Republic

327a Yesterday I went down to the Piraeus with Glaucon, son of Ariston, to offer a prayer to the goddess and also to see how they would conduct the festival, since this was its first celebration. I thought the procession of the local people was beautiful; yet the procession the Thracians held seemed no less splendid. 327b After praying and watching the spectacle, we set off toward the city. Polemarchus, son of Cephalus, caught sight of us from a distance as we started home, and sent his servant running to ask us to wait for him. The servant caught hold of my cloak from behind and said, “Polemarchus asks you to wait.” I turned around and asked where he was. “He is coming up behind us,” he said. “Please wait.” “We will wait,” said Glaucon.327c A little later Polemarchus arrived, along with Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus, son of Nicias, and several others coming from the procession.Polemarchus said, “Socrates, you seem to be heading for the city on your way home.”“You are not mistaken,” I said.“Do you see how many of us there are?” he asked.“How could I not?”“Then either prove stronger than all of us,” he said, “or stay here.”“But,” I said, “there is another possibility: we might persuade you to let us go.”“Could you persuade us,” he asked, “if we refused to listen?”“Not at all,” said Glaucon.“Then you had better understand that we will not listen.”

328a “And besides,” Adeimantus said, “don’t you know there will be a torch race on horseback for the goddess this evening?”“On horseback?” I said. “That is new. Will they ride in a race passing torches from one to another? Is that what you mean?”“Yes,” said Polemarchus. “And they will hold an all-night festival, too, well worth seeing. We will get up after dinner and watch it, meet a great many of the young men there, and talk with them. So stay 328b and do not think of doing otherwise.”“Well, it seems we must stay,” said Glaucon.“If that is how it seems,” I said, “then that is what we must do.”So we went to Polemarchus’ house. There we found his brothers Lysias and Euthydemus, and also Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, Charmantides of Paeania, and Clitophon, son of Aristonymus. Polemarchus’ father Cephalus was inside as well. He seemed very old to me, for it had been a long time since 328c I had seen him. He sat crowned with a wreath upon a cushioned chair; he had just performed a sacrifice in the courtyard. We sat down beside him, for chairs were set there in a circle.As soon as Cephalus saw me, he welcomed me and said, “Socrates, you do not come down to visit us in the Piraeus often enough. You ought to. If I still had the strength to make the journey into the city easily, you would have no need to come 328d here; we would come to you. But as things are, you must visit us more frequently. Be assured that as my other pleasures, those of the body, fade away, my longing and pleasure in conversation grow in equal measure. So do not refuse: spend time with these young men, and visit us here as friends who are very close to you.”“Indeed, Cephalus,” I said, “I enjoy talking 328e with the very old. I think we should learn from them, as from people who have traveled ahead on a road that we too may have to take: whether it is rough and difficult, or easy and passable. And I would gladly hear what you have to say about it, now that you have reached what the poets call the threshold of old age. Is this a difficult time of life, or how do you describe it?”

329a “By Zeus, Socrates,” he said, “I will tell you how it seems to me. Some of us of roughly the same age often gather together, keeping up the old proverb. Most of us, when we meet, lament their lost youthful pleasures, recalling love affairs, drinking parties, feasts, and all that goes with them. They are distressed, as though robbed of something great, as though then they lived well and now they hardly live at all. 329b Others complain of insults they suffer from their own families on account of their age, and rehearse all the evils for which they hold old age responsible. But I think, Socrates, they are blaming the wrong cause. If age were responsible, I would have suffered the same things by virtue of my age, as would everyone else who had reached it. Yet I have met others who feel quite differently. Once I was with the poet Sophocles when someone asked him, ‘How are things 329c with love, Sophocles? Can you still sleep with a woman?’ He answered, ‘Hush, man! I am delighted to have escaped from that, as though I had fled a savage, frenzied master.’ I thought his answer excellent then, and think so no less now. In old age, at least where such things are concerned, there comes a profound peace and freedom. When desires stop straining at us and relax their hold, Sophocles’ words come entirely true: 329d it is an escape from a host of mad masters. But in these matters, and in troubles with family too, there is one cause, Socrates, and it is not old age but a person’s character. For those who are orderly and contented, even old age is only moderately burdensome; without those qualities, Socrates, both youth and age prove hard to bear.”I admired what he said and, wanting to encourage him 329e to speak further, said, “Cephalus, I imagine that when you say this, most people do not accept it. They suppose you bear old age easily not because of your character but because you possess considerable wealth; the rich, they say, have many consolations.”“You are right,” he said. “They do not accept it. There is something in what they say, but not so much as they think. The answer Themistocles gave was apt: when a man from Seriphus insulted him and said

330a that his fame came not from himself but from his city, he replied that he would not have become famous if he had been a Seriphian, nor would the other man if he had been an Athenian. The same answer serves those who are poor and find old age hard: a decent person could not bear old age with poverty very easily, while an indecent person, even if rich, could never be at ease with himself.”“Cephalus,” I said, “did you inherit most of what you own, or did you acquire it yourself?” 330b“What did I acquire, Socrates?” he said. “As a moneymaker, I stand somewhere between my grandfather and my father. My grandfather, whose name I bear, inherited about as much as I own now and made it many times greater. My father Lysanias made it smaller still than it is now. I will be satisfied if I can leave these sons of mine not less, but a little more than I inherited.”“The reason I asked,” I said, “is that you do not seem 330c particularly attached to money. That is generally true of people who have not made it themselves. Those who have earned it love it twice as much as others do. Just as poets love their poems and fathers their children, people who have made money care for it as their own work, besides valuing it for its use as others do. They are difficult company, because they will praise nothing but wealth.”“That is true,” he said. 330d“Indeed it is,” I said. “But tell me one thing more: what do you think is the greatest good you have gained from possessing considerable wealth?”“One that I may not convince many people of when I tell them,” he said. “You must know, Socrates, that when a man thinks he is close to death, fears and concerns come upon him that never troubled him before. The stories told about Hades, that anyone who has done wrong here must pay 330e for it there, which he has laughed at until now, then begin to trouble his soul: what if they are true? And he himself—whether from the weakness of age or because, nearing that place, he sees it more clearly—becomes full of suspicion and dread, and starts to reflect and examine whether he has wronged anyone.The man who finds his life filled with wrongs often wakes from sleep in fear like a child,

331a and lives in fearful expectation. But the man who knows he has done no wrong always has sweet hope at his side, a kindly nurse of old age, as Pindar says. For he put it beautifully, Socrates, when he said that a man who has lived in justice and reverencesweet to his heart,cherishing nurse of age, hope attends him;she above all steers the shiftingmind of mortal men.How wonderfully right he was. And it is chiefly with this in mind that I count the possession of wealth of the highest value—not 331b for every man, but for the decent and orderly man. Wealth contributes greatly to his not deceiving or lying to anyone, even unwillingly, and not departing for that other place afraid because he owes sacrifices to a god or money to a person. It has many other uses as well; but weighing one against another, Socrates, I would count this not the least of the ways in which wealth is useful to a man of sense.” 331c“That is beautifully said, Cephalus,” I said. “But as for this very thing, justice: shall we say it is simply telling the truth and returning what one has taken from another? Or can these very acts sometimes be just and sometimes unjust? I mean something like this: everyone would agree that if a man borrowed weapons from a friend who was in his right mind, and the friend went mad and demanded them back, he should not return them. The man who did would not be just, nor would a man who chose to tell someone in that condition the whole truth.” 331d“You are right,” he said.“So telling the truth and returning what one has taken is not the definition of justice.”“It most certainly is, Socrates,” Polemarchus broke in, “if Simonides is to be believed.”“Then I hand over the argument to you,” said Cephalus. “It is time for me to attend to the sacrifices.”“Is Polemarchus, then,” I asked, “your heir?”“He certainly is,” he said with a laugh, and went off to the sacrifices. 331e“Tell me, then,” I said, “you who inherit the argument: what did Simonides say about justice that you think is right?”“That it is just to give each person what is owed to him. In saying that, I think he speaks well.”“Well, it is not easy to disbelieve Simonides, a wise and inspired man. But what he means by this, Polemarchus, you may understand, while I do not. Clearly he cannot mean what we were just saying, that one should return something deposited with one by anyone who demands it when he is not in his right mind.

332a And yet the thing deposited is presumably owed to him, is it not?”“Yes.”“But it must not be returned at all when someone demands it in a state of madness?”“True,” he said.“Then Simonides evidently means something else when he says it is just to return what is owed.”“By Zeus, he certainly does,” he said. “He thinks friends owe friends good deeds, never harm.”“I see,” I said. “A man does not return what is owed if he returns gold someone deposited with him when both its return 332b and its receipt would be harmful, though the man receiving it and the man returning it are friends. Is that what you say Simonides means?”“Exactly.”“And what of enemies? Should one give them back whatever one happens to owe them?”“Certainly,” he said, “whatever is owed to them. And what one enemy owes another, I imagine, is what is fitting for him: some harm.”“So Simonides spoke in riddles, 332c in the manner of a poet, about what justice is,” I said. “For he apparently meant that justice was giving each person what befits him, and called that what is owed.”“What else could he have meant?” he asked.“By Zeus,” I said, “suppose someone asked him, ‘Simonides, what art is called medicine because it gives to what things what is owed and fitting?’ What do you think he would answer?”“Clearly,” he said, “the art that gives bodies drugs, food, and drink.”“And what art is called cookery because it gives to what things what is owed and fitting?” 332d“The art that gives seasoning to dishes.”“Very well. Then what art would be called justice because it gives what things to what people?”“If we are to follow what was said before, Socrates,” he replied, “the art that gives benefits to friends and injuries to enemies.”“Then does he call doing good to friends and harm to enemies justice?”“I think so.”“Who is best able to do good to sick friends and harm to enemies in matters of disease and health?”“A doctor.” 332e“And who can do so for those at sea, facing its dangers?”“A ship’s captain.”“And the just man? In what activity and for what work is he best able to benefit friends and harm enemies?”“In fighting alongside friends and against enemies, I think.”“Very well. Yet a doctor is useless to people who are not sick, my dear Polemarchus.”“True.”“And a captain to people who are not at sea.”“Yes.”“Is the just man, then, useless to people who are not at war?”“I do not think so at all.”“So justice is useful in peacetime too?”

333a “It is.”“And so is farming, is it not?”“Yes.”“For producing crops?”“Yes.”“And shoemaking too?”“Yes.”“For producing shoes, you would say, I suppose?”“Certainly.”“Then tell me: for what use or acquisition in peacetime would you say justice is useful?”“For contracts, Socrates.”“By contracts do you mean partnerships, or something else?”“Partnerships, of course.” 333b“Then is a just man a good and useful partner in placing pieces on a game board, or is a skilled player?”“The skilled player.”“But in setting bricks and stones, is the just man a more useful and better partner than a builder?”“Not at all.”“Then in what partnership is the just man a better partner than a builder or a lyre player, just as the lyre player is better than the just man at playing music?”“In dealing with money, I think.”“Except perhaps, Polemarchus, when the money is to be used: when money must be spent jointly to buy or sell a horse, then 333c I think the horseman is better. Is that so?”“So it seems.”“And when it is a ship, the shipbuilder or captain?”“Apparently.”“Then when gold or silver must be used jointly in what circumstances is the just man more useful than the others?”“When it must be deposited for safekeeping, Socrates.”“You mean when we do not need to use it, but let it lie idle?”“Exactly.”“So when money is useless, justice is useful in relation to it?” 333d“It seems so.”“And when a pruning knife must be stored, justice is useful to people jointly and individually; but when it must be used, the art of tending vines is useful?”“So it seems.”“And you will say that when a shield or a lyre must be stored rather than used, justice is useful; but when it must be used, the arts of war and music are useful?”“I must.”“And in every other case, justice is useless in the use of a thing, useful when the thing is not in use?”“So it seems.” 333e“Then, my friend, justice could hardly be of much importance if it is useful only for things that are useless. But let us consider this: is not the man most capable of striking a blow in a fight, whether a boxing match or any other sort, also most capable of guarding against one?”“Certainly.”“And is not the man best able to ward off a disease also best able to bring it on undetected?”“I think so.”

334a “And is not the best guardian of an army camp the very man best able to steal the enemy’s plans and other operations?”“Certainly.”“So wherever a man is a clever guardian, he is also a clever thief.”“Apparently.”“Then if the just man is clever at guarding money, he is clever at stealing it.”“So the argument indicates,” he said.“Then the just man, it seems, has turned out to be a kind of thief, and you may have learned this from Homer. For Homer loves Autolycus, Odysseus’ grandfather on his mother’s side, 334b and says that he surpassed all men in thievery and in swearing oaths. According to you, Homer, and Simonides, then, justice seems to be a kind of thievery, though for the benefit of friends and the injury of enemies. Is that not what you meant?”“No, by Zeus,” he said. “I no longer know what I meant. But I still believe justice benefits friends and harms enemies.” 334c“Do you call friends those who seem good to each person, or those who really are good even if they do not seem so? And the same question for enemies.”“A man is likely,” he said, “to love those he thinks good and hate those he thinks bad.”“But do people not make mistakes about this, so that many seem good who are not, and many seem the opposite?”“They do.”“Then for such people, the good are enemies and the bad are friends?”“Certainly.”“Yet for them it would then be just to benefit the bad 334d and harm the good?”“Apparently.”“But the good are just and incapable of doing wrong?”“True.”“So by your account it is just to harm those who have done no wrong.”“By no means, Socrates,” he said. “That account seems wicked.”“Then is it just to harm the unjust and benefit the just?” I asked.“That seems better than the other account.”“So for many people who have made mistakes, Polemarchus, it will follow 334e that it is just to harm their friends, since those friends are bad, and benefit their enemies, since those enemies are good. Then we will say exactly the opposite of what we said Simonides meant.”“Yes,” he said, “that is precisely the consequence. But let us revise our definition, for it seems we have not defined friend and enemy correctly.”“How did we define them, Polemarchus?”“We said that someone who seems good is a friend.”“How shall we revise it now?” I asked.“The man who both seems good and is good,” he said, “is a friend;

335a but one who seems good without being good only seems to be a friend, and is not one. The same definition applies to an enemy.”“On this account, it seems, the good man will be a friend and the bad man an enemy.”“Yes.”“Do you ask us, then, to add to our account of justice? At first we said it was just to do good to a friend and harm to an enemy. Shall we now say, in addition, that it is just to do good to a friend who is good and to harm an enemy who is bad?” 335b“Certainly,” he said. “That would be well said, in my opinion.”“Then,” I asked, “is it the part of a just man to harm any human being at all?”“Of course,” he said. “The bad, who are his enemies, must be harmed.”“When horses are harmed, do they become better or worse?”“Worse.”“In the excellence proper to dogs, or in that proper to horses?”“In that proper to horses.”“And dogs, when harmed, become worse in the excellence proper to dogs, not to horses?”“They must.” 335c“And must we not say, my friend, that people who are harmed become worse in human excellence?”“Certainly.”“But is justice not a human excellence?”“That too is undeniable.”“Then people who are harmed, my friend, must become more unjust.”“So it seems.”“Can musicians use music to make people unmusical?”“Impossible.”“Can horsemen use horsemanship to make people unskilled with horses?”“No.”“Then can just men use justice to make people unjust? Or, 335d in general, can good men use excellence to make people bad?”“Impossible.”“For it is not the work of heat to cool things, I imagine, but of its opposite.”“Yes.”“Nor of dryness to moisten things, but of its opposite.”“Certainly.”“Nor, then, of the good to harm, but of its opposite.”“So it appears.”“And the just man is good?”“Certainly.”“So it is not the work of the just man, Polemarchus, to harm a friend or anyone else. It is the work of his opposite, the unjust man.”“I think you are entirely right, Socrates,” he said. 335e“Then if someone says justice is giving each person what is owed, and by that he means that a just man owes injury to enemies and benefits to friends, the man who said it was not wise. For what he said was untrue: we have found that it is never just to harm anyone.”“I agree,” he said.“Then you and I will fight together,” I said, “if anyone claims that Simonides, Bias, Pittacus, or any other wise and blessed man said it.”“I am ready, for my part,” he said, “to join in the fight.”

336a “But do you know,” I asked, “who I think is responsible for the saying that justice consists in benefiting friends and harming enemies?”“Who?” he asked.“I think it was Periander, or Perdiccas, or Xerxes, or Ismenias the Theban, or some other wealthy man who thought himself immensely powerful.”“What you say,” he replied, “is absolutely true.”“Very well,” I said. “Since justice and what is just have proved to be neither of these things, what else could one say justice is?” 336bSeveral times during our conversation Thrasymachus had begun to leap in and seize the argument, but the people sitting beside him restrained him because they wanted to hear it through. Once we had paused and I had spoken these last words, he could no longer keep quiet. Coiling himself like a wild beast, he sprang upon us as if to tear us apart.Polemarchus and I were startled out of our wits. Thrasymachus broke in before us: “What nonsense 336c has possessed you all this time, Socrates? Why do you play the fool together, bowing and scraping to each other? If you truly want to know what justice is, stop merely asking questions and seeking glory by refuting anyone who answers, knowing as you do that it is easier to ask than to answer. Give an answer yourself: say what you claim the just is. And do not tell me that it is 336d what is required, or beneficial, or profitable, or lucrative, or advantageous. Tell me clearly and precisely what you mean, because I will not accept such drivel from you.”I was stunned when I heard him, and looking at him I was afraid. I believe that if I had not looked at him before he looked at me, I would have lost my voice. But when he first began to grow savage at the course of the argument, I had looked at him first, 336e and so I was able to answer him. Trembling a little, I said, “Thrasymachus, do not be hard on us. If my friend and I go wrong in examining these arguments, you may be sure we do so unwillingly. Do not imagine that if we were searching for gold, we would willingly bow and scrape to each other in the search and ruin our chance of finding it, yet, when searching for justice—a thing worth far more than any quantity of gold—we would be so foolish as to give way to each other rather than make every effort to bring it to light. Surely you do not think so, my friend. I believe, rather, that we lack the power. It is much more fitting

337a for experts like you to pity us than to be angry.”At this he gave a harsh, derisive laugh and said, “By Heracles! Here is the usual irony of Socrates. I knew it, and I told these people in advance: you would refuse to answer, play the innocent, and do anything rather than answer a question.”“You are a wise man, Thrasymachus,” I said. “You knew perfectly well that if you asked someone what twelve is, and prefaced the question 337b by saying, ‘Mind you do not tell me, sir, that twelve is twice six, or three times four, or six times two, or four times three, because I will not accept such nonsense from you,’ no one would answer a question asked that way. But suppose he said to you, ‘Thrasymachus, what do you mean? Must I not give any of the answers you have forbidden? Even if one of them is true, my remarkable friend, am I to say something 337c other than the truth? Or what do you mean?’ What would you say in reply?”“Well!” he said. “As though the two cases were alike.”“Nothing prevents them from being so,” I said. “But even if they are not alike, and they seem so to the person questioned, do you think he will be any less likely to answer as it seems right to him, whether we forbid it or not?”“Is that what you will do, then?” he asked. “Will you give one of the answers I have forbidden?”“I would not be surprised,” I said, “if that is what I decide after considering the question.” 337d“And what if I show you an answer about justice different from all of these and better than they are? What penalty do you think you deserve?”“What else,” I said, “but the penalty appropriate to someone who does not know? Surely it is appropriate for him to learn from someone who does. That is the penalty I think I deserve.”“How charming,” he said. “But besides learning, you must pay me money.”“Once I have some,” I said.“But he does,” Glaucon said. “Speak, Thrasymachus, if money is the issue: all of us will pay for Socrates.” 337e“Oh yes, I am sure,” he said. “Then Socrates can do what he always does: give no answer himself, but catch hold of someone else’s answer and refute it.”“How could anyone answer, my good man,” I said, “when, first, he does not know and does not claim to know, and, second, even if he has an opinion, a man of no mean ability has forbidden him to say anything he thinks? It is far more fitting that you should speak: you claim to know and to have an answer.

338a Please do not refuse, but do me the favor of answering, and do not begrudge Glaucon and the others a chance to learn.”When I had said this, Glaucon and the others urged him to speak. Thrasymachus plainly wanted to speak and win admiration, convinced he had a splendid answer; but he pretended to insist that I must be the one to answer. At last he yielded, 338b and then said, “This is Socrates’ famous wisdom: he refuses to teach anything himself, but goes about learning from others without even paying them thanks.”“It is true that I learn from others, Thrasymachus,” I said, “but when you say I pay them no thanks, that is false. I pay as much as I can: I can offer praise, though I have no money. You will know at once how readily I offer it when someone seems to speak well, as soon as you answer. For I expect you to speak well.” 338c“Then listen,” he said. “I say that the just is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger. Why do you not praise me? You will not, of course.”“Not until I learn what you mean,” I said. “As yet I do not know. You say the advantage of the stronger is just. But what do you mean by this, Thrasymachus? Surely you do not mean, for instance, that if the wrestler Polydamas is stronger than we are and beef is advantageous for his body, that food is 338d advantageous and just for us too, who are weaker than he is.”“You are repulsive, Socrates,” he said, “and you seize on the interpretation that will do the greatest damage to the argument.”“Not at all, my good man,” I said. “Only make your meaning clearer.”“Do you not know,” he said, “that some cities are ruled by tyrants, some by democracies, and others by aristocracies?”“Of course.”“And in each city, the ruling power is the stronger?”“Certainly.” 338e“Each ruling power makes laws for its own advantage: a democracy makes democratic laws, a tyranny tyrannical laws, and the rest do likewise. Once they have made them, they declare that what is advantageous to themselves is just for their subjects, and punish anyone who departs from it as a lawbreaker and a wrongdoer. This, my good man, is what I mean when I say that in all cities justice is the same thing:

339a the advantage of the established government. That government has the power, so anyone who reasons correctly must conclude that justice everywhere is the same: the advantage of the stronger.”“Now I understand what you mean,” I said, “but I will try to find out whether it is true. So you too, Thrasymachus, have answered that justice is something advantageous—though you forbade me to give that answer—with the addition of ‘to the stronger.’” 339b“A small addition, perhaps,” he said.“It is not yet clear whether it is small. What is clear is that we must examine whether what you say is true. For I agree that justice is something advantageous, but you add that it is advantageous to the stronger, and that is something I do not know. We must examine it.”“Examine it,” he said.“I shall,” I said. “Tell me: do you not also say it is just to obey the rulers?”“I do.” 339c“Are the rulers in every city incapable of error, or can they make mistakes?”“Surely they can make mistakes,” he said.“Then when they undertake to make laws, they make some correctly and some incorrectly?”“I suppose so.”“By making them correctly, do you mean making laws advantageous to themselves, and by making them incorrectly, ones that are disadvantageous? Or what do you mean?”“That is what I mean.”“And whatever laws they make, their subjects must obey; that is what is just?”“Of course.” 339d“Then, by your account, it is just not only to do what is advantageous to the stronger, but also its opposite: what is disadvantageous.”“What do you mean?” he asked.“I think I mean what you mean, but let us look more closely. Have we not agreed that rulers, in commanding their subjects to do certain things, sometimes mistake what is best for themselves, and that it is just for their subjects to do whatever their rulers command? Have we not agreed to that?”“I think we have,” he said. 339e“Then consider,” I said, “that you have also agreed it is just to do what is disadvantageous to rulers, the stronger party, whenever they unintentionally command things harmful to themselves and you say it is just for their subjects to do what they command. Does it not then follow of necessity, most wise Thrasymachus, that it is just to do the opposite of what you say? For the weaker are surely commanded to do what is disadvantageous to the stronger.”

340a “Yes, by Zeus, Socrates,” Polemarchus said, “that is perfectly clear.”“If you testify for him,” Clitophon interjected.“And why,” said Polemarchus, “does he need a witness? Thrasymachus himself agrees that rulers sometimes command things harmful to themselves, and that it is just for their subjects to obey.”“What Thrasymachus laid down as just, Polemarchus,” said Clitophon, “was doing what rulers command.”“And what he laid down as just, Clitophon,” said Polemarchus, “was the advantage of the stronger. 340b After laying down both, he agreed that the stronger sometimes command their weaker subjects to do what is disadvantageous to themselves. From these admissions, the advantage of the stronger would be no more just than its disadvantage.”“But,” said Clitophon, “by the advantage of the stronger he meant what the stronger believed to be advantageous to himself. That is what the weaker must do, and that is what he called just.”“That is not how it was said,” replied Polemarchus. 340c“No matter, Polemarchus,” I said. “If that is what Thrasymachus now means, let us accept it that way. Tell me, Thrasymachus: was this what you meant by justice—the thing the stronger believes advantageous to himself, whether it really is or not? Shall we say that is your meaning?”“Certainly not,” he said. “Do you suppose I call a man stronger when he makes a mistake, at the moment he is making it?”“I did think you meant that,” I said, “when you conceded that rulers are not incapable of error but can make mistakes.” 340d“You are a cheat in argument, Socrates,” he said. “For instance, do you call a man a doctor, precisely insofar as he makes a mistake about a patient? Or a man skilled in calculation, when he makes a mistake in calculation, at the moment of his mistake and in virtue of that mistake? I suppose we use expressions such as ‘the doctor made a mistake,’ or ‘the calculator made a mistake,’ or ‘the teacher made a mistake.’ But in my view, each of these, insofar as he is 340e what we call him, never makes a mistake. So, to speak precisely, since you insist on precision, no practitioner of an art makes a mistake. The man who errs does so when his knowledge fails him, and at that point he is no practitioner. No practitioner, wise man, or ruler makes a mistake insofar as he is a ruler, though everyone will say that the doctor made a mistake or the ruler made a mistake.“That, then, is how you should take the answer I gave you just now. To speak with utmost precision, a ruler, insofar

341a as he is a ruler, does not make mistakes; being free of error, he makes laws for what is best for himself, and his subject must obey them. So, as I said from the start, I call it just to do what is advantageous to the stronger.”“Very well, Thrasymachus,” I said. “Do I seem to you to cheat?”“Absolutely,” he said.“You think I asked what I asked as part of a plot to trip you up in the argument?”“I am sure of it,” he said. “And it will do you no good: 341b you will not trick me without my noticing, nor, once I notice, will you be able to overpower me in argument.”“I would not even try, blessed man,” I said. “But to prevent this from happening again, define for us whether you mean ‘ruler’ and ‘stronger’ in the common way of speaking, or in the precise sense you just described, whose advantage it will be just for the weaker to promote.”“I mean ruler in the most precise sense,” he said. “Now use your tricks and cheat if you can; I give you no quarter. But you will not be able to.” 341c“Do you think,” I asked, “I am mad enough to try to shave a lion and trick Thrasymachus?”“You just tried,” he said, “though you are no match for it.”“Enough of that,” I said. “Tell me: the doctor in the precise sense you spoke of just now—is he a moneymaker or a healer of the sick? Speak of someone who really is a doctor.”“A healer of the sick,” he said.“And a captain? Is a captain in the true sense a ruler of sailors or a sailor?”“A ruler of sailors.” 341d“We should not count the fact that he sails aboard the ship, I imagine, nor should we call him a sailor. He is called captain not because he sails, but because of his art and his command over the sailors.”“True,” he said.“Then is there something advantageous to each of these people?”“Certainly.”“And is not each art,” I asked, “by its very nature devoted to seeking out and providing what is advantageous to its object?”“It is,” he said.“Is there any advantage to each art itself beyond being as complete as possible?” 341e“What do you mean by that question?”“Suppose you asked me,” I said, “whether a body is sufficient simply by being a body, or whether it needs something further. I would say it certainly needs something further. That is why the art of medicine has now been discovered: the body is deficient, and its condition alone is not enough. The art was established to provide what benefits it. Would you say I was right to put it this way, or not?”“Yes,” he said.

342a “But tell me: is medicine itself defective? Or is there any craft that needs some excellence added to it—as eyes need sight and ears hearing, and for that reason need a craft to examine and provide what benefits them? Is there some defect within the craft itself, so that each craft needs another to examine what benefits it, and the examining craft needs another in turn, without end? 342b Or will it examine what benefits itself? Or does it need neither itself nor another craft to examine what benefits it against its own defect, since no craft has any defect or error, and it is not a craft's business to seek the benefit of anything but that of which it is the craft? In itself it is sound and whole, so long as each craft is precisely and entirely what it is. Examine it in that strict sense. Is this so or otherwise?”

“So it seems,” he said. 342c

“Then medicine,” I said, “examines what benefits the body, not medicine.”

“Yes.”

“Nor does horsemanship examine what benefits horsemanship, but what benefits horses. No other craft examines its own benefit either—it has no need—but the benefit of that of which it is the craft.”

“So it seems,” he said.

“And yet, Thrasymachus, the crafts rule and have authority over the things of which they are crafts.”

At this he conceded, though with great reluctance.

“No branch of knowledge, then, examines or commands what benefits the stronger, but what benefits the weaker, the thing ruled 342d by it.”

In the end he agreed to this too, though he tried to fight it. Once he had agreed, I said, “Then surely no doctor, insofar as he is a doctor, examines or commands what benefits the doctor, but what benefits the patient? For we have agreed that the doctor in the strict sense is a ruler of bodies, not a moneymaker. Haven't we?”

He assented.

“And that the ship's captain in the strict sense is a ruler of sailors, not a sailor?” 342e

“We have.”

“Then such a captain and ruler will examine and command not what benefits the captain, but what benefits the sailor, the one under his command.”

He reluctantly assented.

“Then, Thrasymachus,” I said, “no one else in any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, examines or commands what benefits himself, but what benefits the one he rules and for whom he practices his craft. He looks to that person and to what is beneficial and fitting for that person in everything he says and everything he does.”

343a When we reached this point in the argument, and it was plain to everyone that our account of justice had turned into its opposite, Thrasymachus, instead of answering, said, “Tell me, Socrates, do you have a nurse?”

“What? Shouldn't you answer rather than ask questions like that?” I said.

