or inflict a blow in a fight, whether as a boxer or elsewhere, also the most wary to guard against a blow? Assuredly. Is it not also true that he who best knows how to guard against disease is also most cunning to communicate it and escape detection? I think so.

But again the very same man is a good guardian of an army who is good at stealing a march upon the enemy in respect of their designs and proceedings generally. Certainly. Of whatsoever, then, anyone is a skilful guardian, of that he is also a skilful thief? It seems so. If then the just man is an expert in guarding money he is an expert in stealing it. The argument certainly points that way. A kind of thief then the just man it seems has turned out to be, and it is likely that you acquired this idea from Homer. For he regards with complacency Autolycus, the maternal uncle of Odysseus, and says he was gifted beyond all men in thievery and perjury. Hom. Od. 19.395 So justice, according to you and Homer and Simonides, seems to be a kind of stealing, with the qualification that it is for the benefit of friends and the harm of enemies. Isn’t that what you meant? No, by Zeus, he replied. I no longer know what I did mean. Yet this I still believe, that justice benefits friends and harms enemies. May I ask whether by friends you mean those who seem to a man to be worthy or those who really are so, even if they do not seem, and similarly of enemies? It is likely, he said, that men will love those whom they suppose to be good and dislike those whom they deem bad. Do not men make mistakes in this matter so that many seem good to them who are not and the reverse? They do. For those, then, who thus err the good are their enemies and the bad their friends? Certainly. But all the same is then just for them to benefit the bad and injure the good? It would seem so. But again the good are just and incapable of injustice. True. On your reasoning then it is just to wrong those who do no injustice. Nay, nay, Socrates, he said, the reasoning can’t be right. Then, said I, it is just to harm the unjust and benefit the just. That seems a better conclusion than the other. It will work out, then, for many, Polemarchus, who have misjudged men that it is just to harm their friends, for they have got bad ones, and to benefit their enemies, for they are good. And so we shall find ourselves saying the very opposite of what we affirmed Simonides to mean. Most certainly, he said, it does work out so. But let us change our ground; for it looks as if we were wrong in the notion we took up about the friend and the enemy. What notion, Polemarchus? That the man who seems to us good is the friend. And to what shall we change it now? said I.

That the man who both seems and is good is the friend, but that he who seems but is not really so seems but is not really the friend. And there will be the same assumption about the enemy. Then on this view it appears the friend will be the good man and the bad the enemy. Yes. So you would have us qualify our former notion of the just man by an addition. We then said it was just to do good to a friend and evil to an enemy, but now we are to add that it is just to benefit the friend if he is good and harm the enemy if he is bad? By all means, he said, that, I think, would be the right way to put it. Is it then, said I, the part of a good man to harm anybody whatsoever? Certainly it is, he replied; a man ought to harm those who are both bad and his enemies. When horses are harmed does it make them better or worse? Worse. In respect of the excellence or virtue of dogs or that of horses? Of horses. And do not also dogs when harmed become worse in respect of canine and not of equine virtue? Necessarily. And men, my dear fellow, must we not say that when they are harmed it is in respect of the distinctive excellence or virtue of man that they become worse? Assuredly. And is not justice the specific virtue of man? That too must be granted. Then it must also be admitted, my friend, that men who are harmed become more unjust. It seems so. Do musicians then make men unmusical by the art of music? Impossible. Well, do horsemen by horsemanship unfit men for dealing with horses? No. By justice then do the just make men unjust, or in sum do the good by virtue make men bad? Nay, it is impossible. It is not, I take it, the function of heat to chill but of its opposite. Yes. Nor of dryness to moisten but of its opposite. Assuredly. Nor yet of the good to harm but of its opposite. So it appears. But the just man is good? Certainly. It is not then the function of the just man, Polemarchus, to harm either friend or anyone else, but of his opposite. I think you are altogether right, Socrates. If, then, anyone affirms that it is just to render to each his due and he means by this, that injury and harm is what is due to his enemies from the just man and benefits to his friends, he was no truly wise man who said it. For what he meant was not true. For it has been made clear to us that in no case is it just to harm anyone. I concede it, he said. We will take up arms against him, then, said I, you and I together, if anyone affirms that either Simonides or Bias or Pittacus or any other of the wise and blessed said such a thing. I, for my part, he said, am ready to join in the battle with you.

