What a Soul-Improving Statesman Would Look Like

Socrates

Now does this hold for just one soul, but not for two or many?

Callicles

No, it holds for two and for many as well.

Socrates

So it's possible to gratify a whole group at once, without any regard for what's best?

Callicles

I think so.

Socrates

Can you tell me, then, what practices do this? Or rather, if you like, as I ask about each one, say yes if it seems to you to be one of these, and no if it doesn't. Let's first consider flute-playing. Doesn't it seem to you to be the sort of thing, Callicles, that pursues only our pleasure and cares about nothing else?

Callicles

It seems so to me.

Socrates

And all the similar ones too, like competitive lyre-playing?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

What about the training of choruses, and the composing of dithyrambs? Doesn't it strike you as the same kind of thing? Or do you think Cinesias son of Meles gives any thought to saying something that would make his listeners better, rather than something likely to gratify the crowd of spectators?

Callicles

That much is clear, Socrates, at least about Cinesias.

Socrates

And what about his father, Meles? Did he seem to you to sing to the lyre with an eye toward what's best? Or didn't even he aim at what's most pleasant? Because his singing annoyed the audience. But consider — doesn't the whole art of singing to the lyre, and the composing of dithyrambs, seem to you to have been invented for the sake of pleasure?

Callicles

So it seems to me.

Socrates

And what about this solemn and wondrous thing, the composing of tragedy — what is it in earnest about? Is its whole undertaking and effort, as it seems to you, just to gratify the spectators, or does it also fight against this, so that if something is pleasant and gratifying to them but bad, it won't say that, and if something happens to be unpleasant but beneficial, it will say and sing that instead, whether they enjoy it or not? Which way does the composing of tragedies seem to you to be arranged?

Callicles

That much is clear, Socrates — it's aimed more at pleasure, and at gratifying the spectators.

Socrates

And didn't we just say, Callicles, that this sort of thing is flattery?

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

Now, if someone stripped away the melody, the rhythm, and the meter from all poetry, wouldn't what's left just be speeches?

Callicles

Necessarily.

Socrates

And aren't these speeches delivered before a great crowd, the people?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

So poetry turns out to be a kind of public speaking to the crowd.

Callicles

So it appears.

Socrates

So it would be a rhetorical kind of public speaking — or don't the poets seem to you to be practicing rhetoric in the theaters?

Callicles

So it seems to me.

Socrates

So now we've discovered a kind of rhetoric addressed to a crowd made up of children and women and men together, and slaves and free men alike — one we don't much admire, since we say it's a flattering kind.

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

Very well — but what about the rhetoric addressed to the Athenian people and the other free citizens in other cities — what is this rhetoric, for us? Do the orators seem to you always to speak with an eye to what's best, aiming at making the citizens as good as possible through their speeches, or are they too driven toward gratifying the citizens, neglecting the common good for the sake of their own private interest, treating the people like children, trying only to please them, and giving no thought at all to whether this makes them better or worse?

Callicles

That's no longer a simple question you're asking — some of them say what they say out of genuine care for the citizens, while others are just as you describe.

Socrates

That's enough. Because if this too is twofold, then one part of it would be flattery and shameful public speaking, while the other would be fine — the part that works to make the citizens' souls as good as possible, and fights hard, saying what's best, whether it turns out more pleasant or less pleasant to the listeners. But you've never once seen this kind of rhetoric — or if you can name one of the orators who's like that, why haven't you told me who he is?

Callicles

By Zeus, I can't name a single one of the current orators for you.

Socrates

What about this? Among the men of old, can you name one on whose account the Athenians became better, when before his public speaking began they were worse? Because I myself don't know who this man could be.

Callicles

What about this? Haven't you heard that Themistocles was a good man, and Cimon, and Miltiades, and this Pericles here who died recently, whom you yourself have heard speak?

Socrates

If, Callicles, the virtue you spoke of earlier is the true one — satisfying one's own appetites and other people's — well and good; but if it isn't that, and instead it's what we were forced to agree to later on, that of the appetites, the ones that make a person better when filled should be satisfied, and the ones that make him worse should not, and that this takes some skill — then I myself have no way to say that any of these men [became] such a man.

Callicles

But if you look for one properly, you'll find one.

Socrates

Let's look at this quietly, examining whether any of these men actually became like that — because, consider: the good man, the one who speaks with a view to what's best, won't he say whatever he says not at random, but with his eye on something? Just as all the other craftsmen too, each one, don't select and apply things to their work at random, but so that the thing they're making takes on some definite form. For instance, if you want to look at painters, builders, shipwrights, all the other craftsmen, any one you like — see how each one places whatever he places into some arrangement, and forces one part to be fitting and to harmonize with another, until the whole stands together as an ordered and well-arranged thing; and the other craftsmen too, and the ones we were just talking about, those concerned with the body, trainers and doctors, they too, I take it, bring order and arrangement to the body. Do we agree this is so, or not?

Callicles

Let it be so.

Socrates

So a house that has arrangement and order would be a good one, and one with disorder a bad one?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

And a ship, the same way?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

And surely we say the same about our bodies too?

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

And what about the soul? Will it be good if it has disorder, or if it has some arrangement and order?

Callicles

Given what we agreed before, I have to grant this too.

Socrates

So what's the name for the thing that arises in the body from arrangement and order?

Callicles

I suppose you mean health and strength.

Socrates

I do. And what about the thing that arises in the soul from arrangement and order? Try to find and give its name, just as you did for the body.

Callicles

Why don't you just say it yourself, Socrates?

Socrates

Well, if you'd rather I did, I'll say it — and you, if you think I'm putting it well, say so, and if not, refute me, don't just let it pass. Because it seems to me the name for the body's arrangements is "healthy," the thing from which health arises in it, along with the body's other excellence. Is this so, or not?

Callicles

It is.

Socrates

And for the soul's arrangements and orderings, the names are "lawful order" and "law" — the source from which people become law-abiding and orderly; and these are justice and moderation. Do you say so, or not?

Callicles

Let it be so.

Socrates

So, keeping his eye on these things, that orator — the skilled and good one — will apply to people's souls whatever speeches he gives, and all his actions besides, and if he gives some gift, he'll give it, and if he takes something away, he'll take it away, always with his mind fixed on this: how justice might arise in his fellow citizens' souls and injustice be driven out, how moderation might come to be there and lack of restraint be driven out, and how their other virtue might arise and vice depart. Do you agree, or not?

