Book 2

SOCRATES’ NARRATION CONTINUES: When I had said this, I

(357a) thought I had done with the discussion. But it all turned out to be only a pre-lude, as it were.You see, Glaucon, who is always very courageous in every-thing, refused on this occasion, too, to accept Thrasymachus’ capitulation.Instead, he said: Do you want to seem to have persuaded us, Socrates, that it is better in every way to be just rather than unjust, or do you want to really persuade us (b) of this?

SOCRATES: I want to really persuade you, if I can.

GLAUCON: Well, then, you certainly are not doing what you want. Tell me, do you think there is a sort of good we welcome, not because we desire its consequences, but because we welcome it for its own sake— enjoying, for example, and all the harmless pleasures from which nothing results afterward beyond enjoying having them?

SOCRATES: Certainly, I think there is such a thing.

GLAUCON: And is there a sort of good we love for its own sake, and also (c) for the sake of its consequences—knowing, for example, and seeing, and being healthy? For we welcome such things, I imagine, on both counts.

SOCRATES: Yes.

GLAUCON: And do you also recognize a third kind of good, such as physi- cal training, medical treatment when sick, medicine itself, or ways of mak- ing money generally? We would say that these are burdensome but beneﬁcial to us, and we would not choose them for their own sake, but for (d) the sake of their rewards and other consequences.

SOCRATES: Yes, certainly, there is also this third kind. But what of it?

GLAUCON: In which of them do you place justice? (358a) SOCRATES: I myself put it in the ﬁnest one—the one that anyone who is going to be blessed with happiness must love both because of itself and because of its consequences.

GLAUCON: That is not what the masses think. On the contrary, they think it is of the burdensome kind: the one that must be practiced for the sake of the rewards and the popularity that are the consequences of a good reputa- tion, but that is to be avoided as intrinsically burdensome.

SOCRATES: I know that is the general view.Thrasymachus has been fault- ing justice and praising injustice on these grounds for some time. But it seems that I am a slow learner.

GLAUCON: Come on, then, listen to what I have to say as well, and see (b) whether you still have that problem.You see, I think Thrasymachus gave up before he had to, as if he were a snake you had charmed.Yet, to my way of thinking, there was still no demonstration on either side. For I want to hear what justice and injustice are, and what power each has when it is just by itself in the soul. I want to leave out of account the rewards and the conse- quences of each of them.

So, if you agree, I will renew the argument of Thrasymachus. First, I (c) will state what sort of thing people consider justice to be, and what its ori- gins are. Second, I will argue that all who practice it do so unwillingly, as something necessary, not as something good. Third, I will argue that they have good reason to act as they do. For the life of the unjust person is, they say, much better than that of the just one.

It isn’t, Socrates, that I believe any of that myself. I am perplexed, indeed, and my ears are deafened listening to Thrasymachus and countless others. But I have yet to hear anyone defend justice in the way I want, as (d) being better than injustice. I want to hear it praised on its own, and I think that I am most likely to learn this from you. That is why I am going to speak at length in praise of the unjust life: by doing so, I will be showing you the way I want to hear you praising justice and denouncing injustice.

But see whether you want me to do what I am saying or not.

SOCRATES: I want it most of all. Indeed, what subject could a person with any sense enjoy talking and hearing about more often?

GLAUCON: Excellent sentiments. Now, listen to what I said I was going to (e) discuss ﬁrst—what justice is like and what its origins are. People say, you see, that to do injustice is naturally good and to suffer injustice bad. But the badness of suffering it far exceeds the goodness of doing it. Hence, those who have done and suffered injustice and who have tasted both—the ones who lack the power to do it and avoid suffering it—decide that it is proﬁt- (359a) able to come to an agreement with each other neither to do injustice nor to suffer it. As a result, they begin to make laws and covenants; and what the law commands, they call lawful and just. That, they say, is the origin and very being1 of justice. It is in between the best and the worst.The best

is to do injustice without paying the penalty; the worst is to suffer it with- out being able to take revenge. Justice is in the middle between these two extremes. People love it, not because it is a good thing, but because they are (b) too weak to do injustice with impunity. Someone who has the power to do [1]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. being.

it, however—someone who is a real man—would not make an agreement with anyone, neither to do injustice nor to suffer it. For him, that would be insanity.That is the nature of justice, according to the argument, Socrates, and those are its natural origins.