“Because she lets you go about with a runny nose without wiping it when you need it; she hasn't even taught you to tell sheep from shepherds.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked. 343b

“Because you imagine that shepherds and herdsmen look to the good of their sheep or cattle, and fatten and tend them with some end in view other than their masters' good and their own. And you imagine, too, that those who rule cities, the rulers in the true sense, feel toward their subjects any differently from a shepherd toward sheep, or think about anything day and night but the source 343c of their own profit. You are so far from understanding justice and what is just, injustice and what is unjust, that you fail to see that justice and the just are in truth another person's good—the advantage of the stronger, the ruler—and a loss to the one who obeys and serves him. Injustice is the reverse: it rules over those who are truly simple and just. The subjects do what benefits the stronger man and, by serving 343d him, make him happy, but themselves not in the least. You must look at it this way, most innocent Socrates: everywhere the just man gets less than the unjust man. First, in dealings between them, whenever such men enter into a partnership, you will never find the just man coming away from its dissolution with more than the unjust, but with less. Next, in dealings with the city: when there are taxes to pay, the just man pays more on the same resources and the unjust less; when there is money to receive, 343e the just gets nothing and the unjust makes a great gain. When each of them holds office, the just man, even if he suffers no other loss, at least finds his own affairs in worse shape through neglect, while he gains nothing from public funds because he is just. Beyond this, he earns the hatred of family and acquaintances when he refuses to serve them against justice. For the unjust man everything is the opposite. I mean

344a the man I mentioned just now, the one capable of taking a vast advantage. Consider him if you wish to judge how much more profitable it is for a man personally to be unjust than just. You will see it most readily if you turn to injustice in its most complete form, which makes the perpetrator happiest and those who suffer it, and refuse to commit it themselves, most wretched. This is tyranny: it takes the property of others, sacred and profane, private and public, not bit by bit, covertly or by force, but 344b all at once. When someone commits any one of these offenses and is caught, he is punished and subjected to the deepest disgrace. Those who commit these crimes one at a time are called temple robbers, enslavers, burglars, swindlers, and thieves. But when a man not only takes his fellow citizens' possessions but enslaves the citizens themselves, instead of receiving these shameful names he is called happy and blessed, 344c not only by his fellow citizens but by everyone else who hears of the full extent of his injustice. For those who condemn injustice condemn it not because they fear doing wrong, but because they fear suffering it. Injustice, Socrates, when practiced on a sufficient scale, is stronger, freer, and more masterful than justice. And as I said at the outset, justice turns out to be the advantage of the stronger, while injustice profits and benefits the unjust man himself.” 344d

After pouring this great flood of words into our ears like a bath attendant, Thrasymachus intended to leave. But the others would not let him go; they made him stay and give an account of what he had said. I too urged him earnestly. “Extraordinary Thrasymachus,” I said, “you fling an argument like that at us and mean to leave before you have adequately taught us, or learned yourself, whether it is so or otherwise? 344e Do you think it a small matter you are trying to decide—the course of a whole life, the life each of us must lead to live to greatest advantage?”

“Do you think I believe it is otherwise?” said Thrasymachus.

“So it seems,” I said. “Either that, or you care nothing for us and have no concern whether we live better or worse lives in ignorance of what you claim to know. 345a Please, my good man, make an effort to show us as well. A favor to so many of us would not be a bad investment for you. Speaking for myself, I am not convinced. I do not believe that injustice is more profitable than justice, even if it is given free rein to do whatever it wants. Let a man be unjust, my friend, and able to act unjustly, whether by escaping notice or by fighting off opposition; even then he does not convince me that injustice is more profitable than justice. 345b Perhaps another of us feels this way, not just I. So convince us fully, my fortunate friend, that we are wrong to hold justice in higher esteem than injustice.”

“How am I to convince you?” he said. “If what I have just said has not persuaded you, what more can I do? Must I carry the argument and put it inside your soul?”

“No, by Zeus,” I said, “don't do that. First, stand by what you say; if you change your position, change it openly and do not deceive us. As it is, Thrasymachus, you can see—we must still examine what came before—that, having first defined the doctor in the true sense, 345c you did not think it necessary afterward to keep to that definition strictly for the shepherd in the true sense. You think that insofar as he is a shepherd he fattens his sheep with a view not to what is best for them, but, like a diner anticipating a feast, to the pleasure of eating them, or else, like a moneymaker rather than a shepherd, 345d to selling them. But the shepherd's craft surely has no concern except to provide the best for that over which it is set. Its own fitness to do its work is already sufficiently secured, as long as it lacks nothing that makes it the shepherd's craft. That is why I thought we had to agree just now that every form of rule, insofar as it is rule, considers what is best for nothing but what is ruled and cared for, 345e whether the rule is civic or private. But do you think that the rulers in cities, the true rulers, are willing to rule?”

“No, by Zeus,” he said. “I know they aren't.”

“And consider other forms of rule, Thrasymachus,” I said. “Don't you see that no one willingly takes on the rule, but people ask for pay, because the benefit of ruling will go not to themselves but

346a to their subjects? Tell me this much: don't we say that each craft is distinct from every other precisely because it has a distinct power? And, my friend, don't answer against your own judgment; then we may make some progress.”

“Yes, that is what distinguishes it,” he said.

“Then each also gives us a benefit peculiar to itself, not one shared by them all: medicine gives health, the captain's craft safety at sea, and so with the others?”

“Certainly.” 346b

“And the craft of earning wages gives wages? That is its power. Or do you call medicine and the captain's craft the same thing? If you wish to make strict distinctions, as you proposed, would you call the captain's craft medicine because a captain grows healthy while sailing, when a voyage agrees with him?”

“Certainly not,” he said.

“Nor, I think, would you call wage earning medicine if a person stays healthy while earning wages.”

“No.”

“Or medicine wage earning if a person receives pay while healing?” 346c

“No,” he said.

“Then we have agreed that each craft has its own distinctive benefit?”

“Let it be so,” he said.

“Whatever benefit, then, all craftsmen receive in common, they plainly receive by making use of something common to them all.”

“So it seems,” he said.

“And we say that craftsmen gain the benefit of wages through their use of the craft of earning wages.”

He reluctantly assented. 346d

“Then this benefit—the receipt of pay—does not come to each man from his own craft. To be precise, medicine produces health and wage earning produces wages; building produces a house, and the wage earning that accompanies it produces wages. All the other crafts likewise perform their own work and benefit that over which each is set. But if no pay is added, does the craftsman receive any benefit from his craft?”

“Apparently not,” he said. 346e

“Yet does he confer no benefit when he works for nothing?”

“I think he does.”

“Then, Thrasymachus, this much is now clear: no craft or position of rule provides what benefits itself. Rather, as we have long been saying, it provides and commands what benefits its subject, looking to the advantage of that weaker party, not to that of the stronger. For this reason, my dear Thrasymachus, I said just now that no one willingly undertakes to rule and set right the troubles of others,

347a but asks for pay. For someone who means to practice his craft properly never acts or commands for his own benefit when he commands in accordance with his craft, but for the benefit of his subject. Therefore, it seems, those who are to be willing to rule must receive a wage: either money or honor, or a penalty if they refuse.”

“What do you mean, Socrates?” Glaucon asked. “I recognize the first two wages, but I don't understand what penalty you mean, or how you can have called it a kind of wage.”

“Then you do not understand the wage of the best people,” I said, “the one for which 347b the most decent men rule, when they are willing to rule. Don't you know that loving honor and loving money are spoken of as disgraceful—and are disgraceful?”

“I do,” he said.

“This is why,” I said, “good men are unwilling to rule for money or honor. They do not wish to be called hirelings for openly demanding wages for office, or thieves for secretly taking them from office. Nor do they rule for honor: they are not lovers of honor. They must therefore be subject to compulsion and a penalty if they are to consent to rule. 347c This may be why it has come to seem shameful to seek office willingly rather than wait for necessity. The greatest penalty is to be ruled by someone worse if one refuses to rule oneself. It is through fear of this, I think, that decent men rule when they do. Then they approach ruling not as something good or as a source of enjoyment, but as a necessity, since they cannot entrust it to people better than themselves, or even their equals. 347d If there were a city of good men, I suspect that refusing to rule would be as fiercely contested there as ruling is now, and then it would become plain that the true ruler is by nature concerned not with his own advantage but with his subject's. So anyone with understanding would rather receive a benefit from another than have the trouble of benefiting another. Thus I cannot agree with Thrasymachus 347e in any way that justice is the advantage of the stronger. We can examine that again another time. What Thrasymachus says now seems to me much more serious: he claims that the life of the unjust man is better than the life of the just. Which do you choose, Glaucon?” I asked. “Which claim seems truer to you?”

“That the just man's life is more profitable.”

348a “Did you hear all the benefits Thrasymachus just recounted for the unjust man's life?” I asked.

“I heard,” he said, “but I'm not convinced.”

“Then shall we try to persuade him, if we can find a way, that what he says is not true?”

“Of course,” he said.

“If we stretch out an opposing speech,” I said, “setting argument against argument and listing all the benefits of being just, and he replies, and we reply again, we will have to count and measure the benefits 348b that each side names in each case, and we will need judges to decide between us. But if, as just now, we inquire while reaching agreement with one another, we will be both judges and advocates ourselves.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“Which way do you prefer?” I asked.

“That way,” he said.

“Come then, Thrasymachus,” I said, “answer us again from the beginning. Do you say that complete injustice is more profitable than complete justice?” 348c

“I certainly do,” he said, “and I have given my reasons.”

“Now tell me how you describe them in this respect. You call one of the two a virtue, I take it, and the other a vice?”

“Of course.”

“Justice a virtue and injustice a vice?”

“That would be likely, wouldn't it, my delightful friend,” he said, “when I say injustice pays and justice doesn't?”

“Then what do you say?”

“The opposite,” he said.

“Justice a vice?”

“No, but a most noble simplicity.” 348d

“Then you call injustice wickedness?”

“No, good judgment,” he said.

“And do you think unjust people intelligent and good, Thrasymachus?”

“Those who can commit injustice to the fullest extent,” he said, “who can bring cities and nations of people under their power. Perhaps you think I mean people who cut purses. Such things are profitable too, provided they go unnoticed. But they are not worth discussing; I mean what I spoke of just now.” 348e

“I know what you mean,” I said. “But what surprised me is that you place injustice with virtue and wisdom, and justice among their opposites.”

“That is exactly where I place them.”

“That makes your position harder to shake, my friend, and it is no longer easy to know what to say. If you maintained that injustice is profitable but still admitted, as some do, that it is a vice or something shameful, we could appeal to conventional beliefs. But plainly you will call it noble and strong and assign it all the other qualities

349a that we assigned to justice, now that you have dared to put it among virtue and wisdom.”

“You have guessed quite correctly,” he said.

“Still, I must not shrink from following the argument wherever our inquiry leads, as long as I take you to be saying what you truly think. For I believe, Thrasymachus, that you are not joking now at all, but speaking your genuine view of the truth.”

“What difference does it make to you,” he said, “whether that is my view or not? Why don't you test the argument?” 349b

“None at all,” I said. “But try to answer this in addition: do you think a just man would wish to get the better of another just man?”

“Not at all,” he said. “If he did, he would not be the well-mannered innocent he is.”

“What about getting the better of a just action?”

“Not of a just action either,” he said.

“But would he claim the right to get the better of an unjust man, and consider it just, or would he not?”

“He would think it just and claim the right,” he said, “but he would not be able to do it.”

“That isn't what I'm asking,” I said. “I'm asking whether the just man 349c neither claims nor wants to get the better of another just man, but does want to get the better of an unjust man.”

“Yes, that is how it is,” he said.

“What about the unjust man? Does he claim the right to get the better of the just man and of just conduct?”

“How could he not,” he said, “when he claims the right to get the better of everyone?”

“Then the unjust man will try to get the better of another unjust man and unjust conduct too, competing to take the most of all.”

“That is so.”

“Let us put it this way,” I said. “The just man does not seek to outdo his like, but his unlike; the unjust man seeks to outdo both his like 349d and his unlike.”

“Excellent,” he said. “You have put it well.”

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

“That too is well put,” he said.

“Then does the unjust man also resemble the intelligent and good, while the just man does not?”

“Of course a man who has those qualities must resemble people who have them, while the other does not,” he said.

“Good. So each is the sort of person those he resembles are?”

“What else could he be?” he said.

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

“I do.”

“Which is intelligent and which unintelligent?”

“The musical man is intelligent, of course, and the unmusical unintelligent.”

“And in the respects in which he is intelligent he is good, while the unintelligent man is bad?”

“Yes.”

“And is it the same with someone skilled in medicine?”

“Yes.”

“Now do you think, my good man, that a musical man tuning a lyre wishes or claims the right to go further than another musical man in tightening and loosening its strings?”

“I do not.”

“But further than an unmusical man?”

“Necessarily,” he said.

350a “And someone skilled in medicine? When prescribing food or drink, would he wish to go further than another skilled doctor, or than that doctor's prescription?”

“Certainly not.”

“But further than someone without medical skill?”

“Yes.”

“Consider knowledge and ignorance in every field. Do you think any knowledgeable person would wish to choose to do or say more than another knowledgeable person does or says, rather than make the same choice as someone like himself in the same undertaking?”

“Perhaps,” he said, “that must be so.”

“What about the ignorant man? Wouldn't he want to get the better of both the knowledgeable 350b and the ignorant alike?”

“Perhaps.”

“And the knowledgeable man is wise?”

“Yes.”

“And the wise man good?”

“Yes.”

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

“So it seems,” he said.

“And the bad and ignorant man wants to get the better of both his like and his opposite.”

“Apparently.”

“Now, Thrasymachus,” I said, “our unjust man seeks to get the better of both his like and his unlike. Isn't that what you said?”

“It is,” he said. 350c

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

“Yes.”

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

“It looks that way.”

“And yet we agreed that each is himself of the sort he resembles.”

“We did.”

“So the just man has proved to be good and wise, and the unjust man ignorant and bad.”

Thrasymachus conceded all this, 350d not as easily as I recount it now, but dragged to it with difficulty, sweating profusely, as it was summer. It was then that I saw Thrasymachus blush, something I had never seen before. When we had thus agreed that justice was virtue and wisdom, and injustice vice and ignorance, I said, “Very well, let that stand. We also said, didn't we, that injustice was strong. Or have you forgotten, Thrasymachus?”

“I remember,” he said. “But I don't like what you are saying now either, and I have something to say about it. If I were to say it, I know you would accuse me of making a public speech. So either let me say all I want, or if you want to ask questions, ask them. And I will say ‘So be it’ to you as I would to old women telling stories, 350e and nod or shake my head.”

“Never against your own judgment,” I said.

“To please you, then,” he said, “since you will not let me speak. What more do you want?”

“Nothing else, by Zeus,” I said. “But if you will do that, do it, and I will ask.”

“Ask away.”

“Then I ask what I asked a moment ago, so that we may pursue

351a the argument in order and see how justice stands in relation to injustice. It was said, I believe, that injustice is more powerful and stronger than justice. But now,” I said, “if justice is wisdom and virtue, I think it will readily prove stronger than injustice, since injustice is ignorance. No one could fail to see that. But I do not want to treat it quite so simply, Thrasymachus; I want to examine it this way. 351b Would you say that a city might be unjust, try unjustly to enslave other cities, succeed in enslaving them, and hold many in subjection?”

“Of course,” he said. “And the best city will do that especially, if it is most perfectly unjust.”

“I understand that this was your argument,” I said. “But here is what I want to consider about it: will the city that grows stronger than another have this power without justice, or must it have justice?” 351c

“If things are as you said just now, and justice is wisdom, it must have justice. But if they are as I said, it will have injustice.”

“I am delighted, Thrasymachus,” I said, “that you do not merely nod and shake your head, but give such fine answers.”

“I am doing it to please you,” he said.

“And well you do. Please grant me this too and tell me: do you think that a city, an army, a band of raiders or thieves, or any other group that undertakes some unjust act together could accomplish anything if its members wronged one another?” 351d

“Certainly not,” he said.

“But if they did not wrong one another, could they do more?”

“Certainly.”

“For injustice, Thrasymachus, surely brings factions, hatred, and fights among them, while justice brings concord and friendship. Isn't that so?”

“Let it be so,” he said, “so that I don't quarrel with you.”

“You are very kind, my friend. Now tell me this: if it is the work of injustice to breed hatred wherever it arises, will it not also, when it arises among free people or slaves, make them hate one another, fall into factions, and become unable to act 351e together?”

“Certainly.”

“And if it arises in two people, will they not disagree and hate each other and become enemies to each other and to the just?”

“They will,” he said.

“And if, astonishing man, injustice arises in a single person, will it lose its power, or retain it undiminished?”

“Let it retain it undiminished,” he said.

“Then its power appears to be this: wherever it arises, whether in a city, a people, an army, or

352a anything else, it first makes that thing incapable of acting in concert with itself because of faction and discord; and it makes it an enemy to itself, to everything opposed to it, and to what is just. Isn't that so?”

“Certainly.”

“And when it is present in one person, I think it will do the very things it is its nature to do. First, it will make him incapable of action by setting him against himself and robbing him of inner concord; then it will make him an enemy to himself and to just people. Isn't that so?”

“Yes.”

“And the gods, my friend, are just too, aren't they?”

“Let them be,” he said. 352b

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

“Feast confidently on your argument,” he said. “I will not oppose you, for fear of making enemies of our friends here.”

“Come, then,” I said, “complete the rest of the feast for me by answering as you have been doing. For the just appear to be wiser, better, and more capable of action, while the unjust cannot even act together. 352c Indeed, when we speak of unjust people who have at times accomplished something together with force, we do not speak quite truly. If they had been utterly unjust, they would not have held back from wronging one another; plainly there was some justice in them, keeping them from wronging both one another and those they marched against at the same time. This enabled them to achieve what they achieved. They set out on their unjust enterprise only half-corrupted by injustice, for the wholly wicked and perfectly unjust are perfectly incapable of action. That, 352d I understand, is how things are, not as you first proposed. But whether the just also live better than the unjust and are happier—the further question we set ourselves—we must examine. They seem to be, even now, from what we have said; still, we must examine it more carefully. For the subject of our discussion is no trivial matter, but how one ought to live.”

“Then examine it,” he said.

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

“I do.”

“Would you define the function of a horse, or of anything else, as what one can do with it alone, or do best with it?”

“I don't understand,” he said.

“Let me put it this way. Can you see with anything other than your eyes?”

“Certainly not.”

“And hear with anything other than your ears?”

“Not at all.”

“Then we are right to call these their functions?”

“Certainly.”

353a “But you could cut a vine shoot with a knife, a carving tool, and many other things?”

“Of course.”

“Yet I think you could do it best with a pruning hook made for that purpose.”

“True.”

“Then shall we call that its function?”

“We shall.”

“Now I think you may better understand what I asked just now, when I asked whether the function of each thing was what it alone, or better than anything else, accomplishes.”

“Yes,” he said, “I understand, and that seems to me to be the function of each 353b thing.”

“Very well,” I said. “And do you think that each thing assigned a function has an excellence too? Let us return to the same examples: we say the eyes have a function?”

“They do.”

“Do the eyes also have an excellence?”

“They do.”

“And the ears had a function?”

“Yes.”

“And therefore an excellence?”

“An excellence too.”

“What of all the other things? Is it not the same?”

“The same.”

“Consider, then: could eyes ever perform their function well 353c if they did not possess their own proper excellence, but had a defect instead?”

“How could they?” he said. “You mean blindness, perhaps, instead of sight.”

“Whatever their excellence may be,” I said. “I am not asking that yet, but whether things that act perform their own function well through their proper excellence, and badly through a defect.”

“That is true,” he said.

“And ears deprived of their own excellence will perform their function badly?”

“Certainly.” 353d

“Shall we apply the same account to everything else?”

“I think so.”

“Now consider this next. Is there a function of the soul that you could not perform with anything else in existence? For example, caring for things, ruling, deliberating, and all such activities: could we rightly assign them to anything but the soul, and say they belong to it in particular?”

“To nothing else.”

“And what about living? Shall we not say that it is a function of the soul?”

“Above all,” he said.

“Then we say that the soul has an excellence too?”

“We do.” 353e

“Could a soul ever perform its functions well, Thrasymachus, if deprived of its proper excellence? Or is that impossible?”

“Impossible.”

“Then a bad soul must rule and care for things badly, and a good soul must do all these things well.”

“It must.”

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

“We did.”

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

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

354a “And someone who lives well is blessed and happy, while someone who does not is the opposite.”

“Of course.”

“Then the just man is happy and the unjust man wretched.”

“Let it be so,” he said.

“But it does not pay to be wretched; it pays to be happy.”

“Of course.”

“So injustice, my fortunate Thrasymachus, is never more profitable than justice.”

“Let that be your feast at the festival of Bendis, Socrates,” he said.

“A feast supplied by you, Thrasymachus,” I said, “since you grew gentle with me and stopped being angry. Yet I have not feasted well, 354b through my own fault, not yours. Like greedy diners who snatch a taste of each new dish as it is brought around before taking a proper share of the last, so I think I, before finding what we first set out to seek—what justice is—let that go and rushed on to examine whether it is vice and ignorance or wisdom and virtue. And when another argument came up afterward, that injustice is more profitable than justice, I could not keep from leaving the first question to pursue this one. So the result of our discussion is that I now know nothing. 354c For if I do not know what justice is, I can hardly know whether it happens to be a virtue or not, or whether the person who possesses it is unhappy or happy.”

357a When I had said this, I thought I had escaped the discussion. But apparently it had only been a prelude. Glaucon is always exceedingly courageous in everything, and now too he would not accept Thrasymachus' surrender. “Socrates,” he said, “do you want us merely to seem persuaded, or to be 357b truly persuaded that it is in every way better to be just than unjust?”

“Truly persuaded, if it were in my power,” I said.

“Then you are not doing what you want. Tell me this: do you think there is a kind of good we would welcome possessing, not for its consequences, but because we cherish it for itself—joy, for example, and those harmless pleasures that leave nothing in their wake except the pleasure of having them?”

“I do think there is such a kind,” I said. 357c

“And what of a good we love both for itself and for its results—understanding, for example, sight and health? Surely we welcome such things on both accounts.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you see a third class of goods,” he said, “including exercise, medical treatment when one is ill, medicine itself and other ways of earning money? We might say these are burdensome but beneficial, and would not choose to have them for their own sake, 357d but for their wages and the other things that come of them.”

“Yes, that is a third class too,” I said. “But what of it?”

“In which of these classes,” he asked, “do you place justice?”

358a “In the finest,” I said: “the class to be cherished both for itself and for what comes of it by anyone who wishes to be happy.”

“But that is not how most people see it,” he said. “They put it among burdensome things to be practiced for wages and for the good reputation it brings, but shunned in itself as something difficult.”

“I know that is their view,” I said. “Thrasymachus has long condemned justice as such a thing and praised injustice. But I seem to be a slow learner.” 358b

“Come then,” he said, “listen to me as well, if you still think so. Thrasymachus seems to me to have been charmed by you like a snake before his time. I am not yet satisfied with the demonstration concerning either justice or injustice. I want to hear what each is and what power it has in itself when present in the soul; let us set aside wages and all their consequences. So, if you agree, this is what I shall do. I will renew 358c Thrasymachus' argument. First I shall tell you what people say justice is and where it arose; second, that all who practice it do so unwillingly, as a necessity rather than a good; third, that they are right to do so, since, they say, the unjust person's life is far better than the just person's. For my part, Socrates, I do not believe that. But I am at a loss: my ears have been deafened by hearing Thrasymachus and countless others, and I have yet to hear anyone defend justice as 358d better than injustice in the way I want. I want to hear it praised in itself, and I think you are the person most able to tell me. I shall therefore strain every nerve in praise of the unjust life and then show you how, in turn, I want to hear you condemn injustice and praise justice. But see whether this is what you want.”

“More than anything,” I said. “What subject could a person of sense find greater pleasure in discussing and hearing discussed, again and again?” 358e

“Excellent,” he said. “Now listen to the first thing I promised to discuss: what justice is, and where it came from.

“They say that doing injustice is naturally a good thing, and suffering it an evil, but that the evil of suffering it exceeds the good of doing it. So when people do injustice to one another and suffer it in return, and have tasted both, those who cannot avoid the one and secure 359a the other think it profitable to agree among themselves neither to do injustice nor to suffer it. From this, they say, they began to establish laws and mutual covenants, and called what the law commands lawful and just. This, then, is the origin and nature of justice: a middle ground between the best condition, doing wrong with impunity, and the worst, suffering wrong without the power to retaliate. Justice stands between them and is prized not as 359b a good, but because one is too weak to do injustice. For anyone who can do it, if he is truly a man, would never make an agreement with anyone neither to do injustice nor to suffer it. That would be madness. This, Socrates, is the nature of justice, according to the argument, and these are the circumstances from which it arose.

“We could best perceive that even those who practice justice do so unwillingly, because they lack the power to do injustice, if we did this 359c in thought: grant each of them, the just and the unjust, the freedom to do whatever he wishes, and follow them to see where their desires will lead. We would catch the just man in the very act of following the same path as the unjust, through the desire for more that every nature pursues as a good, though law forcibly diverts it toward respect for equality. The freedom I mean would be most complete if they possessed the power once said 359d to have belonged to the ancestor of Gyges the Lydian. The story goes that he was a shepherd serving the ruler of Lydia at the time. After heavy rain and an earthquake, the earth split open, leaving a chasm in the place where he grazed his flocks. Astonished at the sight, he descended and saw, among other marvels told of in the story, a hollow bronze horse with openings. Looking inside, he saw a corpse, apparently larger than a human being, wearing nothing except a gold ring 359e on its hand. He took the ring and climbed out. When the shepherds assembled for their customary monthly meeting to report on the flocks to the king, he came with the ring.

“As he sat among the others, he happened to turn the bezel of the ring toward himself, to the inside of his hand. At once 360a he became invisible to those sitting beside him, and they spoke of him as if he had gone away. Wondering at this, he felt for the ring again and turned the bezel outward, and became visible. He thought it over and tested whether the ring had this power. It did: when he turned the bezel inward he became invisible, and when he turned it outward he reappeared. As soon as he realized this, he arranged to join the messengers sent to the king. On arriving, 360b he seduced the king's wife, conspired with her against him, killed him, and seized the throne. Suppose, then, there were two such rings, and the just man put on one and the unjust man the other. No one, it would seem, could be so adamantine as to remain just, to have the courage to refrain from touching what belongs to others, when he could take whatever he liked from the marketplace without fear, 360c enter houses and sleep with whomever he wished, kill or release from prison whomever he pleased, and act among human beings like a god. In doing all this he would behave no differently from the other man; both would go the same way. Someone might say this is strong evidence that no one is just willingly but only under compulsion, since justice is not a good for the individual: wherever a person believes he can do injustice, he does it. Everyone thinks injustice far more profitable 360d for himself than justice, and thinks rightly, the advocate of this argument will say. For if someone with such power refused to do any wrong or touch another's property, all who knew of it would think him utterly miserable and foolish. They would praise him to one another, however, deceiving each other out of fear of being wronged. So much for that.

360e “To judge the lives we are discussing properly, we must distinguish the most just man from the most unjust. Otherwise we cannot judge. How shall we distinguish them? Like this: take nothing away from the unjust man's injustice or the just man's justice, but make each perfect in his own way of life.

“First, let the unjust man work as a master craftsman does. A consummate pilot or doctor discerns what is possible in his art and what is not, attempting the one and leaving the other; and if he makes a mistake, he can set it right. 361a In the same way, if the unjust man is to be thoroughly unjust, let him undertake his unjust acts skillfully and escape detection. The man who gets caught must be considered inept; for the height of injustice is to seem just without being so. We must therefore give the wholly unjust man the fullest injustice and take nothing away from him: though he commits the gravest wrongs, let him enjoy the highest reputation 361b for justice. If he stumbles, let him be able to recover, eloquent enough to persuade people if any of his misdeeds come to light and strong enough to use force when force is needed, through his courage and vigor and the support of friends and wealth. Having set him up in this way, let us place beside him in our account the just man, a simple and noble man who, in Aeschylus' words, wants not to seem good but to be good. We must take away the appearance of goodness. For if he seems just, 361c honors and gifts will come to him on account of that appearance, and it will be unclear whether he is just for justice's sake or for the gifts and honors. Strip him, then, of everything except justice, and put him in the opposite condition to the first man. Though he does no wrong, let him have the greatest reputation for injustice, so that his justice will be tested by his refusal to yield to disgrace and all that follows it. Let him persist unchanged until 361d death, seeming unjust all his life while actually just. Thus, when each has reached the extreme, one in justice and the other in injustice, we can judge which of the two is happier.”

“Good heavens, Glaucon,” I said, “how vigorously you polish each of your two men, as though they were statues, for our judgment!”

“As vigorously as I can,” he said. “With men like these it is not difficult, I think, to tell what sort of life awaits each of them. We must say it, even if the words are rather coarse; and if they are, Socrates, do not think it is I who speak, but those who praise injustice above justice. 361e

“They will say that the just man, in the condition I have described, will be whipped, racked, chained, 362a and have his eyes burned out. At last, after suffering every evil, he will be impaled, and will learn that one must seek not to be just but to seem so. Aeschylus' words, it turns out, would have been much more rightly applied to the unjust man. For they will say that the unjust man, pursuing what is real and not living for appearances, wants not to seem unjust but to be unjust,

‘Reaping the deep furrow of his mind, 362bFrom which good counsel springs.’

“First, because he seems just, he rules in his city. Then he marries from whatever family he chooses and gives his children in marriage to whomever he chooses; he makes agreements and partnerships with whom he likes, profiting from all these dealings because he has no scruples about wrongdoing. When he enters contests, public or private, he prevails and gains the advantage over his enemies. With those gains he grows rich, 362c helps his friends and harms his enemies, and offers the gods ample and splendid sacrifices and dedications. He can serve the gods, and whatever people he wishes, far better than the just man can. Thus it is reasonable to expect that he will be dearer to the gods than the just man. That, Socrates, is how they say that gods and men have furnished the unjust man with a better life than the just.” 362d

When Glaucon had said this, I was preparing to reply, but his brother Adeimantus spoke. “Surely, Socrates,” he said, “you do not think the case has been sufficiently made?”

“What is missing?” I asked.

“The very thing,” he said, “that most needed to be said.”

“Well then,” I said, “as the saying goes, let a brother stand by his brother. Come to his aid if he has left something out. Though what he has already said is enough to throw me and leave me unable to defend justice.” 362e

“Nonsense,” he said. “Listen to this as well. We must also examine the arguments opposed to his, those that praise justice and condemn injustice, to make Glaucon's intention clearer.