Callicles

I agree.

Socrates

Because what good is it, Callicles, to give a body that's sick and in bad condition plenty of food, even the most pleasant kind, or drink, or anything else, if it won't do it any more good — and, by a fair reckoning, even less good than the opposite would? Isn't that so?

Callicles

Let it be so.

Socrates

Because I don't think it profits a person to live with a body in bad condition — since that means living badly, of necessity. Or isn't that so?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

So don't doctors, as a rule, allow a healthy person to satisfy his appetites, letting him eat as much as he wants when hungry, or drink when thirsty, while a sick person, one might say, they never allow to fill himself with what he desires? Do you agree with this too?

Callicles

I do.

Socrates

And isn't it the same way with the soul, my excellent friend? As long as it's in bad condition — being mindless, unrestrained, unjust, and unholy — it must be held back from its appetites, and not permitted to do anything except what will make it better; do you say so, or not?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

Because that's better for the soul, isn't it?

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

And isn't holding it back from what it desires a matter of correcting it?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

So being corrected is better for the soul than lacking restraint, just as you thought a moment ago.

Callicles

I don't know what you're talking about, Socrates — ask somebody else.

Socrates

This man can't stand being helped, or undergoing the very thing our discussion is about — being corrected.

Callicles

And I don't care in the least about what you're saying — and I only answered you this far as a favor to Gorgias.

Socrates

Very well — so what shall we do, then? Shall we break off the discussion in the middle?

Callicles

You'll have to decide that yourself.

Socrates

But they say it isn't even permitted to leave stories unfinished in the middle — you have to put a head on them, so they don't go around headless. So answer the rest too, so our discussion can get a head.

Callicles

What a bully you are, Socrates. If you'll listen to me, you'll let this discussion go, or else find someone else to argue with.

Socrates

Well, who else is willing? Because we really shouldn't leave the discussion unfinished.

Callicles

Couldn't you get through the discussion yourself, either talking it out on your own or answering your own questions?

The Argument's Bonds of Iron and Adamant

Socrates

So Epicharmus's saying may come true for me — what two men used to say before, I, one man, may prove able to say. But it looks like this really is the most necessary thing. If we're actually going to do this, though, I think all of us need to be eager to find out what's true and what's false in what we're saying; it's a good shared by everyone alike once it comes out into the open. So I'll go through the argument the way it seems to me to stand; and if any of you thinks I'm not agreeing with myself about how things really are, you should take hold of it and refute me. I'm not saying what I say because I know it, but because I'm searching together with all of you, so that if the person disputing with me turns out to be saying something worthwhile, I'll be the first to agree. Still, I'm saying all this on the assumption that we ought to carry the argument through to the end; but if you don't want to, let's drop it right now and go.

Gorgias

But it doesn't seem to me yet time to leave, Socrates — you should go through the argument to the end; it looks to me like the others think so too. I myself, for one, want to hear you go through what's left yourself.

Socrates

But truly, Gorgias, I myself would happily go on talking with our friend Callicles here, until I paid him back Amphion's speech for Zethus's; but since you, Callicles, aren't willing to help me see the argument through, at least listen to me and step in if you think I'm not speaking well . And if you refute me, I won't be annoyed with you the way you were with me — instead you'll be registered as my greatest benefactor.

Callicles

Go on, my good man, speak for yourself and finish it.

Socrates

Listen, then, while I take up the argument again from the beginning. Is the pleasant the same as the good?—Not the same, as Callicles and I agreed.—Now, which is it: do we choose the pleasant because of the good, or the good because of the pleasant?—The pleasant, because of the good.—And the pleasant is that whose presence gives us pleasure, and the good is that whose presence makes us good?—Certainly.—And we, and everything else that's good, are good once some excellence is present in us?—That seems necessary to me, Callicles.—But surely the excellence of each thing — a tool, a body, a soul again, any living creature — comes to it at its finest not by chance, but through arrangement, correctness, and whatever craft has been assigned to each; is that so?—Yes, I say so.—So the excellence of each thing is arranged by arrangement and given order?—I'd say so.—So it's some order, arising in each thing and proper to it, that makes each existing thing good?—So it seems to me.—And a soul that has its own order is better than one without order?—Necessarily.—And surely one that has order is orderly?—How could it not be?—And the orderly one is moderate ?—Quite necessarily.—So the moderate soul is good. I have nothing else to say against this, my dear Callicles; but if you do, teach me.

Callicles

Speak, my good man.

Socrates

I say this: if the moderate soul is good, then the one in the opposite condition to the moderate is bad; and that one was the foolish and unrestrained soul.—Certainly.—And surely the moderate man would do what's fitting, both toward gods and toward men; for he wouldn't be moderate if he did what's not fitting?—That must be so.—And doing what's fitting toward men, he'd be doing just things, and toward gods, pious things; and a man who does just and pious things must be just and pious.—That's so.—And he must be brave too; for it's not the mark of a moderate man to chase or avoid what he shouldn't, but to avoid and pursue whatever things, people, pleasures, and pains he ought to, and to hold his ground and endure where he must; so it's altogether necessary , Callicles, that the moderate man, as we've gone through, being just and brave and pious, is a completely good man; and that the good man does well and finely whatever he does; and that the one who does well is blessed and happy, while the wicked one, who does badly, is wretched; and this last would be the man in the condition opposite to the moderate — the unrestrained man, whom you were praising.