We can see most clearly that those who practice it do so unwillingly, because they lack the power to do injustice, if we imagine the following (c) thought-experiment. Suppose we grant to the just and the unjust person the freedom to do whatever they like.We can then follow both of them and see where their appetites would lead.And we will catch the just person red- handed, traveling the same road as the unjust one.The reason for this is the desire to do better2 than others.This is what every natural being naturally pursues as good. But by law and force, it is made to deviate from this path and honor equality.

They would especially have the freedom I am talking about if they had the power that the ancestor of Gyges of Lydia is said to have possessed.3 The (d) story goes that he was a shepherd in the service of the ruler of Lydia.There was a violent thunderstorm, and an earthquake broke open the ground and created a chasm at the place where he was tending his sheep. Seeing this, he was ﬁlled with amazement and went down into it.And there, in addition to many other amazing things of which we are told stories, he saw a hollow, bronze horse. There were windowlike openings in it and, peeping in, he saw a corpse, which seemed to be of more than human size, wearing noth- (e) ing but a gold ring on its ﬁnger. He took off the ring and came out of the chasm. He wore the ring at the usual monthly meeting of shepherds that reported to the king on the state of the ﬂocks. And as he was sitting among the others, he happened to turn the setting of the ring toward himself, toward the inside of his hand. When he did this, he became invisible to (360a) those sitting near him, and they went on talking as if he had gone. He was amazed at this and, ﬁngering the ring, he turned the setting outward again and became visible. So, he experimented with the ring to test whether it indeed had this power—and it did. If he turned the setting inward, he became invisible; if he turned it outward, he became visible again. As soon as he realized this, he arranged to become one of the messengers sent to (b) report to the king. On arriving there, he seduced the king’s wife, attacked the king with her help, killed him, and in this way took over the kingdom.

Let’s suppose, then, that there were two such rings, one worn by the just person, the other by the unjust. Now no one, it seems, would be so incorruptible that he would stay on the path of justice, or bring himself to keep away from other people’s possessions and not touch them, when he could take whatever he wanted from the marketplace with impunity, go [2]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. do better.

[3]: At 612b4, the ring is assigned to Gyges himself, not his ancestor.

into people’s houses and have sex with anyone he wished, kill or release (c) from prison anyone he wished, and do all the other things that would make him like a god among humans. And in so behaving, he would do no differently than the unjust person, but both would pursue the same course.

This, some would say, is strong evidence that no one is just willingly, but only when compelled. No one believes justice to be a good thing when it is kept private, since whenever either person thinks he can do injustice with impunity, he does it. Indeed, all men believe that injustice is far more (d) proﬁtable to themselves than is justice. And what they believe is true, so the exponent of this argument will say. For someone who did not want to do injustice, given this sort of opportunity, and who did not touch other peo- ple’s property, would be thought most wretched and most foolish by every- one aware of the situation. Though, of course, they would praise him in public, deceiving each other for fear of suffering injustice. So much for my second topic. (e) As for decision itself about the life of the two we are discussing, if we contrast the extremes of justice and injustice, we shall be able to make the decision correctly; but if we don’t, we won’t. What, then, is the contrast I have in mind? It is this: we will subtract nothing from the injustice of the unjust person, and nothing from the justice of the just one. On the con- trary, we will take each to be perfect in his own pursuit. First, then, let the unjust person act like a clever craftsman. An eminent ship’s captain or doc- tor, for example, knows the difference between what his craft can and can- (361a) not do. He attempts the ﬁrst but lets the second go by.And if he happens to slip, he can put things right. In the same way, if he is to be completely unjust, let the unjust person correctly attempt unjust acts and remain unde- tected.The one who is caught should be thought inept. For the extreme of injustice is to be believed to be just without actually being so. And our completely unjust person must be given complete injustice—nothing must be subtracted from it. We must allow that, while doing the greatest injus- tice, he has nonetheless provided himself with the greatest reputation for (b) justice. If he does happen to slip up, he must be able to put it right, either through his ability to speak persuasively if any of his unjust activities are dis- covered, or to use force if force is needed, because he is courageous and strong and has provided himself with wealth and friends.

Having hypothesized such a person, let’s now put the just man next to him in our argument—someone who is simple and noble and who, as Aeschylus says, does not want to be believed to be good, but to be so.4 We must take away his reputation. For a reputation for justice would bring him (c) honor and rewards, so that it would not be clear whether he is being just [4]: In Seven against Thebes 592–4, it is said of Amphiaraus that “he did not wish to be believed to be the best but to be it.”The passage continues with the words Glaucon quotes below at 362a–b.

for the sake of justice, or for the sake of those honors and rewards.We must strip him of everything except justice, and make his situation the opposite of the unjust person’s.Though he does no injustice, he must have the great- est reputation for it, so that he may be tested with regard to justice by see- ing whether or not he can withstand a bad reputation and its consequences.