“Fathers tell their sons, and everyone who cares for anyone tells those in their care, that one must be just. They praise not justice itself 363a but the good reputation it brings, so that a man thought just can gain offices and marriages through his reputation, and all the things Glaucon has just listed as accruing to a just man through public esteem. They go further still in their account of reputation, invoking the esteem of the gods and describing without end the blessings they say the gods give the pious. Noble Hesiod and Homer say as much. Hesiod says that for the just the gods make oaks 363b ‘bear acorns at their crowns and bees in their midst,’ and ‘woolly sheep are weighed down with fleeces’; and he names many other blessings besides. Homer speaks in much the same way:

‘As when a blameless king, who fears the gods,Upholds just judgments, and the dark earth bears 363cWheat and barley, trees are heavy with fruit,Flocks breed without fail, and the sea yields fish.’

“Musaeus and his son give the just even more extravagant rewards from the gods: they take them in their tale down to Hades, lay them at a banquet of the pious, and make them spend all time 363d henceforth crowned and drunk, as though eternal intoxication were the finest wage of virtue. Others extend the gods' rewards further still: they say that the pious man who keeps his oaths leaves behind children of children and a continuing line. Such things, and others like them, are their praises of justice. But the impious and unjust they bury in mud in Hades and force to carry water in a sieve. While they still live, they bring them into ill repute, and speak of the same punishments Glaucon described for the just who are thought unjust. 363e That is all they have to say of the unjust. Such is their praise and blame of the two kinds of people.

“Besides this, Socrates, consider another sort of discourse about justice and injustice, heard in private and among the poets. 364a With one voice they sing that moderation and justice are fine but difficult and laborious, while license and injustice are pleasant and easy to acquire and are shameful only by convention and law. They say that unjust acts are generally more profitable than just ones, and readily call rich, wicked people who possess other forms of power happy and worthy of honor, both publicly and privately. But they dishonor and despise those who are weak 364b and poor, even while admitting that they are better than the others. Most astonishing of all are the things they say about the gods and virtue: that the gods have allotted many good people misfortune and a wretched life, and their opposites an opposite fate. Itinerant priests and diviners go to the doors of the rich and persuade them that they have a power granted by the gods to remedy, through sacrifices and incantations, any wrong a man 364c or his ancestors have done, amid feasting and pleasure. And should he wish to harm an enemy, they can, for a small expense, injure the just as readily as the unjust through spells and bindings, persuading the gods, as they claim, to serve them. For all these claims they summon poets as witnesses. To show how easy vice is, some quote:

‘Wickedness can be had in abundance 364dWith ease: its road is smooth and it lives close by;But before virtue the gods have set sweat,’

and speak of a long, rugged, uphill road. Others call Homer as witness that men can turn the gods, for he too said:

‘Even the gods themselves can be entreated;With sacrifices and gentle prayers, 364eWith libations and the savor of burnt offerings,People turn them aside by supplication when one has transgressed and sinned.’

“They bring out a clamor of books by Musaeus and Orpheus, offspring, they say, of the Moon and the Muses, and perform sacrifices according to them. They persuade not only private people but whole cities that there are releases from wrongdoing and purifications through sacrifice and pleasurable games, both 365a for the living and for the dead. These they call initiations, which deliver us from the evils of the next world, whereas terrible things await those who have not made sacrifice.

“When all these tales of virtue and vice, of how gods and men honor them, are told so often and at such length, my dear Socrates,” he said, “what do we think they do to the souls of young people? Especially those gifted enough to seize on everything they hear and infer from it what sort of person they should be 365b and which way they should go to live the best life. Such a young man will probably say to himself, borrowing Pindar's words: ‘Shall I climb by justice to a high-walled fortress, or by crooked deceits, and fortify myself there for life?’ For, according to what they say, if I am just but do not also seem so, I gain nothing but manifest toil and loss. If I am unjust but cultivate a reputation for justice, a marvelous life is promised me. 365c Since appearance, as the wise tell me, ‘overpowers even truth’ and determines happiness, I must turn wholly toward it. Around myself, as a facade and outward show, I must paint a likeness of virtue, while drawing along behind me the crafty, many-colored fox of that wisest of men, Archilochus. But, someone will say, it is not easy to be wicked and always escape notice. Nor is any other great enterprise 365d easy, we will reply. Still, if we mean to be happy, we must follow where the tracks of the arguments lead. To keep ourselves hidden, we will form conspiracies and clubs; there are masters of persuasion to teach us the arts of speaking in assemblies and courts. By these means we will sometimes persuade and sometimes use force, gaining the advantage without paying the penalty. But we cannot hide from or overpower the gods. Well, if they do not exist, or do not care about human affairs, why should 365e we care about hiding from them? If they exist and do care, all we know or have heard of them comes from the laws and the poets who trace their ancestry. Those same poets say that sacrifices, ‘gentle prayers,’ and offerings can persuade and turn them. We must believe the poets in both claims or neither.

“If we believe them, we must do wrong and offer sacrifices

366a with the profits of our wrongdoing. If we are just, we will merely escape punishment from the gods, while forfeiting the gains of injustice. If we are unjust, we shall make our gains, and when we supplicate the gods for our trespasses and sins, we shall persuade them and go unpunished. But in Hades we shall pay the penalty for the wrongs we commit here, either ourselves or through our children's children. My friend, the calculating young man will reply, initiations too are powerful, and so are the gods who grant release, as the 366b greatest cities tell us, and the children of gods who became poets and prophets of the gods, and reveal that this is so.

“On what grounds, then, should we still choose justice over the greatest injustice? If we combine injustice with a counterfeit show of propriety, both gods and men will give us what we desire in life and after death, according to all these authorities, ordinary and distinguished alike. In view of everything we have said, 366c Socrates, how could anyone endowed with powers of mind, wealth, body, or birth wish to honor justice rather than laugh when he hears it praised? If a man can prove our claims false, then, and knows adequately that justice is best, he must surely have great sympathy for unjust people and feel no anger toward them. He knows that, apart from the man whose divine nature revolts at injustice or who has learned through knowledge 366d to refrain from it, no one else is just willingly: people condemn wrongdoing only through cowardice, old age, or some other weakness that keeps them from doing it. The proof is plain: the first such man to gain power is the first to do wrong, as far as his power allows. All this has one cause, the very point from which Glaucon and I began our argument to you, Socrates. My extraordinary friend, 366e none of you who profess to praise justice, from the earliest heroes whose words survive down to people today, has ever condemned injustice or praised justice except by speaking of the reputation, honors, and rewards they bring. But what each does by its own power within the soul that possesses it, unseen by gods and men, no one has ever sufficiently explored in poetry or in private speech: that injustice is the greatest evil a soul can harbor within itself, and justice its greatest good.

367a “If all of you had spoken this way from the beginning and persuaded us from childhood, we would not guard one another against doing wrong. Each would be his own best guardian, afraid that in doing wrong he would harbor the greatest evil.

“Thrasymachus, Socrates, or perhaps someone else, might say all this and more about justice and injustice, crudely reversing their powers, as it seems to me. But I speak as forcefully as I can 367b because I long to hear the opposite from you; there is no need to conceal my purpose. Do not merely show us in argument that justice is better than injustice. Show us what each does by itself to the person who has it, how the one is a good and the other an evil. Set aside reputation, as Glaucon urged. Unless you strip each of its true reputation and attach to it a false one, we will say you praise not being just but seeming just, and condemn not being unjust 367c but seeming unjust. We will say you advise a man to be unjust without being found out, and agree with Thrasymachus that justice is another's good, the advantage of the stronger, while injustice is advantageous and profitable to the man himself but harmful to the weaker. You agreed that justice is among the greatest goods, worth possessing for their consequences but far more for their own sake, like sight, 367d hearing, understanding, and health, and other goods fruitful by their own nature rather than by reputation. Praise, then, this very power in justice: the benefit it gives its possessor in itself, and the harm injustice does. Leave wages and reputations for others to praise. I could accept it from anyone else if they praised justice and condemned injustice by celebrating and denouncing their reputations and rewards. But I will not accept it from you—unless you ask me to—because you have spent your whole life 367e examining nothing else. So do not merely show us in argument that justice is better than injustice. Show us what each does by itself to the person who has it, whether gods and men see it or not, how one is a good and the other an evil.”

I had always admired the natures of Glaucon and Adeimantus, but when I heard this I was especially delighted. 368a “The lover of Glaucon,” I said, “was not wrong to begin his elegy about you, sons of that man, after your distinction in the battle at Megara, with the words:

‘Sons of Ariston, divine offspring of a renowned man.’

“That seems aptly put, my friends. For there is something truly divine in your being able to speak so powerfully for the claim that injustice is better than justice without being convinced of it. I think you really are 368b unconvinced. I judge this from the rest of your character; if I judged by your speeches alone, I would distrust you. But the more I trust you, the more at a loss I am as to what to do. I cannot see how to defend justice: I think I lack the ability, as you showed when you rejected the argument with which I thought I had established, against Thrasymachus, that justice is better than injustice. Yet I cannot leave it undefended either, for I fear it would be impious to stand by while justice is slandered 368c and give up its defense while I can still breathe and speak. So the best I can do is come to its aid as best I can.”

Glaucon and the others begged me to help in every way, not to abandon the argument, but to investigate what each of the two is and where the truth lies about their benefits. I said what seemed to me true: “The inquiry we are undertaking is no slight one; it calls, I think, for keen eyesight. Since we are not especially sharp-sighted, I suggest 368d that we investigate it as we would if someone told us to read small letters from a distance and we noticed the same letters written larger somewhere else on a larger surface. It would be a godsend, I think, to read the larger letters first, then examine the smaller to see whether they are the same.”

“Certainly,” Adeimantus said. “But what does this analogy reveal to you, 368e Socrates, about our inquiry into justice?”

“I will tell you. We say that justice belongs to a single man, but also, surely, to an entire city?”

“Certainly.”

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

“Larger,” he said.

“Perhaps, then, there will be more justice in the larger thing and it will be easier to discern. So if you wish, let us first 369a look for what justice is in cities; then we can examine it in each individual, looking for the likeness of the larger in the form of the smaller.”

“That sounds good to me,” he said.

“If we were to watch a city coming into being in speech,” I asked, “would we see its justice and injustice coming into being as well?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“And once it has come into being, may we hope to see what we are seeking more easily?” 369b

“Much more easily.”

“Do you think, then, we should attempt it? I think it will be no small undertaking. Consider it.”

“We have considered it,” Adeimantus said. “By all means proceed.”

“A city comes into being,” I said, “because none of us is self-sufficient, but each has many needs. Can you think of any other origin for the founding of a city?”

“None,” he said. 369c

“So one person takes another into partnership for one need, and another for another. Having many needs, we gather many people into one settlement as partners and helpers, and call this common dwelling a city. Is that not so?”

“Certainly.”

“And when one person gives a share to another, or receives one, he does so because he thinks it better for himself?”

“Certainly.”

“Come, then,” I said, “let us build a city from its beginnings in speech. Our need, it seems, will build it.”

“How could it be otherwise?” 369d

“Surely the first and greatest need is the provision of food, so that we may exist and live.”

“Absolutely.”

“The second is shelter, and the third clothing and things of that kind.”

“Yes.”

“Come then,” I said, “how will the city provide for all this? Will one person be a farmer, another a builder, and another a weaver? Shall we add a shoemaker too, or someone else to tend to the body's needs?”

“Certainly.”

“The city in its most necessary form, then, would consist of four or five people.” 369e

“It seems so.”

“Now what? Must each of these contribute his work for them all to share? Must the farmer, for example, though he is one man, produce food for four, spend four times as much time and effort on it, and share it with the others? Or should he ignore them, produce a quarter as much 370a food for himself in a quarter of the time, and spend the other three quarters on building his house, making his clothes, and making his shoes, attending to his own affairs without sharing in the work of others?”

“Perhaps, Socrates,” Adeimantus said, “the first way is easier.”

“By Zeus, there is nothing strange in that,” I said. “Now that you mention it, I too see that, first of all, none of us is born exactly 370b like anyone else; our natures differ, and different people are suited to different tasks. Do you not think so?”

“I do.”

“Which person will work better: one who practices many crafts, or one who practices one?”

“One who practices one,” he said.

“And surely it is plain that if someone misses the right moment for a task, the work is spoiled.”

“Plain enough.”

“The work, I think, will not wait for the worker's leisure. The worker must 370c attend to it when it demands, not treat it as a sideline.”

“He must.”

“So more of everything is produced, and better and more easily, when each person performs one task suited to his nature, at the right time, free from other work.”

“Absolutely.”

“Then, Adeimantus, we need more than four citizens to provide what we mentioned. The farmer, it seems, will not make his own plow, if it is to be a good one, 370d or his hoe, or all the other implements of farming. Nor will the builder make his tools; he too needs many. The same goes for the weaver and the shoemaker, does it not?”

“True.”

“Carpenters, smiths, and many such craftsmen will join our little settlement and make it a sizable place.”

“Certainly.”

“Still, it would not yet be very large even if we added cowherds, shepherds, and keepers of other livestock: then farmers could have oxen to plow, builders could share with farmers in using beasts of burden for transport, 370e and weavers and shoemakers could have hides and wool.”

“But a city with all these people would not be small,” he said.

“Yet it is nearly impossible to found a city in a place where it will need no imports.”

“Impossible.”

“It will need still more people, then, to bring it what it requires from other cities.”

“It will.”

“But if a carrier goes empty-handed, bringing nothing those people need in exchange for the goods 371a our citizens need from them, he will return empty-handed. Is that not so?”

“I think so.”

“So they must produce at home not only enough for themselves, but goods of the kinds and in the quantities that their suppliers need.”

“They must.”

“Our city needs more farmers and other craftsmen, then.”

“Yes, more.”

“And more carriers too, to bring goods in and take them out. These are merchants, are they not?”

“Yes.”

“So we shall need merchants.”

“Certainly.”

“If the trade goes by sea, we shall also need a considerable number 371b of others who know the work of the sea.”

“A considerable number indeed.”

“And within the city itself, how will they exchange the products of their labor? Exchange was the very reason we formed a community and founded a city.”

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

“Then this gives us a marketplace and money as a token of exchange.”

“Certainly.” 371c

“Suppose a farmer or another craftsman brings something he has made to market, but does not arrive at the same time as those who want to trade for it. Will he sit idle in the market, away from his craft?”

“Not at all,” he said. “People who see this need appoint themselves to the task. In well-governed cities they are generally those least strong in body and unfit for other work. They must remain there 371d in the market: from those who wish to sell, they buy goods for money, and to those who wish to buy, they sell goods for money.”

“Then this need gives rise to retailers in our city,” I said. “Do we not call those who stay in the marketplace to serve buyers and sellers retailers, and those who travel between cities merchants?”

“Certainly.” 371e

“There are also, I think, other helpers who are not especially valuable partners in matters of the mind, but whose bodies are strong enough for hard work. They sell the use of their strength, call its price a wage, and are, I believe, called wage laborers. Is that right?”

“Certainly.”

“Wage laborers too, it seems, complete the city.”

“I think so.”

“Well, Adeimantus, has our city now grown enough to be complete?”

“Perhaps.”

“Where, then, might justice and injustice be in it? And in which of the things we have considered did they arise together?”

372a “I do not see, Socrates,” he said, “unless perhaps in some need these people have for one another.”

“Perhaps you are right,” I said. “We must examine it and not shrink from the task.

“First, let us see how people furnished in this way will live. They will surely produce grain and wine, clothing and shoes; they will build houses, and in summer mostly work barefoot and lightly clad, but in 372b winter adequately clothed and shod. For food they will grind barley into meal and wheat into flour, bake some and knead some, and set out fine barley cakes and bread on reeds or clean leaves. Reclining on beds of leaves strewn with bryony and myrtle, they will feast with their children, drink wine, wear garlands, and sing hymns to the gods. They will enjoy one another's company and have no more children than their means allow, guarding against poverty or war.” 372c

Glaucon interrupted. “You seem to be serving these people a feast without anything to eat with their bread.”

“You are right,” I said. “I forgot that they will have accompaniments too: salt, olives, and cheese, of course, and they will boil onions and greens such as people cook in the country. We shall serve them dessert as well—figs, chickpeas, and beans—and they will roast myrtle berries and acorns 372d by the fire, sipping their wine in moderation. Living thus in peace and health, they will probably reach old age and die, bequeathing a life like their own to their descendants.”

“If you were founding a city of pigs, Socrates,” he said, “what else would you feed them?”

“How should I feed them, Glaucon?” I asked.

“In the customary way,” he said. “If they are not to live miserably, I imagine they should recline on couches and dine at tables, and have the accompaniments and desserts people have nowadays.” 372e

“Very well,” I said. “I understand. We are looking at the origin not just of a city, it seems, but of a luxurious city. Perhaps that is no bad thing: by examining such a city, we may soon see how justice and injustice take root in cities. The true city, as I see it, is the one we have described, as healthy as a body. But if you wish, we can look at a fevered city too; nothing prevents us.

373a “For some people, it seems, what we have described and that way of life will not suffice. They will add couches, tables and other furnishings, rich foods, perfumes, incense, courtesans, and pastries, each in every variety. And the things we first spoke of—houses, clothes, and shoes—must no longer be provided merely as necessities. We must set painting and embroidery to work and acquire gold, ivory, and everything of the sort. Is that not so?” 373b

“Yes,” he said.

“So the city must be made larger again. That healthy city is no longer enough; it must now be filled with the mass and multitude of things no city needs for bare necessity: hunters of every kind and imitators, many who work in shapes and colors, many in music—poets and their attendants, reciters, actors, dancers, and producers; craftsmen making every kind of equipment, including the adornments 373c of women. We shall also need more servants. Do you not think we will need tutors, wet nurses, nurses, dressers, barbers, cooks, and chefs? We shall need swineherds too: there were none in the earlier city, for there was no need, but we will need them in this one. We shall also need very many other kinds of livestock, if anyone is to eat them. Is that not so?”

“How could it be otherwise?” 373d

“And living like this, will we not have far greater need of doctors than before?”

“Far greater.”

“And the land that was sufficient to feed our people before will now be too small. Is that how it stands?”

“It is,” he said.

“Then we will have to carve off a part of our neighbors' land, if we are to have enough for pasture and plowing, and they in turn will have to take some of ours, if they too give themselves over to the unlimited acquisition of wealth and pass beyond the limits of necessity.” 373e

“Inevitably, Socrates,” he said.

“Will we go to war after that, Glaucon? Or what will happen?”

“That is what will happen,” he said.

“Let us not yet say whether war brings good or evil,” I said. “Let us say only that we have found the origin of war, the source of the greatest evils that befall cities, both in private and in public, whenever they arise.”

“Certainly.”

“Then, my friend, our city must grow larger still, and by no small amount,

374a “No, a whole army, which will go out and fight the invaders for all their possessions and for everything we were speaking of just now.”

“But what?” he said. “Are the citizens themselves not enough?”

“Not if you and all of us were right in the agreement we made when we founded the city. We agreed, if you remember, that it is impossible for one person to practice many crafts well.”

“What you say is true,” he said. 374b

“Well then,” I said, “does the contest of war not seem to you a matter of craft?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Should we care more for shoemaking than for warfare?”

“Not at all.”

“Yet we forbade our shoemaker to attempt to be a farmer at the same time, or a weaver or a builder, but made him a shoemaker, so that the work of shoemaking would be done well for us. Likewise we assigned each of the others a single task, the one for which he was naturally suited, which he would pursue throughout his life, free from other occupations, without missing the right moments, and so do well. 374c Are the affairs of war not of the greatest importance to carry out well? Or is warfare so easy that a farmer can be a warrior while farming, a shoemaker while making shoes, or a practitioner of any other craft while practicing it? Yet no one would become sufficiently skilled at checkers or dice if he did not make that very thing his practice from childhood, but took it up as a sideline. 374d Will a man take up a shield, or any other weapon or instrument of war, and that same day become a capable competitor in heavy-armed combat or any other kind of battle, when no other instrument, simply by being picked up, will make anyone a craftsman or an athlete, or be of use to someone who has neither acquired the knowledge of each craft nor given it sufficient practice?”

“Then the instruments would be worth a great deal indeed,” he said.

“So,” I said, “the greater the guardians’ task, 374e the more it will require freedom from all other occupations, as well as the greatest skill and devotion.”

“I think so,” he said.

“And will it not require a nature suited to that pursuit as well?”

“Of course.”

“Then our task, it seems, if we are capable of it, will be to select the people whose natures are suited to guarding a city.”

“Yes, that will be our task.”

“By Zeus,” I said, “we have taken on no slight undertaking. Still, we must not lose courage, so far as our strength allows.”

375a “Certainly not,” he said.

“Do you think,” I said, “that in the matter of guarding, the nature of a well-bred puppy differs from that of a well-born young man?”

“What do you mean?”

“Both must be keen to perceive, quick to pursue whatever they perceive, and strong as well, if they must seize it and fight.”

“Yes,” he said, “they need all those qualities.”

“And courage, surely, if they are to fight well.”

“Of course.”

“But will anything be courageous, whether horse, dog, or any other creature, if it has no spirit? Have you not observed 375b how irresistible and unconquerable spirit is, how its presence makes every soul fearless and undefeated against all things?”

“I have.”

“Then the bodily qualities the guardian needs are clear.”

“Yes.”

“And the quality of soul too: a spirited temper.”

“That too.”

“How then, Glaucon,” I said, “will they not be savage to one another and to the other citizens, with such natures?”

“By Zeus,” he said, “it is hard to see how they could avoid it.” 375c

“Yet they must be gentle to their own people and fierce toward enemies. Otherwise they will not wait for others to destroy them: they will get there first and do it themselves.”

“True,” he said.

“What are we to do, then?” I said. “Where shall we find a character both gentle and high-spirited? A gentle nature, surely, is opposed to a spirited one.”

“So it appears.”

“And yet, deprived of either quality, a man will never make a good guardian. These qualities appear incompatible; 375d thus it follows that a good guardian cannot exist.”

“So it seems,” he said.

I was at a loss, and after reviewing what had gone before I said, “No wonder we are at a loss, my friend: we have lost sight of the example we set before ourselves.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have overlooked the existence of natures that possess both these opposites, though we thought no such natures possible.”

“Where are they?”

“One may see them in other animals too, but not least 375e in the animal to which we compared our guardian. You know, I suppose, that noble dogs are by nature as gentle as can be toward those they know and live with, but the reverse toward strangers.”

“Yes, I know.”

“So this is possible,” I said, “and it is not contrary to nature to seek a guardian of this kind.”

“Apparently not.”

“Do you think our prospective guardian needs one more quality: besides being spirited, must he not also be a philosopher by nature?”

376a “How so?” he asked. “I do not understand.”

“You will see this too in dogs,” I said, “and it is a remarkable thing in the creature.”

“What thing?”

“When it sees a stranger, it grows angry although it has suffered no harm from him; but when it sees someone it knows, it welcomes him, even if it has never received a kindness from him. Have you never wondered at that?”

“I have not given it much thought until now,” he said, “but clearly that is what it does.”

“Yet this trait of its nature seems refined 376b and truly philosophical.”

“In what way?”

“Because,” I said, “it distinguishes a friendly face from an enemy’s by nothing but its knowing the one and not knowing the other. How could a creature fail to love learning when it determines what belongs to it and what is alien by knowledge and ignorance?”

“It could not possibly fail,” he said.

“But love of learning and love of wisdom are the same thing, are they not?” I asked.

“Yes, the same,” he said.

“Then we may confidently conclude that if a human being is to be 376c gentle toward his own people and those he knows, he must by nature be a philosopher and a lover of learning.”

“Let us conclude that,” he said.

“Thus whoever is to be a worthy guardian of our city will be, by nature, philosophical, spirited, swift, and strong.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“So much for his natural qualities. But how shall these men be raised and educated? And will examining that question help us to see what lies behind our whole inquiry: how justice and injustice arise in a city? We do not want to leave out a necessary account or pursue one at excessive length.” 376d

Glaucon’s brother said, “I certainly expect this inquiry to be useful for that purpose.”

“By Zeus, dear Adeimantus,” I said, “then we must not abandon it, even if it proves rather long.”

“Certainly not.”

“Come, then: let us educate these men in thought, as though we had leisure to tell a story.” 376e

“Yes, we must.”

“What, then, is their education? Is it hard to find a better one than the one discovered over the course of ages? It consists, I think, of physical training for the body and music and poetry for the soul.”

“Yes.”

“And shall we not begin their education with music and poetry, before physical training?”

“Of course.”

“Do you include stories in music and poetry?” I asked.

“I do.”

“And are there two kinds of stories, one true and the other false?”

“Yes.”

377a “We must educate them in both, but begin with the false?”

“I do not understand what you mean,” he said.

“Do you not understand,” I said, “that the first things we tell children are stories? These, taken as a whole, are false, though they contain some truth. And we tell children stories before we give them physical training.”

“That is so.”

“That is what I meant when I said we should begin with music and poetry before physical training.”

“Right,” he said.

“You know, then, that the beginning is the most important part of any undertaking, especially 377b for anything young and tender? That is when it is most readily molded and takes the impression one wishes to stamp upon it.”

“Very much so.”

“Shall we then so easily allow children to hear any stories composed by just anyone and take into their souls beliefs for the most part contrary to those we think they ought to hold when they have grown up?”

“We shall never allow it.”

“First, then, it seems we must oversee the storytellers. We must admit whatever fine story 377c they compose and reject whatever is not fine. The stories we admit, we shall persuade nurses and mothers to tell the children, shaping their souls with these stories far more than they shape their bodies with their hands. But most of the stories they tell now must be cast out.”

“Which ones?” he asked.

“We shall see the lesser stories,” I said, “in the greater. For both the greater and the lesser must have the same pattern and the same effect. Do you not think so?” 377d

“I do,” he said. “But I do not even know which greater stories you mean.”

“Those that Hesiod and Homer and the other poets used to tell us,” I said. “They fashioned false stories for people and told them, and still tell them.”

“Which stories,” he asked, “and what is your objection to them?”

“What one ought to object to first and most of all,” I said, “especially when the falsehood is badly told.”

“What is that?” 377e

“When someone gives a bad image in words of what gods and heroes are like, as a painter does when he paints something that bears no resemblance to what he intended to portray.”

“Yes,” he said, “it is right to object to such things. But what exactly do we mean, and which things?”

“First,” I said, “whoever told the greatest lie about the greatest beings told it badly, when he said that Uranus did the things Hesiod ascribes to him, and that Cronus in turn 378a took revenge upon him as he did. As for the deeds of Cronus, and what he suffered at his son’s hands, even if they were true I would not think they should be told so readily to the young and unthinking. Best keep them silent; but if they must be told, let as few as possible hear them in secret, after sacrificing not a pig but some great, hard-to-obtain offering, so that as few as possible may come to hear them.”

“Those are troubling stories indeed,” he said. 378b

“And they must not be told in our city, Adeimantus,” I said. “A young listener must not be told that if he commits the gravest injustice he does nothing extraordinary, or that if he punishes his unjust father in every possible way he is only doing what the first and greatest of the gods did.”

“No, by Zeus,” he said, “I too think these stories are unfit to tell.”

“Nor, indeed,” I said, “must we tell of gods warring, plotting, and fighting against gods 378c—such tales are not even true—if those who will guard our city are to regard it as utterly shameful to fall easily into hatred of one another. Far less should we tell them tales of battles among giants or embroider them with all the many different feuds of gods and heroes against their relatives and families. Instead, if we are somehow to persuade them that no citizen has ever hated another citizen and that such hatred is unholy, these are the kinds of things that must be said to children from the start by old men and women; and as the children grow older, the poets too must be compelled to compose stories along these lines. 378d But we must not admit into the city stories of Hera bound by her son, or Hephaestus hurled down by his father when he tried to defend his mother from a beating, or any of the battles among gods that Homer has composed, whether made with a hidden meaning or without one. A young person cannot distinguish what has a hidden meaning from what does not; the opinions he takes in at that age tend to be hard to wash away 378e and hard to change. Perhaps this is why we must make it our chief concern that the first stories they hear are as beautifully told as possible, to guide them toward virtue.”

“That makes sense,” he said. “But suppose someone asks us what these stories are, and which ones we mean. What would we say?”

And I said, “Adeimantus, you and I 379a are not poets at present but founders of a city. Founders should know the patterns within which poets must tell their stories, and must not allow them to depart from those patterns; they need not compose the stories themselves.”

“Right,” he said. “But just what are these patterns for speaking about the gods?”

“Something like this,” I said: “a god must always be represented as he truly is, whether someone portrays him in epic or lyric or tragedy.”

“Yes, he must.” 379b

“And a god is truly good, and must be spoken of as such?”

“Certainly.”

“Now, nothing good is harmful, is it?”

“I do not think so.”

“Does what is not harmful do harm?”

“Not at all.”

“And what does no harm does no evil?”

“None.”

“And what does no evil cannot be the cause of any evil?”

“How could it?”

“And is the good beneficial?”

“Yes.”

“So it is a cause of well-being?”

“Yes.”

“Then the good is not the cause of everything, but the cause of what goes well; of evil it is not the cause.” 379c

“Exactly,” he said.

“Neither, then,” I said, “could a god, being good, be the cause of everything, as most people say. Of the things that befall human beings he causes few, and of many he is not the cause, since good things are far fewer than bad things for us. For good things we must hold no one else responsible, but for bad things we must seek other causes, not a god.”

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

“Then,” I said, “we must not accept Homer’s mistake, or any other poet’s, when he foolishly errs concerning the gods 379d and says:

“‘Two jars stand upon the floor of Zeus,filled with destinies, one of blessings, the other of sorrows;and to the man for whom Zeus mixes a portion from both,now evil comes, now good;but to the man for whom he mixes none and gives the unmixed second jar,grinding hunger drives him over the sacred earth.’

“379e Nor must we accept that Zeus is for us the steward

“‘of both blessings and evils.’

“If anyone says that Athena and Zeus caused Pandarus to break the oaths and truce, we shall not praise him; nor shall we praise the strife and judgment of the gods 380a attributed to Themis and Zeus. And we must not let the young hear what Aeschylus says:

“‘A god plants guilt in mortalswhen he wishes to destroy a house utterly.’