So I hold to all this, and I say it's true; and if it's true, then anyone who wants, it seems, to be happy must pursue and practice moderation, and flee licentiousness as fast as his feet will carry him, and above all arrange things so he never needs correcting, but if he does need it — himself, or anyone close to him, whether a private person or a city — then punishment must be imposed and correction applied, if he's going to be happy. This seems to me to be the goal a person should keep in view and live by, directing everything he does — his own affairs and the city's — toward making sure justice and moderation will be present in the man who's going to be happy, acting that way instead of letting his desires run unrestrained and trying to fill them up, an endless evil, living a bandit's life. A man like that couldn't be dear to anyone else, human or god; he's incapable of community, and where there's no community, there can be no friendship. The wise say, Callicles, that heaven and earth, gods and men, are all held together by community, friendship, orderliness, moderation, and justice — and that's why they call the whole of it order, my friend, not disorder or licentiousness. But you seem to me to pay no attention to any of this, clever as you are, and it has escaped you that geometric equality has great power among both gods and men, while you think one should practice getting more; that's because you neglect geometry. Well then; either this argument of ours must be refuted — that it's not by possessing justice and moderation that the happy are happy, and by possessing vice that the wretched are wretched — or, if it's true, we need to look at what follows from it. And all those earlier things follow, Callicles — the ones you asked me about, whether I was serious when I said that a person ought to accuse himself, his son, or his companion, if he does any wrong, and that rhetoric should be used for this purpose; and what you thought Polus admitted only out of shame turns out to be true after all — that doing wrong is worse than suffering it by exactly as much as it's more shameful ; and that the man who's going to be a genuine orator must be just and knowledgeable about just things, which Polus in turn said Gorgias admitted only out of shame.

Since that's how things stand, let's consider what it actually is you're reproaching me with — whether it's well said or not — that I'm not capable of helping myself or any of my friends or family, or saving them from the greatest dangers, and that I'm at the mercy of anyone who wants, the way disgraced men are at the mercy of anyone who's willing — whether he wants to hit me across the face, that vigorous phrase of yours, or take my money, or drive me out of the city, or, worst of all, kill me; and that being in such a position is the most shameful thing there is, according to your argument. But my own position, whatever it is, has already been stated many times, and nothing stops me from stating it again now; I say, Callicles, that being struck unjustly across the face isn't the most shameful thing, and neither is having my body cut, or my purse — but striking me and mine unjustly, and cutting us, is more shameful and worse, and so is stealing, enslaving, breaking into my house, and in a word doing any wrong at all to me and mine — for the one doing the wrong, it's worse and more shameful than it is for me, the one wronged. These things, having appeared to us this way, up there in our earlier discussions, are held fast and bound, as I put it, and — if I may put it rather crudely — bound by arguments of iron and adamant, or so it would seem, at any rate; arguments which, unless you or someone even more forceful than you break them, no one can say anything other than what I'm now saying and still speak well; since, for my part, my position is always the same — that I myself don't know how these things stand, but that of everyone I've ever met, as now, no one can say anything different without being ridiculous. So I, for my part, maintain once again that this is how things stand; and if this is so, and doing wrong is the greatest of evils for the one doing it, and greater still than this greatest evil — if such a thing is possible — is for the wrongdoer to escape paying the penalty, then what kind of help, if a person can't provide it for himself, would make him truly ridiculous? Isn't it the help that would turn aside the greatest harm to us? It must surely be the most shameful thing, then, not to be able to provide that help either for oneself or for one's own friends and family, and the next most shameful not to be able to help against the second-worst evil, and the third most shameful against the third, and so on down the line; the greater the natural size of each evil, the finer it is to be able to help against it, and the more shameful not to be able to. Or does it stand some other way than this, Callicles?

Callicles

Not some other way.

Socrates

So, there being two things, doing wrong and suffering wrong, we say doing wrong is the greater evil, and suffering wrong the lesser. What, then, would a person need to acquire in order to help himself and get both these benefits — the one that comes from not doing wrong, and the one that comes from not suffering wrong? Power, or wishing? Here's what I mean: if he simply doesn't wish to suffer wrong, will he not suffer it, or does he need to acquire the power not to suffer wrong in order not to suffer it?

Callicles

That much is clear — if he has the power.

Socrates

And what about doing wrong? Is it enough for him simply not to wish to do wrong — since then he won't do it — or does he also need to acquire some power and craft for this , so that if he doesn't learn and practice it, he'll do wrong? Why don't you just answer me this, Callicles: do you think Polus and I were right to be forced into agreeing, earlier in the discussion, or not, when we agreed that no one does wrong willingly, and that everyone who does wrong does it unwillingly?

Currying a Tyrant's Favour, and the Craft That Saves Lives

Callicles

Let's grant you that, Socrates, so that you can finish the argument.

Socrates

So for this too, it seems, we need to acquire some power and craft, so that we don't do wrong.

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

So what craft, then, provides for not being wronged at all, or as little as possible? See if you think the same as I do. Because it seems to me to be this: either a man must rule in the city himself, or even be tyrant, or be a partner of the government currently in power.

Callicles

You see, Socrates, how ready I am to praise you, whenever you say something well? This seems to me very well put.

Socrates

Then consider this too, and see if you think I'm right. It seems to me that each person is a friend to another as much as possible in the way the ancients and the wise put it — like to like. Don't you think so too?

Callicles

I do.

Socrates

So wherever a savage, uneducated man is tyrant and ruler, if someone in the city were far better than he is, the tyrant would surely be afraid of him, and could never wholeheartedly become his friend?

Callicles

That's so.

Socrates

Nor, if someone were far worse, could that man be his friend either; the tyrant would look down on him, and would never take him seriously as a friend.

Callicles

That's true too.

Socrates

So the only friend worth mentioning left for a man like that is someone of the same character, who blames and praises the same things, and is willing to be ruled and to submit to the ruler. This man will have great power in that city, and no one will wrong him and get away with it. Isn't that how it is?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

So if one of the young men in that city were to consider, in what way could I gain great power and have no one wrong me? This, it seems, is his path: to accustom himself, right from youth, to take pleasure and displeasure in the same things as his master, and to arrange things so that he becomes as much like him as possible. Isn't that so?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

So this man will have achieved both not being wronged and having great power in the city, according to your account.

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

But does he also achieve not doing wrong? Or is that far from true, if he's going to be like a ruler who's unjust, and have great power at his side? No — I think it's exactly the opposite: his preparation will be aimed at being able to do as much wrong as possible, and doing wrong without paying the penalty. Isn't that so?

Callicles

It seems so.

Socrates

So the greatest evil will befall him — being corrupt in his soul and maimed, because of his imitation of his master and his power.

Callicles

I don't know how you keep turning the arguments upside down every time, Socrates; or don't you know that the man who does the imitating will kill the one who doesn't, if he wants to, and take his property away?