Let him stay like that, unchanged, until he is dead—just, but all his life (d) believed to be unjust. In this way, both will reach the extremes, the one of justice and the other of injustice, and we will be able to judge which of them is happier.

SOCRATES: Whew! My dear Glaucon, how vigorously you have scoured each of the men in our competition, just as you would a pair of statues for an art competition.

GLAUCON: I am doing the best I can. Since the two are as I have described, in any case, it should not be difﬁcult to complete the account of the sort of life that awaits each of them, but it must be done. And if what I (e) say sounds crude, Socrates, remember that it is not I who speak, but those who praise injustice at the expense of justice. They will say that the just person in such circumstances will be whipped, stretched on a rack, chained, blinded with a red-hot iron, and, at the end, when he has suffered every (362a) sort of bad thing, he will be impaled, and will realize then that one should not want to be just, but to be believed to be just. Indeed, Aeschylus’ words are far more correctly applied to the unjust man. For people will say that it is really the unjust person who does not want to be believed to be unjust, but actually to be so, because he bases his practice on the truth about things and does not allow reputation to regulate his life. He is the one who “har- (b) vests a deep furrow in his mind, where wise counsels propagate.” First, he rules his city because of his reputation for justice. Next, he marries into any family he wishes, gives his children in marriage to anyone he wishes, has contracts and partnerships with anyone he wants, and, besides beneﬁting himself in all these ways, he proﬁts because he has no scruples about doing injustice. In any contest, public or private, he is the winner and does better than his enemies. And by doing better than them, he becomes wealthy, (c) beneﬁts his friends, and harms his enemies. He makes adequate sacriﬁces to the gods and sets up magniﬁcent offerings to them, and takes much better care of the gods—and, indeed, of the human beings he favors—than the just person. So he may reasonably expect that the gods, in turn, will love him more than the just person.That is why they say, Socrates, that gods and humans provide a better life for the unjust person than for the just one.

(d) When Glaucon had said this, I had it in mind to respond, but his brotherAdeimantus intervened: You surely do not think that the argument has been adequately stated?

SOCRATES: Why shouldn’t I?

ADEIMANTUS: The most important point has not been mentioned.

SOCRATES: Well, then, as the saying goes, a man’s brother must stand by him.5 So if Glaucon has omitted something, you must help him. Though, for my part at any rate, what he has already said is quite enough to throw me to the canvas and make me incapable of coming to the aid of justice. (e) ADEIMANTUS: Nonsense. But listen to what more I have to say, as well.

You see, in order to clarify what Glaucon has in mind, we should also fully explore the arguments that are opposed to the ones he gave—those that praise justice and disparage injustice.

As you know, when fathers speak to their sons to give them advice, they say that one must be just, as do all those who have others in their charge. (363a) But they do not praise justice itself, only the good reputation it brings: the inducement they offer is that if we are reputed to be just, then, as a result of our reputation, we will get political ofﬁces, good marriages, and all the things that Glaucon recently said that the just man would get as a result of having a good reputation.

But these people have even more to say about the consequences of repu- tation. For by throwing in being well thought of by the gods, they have plenty of good things to talk about—all the ones the gods are said to give to those who are pious. For example, the noble Hesiod and Homer say such (b) things. For Hesiod says that the gods make the oak trees “bear acorns at the top, bees in the middle, and ﬂeecy sheep heavy laden with wool” for those who are just, and tells of many other good things akin to these.6 And Homer says pretty much the same:

When a good king, in his piety, Upholds justice, the black earth bears (c) Wheat and barley for him, and his trees are heavy with fruit, His sheep bear lambs unfailingly and the sea yields up its ﬁsh.7 Musaeus and his son claim that the gods give just people even more excit- ing goods than these. In their account, they lead the just to Hades, seat them on couches, provide them with a symposium of pious people, crown them with wreaths, and make them spend all their time drinking—as if (d) they thought eternal drunkenness was the ﬁnest wage of virtue. Others stretch even further the wages that virtue receives from the gods. For they say that someone who is pious and keeps his promises leaves his children’s children and a whole race behind him.