Do you know, said I, to whom I think the saying belongs—this statement that it is just to benefit friends and harm enemies? To whom? he said. I think it was the saying of Periander or Perdiccas or Xerxes or Ismenias the Theban or some other rich man who had great power in his own conceit. That is most true, he replied. Very well, said I, since it has been made clear that this too is not justice and the just, what else is there that we might say justice to be? Now Thrasymachus, even while we were conversing, had been trying several times to break in and lay hold of the discussion but he was restrained by those who sat by him who wished to hear the argument out. But when we came to a pause after I had said this, he couldn’t any longer hold his peace. But gathering himself up like a wild beast he hurled himself upon us as if he would tear us to pieces. And Polemarchus and I were frightened and fluttered apart, and he bawled out into our midst, What balderdash is this that you have been talking, and why do you Simple Simons truckle and give way to one another? But if you really wish, Socrates, to know what the just is, don’t merely ask questions or plume yourself upon controverting any answer that anyone gives—since your acumen has perceived that it is easier to ask questions than to answer them, but do you yourself answer and tell what you say the just is. And don’t you be telling me that it is that which ought to be, or the beneficial or the profitable or the gainful or the advantageous, but express clearly and precisely whatever you say. For I won’t take from you any such drivel as that! And I, when I heard him, was dismayed, and looking upon him was filled with fear, and I believe that if I had not looked at him before he did at me I should have lost my voice. But as it is, at the very moment when he began to be exasperated by the course of the argument I glanced at him first, so that I became capable of answering him and said with a light tremor: Thrasymachus, don’t be harsh with us. If I and my friend have made mistakes in the consideration of the question, rest assured that it is unwillingly that we err. For you surely must not suppose that while if our quest were for gold we would never willingly truckle to one another and make concessions in the search and so spoil our chances of finding it, yet that when we are searching for justice, a thing more precious than much fine gold, we should then be so foolish as to give way to one another and not rather do our serious best to have it discovered.

You surely must not suppose that, my friend. But you see it is our lack of ability that is at fault. It is pity then that we should far more reasonably receive from clever fellows like you than severity. And he on hearing this gave a great guffaw and laughed sardonically and said, Ye gods! here we have the well-known irony of Socrates, and I knew it and predicted that when it came to replying you would refuse and dissemble and do anything rather than answer any question that anyone asked you. That’s because you are wise, Thrasymachus, and so you knew very well that if you asked a man how many are twelve, and in putting the question warned him: don’t you be telling me, fellow, that twelve is twice six or three times four or six times two or four times three, for I won’t accept any such drivel as that from you as an answer—it was obvious I fancy to you that no one could give an answer to a question framed in that fashion. Suppose he had said to you, Thrasymachus, what do you mean? Am I not to give any of the prohibited answers, not even, do you mean to say, if the thing really is one of these, but must I say something different from the truth, or what do you mean? What would have been your answer to him? Humph! said he, how very like the two cases are! There is nothing to prevent, said I; yet even granted that they are not alike, yet if it appears to the person asked the question that they are alike, do you suppose that he will any the less answer what appears to him, whether we forbid him or whether we don’t? Is that, then, said he, what you are going to do? Are you going to give one of the forbidden answers? I shouldn’t be surprised, I said, if on reflection that would be my view. What then, he said, if I show you another answer about justice differing from all these, a better one—what penalty do you think you deserve? Why, what else, said I, than that which it befits anyone who is ignorant to suffer? It befits him, I presume, to learn from the one who does know. That then is what I propose that I should suffer. I like your simplicity, said he; but in addition to learningyou must pay a fine of money. Well, I will when I have got it, I said. It is there, said Glaucon: if money is all that stands in the way, Thrasymachus, go on with your speech. We will all contribute for Socrates. Oh yes, of course, said he, so that Socrates may contrive, as he always does, to evade answering himself but may cross-examine the other man and refute his replies.