Socrates

I know it, my good Callicles, unless I'm deaf — I've heard it just now from you, and from Polus, many times over, and from nearly everyone else in the city; but you listen to me too: he'll kill him, if he wants — but he'll be a wicked man killing a fine and good one.

Callicles

And isn't that exactly the outrageous part?

Socrates

Not to a man with sense, at any rate, as the argument shows. Or do you think a person ought to arrange to live as long as possible, and practice the crafts that always save us from danger — the way you tell me to practice rhetoric, the kind that saves people in the courtroom?

Callicles

Yes, by Zeus, and giving you good advice too.

Socrates

But what about this, my excellent fellow? Does the knowledge of swimming seem to you to be some solemn thing?

Callicles

No, by Zeus, not to me.

Socrates

And yet it too saves people from death, whenever they fall into a situation where that knowledge is needed. And if that seems too small a thing to you, I'll tell you of a greater one : the pilot's craft, which saves not only lives but also bodies and property from the direst dangers, the way rhetoric does. And this craft is modest and orderly, and doesn't put on airs, dressing itself up as though it were doing something magnificent, but having accomplished the very same result as the courtroom pleader's craft — if it brings someone safely here from Aegina, I think it charges two obols, and if from Egypt or the Black Sea, however great the distance, for this great service — having saved, as I was just saying, the man himself, his children, his property, and his womenfolk — it sets them ashore at the harbor and charges two drachmas; and the man who has the craft, having accomplished all that, steps off the ship and walks along the beach beside it in a modest manner; for I imagine he knows how to reckon that it's unclear which of his fellow passengers he benefited by not letting them drown, and which he harmed, knowing that he put none of them ashore any better than they were when they boarded, neither in body nor in soul. So he reckons that it isn't the case that if a man burdened with great, incurable diseases of the body failed to drown, that man is wretched for not having died, and got no benefit from him; but that if someone, on the other hand, has many incurable diseases in what is more valuable than the body, the soul, and this man is to go on living, the pilot will do him a service by saving him, whether from the sea, or the courtroom, or wherever else he saves him from — no, he knows that it's no better for a corrupt man to live; for such a man is bound to live badly.

That's why it isn't customary for the pilot to give himself airs, even though he saves us, nor for the engineer either, my remarkable friend, who's sometimes able to save no less than a general — to say nothing of a pilot — or anyone else; because sometimes he saves whole cities. Doesn't he seem to you to be on the same level as the courtroom pleader? And yet if he wanted to talk the way you people do, Callicles, giving the business a grand air , he could bury you in words, saying and urging that everyone ought to become an engineer, since nothing else amounts to anything; his argument would be more than adequate for it. But you look down on him and his craft all the same, and you'd use engineer as an insult, and you wouldn't want to give your daughter to his son, or take his daughter for yourself. And yet, given the grounds on which you praise your own pursuits, what fair reason do you have to look down on the engineer and the others I just mentioned? I know you'd say you're better, and from better people. But if the better isn't what I say it is, and instead virtue itself just is saving yourself and what's yours, whatever sort of person you happen to be, then your contempt for the engineer, the doctor, and the other crafts made for the sake of saving people becomes ridiculous. No, my good man, consider whether what's noble and good might be something other than saving and being saved. Because a man who's truly a man should let this — living for however long — go, and not cling to life, but leave these matters to the god and trust the women who say no one can escape his fated portion, and then turn to the question of how he might live as well as possible in whatever time he has left — whether by making himself like the government of the city he lives in, and so whether you now need to become as much like the Athenian people as possible, if you're going to be dear to them and have great power in the city; consider whether that actually pays off for you and for me, so that we don't end up, my good friend, suffering what they say the Thessalian witches suffer who pull down the moon — that we pay for this power in the city with what we hold dearest. But if you think any human being at all is going to hand you a craft that will let you have great power in this city while being unlike its government, whether for better or for worse, then, as it seems to me, you're not planning correctly, Callicles; you can't be an imitator — you have to be naturally like them, if you're going to produce anything genuine that wins the friendship of the Athenian people, and, by Zeus, of Pyrilampes' son too. So whoever makes you most like these people will make you into what you long to be — a politician and orator; for each group takes pleasure in speeches made to match its own character , and resents speeches that don't fit it, unless you have something else to say, my dear fellow. Do we have anything to say to that, Callicles?

Callicles

I don't know how it is, Socrates, but you seem to me to be right somehow, yet I feel what most people feel — I'm not entirely convinced by you.

Socrates

That's because the love of the people, Callicles, at home in your soul, is resisting me; but if we examine these same things over again many times, [perhaps even] better , you'll be convinced. Just recall that we said there were two ways of caring for each thing, body and soul alike: one that deals with pleasure, and another that deals with what's best, not indulging but fighting against it. Isn't that what we settled on back then?

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

So the one that deals with pleasure is base, and turns out to be nothing but flattery — isn't that so?

Callicles

Let it be so for you, if you like.

Socrates

And the other one aims at making whatever we're caring for — body or soul, whichever it happens to be — as good as possible?

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

So is this how we ought to go about caring for the city and its citizens — trying to make the citizens themselves as good as possible? Because without that, as we found earlier, there's no use in providing any other benefit at all, unless the intentions of the people who are going to acquire great wealth, or rule over others, or hold any other kind of power, are fine and good. Shall we say that's how it is?

Callicles

Certainly, if that's more agreeable to you.

Socrates

So if, Callicles, we were calling on each other to take up public affairs and turn to building projects — the greatest structures, whether walls, dockyards, or temples — should we first have examined and questioned ourselves , whether we knew the craft of building or not, and from whom we'd learned it? Should we have, or not?

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

And here's the second question: whether we'd ever actually built a building on our own, either for a friend or for ourselves, and whether that building was fine or shameful; and if, on examining the matter, we found that our teachers had been good and distinguished, and that we'd built many fine buildings together with our teachers, and many more on our own once we'd parted ways with them — in that condition, it would make sense to go on to public works; but if we had no teacher of our own to point to, and either no buildings at all, or many that weren't worth anything, then surely it would be senseless to attempt public works and call on each other to undertake them. Shall we say that's rightly put, or not?