[5]: See Homer, Odyssey 16.97–8.

[6]: Hesiod,Works and Days 332–3.

[7]: Homer, Odyssey 19.109.

In these and other similar ways, they praise justice. But the impious and (a) unjust they bury in mud in Hades, and they force them to carry water in sieve. They bring them into bad repute while they are still alive. And all those penalties that Glaucon gave to just people who are thought to be (e) unjust, they give to the unjust ones. But they have nothing else to say.

That, then, is the praise and blame given to each. But in addition, Socrates, there is another kind of argument about justice and injustice for you to consider—one that is used both by private individuals and by poets. (364a) With one voice they all chant the hymn that justice and temperance are ﬁne things, but difﬁcult and onerous, while intemperance and injustice are sweet and easy to acquire and are only shameful by repute and convention.

They also say that unjust deeds are, for the most part, more proﬁtable than just ones; and whereas they are perfectly willing to bestow public and pri- vate honors on bad people—provided they have wealth and other types of power—and to declare them to be happy, they dishonor and disregard those who happen to be in any way weak or poor, even though they admit that (b) they are better than the others.

But most amazing of all are the accounts they give of the gods and virtue, and how it is that the gods, too, assign misfortune and a bad life to many good people, and the opposite fate to their opposites. Begging priests and prophets go to the doors of rich people and persuade them that, through sacriﬁces and incantations, they have acquired a god-given power: if the rich (c) person or any of his ancestors has committed an injustice, they can ﬁx it with pleasant rituals. And if he wishes to injure an enemy, he will be able to harm a just one or an unjust one alike at little cost, since by means of spells and enchantments they can persuade the gods to do their bidding.

And the poets are brought forward as witnesses to all these accounts.

Some harp on the ease of vice, on the grounds that Vice in abundance is easy to get, (d) The road is smooth and begins beside you, But the gods have put sweat between us and virtue and a road that is long, rough, and steep.8 Others quote Homer to bear wit- ness that the gods can be inﬂuenced by humans, since he too said:

Even the gods themselves can be swayed by prayer.

And with sacriﬁces and soothing promises, Incense and libation-drinking, human beings turn them from (e) their purpose, When someone has transgressed and sinned.9 [8]: Works and Days 287–9, with minor alterations.

[9]: Iliad 9.497–501, with minor alterations.

And they present a noisy throng of books by Musaeus and Orpheus—who are the offspring, they claim, of Selene and the Muses—on which they base their rituals. And they persuade not only private individuals, but whole cit- ies, that there are in fact absolutions and puriﬁcations for unjust deeds. For the living, these consist of ritual sacriﬁces and pleasant games. But there are (365a) also special rites for the dead.These initiations, as they call them, free peo- ple from evils hereafter, while terrible things await those who have not per- formed the rituals.

With so many things of this sort, my dear Socrates, being said about virtue and vice, and about how human beings and gods honor them, what effect do we suppose they have on the souls of young people? I mean those who are naturally gifted and able to ﬂit, so to speak, from one of these sayings to another and gather from them an impression of what sort (b) of people they should be, and of how best to travel the road of life. He would surely ask himself Pindar’s question: “Is it by justice or by crooked tricks that I will scale the higher wall,” and so live out my life surrounded by secure defenses? And he will answer: “As for what people say, they say that there is no advantage in my being just if I am not also thought just, whereas the troubles and penalties of being just are apparent; but the unjust person, who has secured for himself a reputation for justice, lives the life of a god. Since, then, ‘opinion forcibly overcomes truth,’ and ‘con- trols happiness,’ as the wise men say, I must surely turn entirely to it.10 I (c) should create an illusionist painting11 of virtue around me to deceive those who come near, but keep behind it the wise Archilochus’ greedy and cun- ning fox.” “But surely,” someone will object, “it is not easy for evil to remain always hidden.”We will reply that nothing great is easy. And, in any case, if (d) we are to be happy, we must go where the tracks of the arguments lead.To remain undiscovered we will form secret societies and political clubs. And there are teachers of persuasion to make us clever in dealing with assemblies and law courts. Therefore, partly by persuasion, partly by force, we will contrive to do better than other people, without paying the penalty.

“But surely we cannot hide from the gods or overpower them by force!” Well, if the gods do not exist, or do not concern themselves with human affairs, why should we worry at all about hiding from them? On the other (e) hand, if they do exist, and do care about us, we know nothing about them except what we have learned from the laws and from the poets who give their genealogies. But these are the very people who tell us that the gods can be persuaded and inﬂuenced by sacriﬁces, gentle prayers, and offerings.