“If someone writes of the sufferings of Niobe, in a work containing these verses, or of the descendants of Pelops, or of the Trojan War, or of anything else of the kind, we must not allow him to say that these are the works of a god; or if he does say so, he must discover something like the account we are seeking now 380b and say that what the god did was just and good, and that those who were punished benefited from it. But we must not permit the poet to say that those who paid the penalty were wretched and that it was a god who brought this about. If he says that the wicked were wretched because they needed punishment, but benefited in paying the penalty at a god’s hands, that we may allow. But we must fight in every way against anyone’s saying that a god, who is good, becomes a cause of evil to anyone; we must allow no one in his own city, if it is to have good laws, to tell such a tale or listen to one, 380c whether young or old, whether it is told in verse or without meter. Such talk, if spoken, would be neither holy nor beneficial to us nor consistent with itself.”

“I vote with you for this law,” he said, “and it pleases me.”

“This, then,” I said, “will be one of our laws and patterns concerning the gods, by which speakers must speak and poets compose: a god is not the cause of all things but of good things.”

“That is quite enough,” he said. 380d

“Now what of this second question? Do you believe a god is a sorcerer who deliberately appears now in one shape and now in another, sometimes himself changing his own form into many shapes, sometimes deceiving us and making us think such things of him? Or is he simple, and least of all beings liable to depart from his own form?”

“I cannot answer that yet,” he said.

“Consider this: if something departs from its own form, must it not be changed either by itself or by another?” 380e

“It must.”

“And the things that are best constituted are least altered and moved by something else, are they not? Take a body affected by food and drink and exertion, or a plant by the sun’s heat and the winds and such conditions. Is it not the healthiest and strongest that is 381a least altered?”

“Of course.”

“And will not some external experience least disturb and change the bravest and wisest soul?”

“Yes.”

“And surely the same account holds for all composite things—implements, buildings, and clothes: those well made and in good condition are least altered by time and other influences.”

“That is so.” 381b

“Anything, then, in good condition by nature or craft or both admits the least change from another thing.”

“So it seems.”

“But a god and everything divine are in every respect in the best condition.”

“Of course.”

“In this respect, then, a god would be least likely to take on many forms.”

“Least likely indeed.”

“But might he change and alter himself?”

“Clearly he would have to,” he said, “if he changes at all.”

“Would he change himself into something better and finer, or into something worse and uglier than himself?” 381c

“Necessarily into something worse,” he said, “if he changes at all: surely we would not say that a god lacks beauty or excellence.”

“You are quite right,” I said. “And given that, Adeimantus, do you think anyone, god or human, would willingly make himself worse in any respect?”

“Impossible,” he said.

“Then it is also impossible,” I said, “for a god to wish to alter himself. Rather, it seems, each of them, as beautiful and excellent as possible, always remains simply in his own form.”

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

“Then let no poet, my good friend,” I said, “tell us:

“‘The gods, appearing as strangers from foreign lands,take on every shape and wander through the cities.’

“Nor let anyone slander Proteus and Thetis; nor bring Hera onstage in tragedy or other poetry, changed into a priestess begging alms

“‘for the life-giving children of Inachus, the river of Argos.’

“381e Let them not tell us many other falsehoods of that kind. And let mothers not be persuaded by these tales to frighten their children by telling them wicked stories that certain gods roam about at night appearing as strangers in all sorts of shapes. Otherwise they blaspheme the gods and at the same time make their children more timid.”

“No, they must not,” he said.

“But,” I said, “could it be that the gods themselves do not change, yet make us think they appear in all kinds of shapes, deceiving and bewitching us?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

382a “But tell me,” I said, “would a god wish to lie in word or deed, presenting a false appearance?”

“I do not know,” he said.

“Do you not know,” I said, “that what is truly a lie, if one may call it that, is hated by gods and human beings alike?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“This,” I said: “no one willingly accepts falsehood in the ruling part of himself about the most important things; there, above all places, he dreads possessing it.”

“I still do not understand,” he said. 382b

“You think I mean something profound,” I said. “What I mean is that all of us are least willing to be deceived in our souls about what is, to remain ignorant and harbor falsehood there; that is where we hate it most.”

“By far,” he said.

“And the name ‘true falsehood’ would most properly belong, as I was just saying, to ignorance in the soul of one who has been deceived. A spoken falsehood is an imitation of that condition of the soul, an image produced afterward, not falsehood in its pure form. 382c Is that not so?”

“Certainly.”

“Then true falsehood is hated not only by gods but also by human beings.”

“So it seems to me.”

“What, then, of falsehood in speech? When, and for whom, is it useful enough not to deserve hatred? Against enemies, surely; and when those we call friends attempt some evil through madness or folly, it can serve as a medicine to turn them away. And in the stories we mentioned 382d just now, because we do not know the truth about the distant past, we make falsehood as like the truth as we can and so make it useful.”

“Yes, that is exactly so,” he said.

“Which of these uses, then, could a god have for falsehood? Would he lie by making something up because he does not know the distant past?”

“That would be absurd,” he said.

“Then no lying poet resides in a god.”

“I think not.”

“Would he lie because he fears his enemies?” 382e

“Far from it.”

“Or because of the folly or madness of his own?”

“But no one foolish or mad is dear to a god,” he said.

“Then there is no reason for a god to lie.”

“None.”

“The divine and the godlike, then, are wholly without falsehood.”

“Entirely,” he said.

“God, then, is utterly simple and true in deed and word. He neither changes himself nor deceives others—neither by apparitions, nor by words, nor by sending signs, whether in waking life or in dreams.”

383a “As I hear you say it, it seems so to me too,” he said.

“You agree, then,” I said, “that this is our second pattern for speech and poetry concerning the gods: they are not sorcerers who change their shapes, nor do they lead us astray by lies in word or deed.”

“I agree.”

“Then, though we praise much in Homer, we shall not praise the sending of the dream from Zeus to Agamemnon. Nor shall we praise Aeschylus when he has Thetis say that Apollo, singing at her wedding, proclaimed the blessings of her children— 383b

“‘Lives untouched by sickness and long in years;calling all my fortunes dear to the gods,he sang a paean and cheered my heart.And I believed the sacred, truthful voiceof Phoebus, rich in the prophetic art.But he who sang, who joined the feast,who spoke these words—he was the one who killedmy child.’

“383c When anyone speaks of the gods this way, we shall be indignant and refuse him a chorus; nor shall we allow teachers to use such works in educating the young, if our guardians are to become god-fearing and godlike to the utmost degree possible for a human being.”

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

386a “Such, then,” I said, “are the things about the gods, it seems, that those who are to honor the gods and their parents and hold their friendship with one another no small matter must hear—or must not hear—from childhood.”

“And rightly so, I think,” he said.

“What if they are to be courageous? Must we not tell them things that will make them fear death as little as possible? 386b Or do you think anyone who carries that fear within him could ever become courageous?”

“By Zeus, I do not.”

“And do you think a man who believes that the realm of Hades exists and is dreadful will be fearless in the face of death and choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery?”

“Not at all.”

“Then it seems we must also oversee those who undertake to tell stories about that realm, and ask them not to revile the things in Hades indiscriminately, but rather to praise them, since their accounts would be neither true 386c nor useful to men who are to become fighters.”

“Yes, we must,” he said.

“Then we shall erase all such passages, beginning with this one:‘I would rather serve another man for hire upon the earth,a man with no allotment and scarcely enough to live on,than reign over all the dead who have perished.’And this: 386d‘Then the houses of the dead would stand revealed to mortal and immortal eyes,dreadful and dank, hated even by the gods.’And:‘Ah, so there is, even in the house of Hades,a soul and a phantom, though no understanding remains at all.’And this:‘He alone has understanding; the others flit about as shadows.’And:‘The soul flew from his limbs and went to Hades,lamenting its fate, leaving manhood and youth behind.’

387a And this:‘The soul went beneath the earth like smoke,with a shrill cry.’And:‘As bats in the recess of a vast cavefly shrieking when one falls from the cluster on the rock,clinging to one another,so these went together, shrieking.’

387b We shall ask Homer and the other poets not to take offense when we strike out these and all such passages—not because they lack poetry or are not pleasant for most people to hear, but because the more poetic they are, the less they should be heard by children and men who must be free and fear slavery more than death.”

“Certainly.”

“Then we must also discard all the terrible and frightening names associated with these things—Cocytus and Styx, 387c the dwellers below and the lifeless dead, and every other name of this kind that makes all who hear it shudder, as people suppose. Perhaps they serve some other purpose well; but we fear for our guardians, lest such shuddering make them more feverish and softer than they should be.”

“And rightly,” he said, “do we fear it.”

“Then these must be removed?”

“Yes.”

“And we must speak and compose in the opposite manner?”

“Clearly. 387d”

“Then shall we also remove the wailings and lamentations of men of renown?”

“We must,” he said, “if we remove the others.”

“Consider,” I said, “whether we shall be right to do so. We say that a decent man will not regard death as dreadful for another decent man who is his friend.”

“So we say.”

“Then he will not lament for him as if something dreadful had happened to him.”

“Certainly not.”

“But we also say that such a man is most self-sufficient when it comes to living well and, unlike others, needs another person least of all. 387e”

“True,” he said.

“Then losing a son or brother, wealth, or anything of that kind will be least dreadful to him.”

“Least of all.”

“So he will also lament least, bearing such a misfortune as calmly as possible when it comes upon him.”

“By far.”

“Then we would be right to remove laments from the mouths of distinguished men and assign them to women—and not even to respectable women—

388a and to men of no worth, so that those we say we are raising to guard our country will recoil from behaving like them.”

“Right,” he said.

“Once more, then, we shall ask Homer and the other poets not to portray Achilles, the son of a goddess,‘now lying on his side, now againon his back, now face downward,’then rising upright and roaming distraught 388b ‘along the shore of the barren sea’; nor taking ‘sooty dust in both hands’ and pouring it over his head; nor weeping and lamenting in all the ways that poet has depicted. Nor should they portray Priam, descended from gods, pleading and‘rolling in the filth,calling each man by name.’Far more urgently still shall we ask them not to portray gods lamenting and saying: 388c‘Alas for me, wretched mother, alas, who bore the noblest child!’But if they must portray gods so, let them at least not dare to imitate the greatest of the gods in so unworthy a fashion that he says:‘Ah, I see with my own eyes a man dear to mepursued around the city, and my heart grieves.’And:‘Alas for me! Sarpedon, dearest to me among men,388d is fated to fall beneath Patroclus, son of Menoetius.’For if our young men, my dear Adeimantus, hear such things in earnest and do not laugh at them as unworthy of being said, scarcely would any of them, mere mortals though they are, think such behavior beneath them or rebuke themselves if they felt an impulse to say or do the like. Instead, without shame or endurance, they would sing out long dirges and lamentations over trifling troubles. 388e”

“What you say is entirely true,” he said.

“But they must not, as our argument just showed us; and we must follow it until someone persuades us with a better one.”

“No, they must not.”

“Nor, surely, should they be given to laughter. For when anyone yields to violent laughter, the result is generally a violent change of temper.”

“So it seems to me,” he said.

“Then we cannot approve of portraying people of any consequence overcome by 389a laughter, much less gods.”

“Much less,” he said.

“Then neither shall we approve Homer's account of the gods:‘Unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed godswhen they saw Hephaestus bustling through the hall.’”

“Not by your argument.”

“If you wish to call it mine,” he said; “at any rate, 389b we cannot approve it.”

“And truth, surely, must be held in high esteem. For if we were right in what we said a moment ago, and falsehood is truly useless to gods but useful to human beings as a kind of medicine, clearly such a thing must be entrusted to physicians, not handled by private citizens.”

“Clearly,” he said.

“Then if anyone has the right to lie, it belongs to the city's rulers, for the city's benefit, whether in dealing with enemies or with citizens; but no one else must touch it. 389c If a private citizen lies to such rulers, we shall call it an offense as great as, or greater than, a patient's failure to tell his doctor the truth about his condition, an athlete's failure to tell his trainer the truth about his body, or a sailor's failure to tell the pilot the facts about the ship and its crew, and how he or any other sailor is performing his duty.”

“Entirely true,” he said. 389d

“Then if a ruler catches anyone else lying in the city—‘one of the craftsmen of the people,a seer, a healer of ills, or a builder of ships’—he will punish him for introducing a practice that could overturn and destroy a city, as it could a ship.”

“If deeds follow our words,” he said.

“What then? Will our young men not need self-control?”

“How could they not?”

“And for the many, are not the chief elements of self-control these: to obey their rulers 389e and themselves to rule their pleasures in drink, love, and food?”

“So it seems to me.”

“Then we shall, I think, call well said such lines as Diomedes speaks in Homer:‘Friend, sit quietly and heed my words,’and the lines that follow these:‘The Achaeans advanced breathing fury,silent in awe of their commanders,’and others of that kind.”

“Well said.”

“But what of these lines:‘You, sodden with wine, with a dog's eyes and a deer's heart,’

390a and what follows them? Are they well said, or any other insolent words that a private person has spoken against rulers in prose or poetry?”

“No.”

“For I think it is not fitting for young men to hear such words if they are to learn self-control. If they give some other pleasure, no wonder. How does it seem to you?”

“As you say,” he replied.

“And what of having the wisest of men say that the finest sight of all, in his judgment, is when‘the tables are laden 390b with bread and meat, and the cupbearer draws winefrom the mixing bowl, carries it round, and pours it into cups’?Do you think it fitting for a young man to hear this if he is to master himself? Or that it is ‘most pitiable to die of hunger and meet one's fate’? Or that Zeus, while all the other gods and men slept, alone awake and pondering his plans, readily 390c forgot them all through desire for sex, and was so overcome at the sight of Hera that he would not even enter their chamber but wanted to lie with her there on the ground, saying that desire had never held him so strongly, not even when they first met in secret from their dear parents? Nor should they hear how Ares and Aphrodite were bound by Hephaestus for a similar affair.”

“No, by Zeus,” he said, “I do not think it fitting. 390d”

“But wherever,” I said, “distinguished men are said or shown to endure everything steadfastly, those are the things they should see and hear. For instance:‘He struck his breast and rebuked his heart:Endure, my heart; you once endured a worse thing still.’”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Yet we must not allow these men to accept bribes or to love money. 390e”

“Not at all.”

“Nor must anyone sing to them that‘Gifts persuade gods, and gifts persuade revered kings.’Nor should we praise Phoenix, Achilles' tutor, as speaking rightly when he counseled Achilles to take gifts and then help the Achaeans, but not to give up his anger without gifts. And we shall neither think Achilles himself worthy of such conduct nor agree that he loved money so much that he accepted gifts from Agamemnon, and again demanded payment to release a corpse 391a but would not release it otherwise.”

“Such things certainly deserve no praise,” he said.

“I hesitate,” I said, “out of regard for Homer, to declare that it is impious to say these things of Achilles or to believe others who do; likewise the tale that he said to Apollo:‘You have wronged me, far-striking one, most destructive of all the gods;I would take revenge on you, if only I had the power.’391b Nor should we believe that he defied the river, a god, and stood ready to fight him, or that he said of the hair consecrated to the other river, Spercheius, ‘I would give this hair to the hero Patroclus to carry with him,’ though Patroclus was dead, and actually did so. The dragging of Hector around Patroclus' tomb, and the slaughter of living prisoners on his pyre—we shall say none of these accounts is true, nor allow 391c our people to believe that Achilles, son of a goddess and of Peleus, a man of great self-control and third in descent from Zeus, raised by the wisest of men, Chiron, was so full of turmoil that he carried within him two contrary diseases: servility joined to love of money, and arrogance toward gods and men alike.”

“You are right,” he said.

“Then let us not believe,” I said, “or permit anyone to say that Theseus, son of Poseidon, and Pirithous, son of Zeus, 391d embarked on such dreadful abductions, or that any other son of a god and hero would dare commit the dreadful and impious deeds falsely attributed to them now. Let us compel the poets either to deny that these deeds were theirs or to deny that these men were sons of gods. They must not say both, nor try to persuade our young men that gods beget evil and heroes are no better than ordinary men. As we said before, 391e these stories are neither holy nor true: we showed, surely, that evil cannot come from gods.”

“Of course.”

“And they harm those who hear them. For everyone will pardon his own wickedness if he believes that such things are and have been done even by‘those near to the seed of gods,those close to Zeus, whose ancestral altar of Zeusstands in the air on Mount Ida,’and that‘the divine blood in them has not yet died away.’That is why we must put an end to such stories, lest they breed in our young men 392a an easy readiness for wrongdoing.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“What category of stories,” I said, “remains for us to define as suitable or unsuitable? We have said how stories should speak of gods, spirits, heroes, and those in Hades.”

“Indeed.”

“Then what remains would be stories about human beings?”

“Clearly.”

“But, my friend, we cannot lay down a rule about these at present.”

“Why not?”

“Because, I think, we would say that poets and storytellers make the greatest error 392b about human beings when they say that many unjust people are happy and just people wretched, that injustice pays if it goes undetected, and that justice benefits someone else but costs its possessor. We would forbid them to say such things and command them to sing and tell the opposite. Would we not?”

“I know we would,” he said.

“Then if you agree that I am right, I shall say that you have conceded the very thing we have been seeking all this time.”

“You have understood correctly,” he said. 392c

“Then we shall agree that these are the stories to tell about human beings only when we discover what justice is, and how it naturally benefits its possessor, whether or not he seems to be just.”

“Entirely true,” he said.

“Let that be the end, then, of the content of stories. Next, I think, we must examine their manner of telling, and our inquiry into both what must be said and how it must be said will be complete.”

Adeimantus said, “I do not understand what you mean by that. 392d”

“But you must,” I said. “Perhaps you will understand better this way. Is not everything said by storytellers or poets an account of things past, present, or future?”

“What else could it be?” he said.

“And do they not accomplish this by simple narration, by narration through imitation, or by both?”

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

“I seem to be a ridiculous and obscure teacher,” I said. “So, like people who are poor at explaining, I shall take one part rather than the whole 392e and try to show you what I mean by it. 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 failed to obtain her, prayed to the god against the Achaeans?”

“I do.”

“Then you know that down to these lines:‘He pleaded with all the Achaeans,but most of all with the two sons of Atreus, commanders of the people,’the poet speaks in his own person and does not try to turn our minds elsewhere, as though someone other than himself were speaking. But after these lines he speaks as if he himself were Chryses and tries 393b as hard as he can to make us think the speaker is not Homer but the priest, an old man. Almost all the rest of his account of events at Troy and of the sufferings in Ithaca and throughout the Odyssey is composed in the same manner.”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Is it narration, then, both when he recounts each speech and when he recounts what comes between the speeches?”

“Of course. 393c”

“But when he delivers a speech as if he were another person, shall we not say that he makes his own expression as like as possible to that of whoever he has presented as about to speak?”

“We shall; what else?”

“And making oneself like someone else in voice or bearing is imitating the person one resembles?”

“Certainly.”

“Then in such passages he and the other poets evidently make their narration through imitation.”

“Indeed.”

“But if the poet never concealed himself, all his poetry and narration 393d would be free of imitation. And so you do not say again that you do not understand how that could happen, I shall explain. If Homer had said that Chryses came bearing a ransom for his daughter and supplicating the Achaeans, especially their kings, and then had gone on speaking not as Chryses but still as Homer, you understand that this would have been not imitation but simple narration. It would have gone something like this—I shall put it in prose, since I am no poet: 393e The priest came and prayed that the gods would grant them victory over Troy and a safe return, and that they would release his daughter to him, accepting the ransom and honoring the god.

When he had spoken, the others showed reverence and consented, but Agamemnon grew savage and ordered him to leave at once and never come back, lest his staff and the god's garlands fail to protect him. Before his daughter was released, he said, she would grow old in Argos with him. He told the priest to go and not provoke him, 394a so that he might reach home safely. The old man heard and was afraid and went away in silence. When he had left the camp, he offered many prayers to Apollo, calling on the god by his titles, reminding him of his service and asking him to repay it if the priest had ever pleased him by building temples or offering sacred sacrifices. In return for these, he prayed that the Achaeans might pay for his tears by the god's arrows. That, my friend,” I said, “is how simple narration is made without 394b imitation.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Understand, then,” I said, “that the opposite arises when someone removes what the poet says between speeches and leaves only the dialogue.”

“That too I understand,” he said. “It is what happens in tragedies.”

“You have grasped it perfectly,” I said. “And now, I think, I can make clear to you what I could not before: one kind of poetry and storytelling 394c is wholly through imitation, as you say tragedy and comedy are; another consists in the poet's own recital, found chiefly, perhaps, in dithyrambs; and yet another uses both, in epic poetry and in many other places, if you follow me.”

“Now I understand,” he said, “what you meant before.”

“Recall also what came before that: we said that we had settled what should be said but still had to examine how it should be said.”

“I remember. 394d”

“That was precisely what I meant when I said we must reach an agreement on whether we shall allow poets to make their narratives through imitation, or allow it in some cases but not in others, defining which are which, or forbid imitation altogether.”

“I suspect,” he said, “you are considering whether we shall admit tragedy and comedy into the city.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “and perhaps still more besides. I do not yet know myself; but wherever the argument carries us, like a wind, there we must go.”

“And rightly so,” he said. 394e

“Consider now, Adeimantus, whether our guardians should be imitators or not. Does this too follow from what we said before—that each person could practice one occupation well, but not many, and that if he tried to take on many he would fail at them all and gain distinction in none?”

“Of course.”

“Then does the same account apply to imitation: one person cannot imitate many things well as he can one?”

“No, he cannot.”

395a “Then he could hardly practice any occupation worthy of note while also imitating many things and being an imitator, since even two forms of imitation that seem close to each other cannot be performed well by the same people at once—for example, composing comedy and tragedy. Did you not just call these two imitations?”

“I did; and you are right that the same people cannot do both.”

“Nor can the same people be rhapsodes and actors.”

“True.”

“Nor are the same actors suited to comedy and tragedy; 395b and all these are imitations, are they not?”

“Imitations.”

“Indeed, Adeimantus, human nature seems to me divided into pieces smaller still, so that a person cannot imitate many things well, or even perform well those very actions of which the imitations are likenesses.”

“Entirely true,” he said.

“Then if we are to preserve our original argument—that our guardians, released from all other crafts, must be highly skilled craftsmen of the city's freedom 395c and must practice nothing that does not lead to this—they should neither do nor imitate anything else. If they do imitate, they must imitate from childhood what befits them: courageous, self-controlled, pious, and free people, and everything of that kind. But they must neither perform servile acts nor become skilled at imitating them, or any other shameful thing, lest imitation give them a share in the reality. 395d Have you not noticed that imitations, if pursued continuously from youth onward, settle into habit and nature, in body, voice, and mind alike?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Then,” I said, “we shall not allow the men we claim to care for, and who we say must become good men, to imitate a woman, whether young or old, quarreling with her husband, contending with the gods and boasting because she thinks herself happy, or caught in misfortune, mourning and lamenting. Still less should they imitate a woman who is sick, in love, or in labor. 395e”

“Certainly not,” he said.

“Nor female or male slaves doing the things slaves do.”

“Not that either.”

“Nor, it seems, wicked men and cowards acting contrary to everything we just named—abusing and mocking one another, speaking obscenely, whether drunk or sober, 396a and committing all the other offenses such people commit in word and deed, against themselves and others. Nor, I think, should they grow accustomed to representing mad people in word or action. They must know mad people and wicked men and women, but neither do nor imitate anything they do.”

“Entirely true,” he said.

“What then?” I said. “Should they imitate blacksmiths or other craftsmen at work, 396b or men rowing triremes or giving orders to the rowers, or anything else connected with such occupations?”

“How could they,” he said, “when they will not even be permitted to pay attention to any of these things?”

“And will they imitate neighing horses, bellowing bulls, rushing rivers, the crashing sea, thunder, and all such sounds?”

“But they have been forbidden,” he said, “both to be mad and to resemble mad people.”

“Then, if I understand you,” I said, “there is one manner of speech and narration that a truly noble and good man would use when he has something to tell, 396c and another manner unlike it, which a man reared and formed in the opposite way would always adopt in telling a story.”

“What are these manners?” he said.

“It seems to me,” I said, “that when a decent man reaches, in his narrative, the words or actions of a good man, he will be willing to tell them as if he himself were that man and will not be ashamed of such imitation. He will imitate most readily 396d the good man acting steadily and sensibly; less readily and to a lesser extent when illness, love, drunkenness, or some other misfortune makes that man falter. But when he encounters someone unworthy of himself, he will not want in earnest to fashion himself after a worse man, except briefly when that man is doing something worthwhile. He will feel shame, partly because he has had no practice in imitating such men, partly because he dislikes molding himself 396e into the patterns of inferior men and, in his heart, disdains to do so except in play.”

“That seems likely,” he said.

“Then he will use a narrative of the kind we described a little while ago in speaking of Homer's poetry. His style will contain both imitation and the other kind of narration, but imitation will be a small part of a long account. Is that not so?”

“Indeed,” he said, “that must be the pattern of such a speaker.”

397a “And the man who is not like him—the more base he is, the more eager he will be to recount everything. He will think nothing beneath him, and so will attempt to imitate everything in earnest, before a crowd: the thunder and the sounds of winds and hail, of axles and pulleys, of trumpets, flutes, reed pipes, and every instrument, and even the cries of dogs and sheep and birds, as we said just now. 397b So will his entire manner of speech be imitation by voice and gesture, with little narration?”

“It must be,” he said.

“These, then,” I said, “are the two manners of speech I meant.”

“And so they are,” he said.

“Now one of the two makes few changes. If someone gives the speech its proper mode and rhythm, a speaker who speaks rightly can stay in nearly the same mode throughout—for the changes are few—and likewise 397c in a fairly constant rhythm.”

“Exactly so,” he said.

“And what of the other manner? Does it not need the opposite—all modes and all rhythms—if it is to be performed fittingly, since its changes take so many forms?”

“That is very much the case.”

“Then do all poets and speakers make use of one of these two patterns of speech, or the other, or some mixture of both?”

“They must,” he said. 397d

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

“If I prevail,” he said, “the unmixed imitation of a decent man.”

“But Adeimantus,” I said, “the mixed kind is pleasant too; and the kind opposite to your choice is by far the most delightful to children and their tutors, and to the great crowd.”

“It certainly is.”

“Yet perhaps,” I said, “you would say it does not suit 397e our constitution, because among us no man is twofold or many-sided: each does one thing.”

“It does not suit it.”

“And is this why only in a city such as ours shall we find the shoemaker a shoemaker, not also a pilot; the farmer a farmer, not also a judge; the soldier a soldier, not also a moneymaker; and everyone else the same?”

“True,” he said.

398a “Then if a man whose skill made him capable of becoming all sorts of people and imitating all sorts of things came to our city wishing to display himself and his poems, we would bow before him as a sacred, marvelous, delightful being. But we would tell him that no such man exists in our city, nor is it lawful for one to arise here; and we would send him on to another city, pouring perfume on his head and crowning him with wool. For our part, we would employ the more austere and less pleasing poet 398b and storyteller for the sake of his usefulness, one who would imitate for us the speech of a decent man and say what he has to say in accordance with those patterns we laid down at the beginning, when we undertook to educate our soldiers.”

“That is exactly what we would do,” he said, “if it were up to us.”

“Now, my friend,” I said, “we seem to have completed the part of musical education concerned with stories and narratives: we have discussed both what should be said and how to say it.”

“So it seems to me too,” he said. 398c

“Then what remains,” I said, “is the manner of song and melody?”

“Clearly.”

“Surely anyone could now discover what we must say of them, and what they must be like, if we are to remain in agreement with what has gone before.”

Glaucon laughed and said, “Then, Socrates, I must be an exception to ‘anyone.’ I cannot at present make out what it is we must say, though I have my suspicions.”

“You can surely tell us this much 398d to begin with,” I said: “a song is composed of three things—words, mode, and rhythm.”

“Yes,” he said, “that much I can tell.”

“And insofar as it consists of words, surely its words differ in no way from unsung speech as regards the patterns in which they must be expressed: they must follow the very ones we just set out.”

“True,” he said.

“And mode and rhythm must follow the words.”

“Of course.”

“But we said that we had no need of dirges and lamentations in our stories.”

“Indeed not. 398e”

“Which, then, are the mournful modes? Tell me, for you are a musician.”

“The mixed Lydian,” he said, “the tense Lydian, and others like them.”

“Then must we remove these? They are no use even to women who are to be decent, much less to men.”

“Certainly.”

“And drunkenness is particularly unbecoming in the guardians, as are softness and idleness.”

“Of course.”

“Which modes, then, are soft and suited to drinking parties?”

“Certain Ionian and Lydian modes,” he said, “called relaxed.”

399a “My friend, will these serve you at all for men at war?”

“Not at all,” he said. “It seems you are left with the Dorian and Phrygian.”

“I do not know the modes,” I said. “But leave me the one that would fittingly imitate the tones and inflections of a courageous man in battle or any other arduous task: one who, when his efforts fail, or he goes toward wounds or death, or falls into some other misfortune, 399b holds his ground in all these circumstances and steadfastly resists his fate. Leave another for a man engaged in peaceful and freely chosen rather than forced action: persuading someone or making a request, whether through prayer to a god or through teaching and admonition to another person; or, conversely, listening to someone who requests, teaches, or persuades him, and thereby succeeding as he wishes. In all these he acts without arrogance, but with self-control and moderation, 399c and accepts what follows. Leave me these two modes, the ones that best imitate the tones of people under constraint or acting freely, unfortunate or fortunate, self-controlled and courageous [modes].”

“But,” he said, “you are asking me to leave precisely the ones I named just now.”

“Then,” I said, “we shall have no need for many-stringed instruments or those capable of all modes in our songs and melodies.”

“I do not think so,” he said.

“Then we shall not support makers of triangular harps, pectides, or any instruments 399d with many strings and many modes.”

“It seems we shall not.”

“What then? Will you admit makers or players of auloi into the city? Is not that the instrument with the greatest range of sounds, and are not instruments capable of every mode themselves imitations of the aulos?”

“Clearly,” he said.