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

And so it is with everything else too; and if we'd taken it upon ourselves to practice medicine in public and called on each other as competent doctors, surely I'd have examined you and you'd have examined me — come, by the gods, how is Socrates himself doing in bodily health? Or has anyone else, slave or free, ever been rid of a disease because of Socrates? I imagine I'd have questioned you along the same lines too; and if we found that no one had become better in body because of us, neither foreigner nor citizen, neither man nor woman, then by Zeus, Callicles, wouldn't it truly be laughable, for people to reach such a pitch of folly that, before practicing privately, doing a great many things as chance would have it, and getting a good many right, and training sufficiently in the craft, they attempt — as the saying goes — to learn pottery on a full-sized jar, and try to practice in public themselves, and call on other people like themselves to do the same? Doesn't it seem to you that acting that way would be senseless?

Callicles

It does to me.

Did the Great Statesmen Make Athens Better, or Only Bigger?

Socrates

But now, best of men — since you are just now starting to handle the city's affairs yourself, while you keep urging me on and reproaching me for not taking part — come, let's examine each other: has Callicles by now made any citizen better? Is there anyone — foreigner or citizen, slave or free — who was wicked before, unjust and undisciplined and foolish, and has become fine and good because of Callicles? Tell me — if someone were to question you on this, Callicles — what will you say? Who will you say you have made better by keeping company with you? Are you reluctant to answer, if there is some deed of yours from when you were still a private citizen, before you attempted public life?

Callicles

You're a contentious man, Socrates.

Socrates

No, I'm not asking out of contentiousness, but because I genuinely want to know in what manner you think one ought to conduct politics among us. Or is it something else you'll take care of for us once you turn to the city's affairs, rather than making the citizens as good as possible? Or haven't we already agreed many times over that this is what the political man must do? Have we agreed, or not? Answer. We have agreed — I'll answer on your behalf. So if this is what a good man must provide for his own city, think back now and tell me about those men you were mentioning a little earlier — whether you still think they turned out to be good citizens — Pericles, Cimon, Miltiades, and Themistocles.

Callicles

I do.

Socrates

Then if they were good, clearly each of them made the citizens better instead of worse. Did he, or not?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

So when Pericles first began speaking before the assembly, were the Athenians worse than when he was giving his last speeches?

Callicles

Perhaps.

Socrates

Not perhaps, best of men, but a necessity from what we've agreed, if he really was a good citizen.

Callicles

What of it, then?

Socrates

Nothing — but tell me this too: whether the Athenians are said to have become better because of Pericles, or, on the contrary, to have been utterly ruined by him. For this is what I hear — that Pericles made the Athenians idle and cowardly and talkative and money-loving, by being the first to establish paid service.

Callicles

You're hearing that from the men with the battered ears, Socrates.

Socrates

But this I no longer merely hear — both you and I know clearly that Pericles was well regarded at first, and the Athenians voted no shameful conviction against him while they were worse; but once they had become fine and good because of him, at the end of Pericles's life, they convicted him of theft, and came close to sentencing him to death — clearly because they thought him wicked.

Callicles

What of it? Was Pericles bad because of that?

Socrates

Well, a keeper of donkeys or horses or cattle, at any rate, would be thought a bad one if this were his record — if he took them over not kicking or butting or biting him, and turned them into animals doing all of that out of savageness. Or don't you think any keeper of any animal whatever is a bad one, if he takes over gentler creatures and turns them out wilder than he received them? Do you think so, or not?

Callicles

Certainly — just to indulge you.

Socrates

Then indulge me on this too, and answer: is man one of the animals, or not?

Callicles

Of course he is.

Socrates

So Pericles was taking care of human beings?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

What then? Shouldn't they, as we just agreed, have become more just instead of more unjust because of him, if he really was taking care of them as a man good in political matters?

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

Now the just are gentle, as Homer said — but what do you say? Isn't that so?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

And yet he made them come out wilder than he received them — and toward himself, of all people, whom he'd least have wished it.

Callicles

Do you want me to agree with you?

Socrates

If you think I'm telling the truth.

Callicles

All right, let it be so.

Socrates

Then if wilder, also more unjust and worse?

Callicles

Let it be.

Socrates

Then by this argument Pericles was not good at politics.

Callicles

Not by your account, anyway.

Socrates

No, by Zeus, nor by yours either, from what you've agreed. Now tell me again about Cimon — didn't the very men he served ostracize him, so as not to hear his voice for ten years? And didn't they do the same to Themistocles, and add exile as punishment? And didn't they vote to throw Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, into the pit, and if not for the presiding officer, wouldn't he have gone in? And yet if these men were good, as you claim, they would never have suffered any of this. Good charioteers, surely, don't fall out of their chariots at the start and then fall out later, once they've trained their horses and become better drivers themselves — that isn't how it works, either in chariot-driving or in any other line of work — or do you think it is?

Callicles

Not to me.

Socrates

So it seems our earlier arguments were true, that we know of no man who has turned out good at politics in this city. You agreed there was none among the men of today, but there was among the men of the past, and you picked out these particular men — but they've turned out to be no better than the men of today, so that, if they were orators, they used neither the true rhetoric — for then they wouldn't have fallen — nor the flattering kind.

Callicles

But it's far from the case, Socrates, that any man alive today could accomplish deeds like the ones any of these men — whichever one you please — accomplished.