Hence, we should believe them on both matters, or on neither. If we The quotation is attributed to Simonides, who is cited by Polemarchus in Book 1.

[11]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. illusionistic painting.

believe them, we should be unjust and offer sacriﬁces from the fruits of our (366a) injustice. For if we are just, our only gain is not to be punished by the gods, but we will lose the proﬁts of our injustice. But if we are unjust, we will get those proﬁts, and afterward we will entreat the gods and, persuading them, escape with our crimes and transgressions unpunished.

“But in Hades, won’t we pay the penalty for crimes committed here, either ourselves or through our children’s children?” “My friend,” the young man will say as he does his rational calculation, “mystery rites and the gods of absolution have great power.The greatest cities tell us this, as do (b) those children of the gods who have become the gods’ poets and prophets and reveal it to be so.” On the basis of what further argument, then, should we choose justice over the greatest injustice? For if we possess such injustice with a false façade, we will do as we have a mind to among gods and humans, both while we are living and when we are dead, as both the masses and the emi- nent claim. So given all that has been said, Socrates, what device could get (c) someone with any power—whether of mind, wealth, body, or family—to be willing to honor justice, and not laugh aloud when he hears it praised?

Indeed, if anyone can show that what we have said is false, and has ade- quate knowledge that justice is best, what he feels for unjust people won’t be anger, but a large measure of forgiveness. After all, he knows that apart from someone of godlike character who is disgusted by doing injustice, or someone who has gained knowledge and avoids injustice for that reason, no (d) one is just willingly.Through cowardice or old age or some other weakness, people do indeed object to injustice. But it is obvious that they do so only because they lack the power to do injustice. For the ﬁrst of them to gain that power is the ﬁrst to do as much injustice as he can.

And all this has no other cause than the one that led to the whole of Glaucon’s and my argument with you, Socrates. “Socrates, you amazing (e) man,” we said, “of all of you who claim to praise justice, beginning from the earliest heroes of old whose accounts survive up to the men of the present day, not one has ever blamed injustice or praised justice except by mentioning the reputations, honors, and rewards that are their conse- quences. No one has ever adequately described what each does itself, through its own power, by its presence in the soul of the person who pos- sesses it, even if it remains hidden from gods and humans. No one, whether in poetry or in private discussions, has adequately argued that injustice is the greatest evil a soul can have in it, and justice the greatest good. If all of you had spoken in this way and had tried to persuade us (367a) from our earliest youth, we would not now be guarding against one another’s injustice, but each would be his own best guardian, afraid that by doing injustice he would be living on intimate terms with the worst thing possible.”

That, Socrates, and probably other things in addition, are what Thrasy- machus (or possibly someone else) might say in discussing justice and injustice—crudely inverting their power, in my view. But I—for I have no (b) reason to hide anything from you—want to hear the opposite from you, and that is why I am speaking with all the force I can muster. So do not merely demonstrate to us by argument that justice is stronger than injus- tice, but tell us what each one itself does, because of itself, to someone who possesses it, that makes the one bad and the other good. Follow Glaucon’s advice and do not take reputations into account.12 For if you do not deprive justice and injustice of their true reputations and attach false ones to them, we will say that it is not justice you are praising, but its rep- utation; nor injustice you are condemning, but its reputation; and that you (c) are encouraging us to be unjust but keep it secret. In that case, we will say that you agree with Thrasymachus that justice is the good of another, the advantage of the stronger, while injustice is one’s own advantage and proﬁt, though not the advantage of the weaker.

You agree that justice is one of the greatest goods, the ones that are worth having for the sake of their consequences, but much more so for their own sake—such as seeing, hearing, knowing, being healthy, of course, (d) and all the others that are genuine goods by nature and not simply by repute. This is what I want you to praise about justice. How does it— because of its very self—beneﬁt its possessor, and how does injustice harm him? Leave wages and reputations for others to praise.

I can put up with other people praising justice and blaming injustice in that way—extolling the reputations and wages of the one and denigrating those of the other. But I won’t put up with that from you (unless you insist on it). For you have spent your whole life investigating this and nothing (e) else. So do not merely demonstrate to us by argument that justice is stron- ger than injustice, but show what effect each one itself has, because of itself, on the person who has it—the one for good, the other for bad—whether it remains hidden from gods and human beings or not.