“So,” I said, “you are left with the lyre and the cithara [and] for use in the city; and in the fields the herdsmen might have a reed pipe.”

“That, at least,” he said, “is what our argument suggests. 399e”

“We are doing nothing new, my friend,” I said, “when we choose Apollo and his instruments over Marsyas and his.”

“By Zeus,” he said, “I think not.”

“And by the dog,” I said, “we have been cleansing once more, without noticing it, the city we said a moment ago had fallen into luxury.”

“A wise thing for us to do,” he said.

“Come then,” I said, “let us cleanse what remains. The question of rhythm follows that of modes. We must not seek intricate rhythms or every kind of measure, but discover which rhythms belong to an orderly and courageous life; once we find them, we must make the meter and melody follow the words of such a life, 400a not the words follow meter and melody. Which rhythms these are is for you to tell me, as with the modes.”

“By Zeus,” he said, “I cannot say. I have observed that there are three kinds of pattern from which measures are woven, just as there are four kinds of notes from which all modes come, and I could tell you that much. But which patterns imitate which kind of life, I cannot say. 400b”

“Then we shall consult Damon about which measures suit servility, insolence, madness, and other vices, and which rhythms we should leave for their opposites. I seem to recall hearing him, though not clearly, speak of a compound enoplian rhythm, a dactyl, and a heroic rhythm; I do not know how he arranged them, making the rise and fall equal and combining short and long syllables. I think he also named the iamb and another rhythm, the trochee, assigning them long and 400c short syllables. In some of these, I think he blamed or praised the movement of the foot no less than the rhythms themselves—or perhaps the two together; I cannot say. Let us leave these questions, as I said, to Damon: distinguishing them would take a long discussion. Or do you disagree?”

“By Zeus, I do not.”

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

“Of course. 400d”

“And good rhythm follows fine speech, resembling it, while bad rhythm follows the opposite. Good and bad harmony do likewise, if rhythm and harmony follow speech, as we just said, rather than speech following them.”

“They must follow speech,” he said.

“And the manner of speaking,” I said, “and speech itself—do they not follow the character of the soul?”

“Of course.”

“And everything else follows the manner of speaking?”

“Yes.”

“Then fine speech, fine harmony, grace, and good rhythm 400e follow from goodness of character—not the simplicity we use as a fond name for foolishness, but a mind whose character is truly formed in a good and beautiful way.”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Must not our young men seek these things everywhere if they are to do their own work?”

“They must.”

401a “And surely painting is full of them, and so is every craft of that kind; weaving and embroidery, building and the making of every other artifact, and even the natural forms of bodies and of other growing things. Grace and gracelessness are present in all of these. Gracelessness, lack of rhythm, and disharmony are kin to bad speech and bad character; their opposites are kin to, and images of, the opposite character, self-controlled and good.”

“Absolutely,” he said. 401b

“Then must we supervise poets alone, compelling them either to put the image of good character into their poems or not to compose among us? Or must we also supervise the other craftsmen and prevent them from putting this vicious, undisciplined, servile, and ugly character into representations of living things, buildings, or any work of craft, and forbid those who cannot refrain from working among us? Otherwise our guardians, reared among images of vice 401c as in a sickly pasture, will gather and graze on countless small things each day from many places, unknowingly building up one great evil in their souls. Instead we must seek out craftsmen gifted at tracing the nature of beauty and grace, so that our young people, dwelling as if in a wholesome place, may benefit from everything that meets their eyes and ears in works of beauty, like a breeze bringing health from 401d a kindly region, and may from childhood be led unawares into likeness, friendship, and harmony with beautiful reason.”

“For that,” he said, “would be the finest way to raise them.”

“Then, Glaucon,” I said, “is not education in music of the greatest importance for these reasons: rhythm and harmony sink most deeply into the soul, seize it most powerfully, and bring it grace, making a person graceful 401e if properly raised, and the opposite if not? And someone raised as he should be in this art would perceive most sharply what has been left undone or fashioned poorly, or grown into a poor form. With just distaste he would praise beautiful things, delight in them and receive them into his soul, be nourished by them, and 402a become noble and good. But he would rightly condemn and hate ugly things while still young, before he could grasp a rational account; and when reason came, he would welcome it, recognizing it above all through his kinship with it.”

“That, at least, is why I think education in music matters,” he said.

“Consider how, in learning letters,” I said, “we knew them well only when we could recognize the few letters wherever they appeared, and did not dismiss them in anything small or 402b large as unworthy of notice, but made every effort to distinguish them everywhere, knowing that we could not read until we did.”

“True.”

“And if their images appear reflected in water or in mirrors, will we recognize them before we know the letters themselves? Is this not a matter for the same skill and study?”

“Certainly.”

“Then, by the gods, is it not the same with musical education? Neither we nor the guardians we say we must educate will be truly accomplished in it 402c until we recognize the forms of self-control, courage, generosity, and magnificence, all the qualities akin to them, and their opposites, wherever they appear; until we perceive them in whatever contains them, both the qualities themselves and their images, and never disregard them in things small or great, but believe that they belong to the same skill and study.”

“Necessarily,” he said. 402d

“Then,” I said, “when a person's soul contains a beautiful character and his outward form agrees and harmonizes with it, sharing the same pattern, would this not be the most beautiful sight for anyone capable of seeing?”

“By far.”

“And what is most beautiful is most lovable?”

“Of course.”

“Then the man educated in music would love those who most fully possess this harmony. But if someone were discordant, he would not love him.”

“Not if the defect were in his soul,” he said. “But if it were in his body, he might bear with it and be willing 402e to embrace him.”

“I understand,” I said. “You have or have had a beloved of that kind, and I grant you the point. But tell me this: is there any fellowship between self-control and excessive pleasure?”

“How could there be?” he said. “It drives a person out of his mind no less than pain does.”

“And does it have any fellowship with the other virtues?”

403a “Not at all.”

“And what of insolence and licentiousness?”

“More than anything.”

“Can you name a pleasure greater and more intense than sexual pleasure?”

“I cannot,” he said, “nor one more akin to madness.”

“But true love is by nature a temperate and harmonious love of what is orderly and beautiful?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Then nothing mad or related to licentiousness must be admitted into true love?”

“Nothing must be admitted.” 403b

“Then this pleasure must not be admitted either, nor shared by a lover and his beloved if they love and are loved rightly?”

“No, by Zeus, Socrates,” he said, “it must not be admitted.”

“It seems, then, that you will lay down this law in the city we are founding: a lover may kiss his beloved, be with him, and touch him as a father might touch a son, for the sake of what is beautiful, if he has his consent; but in every other respect he must conduct himself toward one whom he cherishes so that no one will ever think he goes further 403c than this. Otherwise he will incur reproach for a want of refinement and an ignorance of beauty.”

“So I will,” he said.

“Well then,” I said, “does it seem to you too that our discussion of music and the arts has reached its end? At least it has ended where it must: the arts must end in the love of beauty.”

“I agree,” he said.

“After music and the arts, the young must be brought up in physical training.”

“Of course.”

“And here too they must be trained carefully from childhood throughout 403d life. This, I think, is how it stands; consider it yourself. I do not believe that a sound body makes the soul good through its own excellence, but rather that a good soul makes the body as sound as possible through its excellence. How does it seem to you?”

“The same way,” he said.

“Then if we care properly for the mind and entrust it with deciding the precise details concerning the body, while we ourselves offer only 403e an outline, so as not to go on at length, would we be doing right?”

“Certainly.”

“We said that they must abstain from drunkenness: a drunken guardian, of all people, can least afford not to know where on earth he is.”

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

“And what about food? These men are athletes in the greatest contest, are they not?”

“Yes.”

404a “Then would the regimen of our present-day athletes be suitable for them?”

“Perhaps.”

“But it makes them sleepy,” I said, “and leaves their health precarious. Do you not see that these athletes sleep their lives away, and if they depart even a little from their prescribed diet, they become gravely ill?”

“I do.”

“Our athletes of war,” I said, “need a more discerning kind of training. Like dogs, they must remain alert and see and hear as keenly as possible; on campaign they will face repeated changes in water 404b and other food, in the sun's heat and winter's cold, without suffering a precarious state of health.”

“So it seems to me.”

“Would the best physical training, then, be something like a sister to the simple music and arts we described a little while ago?”

“What do you mean?”

“Simple, measured physical training—especially for those who go to war.”

“In what way?”

“We might learn such things even from Homer,” I said. “You know that when he gives feasts to the heroes in camp, he serves them neither fish, though they are by the sea 404c on the Hellespont, nor boiled meat, but only roast meat, the easiest thing for soldiers to prepare. For almost everywhere it is easier to use a fire itself than to carry cooking pots about.”

“Indeed.”

“Nor, I think, does Homer ever mention sauces and seasonings. Or do even ordinary athletes know this much: that anyone who wants a healthy body must abstain from all such things?”

“And rightly so,” he said; “they know it and abstain.” 404d

“So, my friend, you evidently do not approve of a Syracusan table and Sicilian variety in its dishes, if you think this is right.”

“I suppose I do not.”

“Then you also disapprove of Corinthian girls as lovers for men who wish to keep their bodies in good condition.”

“Most certainly.”

“And the reputed delights of Attic pastries too?”

“Necessarily.”

“For we would be right, I think, to compare this entire diet and manner of living to the composition of melodies and songs in every mode and every 404e rhythm.”

“How could we not?”

“In that case, variety in music produced licentiousness, and variety here produces disease, while simplicity in music produces temperance in the soul, and simplicity in physical training produces health in the body?”

“Entirely true,” he said.

405a “And when licentiousness and disease multiply in a city, do not courts and clinics open in great numbers, while law and medicine grow proud of their importance once many freeborn people devote themselves keenly to them?”

“How could they not?”

“Can you find a greater sign of a city's bad and shameful education than this: not only its common laborers and craftsmen but also those who profess to have been raised as gentlemen need accomplished doctors and judges? 405b Or do you not think it shameful, and a great sign of a lack of education, to have to borrow one's justice from others, as though they were one's masters and judges, because one has none of one's own?”

“It is the most shameful thing of all,” he said.

“And do you think this is even more shameful,” I said, “when a man not only wears away much of his life in court, now defending himself, now prosecuting another, but is so lacking in taste that he prides himself on just this: his skill at wrongdoing, his ability to twist and turn through every maneuver and wriggle through every escape 405c to avoid paying the penalty—all for trifles of no consequence, unaware how much finer and better it would be to order his life so as never to need a dozing judge?”

“No,” he said, “that is still more shameful than the other.”

“And needing medicine,” I said, “not for wounds or a passing seasonal illness, but because of 405d idleness and the diet we have described, filling up with fluids and vapors like stagnant pools, forcing the ingenious descendants of Asclepius to invent the names ‘flatulence’ and ‘catarrh’ for our ailments—is that not shameful?”

“Very much so,” he said. “These really are strange new names for diseases.”

“Names that did not exist, I think,” I said, “in Asclepius's day. 405e My evidence is this: at Troy, when his sons saw that someone had sprinkled plentiful barley meal into Pramnian wine 406a and grated cheese into it for the wounded Eurypylus—things thought to produce phlegm—they found no fault with the woman who gave it to him to drink, nor did they rebuke Patroclus for tending him.”

“And yet,” he said, “it was an odd drink to give a man in that condition.”

“Not if you consider,” I said, “that, according to tradition, the descendants of Asclepius did not practice our present art of nursing disease before Herodicus appeared. Herodicus was a trainer who fell ill; by mixing physical training 406b with medicine he tormented first and foremost himself, and afterward many others.”

“How so?” he asked.

“By making his death a long affair,” I said. “Keeping close watch on his mortal disease, he could not, I think, cure himself. Instead he spent his whole life attending to his health, to the exclusion of everything else, suffering whenever he deviated from his usual regimen; through the art of staving off death, he made it to old age.”

“A fine prize he won from his art,” he said. 406c

“The prize one would expect,” I said, “for a man who did not know that Asclepius withheld this kind of medicine from his descendants not out of ignorance or inexperience, but because he knew that in every well-governed city each person has an appointed task he must perform, and no one has the leisure to spend his whole life as an invalid under treatment. We recognize this, absurdly enough, in the case of craftsmen, but fail to recognize it in the case of the rich and those reputed to be happy.”

“How?” he asked. 406d

“A carpenter,” I said, “when he is sick, asks the doctor for a drug to drink that will make him vomit out his illness, or for a purge to clear him from below, or for cautery or a surgical cut to be rid of it. But if someone prescribes him a long regimen, wrapping woolen caps around his head and adding everything else that goes with them, he soon says he has no leisure to be ill, and that there is no profit in living this way, with his mind on his disease and his appointed work neglected. Then he bids 406e that kind of doctor goodbye, resumes his usual way of life, and, if he recovers, lives on and does his work. If his body cannot withstand it, he dies and is free of his troubles.”

“For such a man,” he said, “that seems the right way to use medicine.”

407a “Because he had a task to perform, and if he could not perform it, life held no profit for him?” I asked.

“Clearly,” he said.

“But the rich man, as we say, has no such appointed task from which he is forced to abstain on pain of finding life unlivable.”

“At any rate, none is commonly mentioned.”

“Have you not heard Phocylides,” I said, “say that once a man has a livelihood, he ought to practice virtue?”

“And before then too, I should think,” he said.

“Let us not quarrel with him about that,” I said. “Let us rather instruct ourselves whether the rich man must devote himself to this, 407b so that life without it is unlivable, or whether nursing a disease obstructs the carpenter's work and the other crafts by monopolizing the mind, but presents no obstacle to Phocylides's command.”

“By Zeus,” he said, “it obstructs that perhaps more than anything—the excessive care of the body that goes beyond physical training. It is troublesome for managing a household, serving in a campaign, and holding settled offices in the city. Above all, it makes any kind of learning and private thought and reflection 407c difficult: always suspecting a strain in the head or a spell of dizziness and blaming philosophy for it. So it hinders the practice and testing of virtue in every respect, for it makes a man think he is always sick and never lets him stop worrying over his body.”

“Naturally,” he said.

“Then shall we say that Asclepius understood this too,” I said, “and 407d devised medicine for those whose bodies are sound by nature and habit but harbor some distinct illness? For such people and such a constitution he drove out illness with drugs and surgery, and prescribed their customary way of life so as not to harm the affairs of the city. But as for bodies diseased through and through, he did not attempt to drain and refill them little by little through regimens, prolonging a person's life in misery and allowing them to beget, as one might expect, more children like themselves. Rather, he thought that one unable to live within 407e the ordinary course of life should not be treated, since this would benefit neither that person nor the city.”

“You describe a civic-minded Asclepius,” he said.

“Plainly so,” I said. “And his sons, because he was such a man, 408a do you not see how they distinguished themselves at Troy in war and practiced medicine as I describe? Do you not remember what they did for Menelaus after Pandarus wounded him?

“‘They sucked out the blood and sprinkled soothing drugs upon the wound.’

“They prescribed no more about what he should eat or drink after this than they did for Eurypylus. They considered the drugs enough to heal men who had been healthy before their wounds and orderly 408b in their habits, even if they happened to drink a barley-and-wine mixture at the moment. But a person diseased by nature and lacking self-control, they thought, would profit neither himself nor others by living; the healing art was not meant for such people, and they should not be treated, even if they were richer than Midas.”

“You make Asclepius's sons very wise,” he said.

“As they should be,” I said. “Yet the tragedians and Pindar disagree with us. They say that Asclepius was Apollo's son, but that gold induced him to heal a rich man already at the point of death, 408c and for this he was struck by lightning. In keeping with what we said earlier, we will not believe them on both counts. If he was a god's son, we will say, he was not greedy for sordid gain; if he was greedy, he was no god's son.”

“That is perfectly right,” he said. “But what do you say about this, Socrates? Should we not have good doctors in the city? The best, surely, will have dealt with the greatest number of healthy and sick people, just as the best judges will have associated with people of every sort of character. 408d”

“Yes,” I said, “I mean good doctors indeed. But do you know whom I consider good?”

“Tell me,” he said.

“I shall try,” I said. “But you have brought two unlike things together in a single question.”

“How so?” he asked.

“Doctors,” I said, “would become most skilled if, from childhood onward, besides learning their art, they were in contact with as many bodies as possible, especially the sickest, and suffered every kind of illness themselves, and were not by nature particularly healthy. 408e For they do not, I think, treat body with body—if they did, it could never be acceptable for their own bodies to be or become sick—but body with soul; and a soul that has itself become bad cannot treat anything well.”

“Right,” he said.

409a “But a judge, my friend, governs one soul with another. His soul cannot have been raised from youth among wicked souls and associated with them, nor can it have passed through every injustice by committing those acts itself, so as to infer other people's crimes swiftly from itself, like diagnosing bodily diseases. While young it must have remained innocent and untouched by vicious ways, if as a fine and good soul it is to judge justly with a sound mind. That is why decent people seem naive when young and are easily deceived 409b by the unjust: they have no patterns within themselves corresponding to the wicked.”

“Yes indeed,” he said, “that is precisely what happens to them.”

“And that,” I said, “is why a good judge must be old, not young: someone who has learned late what injustice is, not by finding it in his own soul, but by studying it as a stranger in other people's souls over a long period, coming to discern the nature of this evil by knowledge, not 409c through any experience of his own.”

“Such a judge seems a most honorable one,” he said.

“And a good one too,” I said, “which is what you asked for: a man with a good soul is good. But that cunning and suspicious fellow, who has committed many injustices and thinks himself crafty and wise, seems formidable among his own kind, because he is on guard and looks to the patterns within himself. Yet when he meets good and older people, he seems foolish in turn, distrustful at the wrong time and ignorant of a sound character, 409d because he has no pattern of it. But since he encounters bad people more often than good, he seems wise rather than ignorant both to himself and to others.”

“Entirely true,” he said.

“Then it is not this sort of man,” I said, “whom we must seek as our good and wise judge, but the former. For wickedness could never know either virtue or itself, but virtue, in a nature educated over time, will come to know both itself and wickedness. It is this man, it seems to me, who becomes wise, not the bad man. 409e”

“I agree,” he said.

“So you will establish in your city medicine of the kind we described, together with this kind of judging. They will care for the citizens 410a who are sound in body and soul; of those who are not, they will let those who are unsound in body die, while those whose souls are incurably bad they themselves will put to death?”

“That has proved best,” he said, “both for the sufferers themselves and for the city.”

“As for the young,” I said, “it is clear that they will take care not to need the courts, because they have practiced that simple music which we said instills temperance.”

“Of course,” he said. 410b

“And if a man trained in music follows the same path in physical training, will he not choose, if he wishes, to have no need of medicine except when necessity demands?”

“I think so.”

“And in the exercises and hardships themselves he will look to the spirited part of his nature, seeking to arouse that rather than mere strength. Unlike other athletes, he will not arrange his diet and exertions for the sake of bodily power.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“Then, Glaucon,” I said, “those who instituted an education in music and physical training did not do so for the reason some suppose: that one should care for the body and the other for the soul? 410c”

“Why else?” he asked.

“It seems they instituted both chiefly for the sake of the soul,” I said.

“How?”

“Have you not noticed,” I said, “what happens to the very minds of those who devote their lives to physical training but never touch music, or those who do the reverse?”

“What are you referring to?” he asked. 410d

“To savagery and harshness on the one hand, and softness and gentleness on the other,” I said.

“I have,” he said. “Those who practice physical training without anything to temper it grow more savage than they should, while those who devote themselves to music grow softer than is good for them.”

“Yet,” I said, “the spirited part of our nature can give rise to savagery: raised rightly it would be brave, but strained beyond measure it becomes hard and difficult, as we might expect.”

“So it seems to me,” he said. 410e

“And does not the philosophical part possess the gentler disposition? Relaxed too far, it becomes softer than it should be; properly raised, it becomes gentle and disciplined.”

“That is so.”

“And we say that the guardians must possess both of these natures.”

“They must.”

“Then the two must be brought into harmony with one another?”

“Of course.”

“And the person whose natures are harmonized has a temperate and brave

411a soul?”

“Certainly.”

“And in one whose natures are out of tune, it is cowardly and uncultivated?”

“Very much so.”

“Then suppose a man lets music charm him and pour through his ears, as through a funnel, those sweet, soft, and plaintive modes of which we were just speaking, and spends his whole life humming and entranced by song. At first, if he had any spirit, he softened it like iron and made useful what had been hard and useless. 411b But if he persists and never lets up, submitting continually to its spell, he then melts it away until he has dissolved his spirit and cut the sinews, as it were, from his soul, leaving him a feeble warrior.”

“Indeed,” he said.

“And if,” I said, “he started with no spirit by nature, this happens quickly. But if he had spirit, he weakens it and makes it unstable, quick to flare up over trifles and just as quick to die down. Instead of being spirited, such men become irritable and hot-tempered, full of peevishness. 411c”

“Exactly.”

“And what if, conversely, a man devotes himself to hard physical training, feasts heartily, and has no share in music or philosophy? At first, as his body becomes strong, does he not fill with pride and spirit, and grow bolder than he was?”

“Certainly.”

“And what if he does nothing else and never has any communion with the Muse? 411d Whatever love of learning was once in his soul receives no taste of study or inquiry, no share in reason or any other part of music and the arts. Does it not grow feeble, deaf, and blind, since it is neither awakened nor nourished, and its perceptions are never cleansed?”

“So it does,” he said.

“Such a man, I think, becomes an enemy of reason and a stranger to the arts. He no longer uses speech to persuade, but gets his way in everything through force and brutality, like a wild beast, and lives in ignorance and clumsiness, without rhythm or grace. 411e”

“Exactly so,” he said.

“It seems, then, that for these two parts, the spirited and the philosophical, some god has given human beings two arts, music and physical training—not for soul and body respectively, except as an incidental matter, but for these two parts, so that 412a they may be brought into harmony by being tightened and relaxed to the proper degree.”

“So it seems,” he said.

“Then the man who blends music and physical training most beautifully, and applies them to the soul with the finest measure, deserves to be called wholly musical and harmonious far more than someone who tunes strings to one another.”

“Reasonably so, Socrates,” he said.

“And will our city, Glaucon, always need someone to oversee this, if its constitution is to be preserved?” 412b

“It certainly will, more than anything.”

“These, then, are the outlines of education and upbringing. Why should we detail the dances of such people, their hunting and pursuit of game, their athletic contests and horse races? Clearly these things must follow the principles already laid down; it is no longer difficult to discover them.”

“Perhaps not difficult,” he said.

“Very well,” I said. “What must we determine next? Is it not which of these men will govern and which will be governed?” 412c

“Of course.”

“Is it not clear that the rulers should be older, and those they rule younger?”

“Clear.”

“And that the rulers should be the best among them?”

“That too.”

“And the best farmers are the ones most skilled at farming, are they not?”

“Yes.”

“But since these men must be the best guardians, should they not be those most skilled at guarding the city?”

“Yes.”

“Then they must be intelligent and capable in this task, and also devoted to the city's welfare.” 412d

“That is so.”

“And a person cares most for what he loves.”

“Necessarily.”

“And he will love most what he believes has the same interests as himself: something whose prosperity, [especially when] it prospers, he thinks will bring prosperity to him, while if it fails, the reverse will follow.”

“So it is,” he said.

“We must therefore select from the other guardians the men who, on our observation throughout their lives, seem most eager in every way to do whatever they think will benefit 412e the city, and wholly unwilling to do what they think will not.”

“They would be suitable,” he said.

“I think we must watch them at every age, to see whether they guard this conviction well, and whether, neither bewitched nor forced, they throw aside and forget their belief that they must do what is best for the city.”

“What do you mean,” he asked, “by throwing it aside?”

“I will tell you,” I said. “It seems to me that a belief leaves the mind either willingly or unwillingly: willingly, when someone discovers that a false belief was false; unwillingly, in every case where the belief was true. 413a”

“I understand the willing loss,” he said, “but I need to understand the unwilling one.”

“Why? Do you not also think,” I said, “that people are unwilling to be deprived of good things but willingly part with bad ones? Is being mistaken about the truth not bad, and knowing the truth good? Or do you not think that holding beliefs about things as they are amounts to knowing the truth?”

“You are right,” he said, “and I think people lose a true belief against their will. 413b”

“And does this happen when they are robbed, bewitched, or forced?”

“I still do not understand,” he said.

“I seem to be speaking like a tragic poet,” I said. “By ‘robbed’ I mean people whose minds are changed by persuasion and people who forget, since a reasoned argument takes away the belief of one and time takes away the belief of the other without their noticing. Surely you understand now?”

“Yes.”

“And by ‘forced’ I mean those whom some pain or suffering causes to change their minds.”

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

“And by ‘bewitched,’ I think you too would mean those who change their minds, whether seduced by pleasure or frightened by fear.”

“Everything that deceives us,” he said, “does seem to bewitch us.”

“As I was just saying, then, we must look for the men who guard best the conviction within them that they must always do what they believe best for the city [for themselves to do]. We must watch them from childhood, giving them tasks in which someone would be most likely to forget this belief or be deceived out of it. We must accept the one who remembers 413d and is hard to deceive, and reject the other. Is that not so?”

“Yes.”

“We must also impose hardships, pains, and contests on them, and watch for the same thing in these.”

“Right,” he said.

“Then,” I said, “we must contrive a trial of the third kind, enchantment, and observe them. Just as people bring young horses up to noises and commotion to see whether they are easily frightened, so we must bring our young men face-to-face with certain terrors and then turn them toward pleasures, 413e testing them far more thoroughly than gold in the fire. We must see whether each is hard to bewitch, and bears himself well in every circumstance, a good guardian both of himself and of the music he learned, showing good rhythm and harmony throughout these trials—the kind of man who would be most useful both to himself and to his city. And the one who has been tested at every stage, as a child, a youth, and a grown man, 414a and has emerged uncorrupted, must be appointed ruler and guardian of the city. We must honor him in life and after death, awarding him the highest honors in burial and other memorials. The one who fails this test we must reject. That, Glaucon,” I said, “seems to me, in outline rather than exact detail, to be how our rulers and guardians should be selected and appointed.”

“That seems about right to me too,” he said. 414b

“Would it not be most accurate to call these men guardians in the fullest sense, guarding against enemies outside and friends within, so that the former will not wish and the latter will not be able to do harm? And should we not call the young men whom we have been calling guardians auxiliaries and helpers in carrying out the rulers' judgments?”

“I think so,” he said.

“How, then,” I asked, “could we devise one of those useful falsehoods we were speaking about—a noble falsehood by which we might persuade, preferably the rulers themselves, 414c or, failing that, the rest of the city?”

“What kind?” he asked.

“Nothing new,” I said, “but a Phoenician tale. Such a thing has happened in many places before, as the poets say and have persuaded people; it has not happened in our day, and I do not know if it ever could. Persuading people would take a great deal.”

“You seem reluctant to speak,” he said.

“You will see that I have good reason to hesitate,” I said, “when you hear it.”

“Speak,” he said, “and do not be afraid.” 414d

“Very well—I do not know how I shall find the courage or the words to say it. I shall try to persuade the rulers themselves first, and then the soldiers and the rest of the city, that the upbringing and education we gave them were like a dream: they merely thought they experienced everything that happened to them then, while in truth they were being formed and nourished beneath the earth, they and their weapons and all their other equipment 414e being fashioned there. When they were wholly finished, the earth, their mother, sent them up. Now they must plan for and defend the land they inhabit as their mother and nurse, if anyone marches against it, and regard their fellow citizens as brothers, born from the same earth.”

“No wonder,” he said, “you were ashamed to tell this lie.”

415a “With good reason,” I said. “But still, listen to the rest of the story. ‘All of you who live in this city are brothers,’ we shall say as we tell them the tale, ‘but when the god molded you, he mingled gold into the birth of those among you fit to rule, and for that reason they are held in highest honor. Into the auxiliaries he mixed silver, and into the farmers and other craftsmen, iron and bronze. Now, because you are all kin, most of the time you will beget children like yourselves, 415b but sometimes a silver child will be born from gold, or a golden child from silver, and so too with every other sort from another. Accordingly, the god's first and chief command to the rulers is that nothing should receive such vigilant guardianship from them as their children, to see what metal has been mixed into their souls. If their own child is touched with bronze or iron, they must show no pity at all, but 415c assign the station appropriate to that child's nature and send him to the craftsmen or the farmers. And if among these a child is born touched with gold or silver, they must honor him and raise him up, one kind to be a guardian, the other an auxiliary. For an oracle says that the city will be destroyed when a guardian of iron or bronze guards it.’ Now have you any way to make them believe this story?”

415d “Not those people themselves,” he said, “but perhaps their sons, and those who come after them, and other people of later generations.”

“Even that,” I said, “would help them care more for the city and for one another. I think I understand your meaning. As for the tale, it will go wherever public report carries it. Let us now arm these earthborn men and lead them forth under the rulers' command. When they reach the city, let them see where it would be best to make camp, so that from that place they can keep the people inside in check, should anyone refuse to obey the laws, and repel an attacker from outside, should an enemy come against the flock like a wolf. 415e Once they have set up camp and made the proper sacrifices, let them make places to sleep. What do you say?”

“So they should,” he said.

“And places adequate to shelter them in winter and summer?”

“Of course,” he said. “I take it you mean dwellings.”

“Yes,” I said, “dwellings fit for soldiers, not for moneymakers.”

416a “How,” he asked, “does the one differ from the other?”

“I shall try to tell you,” I said. “The most terrible and shameful thing of all for shepherds would surely be to rear dogs as helpers for their flocks in such a way that, from lack of restraint, hunger, or some other bad habit, the dogs themselves would attack the sheep, behaving like wolves instead of dogs.”

“That would be terrible,” he said. “How could it not?” 416b

“Then we must take every precaution that our auxiliaries do not behave this way toward their fellow citizens, since they are stronger than they are, and become savage masters instead of kindly allies.”

“We must,” he said.

“And would they not have the greatest protection against this if they had truly been well educated?”

“But they have been,” he said.

And I said, “That is more than we can confidently claim, my dear Glaucon. What we can claim is what we said just now: 416c they must receive the right education, whatever it is, if they are to gain what matters most for being gentle both to one another and to those under their protection.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“Besides this education, any sensible person would say that their dwellings and all their other possessions must be arranged so as neither to stop them from being the best guardians possible 416d nor to tempt them to harm their fellow citizens.”