Socrates

My good man, I'm not faulting them as servants of the city either — they seem to me to have been more capable servants than the men of today, and better able to supply the city with what it desired. But when it comes to redirecting people's desires instead of indulging them, persuading and compelling the citizens toward whatever would actually make them better — in that, they differed from the men of today, one might say, not at all; and that is the one task of a good citizen. As for ships and walls and dockyards and plenty of other things of that kind, I grant you those men were cleverer at supplying them. So you and I are doing something absurd in our discussion — the whole time we've been talking, we haven't stopped circling back to the same point, each failing to grasp what the other is saying. At any rate, I think you've many times agreed and recognized that this business, whether concerning the body or the soul, comes in two kinds: one of them is a service, capable of supplying, if our bodies are hungry, food, if thirsty, drink, if cold, clothes, bedding, shoes, or whatever else bodies come to desire — and I'm deliberately using the same images with you, so you'll follow more easily. For being able to supply any of these things — whether as a shopkeeper or a merchant or a craftsman of one of them, a baker or a cook or a weaver or a shoemaker or a tanner — it's no wonder that a man of that kind seems, both to himself and to others, to be a caretaker of the body, to anyone who doesn't know that there is, apart from all these, one craft, physical training together with medicine, which really is the caretaking of the body, and which rightly ought to rule over all these crafts and make use of their products, because it alone knows what is good and bad among foods and drinks for the excellence of the body, while all the others are ignorant of this — which is why these other crafts, in dealing with the body, are slavish and servile and unfree, while physical training and medicine are, by right, their mistresses. That the same holds for the soul as well — at times you seem to me to understand what I'm saying, and agree as though you know what I mean; but a little later you come round saying that men have become fine and good citizens in the city, and when I ask which men, you seem to me to be putting forward, for politics, men of exactly the same stripe as if, when I asked about physical training who has become or is a good caretaker of bodies, you told me quite in earnest, Thearion the baker, and Mithaecus, who wrote the book on Sicilian cookery, and Sarambus the wine-merchant — that these men have turned out to be wonderful caretakers of bodies, one preparing wonderful bread, another relish, another wine. Well, perhaps you'd be indignant if I told you: my good man, you understand nothing about physical training — you're telling me about servants, men who supply desires, with no understanding of anything fine and good about the matter, who, if it so happens, stuff and fatten people's bodies, get praised for it, and along the way destroy their old flesh too; while the people themselves, in their inexperience, won't blame the ones who feasted them as the cause of their sicknesses and the loss of their old flesh, but rather whoever happens to be present at the time offering some advice, once that earlier overindulgence brings on sickness a good while later, arriving as it does with no regard for health — these are the ones they'll blame and censure and do some harm to, if they can, while praising those earlier men, the actual causes of the trouble, to the skies. And that, Callicles, is exactly what you're doing now — you praise men who have feasted the citizens, filling them up with whatever they wanted. And people say these men made the city great — but that it's swollen and festering underneath because of those men of old, that they don't perceive. For without moderation and justice they've filled the city with harbors and dockyards and walls and tribute and nonsense of that kind; so when this collapse of its weakness comes, they'll blame whoever happens to be advising at the time, and praise Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles, the actual causes of the trouble — and perhaps they'll take hold of you too, if you aren't careful, and of my friend Alcibiades, once they start losing even the old possessions along with what they've newly gained — though you two aren't the causes of the trouble, only perhaps its accomplices. And yet I see a foolish thing happening even now, and I hear the same about the men of old. For I notice that whenever the city takes some political man to task as a wrongdoer, they grow indignant and complain bitterly at the terrible treatment they're suffering — as if, having done the city many good services, they're now being unjustly destroyed by it, or so their story goes. But the whole thing is a lie — no leader of a city could ever be unjustly destroyed by the very city he leads. It seems the same holds for all who claim to be statesmen as for all who claim to be sophists. For the sophists too, wise as they are in other respects, do this absurd thing — claiming to be teachers of virtue, they often accuse their own students of wronging them, cheating them of their fees and paying back no other gratitude either, after having been well treated by them. And what could be more unreasonable than this claim — that men who have become good and just, who have had injustice removed from them by their teacher and have acquired justice instead, should do wrong by means of something they no longer have? Doesn't that strike you as absurd, my friend? You've truly forced me into giving a speech, Callicles, by refusing to answer.

Callicles

And you wouldn't be able to talk, if no one answered you?

The True Political Craft, and a Trial Foreseen

Socrates

So it seems — at any rate, I'm stretching out long speeches now, since you refuse to answer. But, my good man, tell me, in Zeus's name, god of friendship — don't you think it's unreasonable for someone who claims to have made a person good to then blame that same person, made good and being good through him, for afterward turning out wicked?

Callicles

I think so.

Socrates

Now don't you hear men who claim to educate people in virtue saying things like that?

Callicles

I do — but why would you talk about men who aren't worth anything?

Socrates

Then why would you talk about those men who claim to lead the city and take care that it becomes as good as possible, and then turn around and accuse it, whenever it suits them, of being utterly wicked? Do you think these men are any different from the others? The sophist and the orator, my dear fellow, are the same thing, or nearly the same and closely related, as I was telling Polus — but out of ignorance you think one of them, rhetoric, is something altogether splendid, while you look down on the other. But in truth sophistry is as much finer than rhetoric as legislation is finer than the administration of justice, and physical training finer than medicine — and I, for my part, thought it was only public speakers and sophists who had no room to blame the very thing they teach as bad for its practitioners, or else, in that same breath, to accuse themselves of never having benefited the very people they claim to benefit. Isn't that how it is?

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

And surely, then, giving that benefit for free, as one would expect, was possible only for these men, if they were telling the truth. For with any other benefit, someone who's received it — say, made swift by a trainer — might perhaps cheat him of his due gratitude, if the trainer let him go without first striking a bargain for pay and taking the money at the very moment he passed on the speed — since it's not slowness, I imagine, that makes men do wrong, but injustice — isn't that so?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

So if someone removes this very thing, injustice itself, there's no danger of his ever being wronged, but for him alone it's safe to give away this particular benefit for free, if someone really could make people good. Isn't that so?

Callicles

I agree.

Socrates

That's why, it seems, there's nothing shameful in taking money for giving other kinds of advice — about building houses, say, or the other crafts.

Callicles

So it seems.

Socrates

But when it comes to this particular business — by what means someone might become as good as possible and best manage his own household or city — it's considered shameful to refuse to give advice unless someone pays for it. Isn't that so?

Callicles

Yes.

Socrates

Clearly the reason is that this, alone among benefits, makes the one who has received it want to do good in return — so it seems a fine sign, if a man who has done this particular good is treated well in return; and if not, not. Is that how things stand?

Callicles

It is.

Socrates

So which kind of care for the city are you calling me to — define it for me: the kind that fights hard with the Athenians so that they'll become as good as possible, like a doctor, or the kind that serves them and speaks to please them? Tell me the truth, Callicles — it's only fair, since you began speaking frankly with me, that you keep on saying what you actually think. So speak up now, clearly and nobly.

Callicles

Well then, I say the kind that serves them.

Socrates

So you're calling me, noblest of men, to a life of flattering them.