Now, I had always admired the natural characters of Glaucon and Adeiman-tus, but I was especially pleased when I heard what they had to say on thisoccasion, and I replied: Sons of that man,13 Glaucon’s lover was not wrong to begin the elegy he (368a) wrote, when you distinguished yourselves at the battle of Megara, by [12]: At 361b–c.

[13]: Ekeinou tou andros: Sometimes taken to be a facetious, indexical reference to Thra- symachus, whose heirs (sons) in the argument Glaucon and Adeimantus self- confessedly are. It is more likely, however, that it is an honoriﬁc expression equiva- lent in meaning to “that well-known man.”

addressing you as “Sons of Ariston, godlike family of a famous man.”14 That, my dear friends, was well said, in my view. For something altogether god- like must have affected you if you are not convinced that injustice is better than justice and yet can speak like that on its behalf. And I do believe that (b) you really are unconvinced by your own words. I infer this from your gen- eral character, since if I had only your arguments to go on, I would not trust you. The more I trust you, however, the more I am at a loss as to what to do. I do not see how I can be of help. Indeed, I believe I am incapable of it.

And here is my evidence: I thought that what I said to Thrasymachus showed that justice is better than injustice, but you won’t accept that from me as a proof. On the other hand, I do not see how I can refuse my help.

For I fear that it may even be impious to have breath in one’s body and the ability to speak, and yet stand idly by and not defend justice when it is being (c) prosecuted.The best thing, then, is to give justice any assistance I can.

Glaucon and the others begged me not to abandon the argument but to help inevery way to track down what justice and injustice each is, and the truth abouttheir respective beneﬁts. So I told them what I had in mind: The investigation we are undertaking is not an easy one, in my view, but requires keen eyesight. So, since we are not clever people, I think we (d) should adopt the method of investigation that we would use if, lacking keen eyesight, we were told to identify small letters from a distance, and (a) then noticed that the same letters existed elsewhere in a larger size and on larger surface. We would consider it a godsend, I think, to be allowed to identify the larger ones ﬁrst, and then to examine the smaller ones to see whether they are really the same.

ADEIMANTUS: Of course we would. But how is this case similar to our (e) investigation of justice in your view?

SOCRATES: I will tell you. We say, don’t we, that there is a justice that belongs to a single man, and also one that belongs to a whole city?

ADEIMANTUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And a city is larger than a single man?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, it is larger.

SOCRATES: Perhaps, then, there will be more justice in the larger thing, and it will be easier to discern. So, if you are willing, let’s ﬁrst ﬁnd out what (369a) sort of thing justice is in cities, and afterward look for it in the individual, to see if the larger entity is similar in form to the smaller one.

[14]: Homosexual relations between older men and late-adolescent boys were an acceptable part of Athenian social life, especially among the upper classes. See K. J.

Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978).

ADEIMANTUS: I think that is a ﬁne idea.

SOCRATES: If, in our discussion, we could look at a city coming to be, wouldn’t we also see its justice coming to be, and its injustice as well?

ADEIMANTUS: We probably would.

SOCRATES: And once that process is completed, could we expect to ﬁnd what we are looking for more easily? (b) ADEIMANTUS: Yes, much more easily.

SOCRATES: Do you think we should try to carry it out then? It is no small task, in my view. So, think it over.

ADEIMANTUS: It has been thought over. Don’t do anything besides try.

SOCRATES: Well, then, a city comes to exist, I believe, because none of us is individually self-sufﬁcient, but each has many needs he cannot satisfy. Or do you think that a city is founded on some other principle?

ADEIMANTUS: No, none.

SOCRATES: Then because we have many needs, and because one of us calls (c) on another out of one need, and on a third out of a different need, we gather many into a single settlement as partners and helpers. And we call such a shared settlement a city. Isn’t that so?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: And if they share things with one another—if they give some- thing to one another, or take something from one another—don’t they do so because each believes that this is better for himself?

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: Come on, then, let’s, in our discussion, create a city from the beginning. But its real creator, it seems, will be our need.

ADEIMANTUS: Certainly. (d) SOCRATES: Now, the ﬁrst and greatest of our needs is to provide food in order to sustain existence and life.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, absolutely.

SOCRATES: The second is for shelter, and the third is for clothes and things of that sort.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s right.

SOCRATES: Tell me, then, how will a city be able to provide all this? Won’t one person have to be a farmer, another a builder, and another a weaver?

And shouldn’t we add a shoemaker to them, or someone else to take care of our bodily needs?