“And rightly so,” he said.

“Consider, then,” I said, “whether, if they are to be such people, they should live and be housed in this way. First, none of them shall possess any private property unless it is strictly necessary. Next, none shall have any dwelling or storehouse to which anyone who wishes cannot enter. The necessities required by men who are temperate and 416e brave athletes of war they shall receive from the other citizens as wages for their guardianship, in an amount sufficient for the year, neither too much nor too little. They shall eat at common messes and live together as in a camp. As for gold and silver, we shall tell them that they always carry divine gold and silver from the gods within their souls, and have no need of human gold and silver. It is not holy to defile possession of the former by mingling it with possession of mortal gold: many impieties have arisen around 417a the coinage used by most people, whereas the gold within them is pure. They alone among the city's people are therefore forbidden to handle or touch gold or silver, to come under the same roof with it, to wear it, or to drink from vessels of gold or silver. In this way they would preserve themselves and preserve the city. But the moment they acquire private land, houses, and money, they will become householders and farmers instead of guardians, and hostile masters instead of allies to the other citizens. 417b Hating and hated, plotting against others and themselves the targets of plots, they will spend their entire lives fearing their enemies within far more than those outside, racing then, themselves and the rest of the city, toward imminent ruin. For all these reasons,” I said, “shall we declare that the guardians must be provided with housing and the other things in this way, and shall we make it law, or not?”

“Most certainly,” said Glaucon.

419a Adeimantus broke in. “What answer will you make, Socrates, if someone says that you are hardly making these men happy, and that through their own doing? The city is truly theirs, yet they enjoy none of its blessings. Others own fields and build fine, spacious houses, furnish them as befits such houses, offer private sacrifices to the gods, entertain guests, and indeed possess what you mentioned just now—gold and silver and everything thought to belong to people destined for happiness. But these men, he might say, appear to sit in the city like hired auxiliaries, 420a doing nothing but standing guard.”

“Yes,” I said, “and they receive their meals, but no wages besides their food, as the others do. So they cannot go abroad on private business even if they wish, or give money to courtesans, or spend it wherever else they like, as those who are thought happy spend theirs. You are leaving these and many like them out of the indictment.”

“Then let them be included in the indictment,” he said. 420b “What answer shall we make, then?”

“Yes.”

“If we follow the same road,” I said, “I think we shall find what to say. We shall say that it would be no surprise if these men were the happiest of all even as they are. But we are founding our city with our eyes not on making one class exceptionally happy but on making the whole city as happy as possible. For we thought that in such a city we should most readily find justice, and in the worst-governed city 420c injustice; by seeing both we might decide the question we have long been pursuing. At present, then, we believe we are shaping a happy city, not by setting a few people apart and making them happy in it, but by making the whole city happy. Presently we shall examine its opposite. Suppose we were painting a statue, and someone approached to reproach us for not applying the most beautiful colors to the most beautiful parts of the figure: its eyes, the most beautiful part, had been painted not purple but black. We might reasonably 420d answer him this way: ‘My good man, do not imagine we should paint the eyes so beautifully that they cease to look like eyes—or do the same to the other parts. Look instead at whether, by giving each its proper color, we make the whole beautiful.’ So now, too, do not compel us to attach such happiness to the guardians that it would make them anything 420e rather than guardians. We know how to dress the farmers in splendid robes and deck them with gold, and then tell them to till the land for their pleasure; how to lay the potters on couches beside the fire, drinking and feasting, with the wheel close by so they can make pots whenever they please; and how to make everyone else happy in the same fashion, so that the entire city may flourish. But do not give us such advice: if we followed it, the farmer would no longer be a farmer, 421a the potter no longer a potter, and no one would retain any of the roles that make a city. The others matter less: if cobblers grow worthless and corrupt and pretend to be cobblers when they are not, that is no disaster for the city. But when the guardians of its laws and of the city are guardians in appearance only, you can see that they destroy the whole city outright; and they alone have the opportunity to govern it well and make it happy. If we, then, are making true guardians, 421b the least likely of all to harm the city, while our critic is speaking of farmers of a kind, happy hosts at a festival rather than citizens of a city, he must be speaking of something other than a city. We must therefore consider whether, when establishing the guardians, our aim is to secure them the greatest possible happiness, or whether we should look to the city as a whole to see if happiness arises there, while compelling and persuading these auxiliaries and 421c guardians to become the finest craftsmen at their own work, and all the others to do likewise. Then, as the whole city grows and is well governed, we must let each class share in happiness as its nature allows.”

“I think you speak well,” he said.

“Will you think I speak reasonably of something akin to this?” I asked.

“What is that?” 421d

“Consider whether these next two things corrupt the other craftsmen and make them bad at their trades.”

“Which things?”

“Wealth,” I said, “and poverty.”

“How?”

“Like this: do you think a potter who becomes rich will still want to attend to his craft?”

“Not at all,” he said.

“And will he become lazier and more careless than he was?”

“Much more.”

“Then he becomes a worse potter?”

“Much worse in that respect too,” he said.

“Again, if poverty leaves him unable to provide tools or anything else his craft requires, the things he makes will be worse, 421e and he will train his sons or any other apprentices into worse craftsmen.”

“Of course.”

“Both poverty and wealth, then, make the works of the crafts worse, and the craftsmen worse as well.”

“Evidently.”

“So it seems we have discovered two more things that the guardians must keep from slipping into the city unnoticed, by every means in their power.”

“What things?”

422a “Wealth and poverty,” I said. “The one breeds luxury, idleness, and a taste for upheaval; the other, servility and poor workmanship, as well as a taste for upheaval.”

“Certainly,” he said. “But consider this, Socrates: how will our city be able to wage war if it has no wealth, especially if it is forced to fight a great and wealthy city?”

“Clearly,” I said, “it will be harder to fight one, 422b but easier to fight two such cities.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“To begin with,” I said, “if they have to fight, will they not, as trained athletes of war, be fighting rich men?”

“Yes, they will,” he said.

“Now, Adeimantus, would not a single boxer, trained as well as possible for boxing, find it easy to fight two men who are not boxers but are rich and fat?”

“Perhaps not both at once,” he said.

“Not even if he could retreat from the first man who came at him, wheel around to strike him, and do it repeatedly in the hot, stifling sun? 422c Might a boxer like that not overcome even more such men?”

“He certainly might; that would be no wonder,” he said.

“And do you not think that rich men have more knowledge and experience of boxing than of war?”

“I do,” he said.

“Then, in all likelihood, our athletes will easily fight twice or three times their own number.”

“I grant you that,” he said; “you seem to be right.” 422d

“And what if they send an embassy to one of the two cities and tell it the truth: ‘We use neither gold nor silver, nor are we permitted to; you are. Fight at our side and take the other city's possessions.’ Do you think anyone hearing this will choose to fight against lean, hardened dogs rather than join those dogs in fighting fat, tender sheep?”

“I think not. But if the wealth of the other cities is gathered into one city,” he said, 422e “take care that it poses no danger to the city without wealth.”

“How fortunate you are,” I said, “to think any city other than the one we are constructing deserves to be called a city.”

“What else should we call it?” he said.

“We should give the others a grander name,” I said. “Each of them is a great many cities, not a city at all, as the players say. There are at least two, whatever else may be true, at war with each other: 423a one of the poor and one of the rich. Within each of these are many more. Approach them as one city and you will miss your mark entirely; approach them as many, giving some the money and power of others—or the people themselves—and you will always have many allies and few enemies. As long as your city is governed temperately, as we have just ordained, it will be the greatest city: not greatest in reputation, I mean, but greatest in truth, even if it has only a thousand men to fight for it. For you will not easily find a single city so great among Greeks or barbarians, 423b though you will find many that seem to be cities many times its size. Do you think otherwise?”

“No, by Zeus,” he said.

“Then this would also be the finest limit for our rulers to observe in deciding how large to make the city, how much territory to set aside for it at that size, and how much to leave alone.”

“What limit?” he asked.

“This, I think,” I said: “let it grow as long as its growth allows it to remain one city, but no further.” 423c

“And rightly so,” he said.

“Then we shall give the guardians this further instruction: by every means they must see that the city is neither small nor merely great in appearance, but of adequate size and one.”

“That may be an easy instruction for them,” he said.

“Easier still,” I said, “is the one we mentioned before: if a guardian has an inferior child, he must be sent down among the others, while any worthy child born among the others must be brought into the guardians. The point was that each of the other citizens, too, must be directed to the single task for which he is naturally suited, 423d so that by pursuing his own one work each person may become one, not many, and thus the whole city may grow into one, not many.”

“Yes,” he said, “this is a smaller matter than the other.”

“My dear Adeimantus,” I said, “we are not giving them many great instructions, as someone might suppose. They are all easy, provided the guardians protect the one great thing—or rather, not great but sufficient.” 423e

“What is that?” he asked.

“Their education and upbringing,” I said. “If they are well educated and become measured men, they will readily see all these things, and others we are now passing over: how to possess women, how to marry and beget children, and how, according to the proverb, all these things should be made as far as possible common among friends.” 424a

“That would be quite right,” he said.

“Moreover,” I said, “once a constitution starts well, it grows like a rolling circle. Good upbringing and education, when preserved, produce good natures; good natures, receiving such an education in turn, grow even better than those before them, in other respects and in their offspring, as with other animals.” 424b

“That seems likely,” he said.

“To put it briefly, then, those responsible for the city must hold fast to this, lest its corruption escape them. Above all they must guard against any innovation in gymnastics and music contrary to the established order. They must protect it as far as possible, wary when someone says that people pay the greatest heed to ‘that song which is newest as it passes among the singers,’ lest anyone suppose that the poet means not new songs 424c but a new way of singing, and praise it. We must neither praise nor accept such a thing. We must beware of changing to a new kind of music, for it puts everything at risk: musical modes are never changed without the greatest laws of the city changing too, as Damon says, and I believe him.”

“Count me among the believers as well,” said Adeimantus. 424d

“Then it seems the guardians must build their watchpost here, in music,” I said.

“At least lawlessness can easily slip in this way unnoticed,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “because it seems a kind of play, doing no harm.”

“Nor does it do anything else,” he said, “except settle in little by little and quietly seep into habits and practices. From these it spills over more boldly into people's dealings with one another; then, from those dealings, it advances 424e against the laws and constitutions with great insolence, Socrates, until at last it overturns everything, private and public.”

“Well,” I said, “is that how it is?”

“So I think,” he said.

“Then, as we said from the outset, our children must take part from the beginning in play that obeys the law. If play becomes lawless, and children with it, it is impossible for law-abiding and serious adults 425a to grow out of them.”

“Of course,” he said.

“So when children begin by playing well and absorb respect for law through music, the opposite happens to what happens in those other cases: it accompanies them into everything as they grow, restoring even what had earlier gone wrong in the city.”

“True indeed,” he said.

“And they discover even the seemingly minor customs,” I said, “which the others had lost altogether.”

“Which customs?” 425b

“Such things as young people keeping properly silent before their elders, giving up seats and rising before them, honoring parents, and observing the rules for haircuts, clothing, shoes, their whole bearing, and all things of the kind. Do you agree?”

“I do.”

“But I think it foolish to legislate these things. They do not arise from laws laid down in speech or writing, and such laws could not keep them in place.”

“How could they?”

“It seems, Adeimantus,” I said, “that wherever a person's education sets him on his way, 425c everything that follows takes the same direction. Does not like always call to like?”

“Certainly.”

“And in the end, I think, we should say that this comes to full fruition as something vigorous, whether good or its opposite.”

“Of course,” he said.

“That is why,” I said, “I would not attempt any further legislation on such matters.”

“Reasonably so,” he said.

“But in the gods' name,” I said, “what about these matters of the marketplace: the contracts people make with one another there, 425d or, if you wish, agreements with craftsmen; matters of insult and assault, filing lawsuits and appointing juries, and any necessary assessment, collection, or imposition of dues in marketplaces or harbors; and in general all rules governing markets, the city, harbors, and anything else of that sort? Shall we venture to legislate for any of these?”

“It is not worth prescribing them for honorable men,” he said. 425e “They will easily discover for themselves most of the rules that need to be made.”

“Yes, my friend,” I said, “provided a god grants them preservation of the laws we described earlier.”

“Otherwise,” he said, “they will spend their lives laying down and revising countless such rules, forever expecting to arrive at the best.”

“You mean they will live,” I said, “like invalids who, through lack of self-control, refuse to give up a harmful way of life.”

“Precisely.”

426a “And they lead a charming life, to be sure. Their treatment achieves nothing except to multiply and enlarge their illnesses, while they are always hoping that some medicine recommended to them will make them healthy.”

“Yes,” he said, “those are just the ailments of people who are ill in that way.”

“And is it not charming,” I asked, “that they regard as their worst enemy the man who tells them the truth: until they stop drinking, gorging themselves, indulging their sexual appetites, and doing no work, 426b neither medicines nor cauterizing nor cutting, nor incantations nor amulets nor anything else of the kind will do them any good?”

“Not very charming,” he said. “There is no charm in being angry with someone who gives good advice.”

“You do not seem an admirer of such men,” I said.

“Certainly not, by Zeus.”

“Then you will not praise the city as a whole if it acts as we were just saying. Do not the badly governed cities do the same thing when they forbid their citizens to disturb the constitution as a whole, on pain of death for anyone who does, 426c yet regard as a good man, profoundly wise and worthy of honor, whoever serves and flatters them most agreeably in their present way of governing, runs to do their bidding, anticipates their wishes, and proves skillful in fulfilling them?”

“They do exactly the same thing, I think,” he said, “and I do not praise them in the least.” 426d

“And those who are eager and willing to serve such cities—do you not admire their courage and readiness?”

“I do,” he said, “except for those who are deceived by the cities into thinking themselves genuine statesmen because the multitude praises them.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Can you not forgive these men? Do you think a man unable to measure would fail to believe himself four cubits tall if a great many others, no better able to measure, 426e told him he was?”

“No,” he said, “not in that case.”

“Then do not be angry. Such men are the most charming of all: they make and revise laws of the sort we just discussed, always thinking they will find some end to abuses in contracts and the other matters I mentioned, unaware that they are really cutting the Hydra to pieces.”

427a “That is just what they are doing,” he said.

“For my part,” I said, “I should think that a true lawgiver ought not to occupy himself with this kind of legislation or constitution, whether in a badly or a well-governed city. In the former it is useless and achieves nothing; in the latter anyone could discover some of the necessary rules, and the rest will arise of themselves from the practices already established.” 427b

“What, then,” he asked, “remains for us to legislate?”

“Nothing for us,” I said, “but for Apollo at Delphi, the greatest, finest, and first of the ordinances.”

“Which ones?” he asked.

“The founding of temples, sacrifices, and the other services owed to gods, divine beings, and heroes; also the burial of the dead and all the rites that must be performed to win the favor of those in the world beyond. We have no knowledge of these things, and if we have any sense, in founding a city 427c we shall follow no guide other than the ancestral one. For surely this god is the ancestral guide for all human beings in such matters, giving his guidance as he sits at the navel [in the center] of the earth.”

“You speak well,” he said, “and so we must do.”

“So now your city is founded, son of Ariston,” I said. 427d “Next, find yourself enough light from somewhere and look inside it; enlist your brother, Polemarchus, and the others too, and see if we can discover where justice and injustice lie, how they differ from each other, and which a person who is to be happy must possess, whether or not he escapes the notice of all gods and human beings.”

“That will not do,” said Glaucon. “You promised to make the search yourself, because it would be a sin for you not to come to the aid of justice with every means in your power.” 427e

“You remind me truly,” I said, “and that is what I must do. But you too must help.”

“We shall,” he said.

“Then I hope to find it this way,” I said. “I think our city, if we have founded it correctly, is wholly good.”

“It must be,” he said.

“Clearly, then, it is wise, brave, temperate, and just.”

“Clearly.”

“So when we find some of these qualities in it, the remainder will be what we have not yet found?”

428a “Of course.”

“Suppose we were looking for one out of four things in anything at all. If we recognized the one we sought first, that would satisfy us; but if we recognized the other three first, that very fact would reveal what we sought, for clearly it could only be the one left over.”

“You are right,” he said.

“Since these qualities also happen to be four, should we not look for them in the same way?”

“Clearly.”

“The first thing I can see plainly in our city 428b is wisdom; though there is something curious about it.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“I think the city we have described really is wise: it is well advised, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“And good counsel is evidently a kind of knowledge. People take sound counsel not through ignorance, surely, but through knowledge.”

“Clearly.”

“Yet there are many different kinds of knowledge in the city.”

“Of course.”

“Should we call the city wise and well advised because its carpenters possess knowledge?” 428c

“Not on that account,” he said. “That would make it skilled at carpentry.”

“Then the knowledge that tells us how best to make wooden furnishings is not what entitles a city to be called wise.”

“No.”

“What about the knowledge of working in bronze, or any other such craft?”

“Not one of them,” he said.

“Nor the knowledge of producing crops from the earth; that would make it skilled at farming.”

“So it seems to me.”

“Well then,” I said, “is there among some of the citizens of the city we have just founded a kind of knowledge by which it takes counsel not about any one thing 428d within it, but about itself as a whole: how best to conduct its affairs both at home and with other cities?”

“There is indeed.”

“What knowledge is it,” I asked, “and who possesses it?”

“It is the guardians' knowledge,” he said, “and is found among those rulers whom we just called guardians in the full sense.”

“Because of this knowledge, then, what name do you give the city?”

“Well advised,” he said, “and truly wise.”

“Do you think our city will contain more smiths 428e than guardians of this true kind?”

“Far more smiths,” he said.

“And compared with all the others who bear the name of some craft whose knowledge they possess, will these guardians not be the fewest?”

“By far.”

“Thus a city founded according to nature is wise as a whole by virtue of its smallest class and part, and of the knowledge residing there, in the part that leads and rules. And this class, it seems, is by nature 429a the smallest—the one whose share is the only kind of knowledge that deserves, above all other kinds, to be called wisdom.”

“What you say is entirely true,” he said.

“So, somehow or other, we have found one of the four qualities, both the thing itself and its place in the city.”

“I think we have found it quite adequately,” he said.

“Now courage itself, and the part of the city where it resides that causes us to call the city courageous, are not very hard to see.”

“How so?” 429b

“What part other than that which fights in the front ranks and goes to war on its behalf would anyone look at in calling a city cowardly or courageous?” I asked.

“No one would look anywhere else,” he said.

“For I do not think that the courage or cowardice of its other inhabitants determines whether the city is one or the other.”

“No.”

“Then a city is courageous through one part of itself: that part possesses a power to preserve, through everything, the belief about what things are to be feared and what they are like, as the lawgiver laid down 429c in the course of their education. Is this not what you call courage?”

“I did not quite understand what you said,” he replied. “Tell me again.”

“I mean,” I said, “that courage is a kind of preservation.”

“What kind?”

“Preservation of the belief about what things are to be feared and what they are like, a belief instilled by the law through education. When I said ‘through everything,’ I meant keeping it intact through pain 429d and pleasure, through desire and fear, without casting it away. If you like, I will give you an image of what I think it resembles.”

“I would like that.”

“You know,” I said, “that when dyers want to dye wool purple, they first select one kind from among so many colors, the white wool, then prepare it with no little care to take the dye as fully as possible, and only then dye it. 429e Wool dyed in this way becomes colorfast: washing cannot strip the color from it, with soap or without it. But you know what happens to wool dyed otherwise, whether it is another color or even white wool that has not been prepared beforehand.”

“I know,” he said. “The color washes out and the result is ridiculous.”

“Then understand us to have been doing something like that as far as we could when we selected our soldiers and 430a educated them in music and gymnastics. Do not suppose that our aim was anything but to make them receive the laws, through conviction, as beautifully as possible, like dye, so that their beliefs about what is to be feared and about other matters would be colorfast, owing to the fitness of their nature and upbringing. We did not want that dye washed out by these solvents, formidable at stripping color: pleasure, more potent in this respect than any alkali or lye, 430b and pain, fear, and desire, more potent than any other solvent. This power, then, to preserve through everything a right and lawful belief concerning what is and is not to be feared is what I call courage, unless you have some other account.”

“I have none,” he said. “For I take it you do not regard as truly lawful a correct belief about these same things acquired without education, such as a beast or a slave might have, and you call it something other than courage.” 430c

“Entirely true,” I said.

“Then I accept this as courage.”

“Accept it as civic courage,” I said, “and you will be right. We can examine it more thoroughly another time, if you wish. At present we are seeking not courage but justice; for that search, I think, we have done enough.”

“You speak well,” he said.

“Two things remain for us to discern in the city,” I said: 430d “temperance, and the thing for whose sake we have been seeking everything else, justice.”

“Certainly.”

“How, then, could we find justice without taking any more trouble over temperance?”

“I neither know,” he said, “nor would I wish justice to come into view first if that meant we would no longer examine temperance. If you want to please me, consider temperance before justice.” 430e

“I do want to,” I said, “if that is no injustice.”

“Consider it, then,” he said.

“We must,” I said. “As seen from here, it resembles a kind of accord and harmony more than the others do.”

“How?”

“Temperance is surely a kind of order, and mastery of certain pleasures and desires. People speak of a man as ‘master of himself,’ though I do not know quite how, and use other such phrases as traces of it. Is that not so?”

“Precisely,” he said.

“But is ‘master of himself’ not an absurd phrase? Whoever is master of himself would also be his own subject, and whoever is subject his own master: 431a it is the same man described in every case.”

“Of course.”

“Yet this phrase seems to me to mean that within a person's soul there is a better element and a worse one. When what is better by nature masters what is worse, we call the person ‘master of himself’—a term of praise, at least. But when, through bad upbringing or bad company, the better, being smaller, is mastered by the mass of the worse, 431b we censure this as a disgrace, calling someone in that condition ‘subject to himself’ and undisciplined.”

“That seems right,” he said.

“Now look at our new city,” I said, “and you will find one of those two conditions in it. You will rightly call it master of itself, if a thing in which the better rules the worse may be called temperate and master of itself.”

“I look at it,” he said, “and you are right.”

“You will find many varied desires, 431c pleasures, and pains chiefly in children and women and household servants, and among the many ordinary people who are called free.”

“Certainly.”

“But the simple and measured desires, guided by reason and true belief with understanding, you will meet in the few who are best endowed by nature and best educated.”

“True,” he said.

“Do you not see these things in your city, too? There, the desires of the many and less worthy 431d are mastered by the desires and wisdom of the fewer and better.”

“I do,” he said.

“Then if any city deserves to be called master of its pleasures and desires, and of itself, this one does.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“And temperate too, for all these reasons?”

“Indeed,” he said.

“And if there is any other city in which the rulers and the ruled hold the same belief 431e about who ought to rule, ours will have that quality as well. Do you agree?”

“Emphatically,” he said.

“When they hold this belief, in which citizens will you say temperance resides: the rulers or the ruled?”

“In both, I suppose,” he said.

“Do you see, then,” I asked, “that our guess just now was fair, when we likened temperance to a kind of harmony?”

“Why?”

“Because unlike courage and wisdom, each of which resides in one part 432a and makes the city courageous or wise, temperance does not work like that. It stretches through the whole city, like a harmony across the entire scale, making the weakest sing in accord with the strongest and those in between: whether you measure them by understanding, strength, number, wealth, or anything else of that sort. Thus we would be exactly right to call this agreement temperance: a natural accord between the worse and the better over which should rule, both in the city and in each individual.” 432b

“I agree entirely,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “as far as appearances allow us to judge, we have now detected three qualities in the city. What remains, the quality by which the city would still partake of virtue—what could that be? Clearly, it is justice.”

“Clearly.”

“Now, Glaucon, we must station ourselves around the thicket like hunters, alert lest justice slip away somewhere and vanish from sight. 432c It is plainly somewhere near. Look, then, and do your best to catch sight of it; perhaps you will see it before I do and point it out to me.”

“If only I could,” he said. “But if you use me as a follower who can see what you show him, you will make better use of me.”

“Follow me, then,” I said, “after joining me in prayer.”

“I will, but you must lead,” he said.

“The ground seems hard to cross,” I said, “and shadowed. It is dark, at any rate, and difficult to search. Still, we must go on.” 432d

“We must,” he said.

Catching sight of something, I said, “Look, look, Glaucon! I think we have found a track, and I do not believe it will escape us after all.”

“Good news,” he said.

“But what a foolish thing we have done,” I said.

“What thing?”

“It has apparently been rolling at our feet from the very beginning, my friend, and we never saw it. We were utterly ridiculous: like people who sometimes look for the thing they are holding in their hands, 432e we failed to look at the thing itself and gazed away into the distance. That perhaps is why we missed it.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean,” I said, “that for a long time we seem to have been speaking of it and hearing of it, without realizing that, in a way, it was what we were speaking of.”

“That is a long prelude for someone eager to hear,” he said.

433a “Then listen and see whether I have something to say,” I replied. “What we laid down from the beginning as a rule to be followed throughout, when we were founding the city, is, I think, justice—or some form of it. We laid down, and often repeated, if you remember, that each individual must practice one of the city's occupations, the one for which his nature is best suited.”

“We did.”

“And we have heard from many others, and often said ourselves, that doing one's own work and not meddling in many things is justice.” 433b

“We have.”

“Then this, my friend, seems in some way to be justice, when it comes into being: doing one's own work. Do you know what leads me to think so?”

“No; tell me,” he said.

“I think,” I said, “that what is left in the city after the things we have examined—temperance, courage, and wisdom—is what gave them all the power to come into being, and, once they had come into being, preserves them as long as it remains. And yet we said that justice would be 433c what remained if we found the other three.”

“That must be so,” he said.

“Moreover,” I said, “if we had to judge which of these qualities, by its presence, would do most to make our city good, it would be hard to decide. Is it the shared conviction of rulers and ruled? The preservation among soldiers of the lawful belief about which things are to be feared and which are not? Or the 433d understanding and vigilance present in the rulers? Or does the greatest good come from something present in child and woman, slave and free person, craftsman and ruler and subject alike: that each one did his own work, remaining one person and not meddling in many things?”

“It would be hard to decide,” he said. “Of course it would.”

“Then it seems that the power of each person in the city to do his own work competes with its wisdom, temperance, and courage in making the city virtuous.”

“Indeed it does,” he said.

“And would you not say that the thing that competes with those for the city's virtue is justice?” 433e

“Absolutely.”

“Consider another way of looking at it, and see whether you still agree. Will you assign judgment in lawsuits in the city to its rulers?”

“Of course.”

“And in their judgments, will they seek anything more than to ensure that no one has what belongs to another, or is deprived of what belongs to himself?”

“No, that is what they will seek.”

“Because it is just?”

“Yes.”

“Then we might agree that justice also consists, in a way, in having and 434a doing what is properly one's own.”

“That is so.”

“Now see if you agree with me here. Suppose a carpenter tries to do a cobbler's work, or a cobbler a carpenter's, and they exchange each other's tools or honors, or one man tries to do both trades. Do you think all these changes would do the city any great harm?”

“Not much,” he said.

“But when a craftsman, or anyone else naturally fitted to make money, 434b is inflated by wealth, numbers, strength, or some other such advantage and tries to enter the warrior class, or when a warrior tries, without being fit, to enter the class of counselors and guardians, and they exchange their tools and honors—or one person tries to do all these things at once—then I think you too will agree that this exchange of roles and this meddling in many things spell ruin for the city.”

“Absolutely.”

“So when there are three classes, their meddling in one another's work and changing places with one another 434c do the greatest harm to the city, and would most rightly be called its worst offense.”

“Certainly.”

“And would you not call the greatest offense against one's own city injustice?”

“Of course.”

“So that is injustice. Let us put it this way in turn: when the class of those who earn wealth, the class of auxiliaries, and the class of guardians each tend to their own work within the city, this is the opposite of that offense. Would it be justice, and would it make the city just?” 434d

“I can see no other way it could be,” he said.

“Let us not state it too firmly just yet,” I said. “If we find that this quality, when present in each individual person, is also justice there, then we will agree—for what else could we say? If not, we will examine something else. For now let us finish the inquiry we undertook when we thought that, if we tried first to see justice in something larger that possessed it, we might more easily discern what it is in an individual. 434e We decided that the larger thing was a city, and so we founded the best city we could, knowing well that justice would be present in a good city. Let us carry over to the individual what we discovered there; if the two agree, all will be well. If something different appears in the individual, we shall return to the city and test our finding, and 435a perhaps, by considering the two side by side and rubbing them together like fire-sticks, we will make justice flash forth. When it comes to light, we shall establish it firmly for ourselves.”

“What you say follows the right path,” he said. “We must proceed that way.”

“Now if a person calls a greater thing and a smaller thing by the same name, are they unlike in the respect in which they bear that same name, or alike?”

“Alike,” he said. 435b

“So a just man, in the very form of justice, will not differ from a just city but will resemble it.”

“He will resemble it,” he said.

“And the city seemed just when the three kinds of nature within it each did their own work. It seemed temperate, courageous, and wise in turn because of certain other conditions and dispositions of these same classes.”

“True,” he said.

“Then, my friend, we shall expect the same of the individual: if he has those same kinds within his soul, 435c the same conditions will rightly entitle him to the same names as the city.”

“Necessarily,” he said.

“Yet again, my remarkable friend,” I said, “we have stumbled on no easy question about the soul: whether it contains these three kinds or not.”

“It seems no easy question to me,” he said. “Perhaps, Socrates, the saying is true: beautiful things are difficult.”

“So it seems,” I said. “And you may be sure, Glaucon, that in my opinion the precise answer will never be grasped through methods like those we are now using in our discussion. 435d Another road, longer and more demanding, leads to it. Still, perhaps we can reach an answer worthy of what we have said and examined so far.”

“Would that not satisfy us?” he asked. “For the present it would certainly be enough for me.”

“It will be quite enough for me too,” I said.