Callicles

If you'd rather call it playing the Mysian, Socrates — because if you won't do that—

Socrates

Don't say what you've said so often — that anyone who wants to can kill me — so that I don't in turn say, a wicked man killing a good one; nor that he'll take my property if I have any, so that I don't in turn say, but having taken it he won't know what to do with it, but just as he took it from me unjustly, so too he'll use it unjustly once he has it, and if unjustly, shamefully, and if shamefully, badly.

Callicles

You really do seem to me, Socrates, to be confident that none of this could happen to you — as if you lived out of harm's way and could never be hauled into court by some thoroughly rotten and worthless man.

Socrates

Then I really am a fool, Callicles, if I don't think that in this city anyone at all, whoever it happens to be, could suffer that. But this much I know well — that if I do go into court facing danger over one of the things you're talking about, the man bringing me in will be some scoundrel, since no decent man would bring in someone who's done no wrong — and it wouldn't be at all strange if I died for it. Do you want me to tell you why I expect this?

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

I think that I, along with a few Athenians — not to say alone — am attempting the true political craft, and that I'm the only man alive today practicing politics; so since the speeches I make each time aren't spoken to please, but aim at the best, not at the most pleasant, and since I'm unwilling to do those clever tricks you recommend, I'll have nothing to say for myself in court. The same argument comes back to me that I made to Polus — I'll be judged the way a doctor would be judged before a jury of children, prosecuted by a cook. Just think what a man like that could say in his own defense, caught in that position, if someone brought a charge against him, saying: children, this man here has done a great deal of harm to you, to you yourselves — he ruins your youngest with cutting and burning, and by starving and choking you leaves you at a loss, giving you the bitterest draughts and forcing hunger and thirst on you, not like me, who feasted you on all sorts of good things — what do you think a doctor, caught in that bind, could find to say? Or if he told the truth — that he did all of this for your health, children — how loud a cry do you think jurors like that would raise? Wouldn't it be loud?

Callicles

Perhaps — one should assume so, at least.

Socrates

So don't you think he'd be at a complete loss for what he ought to say?

Callicles

Certainly.

Socrates

And that, I know well, is just the kind of thing I would suffer if I went into court. For I won't be able to point to any pleasures I've supplied them with, the kind they count as benefits and services, and I envy neither the men who supply them nor those they're supplied to; and if someone claims I corrupt the young by putting them at a loss, or that I slander my elders with bitter words in private or in public, I'll have no way to say the true thing — that I say all of this justly, and that I'm acting, gentlemen of the jury, in your own interest — nor anything else at all; so whatever happens to come, that, I suppose, is what I'll suffer.

Callicles

So does it seem to you, Socrates, to be a fine thing, for a man in a city to be in such a state, and unable to help himself?

Socrates

Yes — provided he has that one thing, Callicles, which you've agreed to many times: provided he has already helped himself, by having neither said nor done anything unjust, whether toward men or toward gods. For this kind of help to oneself has often been agreed between us to be the strongest kind there is. Now if someone were to prove me unable to give this kind of help, to myself or to anyone else, I'd be ashamed, whether refuted before a crowd or a few, or alone by one man alone, and if I died because of that incapacity, I'd be indignant — but if I should die for lack of the flattering kind of rhetoric, I know well you would see me bear my death easily. For dying itself is feared by no one, unless he's utterly unreasoning and unmanly — what's feared is doing wrong, since arriving in Hades with a soul crammed full of wrongdoing is the worst of all evils. And if you like, I'm willing to tell you a story showing that this is so.

Callicles

Well, since you've finished everything else, finish this too.

The Myth of Judgment

Socrates

Listen, then, they say, to a very fine account — one you'll take for a myth, I imagine, but I take for a true story; for I'll tell you what I'm about to tell you as something that actually happened. As Homer tells it, Zeus and Poseidon and Pluto divided up the rule between them, once they had taken it over from their father. Now there was this law about human beings under Cronus, and it still holds among the gods even now: that whoever has lived out his life justly and piously should, once he dies, depart to the islands of the blessed and dwell there in complete happiness, free of evils, while whoever has lived unjustly and impiously should go to the prison of retribution and justice, the place they call Tartarus. The judges of these cases, under Cronus and still recently under Zeus's rule, were living men judging the living, on the very day each person was due to die — and so the cases were judged badly. So Pluto and the overseers coming from the islands of the blessed kept telling Zeus that men were arriving on both sides who didn't belong there. So Zeus said: well, I'll put a stop to this happening. For right now the cases are being judged badly. The ones being judged, he said, are judged still clothed — for they're judged while alive. Now many people, he said, with wicked souls are dressed up in fine bodies and lineages and riches, and when the judgment comes, plenty of witnesses show up for them, ready to testify that they've lived justly; so the judges are overawed by these witnesses, and at the same time they themselves judge while still clothed, with their own eyes and ears and whole body screening off their soul. So all of this stands in their way — their own coverings and the coverings of the men being judged alike. So first of all, he said, they must stop knowing their death beforehand, since right now they know it in advance. That much, in fact, has already been told to Prometheus, so he'll stop them from knowing it. Next, they must be judged stripped of all of that — for they must be judged while dead. And the judge too must be naked — dead himself — studying the soul itself with his own soul alone, the moment each person dies, stripped of all his kin and having left behind on earth all that finery, so that the judgment may be just. So having recognized this before you did, I made judges of my own sons — two from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and one from Europe, Aeacus — and once they themselves have died, they'll hold court in the meadow, at the fork from which the two roads lead off, one toward the islands of the blessed, the other toward Tartarus. Rhadamanthus will judge those from Asia, and Aeacus those from Europe, and to Minos I'll give the privilege of deciding whenever the other two are at a loss over some point, so that the judgment on people's journey may be as just as possible.