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: A city with the barest necessities, then, would consist of four or ﬁve men? (e) ADEIMANTUS: Apparently.

SOCRATES: Well, then, should each of them contribute his own work for the common use of all? I mean, should a farmer, although he is only one person, provide food for four people, and spend quadruple the time and labor to provide food to be shared by them all? Or should he not be con- cerned about everyone else? Should he produce one quarter the food in one quarter the time for himself alone? Should he spend the other three (370a) quarters providing a house, a cloak, and shoes? Should he save himself the bother of sharing with other people and mind his own business on his own?

ADEIMANTUS: The ﬁrst alternative, Socrates, is perhaps easier.

SOCRATES: There is nothing strange in that, by Zeus.You see, it occurred to me while you were speaking that, in the ﬁrst place, we are not all born alike. On the contrary, each of us differs somewhat in nature from the oth- (b) ers, one being suited to one job, another to another. Or don’t you think so?

ADEIMANTUS: I do.

SOCRATES: Well, then, would one person do better work if he practiced many crafts or if he practiced one?

ADEIMANTUS: If he practiced one.

SOCRATES: And it is also clear, I take it, that if one misses the opportune moment in any job, the work is spoiled.

ADEIMANTUS: It is clear.

SOCRATES: That, I take it, is because the thing that has to be done won’t wait until the doer has the leisure to do it. No, instead the doer must, of necessity, pay close attention to what has to be done and not leave it for his (c) idle moments.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, he must.

SOCRATES: The result, then, is that more plentiful and better-quality goods are more easily produced, if each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited and does it at the opportune moment, because his time is freed from all the others.

ADEIMANTUS: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: Then, Adeimantus, we are going to need more than four citi- zens to provide the things we have mentioned. For a farmer won’t make his own plow, it seems, if it is going to be a good one, nor his hoe, nor any of (d) his other farm implements. Nor will a carpenter—and he, too, needs lots of tools. And the same is true of a weaver and a shoemaker, isn’t it?

ADEIMANTUS: It is.

SOCRATES: So carpenters, metalworkers, and many other craftsmen of that sort will share our little city and make it bigger.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: Yet it still would not be a very large settlement, even if we added cowherds, shepherds, and other herdsmen, so that the farmers would (e) have cows to do their plowing, the builders oxen to share with the farmers in hauling their materials, and the weavers and shoemakers hides and ﬂeeces to use.

ADEIMANTUS: It would not be a small city either, if it had to hold all that.

SOCRATES: Moreover, it is almost impossible, at any rate, to establish the city itself in the sort of place where it will need no imports.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, that is impossible.

SOCRATES: Then we will need still other people who will import what- ever is needed from another city.

ADEIMANTUS: We will.

SOCRATES: And if our servant goes empty-handed to another city, with- out any of the things needed by those from whom he is trying to get what (371a) his own people need, he will come away empty-handed, won’t he?

ADEIMANTUS: I should think so.

SOCRATES: Our citizens, then, must produce not only enough for them- selves at home, but also goods of the right quality and quantity to satisfy the needs of others.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, they must.

SOCRATES: So we will need more farmers and other craftsmen in our city.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And also other servants, I imagine, who are to take care of imports and exports.These are merchants, aren’t they?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: We will need merchants too, then.

ADEIMANTUS: Of course. 15 SOCRATES: And if the trade is carried on by sea, we will need a great (b) many others who have expert knowledge of the business of the sea.

ADEIMANTUS: A great many, indeed.

SOCRATES: Again, within the city itself, how will people share with one another the things they each produce? It was in order to share, after all, that we associated with one another and founded a city.

ADEIMANTUS: Clearly, they must do it by buying and selling.

SOCRATES: Then we will need a marketplace and a currency for such exchange.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: So if a farmer or any other craftsman brings some of his prod- (c) ucts to the marketplace, and he does not arrive at the same time as those who want to exchange things with him, is he to sit idly in the marketplace, neglecting his own craft?

ADEIMANTUS: Not at all. On the contrary, there will be people who notice this situation and provide the requisite service—in well-organized cities, they are generally those whose bodies are weakest and who are not ﬁt to do any other sort of work. Their job is to wait there in the marketplace and (d) exchange money for the goods of those who have something to sell, and then to exchange goods for the money of those who want to buy them.

SOCRATES: This need, then, causes retailers to be present in our city.