“Then do not give up,” he said. “Examine it.” 435e

“Must we not agree,” I asked, “that the same kinds and dispositions are present in each one of us as in the city? They surely cannot have arrived there from anywhere else. It would be absurd to suppose that the spirited character in cities did not come from the individuals who bear that reputation—people in Thrace and Scythia and more or less throughout the northern region—or that the love of learning, which one might attribute to our own”

436a “One might chiefly attribute it to the region, or say that the love of money is found especially among the Phoenicians and the people of Egypt.”“Certainly,” he said.“That much is so,” I said, “and not hard to recognize.”“Not at all.”“But here is a harder question: do we perform each of these things by the same part of ourselves, or, since there are three, each by a different part? Do we learn with one part, feel anger with another, and with a third desire the pleasures of food and procreation and everything 436b akin to them? Or do we act with the whole soul in each case, whenever we are moved to act? These are the distinctions that will be hard to draw adequately.”“I think so too,” he said.“Then let us try this way to determine whether these parts are the same as one another or different.”“How?”“It is clear that the same thing will not consent to do or undergo opposites at the same time, in the same respect and in relation to the same thing. So if we find these opposites taking place among them, we shall know that it was not one 436c thing but more than one.”“Very well.”“Consider what I mean.”“Speak,” he said.“Is it possible,” I said, “for the same thing to stand still and move at once in the same respect?”“Not at all.”“Let us agree more precisely, then, so that we do not dispute the matter as we go on. If someone said that a man who stands still while moving his hands and head is both standing still and moving at once, we would not, I think, accept 436d that way of speaking. We would say instead that one part of him stands still and another moves. Would we not?”“We would.”“And if our speaker grew more ingenious still, making the clever claim that whole spinning tops both stand still and move when they turn with their points fixed in the same spot, or that anything else revolving in a circle on the same base does this, we would not accept it. Such things are not still and moving in the same respects 436e within themselves. We would say that they have both a straight axis and a circumference, and that in respect of the straight axis they stand still—for it inclines in no direction—while in respect of the circumference they move in a circle. But when the axis tilts to the right or left, forward or backward, as the top turns, then it is not standing still in any respect.”“And rightly so,” he said.“Nothing said along these lines, then, will startle us or persuade us in the least that the same thing could ever at once, in the same respect and in relation 437a to the same thing, undergo opposites, or be opposites, or do opposite things.”“It certainly will not persuade me,” he said.“Still,” I said, “so that we need not lengthen our inquiry by taking up every such objection and proving it false, let us assume that this is so and go forward. But let us agree that if these things ever appear otherwise, all our conclusions drawn from this premise will be undone.”“Yes,” he said, “that is what we should do.” 437b“Would you then,” I said, “class nodding assent and shaking the head in denial, reaching to take something and refusing it, drawing something toward oneself and pushing it away—all such things—among opposites of one another, whether as actions or as experiences? That distinction makes no difference here.”“Yes,” he said, “among opposites.”“What, then?” I said. “Thirst and hunger and desires in general, and again willingness and wishing: would you not place all these 437c among the kinds we just named? Would you not say that the soul of one who desires always reaches toward the thing it desires, or draws toward itself what it wishes to have, or again, insofar as it wills that something be provided, assents to it within itself as if answering a question, longing for it to come about?”“I would.”“And unwillingness, refusal, and lack of desire—shall we not place these with repelling and driving away from oneself, and with everything opposed to those other things?” 437d“How could we not?”“Since this is so, shall we say that there is a kind called desire, and that the clearest instances of it are what we call thirst and hunger?”“We shall,” he said.“One is for drink, the other for food?”“Yes.”“Then insofar as thirst is thirst, is it a desire in the soul for anything beyond what we have said? Is thirst, for example, thirst for hot drink or cold, for much or little, or, in a word, for some particular kind of drink? Or, if heat is present 437e along with thirst, does that addition produce desire for cold drink, and cold the desire for hot? If the thirst is great because of the presence of a great amount, will it produce desire for much drink, and if slight, for little? But thirst itself can never be desire for anything but what it naturally seeks, drink itself; and hunger, likewise, for food?”“Yes,” he said. “Each desire in itself is only for that which it naturally seeks; its being for this or that kind of thing comes from what is added to it.”

438a “We must not let anyone unsettle us while we are off our guard by saying that no one desires drink but good drink, or food but good food. For everyone, it is claimed, desires good things; so, if thirst is a desire, it must be for something good, whether drink or whatever else its object may be, and the other desires likewise.”“Perhaps,” he said, “the person saying this might seem to have a point.”“Yet,” I said, “of all things that are related 438b to something else, some, I think, are qualified in a certain way and related to something qualified; but each thing simply itself is related only to the thing simply itself.”“I did not understand,” he said.“Do you not understand,” I said, “that greater is the sort of thing that is greater than something?”“Certainly.”“Than something less?”“Yes.”“And much greater than something much less. Is that so?”“Yes.”“And what was once greater than what was once less, and what will be greater than what will be less?”“Of course,” he said. 438c“And more is related to fewer, double to half, and all such things likewise; heavier to lighter, faster to slower, and hot to cold, and all things of this sort—is that not how it is?”“Indeed it is.”“And what of the branches of knowledge? Is the principle not the same? Knowledge itself is knowledge of what can be learned itself, or whatever it is we ought to call its object; but knowledge of a certain kind 438d is knowledge of an object of a certain kind. Here is what I mean: when there came to be a knowledge of constructing houses, was it not distinguished from other kinds of knowledge, and so named building?”“Of course.”“Was that not because it was of a particular kind, unlike any of the others?”“Yes.”“Then was it not because its object was of a particular kind that it too became a particular kind? And is it not the same with the other arts and branches of knowledge?”“It is.”“Then take this,” I said, “as what I meant, if you understand now: of all things related to something, each thing itself is related simply to its object itself, while a thing qualified in some way is related to an object qualified in some way. 438e I am not saying that knowledge becomes like the things it knows, so that knowledge of healthy and sick things is healthy and sick, or knowledge of good and bad things good and bad. Rather, because this knowledge came to be not of knowledge's object simply, but of an object of a particular kind—the healthy and the sick—it too became a particular kind. This is why it is no longer called simply knowledge, but, with its particular object added, medicine.”“I understand,” he said, “and it seems to me to be so.”

439a “And thirst,” I said, “would you not place it among things that are related to something? For thirst is surely thirst—”“Yes,” he said, “for drink.”“Then a particular kind of thirst is for a particular kind of drink. But thirst itself is neither for much nor little, good nor bad, nor, in short, any particular kind of drink: thirst itself is by nature for drink itself alone?”“Absolutely.”“So the soul of a thirsty person, insofar as it is thirsty, wishes for nothing 439b but to drink; it reaches for that and moves toward it.”“Clearly.”“Then if anything pulls it back when it is thirsty, there must be something else in it besides what thirsts and drives it like a beast toward drinking. For we say that the same thing cannot at the same time, with the same part of itself and in relation to the same thing, perform opposites.”“Certainly not.”“It would be wrong, I think, to say that an archer's hands are at once pushing the bow away and drawing it toward him. Rather, one hand pushes and the other draws.” 439c“Absolutely,” he said.“Shall we say, then, that there are people who are thirsty but sometimes unwilling to drink?”“Yes indeed,” he said, “many people, and often.”“What should one say about them?” I asked. “Is there not in their souls something bidding them drink, but also something restraining them, distinct from and stronger than what bids them?”“I think so,” he said.“And does not what restrains them in such cases arise, when it arises, from calculation, while what leads and draws them comes from feelings and diseases?” 439d“So it appears.”“It will not be unreasonable, then,” I said, “to consider them two distinct things, calling the part of the soul with which it calculates the rational part, and the part with which it loves, hungers, thirsts, and flutters after the other desires the irrational and appetitive part, companion of certain satisfactions and pleasures.” 439e“No,” he said, “we should be right to think of them that way.”“Let these two kinds within the soul be distinguished, then,” I said. “But what about spirit, the part by which we feel anger? Is it a third, or akin in nature to one of these two?”“Perhaps,” he said, “to the latter, the appetitive part.”“But I once heard an account,” I said, “that I believe: Leontius son of Aglaion was coming up from Piraeus outside the north wall when he noticed some corpses lying by the executioner. He longed to look at them, yet at the same time felt disgust and turned himself away. For a while he struggled and covered his face; but at last,

440a overcome by desire, he forced his eyes wide open, ran toward the corpses, and said, ‘There, you wretches! Feast yourselves on the beautiful sight!’”“I have heard it too,” he said.“This story,” I said, “shows that anger sometimes wars against the desires, as one thing against another.”“It does,” he said.“And do we not notice in many other cases,” I said, “that when 440b desires force someone against reason, he reviles himself and grows angry with the thing doing violence within him, and that his spirit, as though in a conflict between two parties, becomes an ally of reason? But I think you would not say you had ever found your spirit joining forces with the desires against reason's judgment that they must not act; nor, I think, would you have seen that happen in anyone else.”“No, by Zeus,” he said. 440c“And when a man thinks he has done wrong?” I said. “The nobler he is, is he not the less capable of growing angry, even when hungry or cold or suffering anything of the kind at the hands of someone he believes is acting justly? His spirit, as I say, refuses to rise against that person.”“True,” he said.“But when he believes he is being wronged, does not his spirit boil and bristle and fight for what seems just? Enduring hunger and cold and every such hardship, 440d it prevails and does not desist from its noble efforts until it either wins, dies, or is called back and soothed by the reason within him, as a dog is by its shepherd?”“Yes,” he said, “it closely resembles what you describe. Indeed, in our city we made the auxiliaries, like dogs, obedient to the rulers, the shepherds of the city.”“You understand well,” I said, “what I mean. But have you noticed this further point?” 440e“What point?”“That the spirited part now appears to be the opposite of what we thought a moment ago. Then we supposed it was something appetitive; now we say it is far from that: in the civil war of the soul it takes up arms much more readily on the side of reason.”“Certainly,” he said.“Is it then distinct from reason too, or a kind of reason, so that the soul contains not three kinds but two, the rational and the appetitive? Or, just as three classes held the city together—the money-making, the auxiliary, and the deliberative—so is there a third part in the soul,

441a the spirited, by nature an auxiliary to reason unless corrupted by bad upbringing?”“It must be a third,” he said.“Yes,” I said, “provided it proves distinct from the rational part, just as it proved distinct from the appetitive.”“That is not hard to show,” he said. “One can see it even in children: they are full of spirit from the moment they are born, but some, it seems to me, never attain reason, 441b and most do so only late.”“By Zeus, well said,” I replied. “And in animals too one can see that what you say is true. Besides, there is the testimony of Homer's line we quoted before: ‘He struck his breast and rebuked his heart with words.’ For here Homer clearly makes the part that has reckoned what is better and worse 441c rebuke another part, which is angry without reckoning.”“You are entirely right,” he said.“So,” I said, “with difficulty we have swum through this question, and reached a fair agreement that the same kinds are present in the city and in each individual soul, and that their number is the same.”“That is so.”“Then it must follow that an individual is wise in the same way and by the same part as the city was wise.”“Of course.” 441d“And that by the same part and in the same manner in which an individual is courageous, the city too is courageous; and that in all else concerning virtue they stand alike?”“Necessarily.”“And so, Glaucon, I think we shall say that a man is just in the very way the city was just.”“That too necessarily follows.”“But we have not forgotten that the city was just because each of its three classes did its own work.”“I do not think we have forgotten,” he said.“Then we must remember that each of us too will be just, and will do his own work, when each of the parts within him 441e does its own work.”“We must indeed remember that,” he said.“Is it not proper for the rational part to rule, since it is wise and has foresight for the whole soul, and for the spirited part to obey and be its ally?”“Indeed.”“And will not the blending of music and physical training, as we said, bring these two into harmony, strengthening and nourishing the one with fine words and learning, relaxing the other with gentle encouragement and taming it with harmony and rhythm?”

442a “Certainly,” he said.“And these two, so nurtured and truly taught and trained in their own work, will stand guard over the appetitive part—the largest part of each person's soul, and by nature the most insatiable for money. They will watch lest it grow great and strong by filling itself with the so-called pleasures of the body, 442b and, instead of doing its own work, attempt to enslave and rule over what its kind has no right to rule, overturning the whole life of all three.”“Indeed,” he said.“And would they not also best defend the entire soul and body against enemies from outside, the one taking counsel and the other fighting in front, following its ruler and executing its decisions through courage?”“That is so.”“And I think we call each person courageous by virtue of this part, 442c when the spirit within him preserves through pains and pleasures reason's commands about what is to be feared and what is not.”“Right,” he said.“And wise by virtue of that small part which ruled within him and gave those commands, itself possessing knowledge of what benefits each of the three parts and the whole community they form.”“Indeed.”“And temperate through their friendship and accord, when the ruling part and the two ruled parts agree that the rational part should rule, 442d and do not rise against it?”“Temperance,” he said, “in city and individual alike, is surely nothing other than this.”“And just, as we have repeatedly said, he will be by virtue of this and in this way.”“Necessarily.”“Well then,” I said, “has our view of justice somehow grown dim? Does it seem to be anything other than what it appeared to be in the city?”“Not to me,” he said.“For we could make ourselves entirely certain,” I said, “if any doubt still remains in our souls, by bringing the ordinary cases before it.” 442e“What cases?”“Suppose we had to reach an agreement about that city and a man bred and raised in its likeness. Would such a man, having received a deposit of gold or silver, seem likely to steal it? Who, do you think, would believe that

443a “he, rather than men who are not of this kind, would do such a thing?”“No one,” he said.“Would he not also be far from sacrilege, theft, and betrayal, whether of friends in private life or of cities in public life?”“Far from them.”“Nor would he be unfaithful in any way to his oaths or other agreements.”“How could he be?”“Adultery, neglect of parents, and failure to honor the gods belong to anyone rather than to such a man.”“To anyone rather than him,” he said. 443b“And is the cause of all this not that each part within him does its own work, whether in ruling or in being ruled?”“That, and nothing else.”“Do you still seek justice as anything other than this power, which produces men and cities of this kind?”“By Zeus, I do not,” he said.“Then the dream we spoke of has come wholly true: we suspected that, as soon as we began to found our city, some god had led us upon a beginning and a pattern 443c of justice.”“Most certainly.”“And so, Glaucon, what we said about the man born a shoemaker rightly practicing shoemaking and doing nothing else, the carpenter doing carpentry, and the others likewise—this was an image of justice, and that is why it helped us.”“So it appears.”“But justice in truth was, it seems, something of this kind: not concerned with the outward performance of one's own work, but with what is 443d within, with oneself and one's own in the truest sense. The just man does not permit the parts of himself to do one another's work or the kinds within his soul to meddle in one another's affairs. Instead, he sets his own house in order in truth; he rules himself, brings himself into order, becomes his own friend, and harmonizes the three parts, exactly like the three notes marking a harmony—the highest, the lowest, and the middle—and any notes that may lie between. He binds all these together 443e and becomes entirely one out of many, temperate and in tune. Only then does he act, if he acts at all, whether in acquiring wealth, caring for his body, conducting public affairs, or making private agreements. In all these matters he judges and calls just and noble the action that preserves and helps bring about this disposition, and calls the knowledge that governs such action wisdom; but an action that continually dissolves it he calls unjust, and the belief that governs such action ignorance.

444a “Entirely true, Socrates,” he said.“Very well,” I said. “If we were to say we have found the just man and the just city, and what justice is within them, I do not think we would seem to be lying.”“By Zeus, we would not,” he said.“Shall we say it, then?”“Let us.”“So be it,” I said. “For next, I think, we must examine injustice.”“Clearly.” 444b“Must it not, in turn, be a kind of civil war among these three parts, a meddling in one another's affairs and doing one another's work, and a rebellion by some part against the soul as a whole, seeking to rule it without right, though its nature is such that it should be a servant to the part whose kind is fit to rule, not to serve? Some such disorder, I think, and the confusion and wandering of these parts, is what we shall call injustice, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance, and, in sum, every kind of vice.”“Exactly so,” he said. 444c“Then,” I said, “what it is to act unjustly and commit injustice, and again to do what is just, must now be plainly evident, if injustice and justice themselves are evident.”“How so?”“Because,” I said, “these actions are no different from what produces health and disease in the body: they work in the soul as those things work in the body.”“In what way?” he said.“Healthy practices produce health, and unhealthy ones disease.”“Yes.”“And just actions produce justice, 444d while unjust ones produce injustice?”“Necessarily.”“And producing health means establishing the parts of the body so that they rule and are ruled by one another according to nature; producing disease means making them rule and be ruled by one another contrary to nature.”“It does.”“And likewise,” I said, “producing justice means establishing the parts of the soul so that they rule and are ruled by one another according to nature; producing injustice means making them rule and be ruled contrary to nature?”“Precisely,” he said.“So virtue would seem to be a kind of health, beauty, and good condition 444e of the soul, and vice its disease, ugliness, and weakness.”“That is so.”“And do not noble pursuits lead to the attainment of virtue, shameful pursuits to vice?”“Necessarily.”“What remains for us to examine now, it seems, is

445a whether it is profitable to act justly, pursue what is noble, and be just, whether or not one is known to be so; or to commit injustice and be unjust, so long as one does not pay the penalty or become better through punishment.”“But Socrates,” he said, “the question now seems ridiculous to me. If the body is so corrupted in its nature that life seems unlivable, even with every kind of food and drink and all wealth and power, can life be livable when the nature of that very part by which we live is thrown into disorder and 445b corrupted? Could it be livable if a man could do whatever he wished, except the one thing that would free him from vice and injustice and enable him to acquire justice and virtue—now that each of these has been shown to be what we have described?”“It is ridiculous,” I said. “Yet since we have come this far, we must not weary of seeing as clearly as possible that these things are so.”“By Zeus,” he said, “this is the last thing we should weary of.” 445c“Come then,” I said, “and you will see how many forms vice has, at least those I think worth seeing.”“I am following,” he said. “Only speak.”“Indeed,” I said, “now that we have climbed to this lookout in our argument, it seems to me that virtue has one form, while vice has countless forms, four of which are worth noting.”“What do you mean?” he said.“There seem to be as many kinds of soul as there are distinct forms of constitution,” I said.“How many?” 445d“Five constitutions,” I said, “and five kinds of soul.”“Tell me what they are,” he said.“I say,” I answered, “that the constitution we have described is one kind, though it may bear either of two names. If one man outstanding among the rulers arises, it may be called kingship; if several, aristocracy.”“True,” he said.“This, then,” I said, “I count as one form. For whether 445e several men or one arise to govern, they will change none of the city's laws worth speaking of, if they have received the upbringing and education we have described.”“That is unlikely,” he said.

449a “Then I call a city and constitution of this kind good and right, and a man of this kind as well. The others I call bad and mistaken, if this one is right—both in the governance of cities and in the formation of the character of individual souls. They fall into four kinds of vice.”

“What kinds?” he asked.

I was about to describe them in sequence, as each seemed to me to 449b pass into the next. But Polemarchus, who sat a little farther from Adeimantus, stretched out his hand and took hold of his cloak high by the shoulder. He drew Adeimantus toward him, leaned forward himself, and spoke in a low voice. We heard nothing else he said, but we did hear this: “Shall we let him go, then, or what shall we do?”

“Certainly not,” said Adeimantus, now speaking aloud.

“And what is it,” I asked, “that you will not let go?”

“You,” he said. 449c

“Why, exactly?” I asked.

“You seem to be taking the easy way out,” he said, “and stealing away a whole part of the argument, no small one, to avoid going through it. You thought you could escape notice by saying offhand that, as to women and children, everyone knows that friends will have all things in common.”

“But was I not right, Adeimantus?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “But that ‘right,’ like everything else, needs an account of what form their community will take; there could be many forms. 449d So do not leave out the one you mean. We have long been waiting, expecting you at some point to mention how children will be conceived and, once born, how they will be raised, and the whole community of women and children that you speak of. We think that whether this is conducted rightly or wrongly makes a great difference to the constitution as a whole. Now that you are turning to another constitution without adequately explaining this one, we have resolved—as you heard— 450a not to let you go until you have discussed all this as you did the rest.”

“And count me a party to that vote,” said Glaucon.

“Indeed, Socrates,” said Thrasymachus, “you may consider it our unanimous decision.”

“What a thing you have done,” I said, “by laying hold of me! What a vast argument you are setting in motion again about the constitution, as if from the beginning. I was glad to think I had already covered it, and would have been content if someone had accepted things as they were stated then and let them stand. In calling these questions up 450b now, you do not know what a swarm of arguments you are rousing. I saw it then and passed them by, for fear they would cause a great deal of trouble.”

“What?” said Thrasymachus. “Do you think these men came here now to pour gold, rather than to listen to arguments?”

“Yes,” I said, “but only arguments of a reasonable length.”

“For sensible people, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “a whole lifetime is a reasonable measure for listening to arguments of this kind. Never mind us: do not tire of explaining, as you see fit, the matter we ask about—what community of women and children our guardians are to have, and how the young are to be brought up 450c in that period between birth and education, which seems the most laborious of all. Try to tell us how it should be managed.”

“It is not easy, my fortunate friend,” I said, “to explain. It raises even more doubts than the matters we discussed before. One may doubt whether the proposals are possible, and even if they were perfectly possible, one would still doubt whether they are best. 450d That is why I hesitate to touch them, my dear companion, for fear the argument might seem a wishful dream.”

“Do not hesitate,” he said. “Your listeners are neither foolish nor incredulous nor hostile.”

“My excellent friend,” I said, “you say that, I suppose, to encourage me?”

“I do.”

“Then you are doing precisely the opposite,” I said. “If I trusted myself to know what I was saying, the encouragement would be apt: before wise and friendly people, speaking truths one knows about the greatest and 450e dearest matters is safe and heartening. But to put forth arguments while doubting and searching, as I am doing, 451a is frightening and precarious—not because I fear making myself ridiculous; that is childish—but because, if I slip from the truth, I shall fall and drag my friends down with me in a matter where a fall is least allowable. I bow before Adrasteia, Glaucon, for what I am about to say. I hope that unintentionally killing someone is a lesser wrong than deceiving anyone about what is fine, good, and just in our institutions. Such a risk is better taken among enemies than 451b friends. So much for your fine encouragement.”

Glaucon laughed. “But Socrates,” he said, “if we suffer any injury from your argument, we acquit you as we would of a killing: you shall be innocent, and no deceiver of ours. Take heart and speak.”

“Well,” I said, “according to the law a man acquitted of killing is innocent too. If that holds there, it likely holds here as well.”

“Then speak, at least on that account,” he said.

“I must now say in reverse order,” I said, “what perhaps 451c I should have said in its proper sequence then. But perhaps it is fitting, after bringing the men's drama fully to its end, to bring on the women's drama next, especially since you call for it so insistently. For people born and educated as we have described, there is, to my mind, no right way to possess and employ women and children except by following the course we first set out on. We undertook in our argument, I think, to appoint the men as guardians of a herd.”

“Yes.” 451d

“Let us follow that course, then, giving them a comparable way of breeding and upbringing, and consider whether it suits us.”

“How?” he asked.

“Like this. Do we think the female guard dogs ought to guard what the males guard, hunt alongside them, and share in all their work? Or should the females stay at home, unable to act because they bear and nurse their puppies, while the males do the work and take all responsibility for the flocks? 451e”

“Let them share in everything,” he said, “though we employ the females as weaker and the males as stronger.”

“Can one employ an animal for the same tasks,” I asked, “without giving it the same nurture and training?”

“No.”

“If, then, we are to employ women for the same tasks as men, we must teach them the same things.”

452a “Yes.”

“And music and physical training were given to the men.”

“Yes.”

“Then women too must be given both these arts, as well as the practice of war, and be employed in the same way.”

“That seems likely, from what you say.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “much of what we are saying would appear ridiculous by present custom if put into practice as proposed.”

“Very much so.”

“And what,” I asked, “seems most ridiculous to you? Plainly it is women exercising naked in the wrestling grounds with 452b men—not only the young but the older women too, just like the old men at the gymnasiums who, wrinkled and no longer pleasing to the eye, nevertheless love their exercise.”

“By Zeus,” he said, “under present conditions it would certainly look ridiculous.”

“Yet since we have begun this discussion,” I said, “we must not fear the jokes of the wits, whatever they might say about such a change, whether in exercise, 452c in music, or above all in bearing arms and riding horses.”

“You are right,” he said.

“But now that we have begun, we must press on toward the hardest part of the law, asking those jesters to be serious rather than play their customary part. Let us remind them that not long ago the Greeks thought it shameful and ridiculous for men to be seen naked, as most non-Greeks do now. When first the Cretans, and then the Spartans, began exercising naked, 452d the wits of the day could make comedy of it all. Do you not think so?”

“I do.”

“But once experience showed, I think, that stripping was better than covering up for all these activities, the ridicule visible to the eyes was swept away by the excellence disclosed in reason. That showed how foolish a person is to consider anything laughable except what is bad, and how a man who sets out to make people laugh, fixing his gaze on any sight but that of folly 452e and vice as his object of ridicule, takes seriously some standard of beauty other than the good.”

“Quite so,” he said.

“Must we not first agree about this proposal, then—whether it is possible or not—and allow anyone who wants to challenge it, whether in play or in earnest, to dispute whether 453a the female human nature can share in every task of the male sex, in none at all, or in some but not others? And to which of these does warfare belong? Would that not be the fairest way to begin, and likely to bring us to the fairest conclusion?”

“By far,” he said.

“Then shall we ourselves take the opposing side,” I asked, “on behalf of others, so that their case is not besieged without a defender? 453b”

“Nothing prevents it.”

“Let us say on their behalf: ‘Socrates and Glaucon, no one else need dispute with you. When you began founding the city you were founding, you agreed that each individual, according to nature, should do the one work proper to him.’”

“We did agree, I think. How could we deny it?”

“‘And does not a woman differ greatly from a man in nature?’”

“Of course she does.”

“‘Then ought not each be assigned different work 453c appropriate to their own nature?’”

“Certainly.”

“‘How can you fail now, and contradict yourselves by saying that men and women ought to do the same things when their natures are so far apart? What defense can you offer for this, my remarkable friend?’”

“Not an easy one to give on the spot,” he said. “But I shall ask you—I am asking you—to explain the argument in our defense, whatever it may be.”

“These, Glaucon,” I said, “and many other objections 453d of the kind were what I foresaw long ago. I feared them, and hesitated to touch the law concerning the possession and upbringing of women and children.”

“By Zeus,” he said, “it does not look easy.”

“No,” I said. “But here is the fact: whether a person falls into a little swimming pool or into the middle of the greatest sea, he still has to swim.”

“Certainly.”

“So we too must swim and try to save ourselves from this argument, hoping some dolphin may take us on its back or that some other unlikely rescue may come. 453e”

“So it seems,” he said.

“Come, then,” I said, “let us see whether we can find a way out. We agree that different natures should undertake different work, and that women and men have different natures; yet we now say that these different natures should undertake the same work. That is the charge against us?”

“Exactly.”

454a “How formidable, Glaucon,” I said, “is the power of the art of contradiction!”

“Why?”

“Because,” I said, “many people seem to me to stumble into it without knowing it. They think they are engaging in dialogue, not quarreling, because they cannot examine what is said by dividing it into kinds. Instead they chase after contradictions in the bare words, using contention rather than dialectic with one another.”

“Many people do fall into that condition,” he said. “But is it aimed at us now? 454b”

“Absolutely,” I said. “We seem to be falling unwittingly into contradiction ourselves.”

“How?”

“We cling to the phrase ‘different natures must not have the same pursuits’ with great boldness and contentiousness, yet we have never examined what kind of sameness or difference of nature we meant, or with reference to what, when we assigned different pursuits to different natures and the same pursuits to the same nature.”

“No,” he said, “we did not examine it. 454c”

“So it seems we are free to ask ourselves whether bald men and long-haired men have the same nature or opposite natures. And after agreeing that their natures are opposite, if bald men make shoes, we can forbid long-haired men to do so; or if the long-haired make shoes, forbid the others.”

“That would be absurd,” he said.

“Is it absurd,” I asked, “for any reason but this: at that time we did not mean sameness and difference of nature in every respect, but attended only to the kind of difference and likeness 454d relevant to the pursuits themselves? For example, we said that a man with the aptitude for medicine and a woman with the aptitude for medicine have the same nature in soul. Do you not agree?”

“I do.”

“But someone with an aptitude for medicine and someone with an aptitude for carpentry have different natures?”

“Surely.”

“Then,” I said, “if the male and female sexes appear to differ with regard to some art or other pursuit, we shall say each should be assigned that pursuit accordingly. But if they differ only in that the female bears children 454e and the male begets them, we shall say that this in no way proves that women and men differ with respect to the matter we are discussing. We shall still believe our male guardians and their women should follow the same pursuits.”

“And rightly,” he said.

“Then next we ask the person who says otherwise 455a to teach us precisely in what art or pursuit involved in the ordering of a city the nature of woman is not the same as man's, but different.”

“That is fair.”

“Perhaps someone else might say what you said a little while ago: it is not easy to give a satisfactory answer at once, but after consideration it is not difficult.”

“He might.”

“Then shall we ask our opponent to follow along 455b as we try to show him that there is no pursuit peculiar to women in the government of a city?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“‘Come, answer us,’ we shall say to him. ‘Was this what you meant by saying one person is naturally suited to a task and another unsuited: that one learns something easily and the other with difficulty; that after a little teaching one makes many discoveries in the subject learned, while the other, even after much teaching and practice, cannot retain what was taught; and that for one the body's powers sufficiently serve the mind, while for the other they hinder it? 455c Are there any qualities other than these by which you distinguish the naturally suited from the unsuited for each task?’”

“No one,” he said, “would name others.”

“Do you know anything practiced by human beings in which the male sex does not possess all these qualities to a greater degree than the female? Need we take the time to speak of weaving, making cakes, and preparing boiled dishes, where the female sex is supposed to excel, and where its defeat would be most laughable of all? 455d”

“You speak the truth,” he said. “One sex is, broadly speaking, surpassed by the other in everything. Yet many women are better than many men at many things; in general, however, it is as you say.”

“So, my friend, there is no pursuit among those who govern a city that belongs to a woman because she is a woman, or to a man because he is a man. Natural capacities are distributed alike among both creatures, and by nature a woman shares in all pursuits, 455e as a man does; though in all of them a woman is weaker than a man.”

“Certainly.”

“Shall we then assign everything to men and nothing to women?”

“How could we?”

“For we will say, I think, that one woman has a gift for medicine and another has not, one is musical by nature and another without music.”

“Certainly.”

456a “And is not one skilled in exercise and war, while another is unwarlike and has no love of exercise?”