This, Callicles, is what I've heard and believe to be true — and from this account I reckon something like the following follows. Death, it seems to me, is nothing other than the separation of two things, soul and body, from each other; and once they've been separated from one another, each of the two keeps its own condition not much less than it had while the person was alive, the body keeping its own nature, and all its treatments and sufferings plainly visible. For instance, if someone's body was large, whether by nature or by feeding or by both while he was alive, then his corpse is large once he's died too, and if fat, fat also once dead, and so on for the rest — and if in turn he made a practice of wearing his hair long, his corpse is long-haired too. Again, if someone was a whipped man and carried, while living, the traces of blows as scars on his body, whether from whips or other wounds, one can see his corpse bearing these same marks too; and if someone's limbs were broken or twisted in life, these same things are plainly visible in death as well. In a word, whatever condition the body had been prepared to have in life, these same features remain visible after death too, either all of them or most of them, for a certain span of time. The very same thing, then, seems to me to hold for the soul as well, Callicles — once it's stripped of the body, everything is plainly visible in the soul, both its natural features and the conditions the person's soul acquired through his practice of each particular thing. So whenever they arrive before their judge, those from Asia before Rhadamanthus, Rhadamanthus stops each of them and studies his soul, not knowing whose it is — but often, laying hold of the Great King or some other king or potentate, he finds nothing sound in the soul at all, but one flogged raw and covered with scars from perjuries and injustice, which each of his actions has smeared into the soul, and everything crooked from lying and pretension, nothing straight, because it was raised without truth; and he sees the soul crammed with disproportion and ugliness from unchecked power and luxury and violence and unrestrained conduct; and seeing it in this state, he sends it off in disgrace, straight to its place of confinement, where it's bound to go and undergo the sufferings it deserves. Now it's fitting for everyone undergoing punishment, when rightly punished by another, either to become better and benefit from it, or to become an example to others, so that others, seeing him suffer whatever he suffers, may grow better out of fear. Those who benefit and pay their penalty at the hands of gods and men are the ones who have committed curable wrongs; but even so, the benefit comes to them only through pain and suffering, both here and in Hades — for there's no other way to be rid of injustice. But those who have committed the worst wrongs, and through such crimes have become incurable, from these come the examples — and while these men themselves no longer benefit at all, being incurable, others benefit, who see them suffering, on account of their crimes, the greatest and most painful and most terrifying sufferings for all time, hung up there in Hades in the prison, quite literally as examples, sights and warnings for whichever wrongdoers keep on arriving. And I say Archelaus will be one of these, if Polus is telling the truth, and so will any other tyrant of that kind — and I think most of these examples turn out to have come from tyrants and kings and potentates and men who've handled the affairs of cities, since it's their power that lets them commit the greatest and most unholy crimes. Homer bears witness to this too — for he portrays kings and potentates as the ones punished in Hades for all time, Tantalus and Sisyphus and Tityus, while Thersites, or any other private person who was wicked, no poet has ever portrayed as gripped by great punishments as incurable — no doubt because it wasn't open to him to sin on that scale, which is why he was happier than those to whom it was open — but the truth is, Callicles, that it's from among the powerful that the utterly wicked men tend to come; nothing, however, stops good men from arising among these too, and it's very much worth admiring the ones who do; for it's hard, Callicles, and worthy of great praise, for a man given great scope to do wrong to live his life out justly. Few such men come to exist — though both here and elsewhere there have been, and I think there will go on being, men fine and good in this particular virtue, that of justly managing whatever's entrusted to them; and one has even become quite renowned among the rest of the Greeks, Aristides son of Lysimachus — but most men in power, my excellent friend, turn out wicked. So, as I was saying, whenever Rhadamanthus gets hold of someone of that kind, he knows nothing else about him — not who he is, nor whose son — only that he's some wicked man; and having seen this, he sends him off to Tartarus, marking him as to whether he seems curable or incurable, and once he arrives there he suffers what he deserves. But sometimes, catching sight of another soul that has lived piously and with truthfulness, that of a private man or someone else — most of all, I'd say, Callicles, a philosopher's, one who has minded his own business and not meddled in others' affairs during his life — he's filled with admiration and sends it off to the islands of the blessed. Aeacus does the very same — each of the two holds a rod as he judges — while Minos sits overseeing them, alone holding a golden scepter, as Homer's Odysseus says he saw him—

So I, Callicles, am persuaded by this account, and I'm looking to how I might show the judge a soul as healthy as possible — so, letting go of the honors most men prize, and practicing truth, I'll try, as best I can, to actually be as good as possible both in living and, when I come to die, in dying. And I call on all other people too, as far as I'm able, and I call on you especially, in return, to this life and this contest, which I say stands in place of all the contests here — and I reproach you with this: that you'll be unable to help yourself, when your trial and judgment comes, the one I was just now describing, but instead, going before that judge, the son of Aegina, once he takes hold of you and leads you off, you'll gape and grow dizzy there no less than I do here, and someone will perhaps strike you on the side of the head in utter disgrace, and treat you with contempt in every way.

Now perhaps all this seems to you to be told like an old wives' tale, and you look down on it — and there'd be nothing strange in looking down on it, if we could search and find something better and truer than this somewhere; but as it is, you can see that the three of you, the wisest of the Greeks alive today, you and Polus and Gorgias, cannot show that one ought to live any other life than this one, which also turns out to serve us well in that other place. But out of so many arguments, with all the others refuted, this one alone stands firm: that one must guard against doing wrong more than against suffering it, and that above everything else a man must practice, in private and in public alike, not seeming to be good but being it; and if anyone turns out bad in some respect, he must be corrected, and this is the second-best good, after being just — becoming just by being corrected and paying the penalty; and every kind of flattery, both toward oneself and toward others, whether toward the few or toward the many, must be avoided; and rhetoric, just like every other activity, must always be used toward what's just. So trust me, and follow this path, arriving at which you'll be happy both in life and in death, as the argument shows. And let someone look down on you as a fool and treat you with contempt, if he wants to, and yes, by Zeus, confidently let him strike you with that disgraceful blow — for you'll suffer nothing terrible, if you're truly fine and good, practicing virtue. And then, once we've practiced it together in this way, at that point, if it still seems we should, we'll take up politics, or whatever else seems best to us — and we'll decide then, being better at deciding than we are now. For it's shameful, in the state we plainly find ourselves in right now, to go on swaggering as though we were somebody, when we can never agree with ourselves twice over about the very same things, and that about the most important matters — to such a depth of ignorance have we sunk — so let's take as our guide the argument that has now come to light, which shows us that this way of life is the best, practicing justice and the rest of virtue both in living and in dying. Let's follow this one, then, and call on others to follow it too, rather than the one you trust in and use to call on me — for that one, Callicles, is worth nothing at all.