“So I think.”

“What of a lover of wisdom and a hater of it? One has spirit, another none?”

“That too.”

“Then one woman has the nature of a guardian and another does not. Did we not select men with such a nature to be guardians?”

“We did.”

“So a woman and a man may have the same nature for guarding a city, except that the one is weaker and the other stronger.”

“So it appears. 456b”

“Women of that kind, then, must be chosen to live with men of that kind and guard alongside them, since they are capable and kindred to the men in nature.”

“Certainly.”

“And should not the same pursuits be given to the same natures?”

“They should.”

“So we have come round to where we started and agree that giving music and physical training to the women of the guardians is not against nature.”

“Not at all.”

“Then the law we laid down was neither impossible nor a mere wish, 456c since we established it in accordance with nature. Rather, the practices that now oppose it seem more contrary to nature.”

“So it seems.”

“And our inquiry was whether our proposals were possible and best?”

“It was.”

“We have agreed that they are possible?”

“Yes.”

“Next we must agree that they are best?”

“Plainly.”

“To make a woman a guardian, it will not be one education that makes our men guardians and another that makes our women, 456d especially when it takes up the same nature in both?”

“It will not.”

“What is your opinion on this?”

“On what?”

“Do you think to yourself that one man is better and another worse? Or do you consider all men alike?”

“Not at all.”

“In the city we are founding, which men do you think we have made better: the guardians, who received the education we described, or the shoemakers, trained in shoemaking?”

“An absurd question,” he said.

“I understand,” I said. “And are the guardians not the best of the citizens? 456e”

“By far.”

“And will these women not be the best of women?”

“By far, in their turn,” he said.

“Is anything better for a city than to have women and men who are as excellent as possible?”

“Nothing.”

“And music and physical training, provided as we have

457a described, will bring that about?”

“How could they not?”

“So the law we laid down was not only possible, but the best for a city.”

“So it was.”

“The women of the guardians, then, must take off their clothes, since they will be clothed in virtue instead of cloaks; they must share in war and in the rest of the city's defense, and undertake no other work. Of these duties the lighter should be given to the women rather than the men, because of the weakness of their sex. The man 457b who laughs at naked women exercising for the sake of what is best plucks an unripe fruit from the tree of comic wisdom: he seems to know neither what he laughs at nor what he is doing. For it is and will remain the finest saying that what is beneficial is beautiful, and what is harmful, ugly.”

“Certainly.”

“Then let us say that in speaking of the law concerning women we have escaped one wave without being altogether swept away: we have ordained that our male and female 457c guardians must share in every pursuit, and our argument seems at least consistent with itself in calling this both possible and beneficial.”

“You have escaped no small wave,” he said.

“You will not call it large,” I said, “when you see the next one.”

“Speak, and let me see,” he said.

“The law following from this and the other laws that preceded it is, I believe, this.”

“What law?”

“All these women are to be held in common by all these men. No woman is to live privately with any one man; the children 457d too are to be held in common, and no parent shall know his own child nor any child its parent.”

“That,” he said, “is a much greater challenge to belief than the other, both as to whether it is possible and whether it is beneficial.”

“I do not think,” I said, “that anyone would dispute its benefit: that women and children should be held in common would be the greatest good, if only it could be done. But I think there would be a great deal of dispute about whether it is possible. 457e”

“Both questions,” he said, “would be thoroughly disputed.”

“You join two arguments against me,” I said. “I thought I might escape the first if you agreed it was beneficial, leaving me only the question of its possibility.”

“But your attempt to escape did not go unnoticed,” he said. “You must account for both.”

“I must submit to judgment,” I said. “But grant 458a me this much: let me enjoy a holiday, as idle minds are accustomed to feast themselves with fantasies when they walk alone. Before such people have discovered how they will attain what they desire, they pass over that question, so as to spare themselves the labor of considering whether it is possible. Assuming they have what they want, they at once arrange everything else and take delight in describing what they will do once they have it; so they make an already idle soul 458b idler still. Now I too am growing soft, and wish to postpone those questions and examine later how these things can be possible. For the present I will assume that they are possible and consider, if you permit me, how the rulers will arrange them when they come to pass, and how their practice would be most advantageous of all to the city and its guardians. Let me first examine these matters with you, and the other questions afterward, if you permit it.”

“I permit it,” he said. “Go on and examine them.”

“I think,” I said, “that if our rulers deserve 458c that name, and their assistants likewise, the latter will be willing to carry out their orders and the former to give them, obeying the laws themselves in some matters and following their pattern in the others left to their discretion.”

“That is likely,” he said.

“You, then, as their lawgiver, just as you selected the men, must select and present the women, so far as possible of like nature. Since they have common dwellings and common meals, and no one has any such thing in private possession, they will be together. Mingling in the gymnasiums and throughout their upbringing, they will be led, I think, by their inborn necessity to unite with one another. Does that not seem an inevitable outcome to you? 458d”

“Not by geometrical necessity,” he said, “but by the necessity of love, which is likely to be more compelling than geometry in persuading and drawing the multitude.”

“Very much so,” I said. “But after that, Glaucon, to mate without order or do anything else at random would be neither holy in a city of happy people, nor would the rulers allow it. 458e”

“No,” he said, “it would not be right.”

“Plainly, then, we must next make marriages as sacred as possible; and the most beneficial marriages would be sacred.”

“Certainly.”

459a “How will they be most beneficial? Tell me this, Glaucon: I see that you have a good number of hunting dogs and pedigreed birds at home. By Zeus, have you given any thought to their matings and breeding?”

“What about them?” he asked.

“First, even among those of fine stock, are not some individuals outstanding?”

“Yes.”

“Do you breed equally from all of them, or are you eager to breed chiefly from the best?”

“From the best. 459b”

“And from the youngest, or the oldest, or chiefly from those in their prime?”

“From those in their prime.”

“And if they are not bred this way, do you think your stocks of birds and dogs will greatly deteriorate?”

“I do,” he said.

“What about horses,” I asked, “and the other animals? Is it somehow different with them?”

“That would be strange,” he said.

“Good heavens, dear friend,” I said, “how excellent our rulers will have to be, if matters stand the same way with the human race. 459c”

“They do stand that way,” he said. “But what do you mean?”

“That they will have to use many remedies,” I said. “When bodies do not need drugs, but are willing to obey a regimen, we think even a lesser physician adequate. But when drugs are necessary, we know that a bolder physician is needed.”

“True. But why do you say so?”

“Because,” I said, “our rulers will apparently have to make considerable use of falsehood and deception for the benefit 459d of those they rule. And we said, I believe, that all such devices could be useful as a kind of medicine.”

“And rightly so,” he said.

“This right use appears to be especially important in marriages and the begetting of children.”

“How so?”

“By what we have agreed,” I said, “the best men must mate with the best women as often as possible, and the worst with the worst as seldom as possible. The children of the former must be raised, but not those of the latter, if the flock is to be as excellent as possible. 459e And all these arrangements must remain unknown to everyone except the rulers themselves, if the herd of guardians is to be as free from faction as possible.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“Then we must institute festivals at which we will bring together brides and bridegrooms, with sacrifices, and our poets must compose 460a hymns fitting for the marriages performed. The number of marriages we shall leave to the rulers, so that they can maintain, as far as possible, a constant population, taking account of wars, diseases, and all such contingencies, and so keep our city from growing either too large or too small.”

“Right,” he said.

“And some ingenious drawing of lots must, I think, be devised, so that each time the inferior man is paired off he blames chance and not the rulers.”

“Certainly,” he said.

460b “And the young men who distinguish themselves in war or anywhere else must be given honors and prizes, including more abundant opportunities to lie with women, so that this too will provide a pretext for fathering as many children as possible from such men.”

“Right.”

“Then the children born at any time will be taken into the care of the officials appointed for this purpose, whether these are men or women or both—for surely offices, too, are shared by women and men.”

“Yes. 460c”

“I imagine they will take the children of the good to a nursery, entrusting them to nurses who live apart in a particular district of the city. But the children of the inferior, and any child of the others born with a disability, they will hide away in a place secret and unknown, as is fitting.”

“If,” he said, “the guardian stock is to remain pure.”

“Will they not also see to their feeding, bringing the mothers to the nursery when their breasts are full, and taking every measure to ensure that none recognizes her own child? 460d They will procure other women with milk if the mothers themselves are not enough, make sure these mothers nurse for a moderate time, and assign the sleepless nights and all the other labor to wet nurses and attendants.”

“You are making childbearing very easy for the guardians' women,” he said.

“As it should be,” I said. “But let us pursue our original subject. We said that children should be begotten by people in their prime.”

“True. 460e”

“Do you agree, then, that a moderate span of prime is twenty years for a woman, and thirty for a man?”

“Which years do you mean?” he asked.

“For a woman,” I said, “the period from the age of twenty until forty, when she may bear children for the city; and for a man, from the time he passes the peak of his speed in running until the age of fifty-five, when he may beget children for the city.”

461a “At least for both,” he said, “those are the years of prime in body and mind.”

“Then if anyone older or younger than these ages undertakes to beget children for the community, we shall declare his error unholy and unjust. He is planting a child in the city who, if born without detection, will not have been conceived under the sacrifices and prayers which priestesses, priests, and the whole city will offer at each marriage—that from good parents ever better children may be born, and from useful parents 461b still more useful ones. Rather, this child will have been begotten in darkness amid dreadful lack of restraint.”

“Right,” he said.

“The same law applies,” I said, “if a man still of begetting age approaches a woman of childbearing age without the ruler's having joined them. We shall say that he is giving the city a bastard child, without a pledged marriage and without consecration.”

“Exactly right,” he said.

“But once the women and men have passed beyond the age for having children, I think we shall leave them free to unite 461c with whom they wish, except that a man must not unite with his daughter or mother, his daughter's daughters or his mother's female ancestors; nor a woman with her son or father or their descendants or forebears. Even then we shall strictly command them above all to keep any conception from seeing the light, and, if a child does come to birth despite them, to arrange matters on the understanding that no upbringing is available for it.”

“That is fairly put,” he said. “But how 461d are they to recognize their fathers and daughters, and the other relations you mentioned just now?”

“In no way,” I said. “From the day a man becomes a bridegroom, he will call all the children born in the tenth or seventh month afterward his sons if male and daughters if female, and they will call him father. He will call their children his grandchildren, and they in turn will call those of his generation grandfathers and grandmothers. Those born during the period when their mothers and fathers were having children 461e will call each other brothers and sisters, and so, as we just said, they will not unite with one another. Yet the law will allow brothers and sisters to live together if the lot falls that way and the Pythia gives her sanction.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“That, Glaucon, is the nature of the community of women and children for your city's guardians. What remains is to establish by argument that it follows from the rest of the constitution and is by far the best arrangement. Shall we proceed in that way?”

462a “By Zeus, we shall,” he said.

“Would this not be the beginning of our agreement: let us ask ourselves what is the greatest good we can name in the founding of a city, the end at which the lawgiver should aim in making its laws, and what is the greatest evil. Then we can examine whether the arrangements just discussed fit the pattern of good, and not that of evil.”

“Above all else,” he said.

“Have we any greater evil for a city than what tears it apart and makes it many cities 462b instead of one? Or any greater good than what binds it together and makes it one?”

“No.”

“Does not sharing pleasure and pain bind it together, when, so far as possible, all the citizens rejoice and grieve alike at the same things coming into being and passing away?”

“Indeed it does,” he said.

“And does not private feeling about such things dissolve it, when some are overwhelmed with grief and others 462c with joy at the same events affecting the city and its people?”

“Of course.”

“Does this not happen when the people in the city do not say ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ of the same things at the same time? And likewise of what belongs to others?”

“Exactly.”

“Then the city in which the greatest number say ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ of the same things in the same way is the best governed?”

“By far.”

“And it comes closest to being like one human being? When, for instance, one of us injures a finger, the entire community of body and soul, bound into one order under the governing principle within it, feels the injury, and the whole shares the pain of the part that suffers. That is why we say the person has pain in his finger. 462d The same holds for every other part of a human being, both when a part suffers pain and when it enjoys relief.”

“The same holds,” he said. “And to answer your question, the best-governed city comes closest to such a person.”

“When one of its citizens suffers some good or evil, then, such a city will surely say, more than any other, that the one affected is part of itself, and the whole city will share either the joy or the grief. 462e”

“It must, if it has good laws,” he said.

“It is time,” I said, “to return to our own city and examine whether the conclusions of our argument apply most fully to it, or to some other city instead.”

“We should,” he said.

463a “Well, then, are there rulers and people in other cities, and in this one too?”

“There are.”

“Will all of them call one another citizens?”

“How could they not?”

“But besides citizens, what does the populace in other cities call its rulers?”

“In most cities, masters. In democracies, by that very name—rulers.”

“What of the populace in ours? Besides citizens, what does it call its rulers? 463b”

“Saviors and defenders,” he said.

“And what do the rulers call the populace?”

“Those who pay their wages and provide their food.”

“And what do rulers in other cities call their peoples?”

“Slaves,” he said.

“What do rulers call one another?”

“Fellow rulers,” he said.

“And ours?”

“Fellow guardians.”

“Can you name a ruler in another city who might call one fellow ruler a member of his family and another a stranger?”

“Many of them.”

“And does he not consider and speak of the family member as his own, 463c and the stranger as not his own?”

“Yes.”

“What about your guardians? Could any one of them regard or address a fellow guardian as a stranger?”

“Not at all,” he said. “For everyone he meets he will regard as a brother or sister, a father or mother, a son or daughter, or a descendant or ancestor of these.”

“Excellent,” I said. “But tell me one thing more. Will your laws give them only the names of kinship, 463d or require that they act in all things according to those names? With regard to fathers, for instance, will they observe everything custom requires: respect, care, and obedience to parents, knowing that otherwise neither gods nor men will favor them, since they would be acting neither piously nor justly? Will these, or different teachings, be sounded in children's ears by all the citizens from the beginning, concerning those designated as their fathers and all their other relations? 463e”

“These,” he said. “It would be absurd if they spoke the names of kinship with their lips alone, without the deeds.”

“Then in this city, more than in any other, all will join in saying what we spoke of just now whenever anyone fares well or badly: ‘One of my own fares well,’ or ‘One of my own fares badly.’”

“Perfectly true,” he said.

464a “Did we not say that this conviction and expression bring with them a shared experience of pleasure and pain?”

“And rightly so.”

“Then our citizens will share most fully in what they call their own, and by sharing in that they will share most fully in pain and pleasure?”

“By far.”

“And is it not their community of women and children, along with the rest of our arrangements, that brings this about for the guardians?”

“More than anything else,” he said. 464b

“Yet we agreed that this was the greatest good for a city, likening a well-governed city to a body in its response to the pleasures and pains of one of its parts.”

“And rightly we agreed,” he said.

“Then the community of children and women among the city's defenders has proved to be the cause of its greatest good.”

“Most certainly,” he said.

“And we are consistent with our earlier conclusions as well. For we said, I think, that these people must have no private houses, no land, 464c and no property, but should receive their sustenance from the others as payment for guarding them and spend it all in common, if they are to be guardians in truth.”

“Right,” he said.

“Do not those earlier provisions, as I say, and the ones we are discussing now make them still more truly guardians? Do they not prevent them from tearing the city apart by calling different things ‘mine,’ each dragging into his own house what he can acquire apart from the others, another into another house, and each having different wives and children, which produce private pleasures and pains because they belong to each alone? 464d Instead, holding one conviction about what belongs to them, they will all strive for the same end, sharing, so far as possible, one experience of pain and pleasure.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“And will lawsuits and accusations against one another not all but vanish among them, because they own nothing private but their bodies and hold everything else in common? Thus they will be free from the factional disputes that arise when people struggle over wealth or possession of children and relations. 464e”

“They must be wholly free of those,” he said.

“Nor would lawsuits over violent assault or abuse be justified among them. We shall say that it is honorable and just for contemporaries to defend themselves against contemporaries, since this makes care of the body necessary.”

“Right,” he said.

465a “And this law, too, is sound,” I said. “If anyone should be angry with another, by satisfying his anger in this way he would be less likely to go on to more serious feuds.”

“Certainly.”

“An elder, moreover, will be authorized to rule and discipline all who are younger.”

“Clearly.”

“And, as is natural, no younger person will ever attempt to use force against an elder, or strike him, unless the rulers command it. Nor, I imagine, will he dishonor him in any other way. For two guards will be enough to restrain him: fear and reverence—reverence preventing him from laying hands 465b on one who might be his parent, and fear that others will come to the victim’s aid, some as sons, others as brothers, others as fathers.”

“That is how it follows,” he said.

“So the laws will ensure that the men live at peace with one another in every respect?”

“At profound peace.”

“And if these men have no factions among themselves, there is no danger that the rest of the city will ever be divided against them or against itself.”

“None at all.”

“As for the least of the evils they will escape, I shrink 465c from even mentioning them, they are so unseemly: the poor flattering the rich, the hardships and suffering involved in raising children and making money to support a necessary household of servants—borrowing some of it, disowning some obligations, gathering the money by every means, depositing it with wives and servants, and entrusting them with its management. What they endure over all this, my friend, is obvious, ignoble, and not worth recounting. 465d”

“Obvious even to a blind man,” he said.

“They will be rid of all these troubles, and live a life more blessed than the life for which Olympic victors are called blessed.”

“How so?”

“The victors are counted happy for a small fraction of what our people possess. Their victory is finer, and their upkeep at public expense more complete. For their victory saves the entire city; both they and their children receive food and all else life requires, and from their own city they receive honors 465e while alive and a fitting burial when they die.”

“Splendid honors indeed,” he said.

“Do you remember,” I said, “how earlier someone—I cannot remember who—reproached us for failing to make the guardians happy,

466a when they might have everything belonging to the citizens but have nothing? And we said that we would consider that point later if occasion arose; for the present we were making the guardians into guardians, and the city as happy as we could, rather than shaping one class within it for happiness alone.”

“I remember,” he said.

“Now, then, if the life of the auxiliaries seems far finer and better than that of Olympic victors, does it resemble 466b the life of shoemakers, or of other craftsmen, or of farmers?”

“I think not,” he said.

“Yet what I said then is fair to say here as well: if a guardian tries to be happy in such a way that he ceases to be a guardian, and if a life so moderate, secure, and, as we maintain, excellent does not satisfy him, but some foolish and childish notion of happiness seizes him and drives 466c him, by the power he holds, to appropriate everything in the city, he will learn that Hesiod was truly wise when he said that the half is somehow greater than the whole.”

“If he takes my advice,” he said, “he will remain with this life.”

“So you agree,” I said, “to the sharing between women and men that we have described—sharing in education, children, and the guardianship of the other citizens? Both when they remain in the city and when they go to war, they must guard together 466d and hunt together like hounds, sharing everything in every way as far as they can; in doing so, they will act for the best, and not against the nature of female and male, which fits them for partnership with each other?”

“I agree,” he said.

“Then what remains,” I said, “is to determine whether such a partnership can arise among human beings as it does among other animals, and in what way it is possible.”

“You have anticipated,” he said, “what I was about to ask. 466e”

“As for their conduct in war,” I said, “I think it is clear how they will fight.”

“How?” he asked.

“They will campaign together and take to war those among their children who are strong enough, so that, like the children of other craftsmen, they may observe the work they will have to perform once they are grown.

467a Besides watching, they will serve and assist in everything to do with war, and attend to their fathers and mothers. Have you not noticed what happens in the crafts? The sons of potters spend a long time serving and observing before they put their hands to pottery.”

“Indeed.”

“Should those craftsmen train their children more carefully than the guardians train theirs, through experience and observation of their proper work?”

“That would be absurd,” he said.

“And every animal fights especially fiercely 467b when its offspring are present.”

“That is so. But there is no small danger, Socrates, that if our people suffer a defeat, as often happens in war, they will lose their children as well as themselves and leave the rest of the city unable to recover.”

“You speak the truth,” I said. “But do you think our first obligation is to arrange that they never face any danger?”

“Not at all.”

“And if they must run a risk, should it not be one that will make them better if they succeed?”

“Clearly. 467c”

“Do you think it makes so little difference, and is so little worth the risk, whether children who will become warriors observe warfare or not?”

“No; it makes a difference for the purpose you describe.”

“Then we must begin by making children spectators of war, while devising means to keep them safe. That will be well, will it not?”

“Yes.”

“In the first place,” I said, “their fathers, to the extent that human judgment permits, will not be ignorant but discerning about which 467d campaigns are dangerous and which are not.”

“That is likely,” he said.

“They will take them on some campaigns and avoid taking them on others.”

“Right.”

“And they will put in charge of them not the least capable commanders, I imagine, but men whose experience and age qualify them to be both leaders and tutors.”

“As they should.”

“But we shall say that many things have happened to many people contrary to expectation.”

“Indeed.”

“To meet such contingencies, my friend, we must give the children wings from their earliest years, so they can fly away if need be. 467e”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“We must put them on horseback as young as possible; once they have learned to ride, take them to watch on horses not spirited or combative but as swift of foot and easy to rein as can be found. Thus they will have the finest view of their own future work and, if necessary, the safest escape, following older guides.”

“I think you are right,” he said.

468a “Now what about war itself?” I asked. “How should your soldiers behave toward one another and toward the enemy? Does my view seem right to you, or not?”

“Tell me what it is,” he said.

“Should we not assign anyone among them who deserts his post, throws away his weapons, or commits some similar act of cowardice to the status of craftsman or farmer?”

“Certainly.”

“And should we not give anyone captured alive by the enemy as a gift to his captors, to do what they wish with their prize? 468b”

“Absolutely.”

“And the man who distinguishes himself and wins renown: should he not first be crowned on campaign by the youths and children serving with him, each in turn? Do you agree?”

“I do.”

“And be greeted with a clasp of the hand?”

“That too.”

“But I suppose you will not agree to this next thing,” I said.

“What is it?”

“That he should kiss and be kissed by each of them.”

“I agree most emphatically,” he said. “And I would add this to the law: 468c while they are on that campaign, no one he wishes to kiss may refuse him. That way, if he happens to love someone, male or female, he will be more eager to win the prize for valor.”

“Well said,” I replied. “We have already said that a good man will have more opportunities for marriage than others and be chosen for such unions more often, so that as many children as possible may be born from him.”

“So we have,” he said.

“And according to Homer, too, it is right to honor brave young men in this fashion. For Homer said that Ajax, when he distinguished himself in war, was honored 468d with ‘the long cuts of the chine,’ as a fitting tribute to one who is young and courageous, and one that strengthens him even as it honors him.”

“Exactly right,” he said.

“Then we shall follow Homer in this matter at least,” I said. “At sacrifices and all such occasions, according to the measure of their merit, we shall honor the brave with hymns and the tributes just mentioned, as well as with ‘seats of honor, cuts of meat, 468e and brimming cups,’ so that while we honor them, we also train our good men and women.”

“An excellent proposal,” he said.

“Very well. Of those who die on campaign after distinguishing themselves, shall we not say first that they belong to the golden race?”

“Above all.”

“And shall we not believe Hesiod when he says that after some of that race die,

469a ‘They become pure spirits dwelling on earth, noble, warding off evil, guardians of mortal men’?”

“We certainly shall.”

“Then we shall ask the god how we must bury these godlike and divine people, and what special rites to use, and bury them in whatever way he directs.”

“How could we do otherwise?”

“And thereafter we shall tend their tombs 469b and revere them as those of divine spirits? And we shall establish the same practice when someone dies of old age or in another way, if he was judged outstandingly good during his life?”

“That would be just,” he said.

“Now, how will our soldiers treat their enemies?”

“In what respect?”

“First, on enslavement: do you think it right for Greeks to enslave Greek cities, or should they prevent others from doing so as far as they can, and make it their practice to spare the Greek 469c people, guarding against enslavement by foreigners?”

“By every measure,” he said, “it is better to spare them.”

“Then they themselves must own no Greek slave and must advise other Greeks to do likewise?”

“Certainly,” he said. “That way they would be more likely to turn against the foreigners and leave one another alone.”

“And what of stripping the dead after a victory, except for their weapons?” I said. “Is that proper? Does it not give cowards an excuse 469d to avoid the fighting, as though they were doing some necessary duty when they crouch over a corpse? Have not many armies already been destroyed by such plundering?”

“Indeed they have.”

“And does it not seem servile and greedy to despoil a corpse, and the mark of a petty, womanish mind to think that the dead body is the enemy, when the enemy has flown away and left behind what he fought with? Do you think those 469e who do this behave any differently from dogs that rage against the stones thrown at them but do not touch the one who threw them?”

“Not in the least,” he said.

“Then we must put an end to stripping the dead and to preventing their bodies from being recovered?”

“We must indeed, by Zeus,” he said.

“Nor shall we carry weapons to the temples as offerings—particularly weapons taken from Greeks—if we care at all

470a about good relations with the other Greeks. Indeed, we should fear bringing such things from our own kin into a sanctuary as a pollution, unless the god directs otherwise.”

“Exactly right,” he said.

“What about ravaging Greek land and burning houses? How do you think your soldiers should treat their enemies in these matters?”

“I would gladly hear your judgment,” he said.

“My own judgment,” I said, “is that they should do neither, 470b but should take away the harvest of that year. Shall I tell you why?”

“Certainly.”

“It seems to me that, just as there are two names, war and civil strife, so there are two distinct things, arising from two distinct kinds of division. By these two I mean, on the one hand, what belongs to us and is akin to us; on the other, what is foreign and strange. Enmity among kindred is called civil strife; enmity with foreigners is called war.”

“What you say is not at all unreasonable,” he said. 470c

“Consider whether this next point is reasonable too. I maintain that the Greek people are their own kin and family, but foreign and strange to the non-Greek peoples.”

“Well said,” he replied.

“So when Greeks fight non-Greeks, and when non-Greeks fight Greeks, we shall say they wage war and are enemies by nature, and call this enmity war. But when Greeks do such a thing to Greeks, we shall say that they are friends by nature, that in this condition Greece is sick and divided, 470d and call this enmity civil strife.”

“I agree,” he said, “that we should regard it so.”

“Consider, then, what happens in what everyone now acknowledges to be civil strife. When a city is divided and each side ravages the other’s fields and burns its houses, the strife seems accursed, and neither party seems to love its city—for otherwise neither would dare to strip the land that nourished and mothered them. But it would be a measured course for the victors to take away the harvest 470e of the defeated, with the thought that one day they will be reconciled and will not be at war forever.”

“That way of thinking,” he said, “is far more humane than the other.”

“Well, then,” I said, “will the city you are founding not be a Greek city?”

“It must be,” he said.

“And will its people not be good and humane?”

“Very much so.”

“And lovers of their fellow Greeks? Will they not regard Greece as their own home and share in the sanctuaries of the other Greeks?”

“Most certainly.”

471a “Then they will regard a dispute with Greeks, as with kin, as civil strife, and will not even call it war?”

“No.”

“And they will conduct their dispute with reconciliation in view?”

“Certainly.”

“They will discipline them with goodwill, not punish them to enslave or destroy them, acting as correctors, not as enemies.”

“So they will,” he said.

“Being Greeks, then, they will not ravage Greece or burn homes, nor will they claim that everyone in each city is their enemy—men, women, and children alike—but only the few who are responsible for the dispute. 471b And for all these reasons they will be unwilling to devastate their land, since most of its people are friends, or to destroy their houses. They will pursue the dispute only until those responsible are compelled by the suffering of the innocent to pay the penalty.”

“I agree,” he said, “that our citizens should deal with their opponents in this way, but should treat non-Greeks as Greeks now treat one another.”

“Then shall we make this a law for the guardians too: neither to ravage land 471c nor to burn houses?”

“Let us,” he said. “This law and the ones before it are sound.”

“But it seems to me, Socrates, that if anyone lets you talk about such matters, you will never return to the question you pushed aside before all this began: how this constitution could come into being, and by what means it might be possible. I grant that if it did come into being, all would be well with the city where it arose; and I can add what you have omitted: that its citizens would fight 471d their enemies superbly because they would be least likely to abandon one another, knowing and calling one another by these names: brothers, fathers, sons. And if the women joined the campaign as well, either in the same ranks or posted behind the men, to strike fear into the enemy and offer aid if ever the need arose, I know they would be invincible from every quarter. I see, too, how many benefits at home you have left unmentioned. 471e But since I agree that they would have all these benefits and ten thousand more if this constitution came about, say no more about them. Let us now try to convince ourselves of this very thing: that it is possible, and how it is possible. We can leave the rest aside.”

472a “You have made a sudden assault on my argument,” I said, “and have no mercy on my hesitation. Perhaps you do not know that after I have barely escaped two waves, you are bringing upon me the greatest and most difficult of the three. Once you have seen and heard it, you will readily forgive me for having good reason to hesitate and fear to state and examine so astonishing a proposal.”

“The more you say things like that,” he replied, “the less likely we are 472b to release you from explaining how this constitution can come into being. Speak, then, and delay no longer.”

“First,” I said, “we must remember that we came to this point in our search for the nature of justice and injustice.”

“We must, but what follows?” he asked.

“Nothing, except this: if we find what justice is, shall we demand that the just man differ from justice itself in no respect, but be in every way exactly as justice 472c is? Or shall we be content if he comes as close to it as possible and has a greater share in it than anyone else?”

“We shall be content with that,” he said.

“It was as a model, then,” I said, “that we sought what justice itself is, what a perfectly just man would be like if he came into existence, and likewise what injustice is and what the most unjust man would be like. We sought to look at them and at how they appear to us with regard to happiness and its opposite, so that we would have to agree, concerning ourselves too, that whoever most resembles 472d either of them will receive the most similar share of that one’s lot. We did not do it to prove that such men could actually exist.”

“What you say is true,” he replied.

“Do you think a painter would be any less good for painting a model of the most beautiful person and rendering every feature adequately in his picture, if he could not prove that such a man could exist?”

“By Zeus, I do not,” he said.

“And were we not also,” I said, “making a model 472e in speech of a good city?”

“Certainly.”

“Do you think our account is any less sound because we cannot prove that a city could be governed in the way we described?”

“Not at all,” he said.

“That, then,” I said, “is the truth of it. But if, to oblige you, I must also make every effort to show how and under what conditions it might be most nearly possible, grant me once again the same points for this demonstration.”

“What points?”