Those who wait in the marketplace, and provide this service of buying and selling, are called retailers, aren’t they, whereas those who travel between cities are merchants?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, that’s right.

SOCRATES: There are also other servants, I think, whose minds would not (e) altogether qualify them for membership in our community, but whose bodies are strong enough for hard labor. So they sell the use of their strength for a price called a wage, and that is why they are called wage- earners. Isn’t that so?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: So the wage-earners too, it seems, serve to complete our city?

ADEIMANTUS: I think so.

SOCRATES: Well, then, Adeimantus, has our city now grown to completeness?

ADEIMANTUS: Maybe it has.

SOCRATES: Then where are justice and injustice to be found in it? With which of the people we considered did they come in? (372a) ADEIMANTUS: I have no idea, Socrates, unless it is somewhere in some need that these people have of one another.

SOCRATES: Perhaps what you say is right. We must look into it and not back off. First, then, let’s see what sort of life people will lead who have been provided for in this way. They will make food, wine, clothes, and shoes, won’t they? And they will build themselves houses. In the summer,

they will mostly work naked and barefoot, but in the winter they will wear (b) adequate clothing and shoes. For nourishment, they will provide themselves with barley meal and wheat ﬂour, which they will knead and bake into noble cakes and loaves and serve up on a reed or on clean leaves.They will recline on couches strewn with yew and myrtles and feast with their chil- dren, drink their wine, and, crowned with wreaths, hymn the gods. They will enjoy having sex with one another, but they will produce no more (c) children than their resources allow, lest they fall into either poverty or war.

At this point Glaucon interrupted and said: It seems that you make your people feast without any relishes.15 SOCRATES: True enough, I was forgetting that they will also have rel- ishes—salt, of course, and olives and cheese, and they will boil roots and vegetables the way they boil them in the country. We will give them des- serts too, I imagine, consisting of ﬁgs, chickpeas, and beans. And they will roast myrtles and acorns before the ﬁre and drink in moderation. And so (d) they will live in peace and good health, it seems, and when they die at a ripe old age, they will pass on a similar sort of life to their children.

GLAUCON: If you were founding a city of pigs, Socrates, isn’t that just what you would provide to fatten them?

SOCRATES: What, then, would you have me do, Glaucon?

GLAUCON: Just what is conventional. If they are not to suffer hardship, they should recline on proper couches, I suppose, dine at tables, and have (e) the relishes and desserts that people have nowadays.

SOCRATES: All right, I understand. It isn’t merely the origins of a city that we are considering, it seems, but those of a city that is luxurious, too. And that may not be a bad idea. For by examining such a city, we might perhaps see how justice and injustice grow up in cities.Yet the true city, in my view, is the one we have described: the healthy one, as it were. But if you also want to look at a feverish city, so be it.There is nothing to stop us.You see, (373a) the things I mentioned earlier, and the way of life I described, won’t satisfy some people, it seems; but couches, tables, and other furniture will have to be added to it, and relishes, of course, and incense, perfumes, prostitutes, pastries—and the multifariousness of each of them. In particular, we cannot just provide them with the necessities16 we mentioned at ﬁrst, such as houses, clothes, and shoes; no, instead we will have to get painting and embroidery going, and procure gold and ivory and all sorts of everything of that sort. Isn’t that so?

[15]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. relish.

[16]: See 558d8–559d2.

(b) GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then we will have to enlarge our city again: the healthy one is no longer adequate. On the contrary, we must now increase it in size and population and ﬁll it with a multitude of things that go beyond what is nec- essary for a city—hunters, for example, and all those imitators. Many of the latter work with shapes and colors; many with music—poets and their assis- tants, rhapsodes,17 actors, choral dancers, theatrical producers. And there will have to be craftsmen of multifarious devices, including, among other things, those needed for the adornment of women. In particular, then, we (c) will need more servants—don’t you think—such as tutors, wet nurses, nan- nies, beauticians, barbers, and relish cooks and meat cooks, too? Moreover, we will also need people to farm pigs.This animal did not exist in our ear- lier city, since there was no need for it, but we will need it in this one. And we will also need large numbers of other meat-producing animals, won’t we, if someone is going to eat them?

GLAUCON: We certainly will.

SOCRATES: And if we live like that, won’t we have a far greater need for (d) doctors than we did before?

GLAUCON: Yes, far greater.

SOCRATES: And the land, I take it, that used to be adequate to feed the population we had then will now be small and inadequate. Or don’t you agree?

GLAUCON: I do.

SOCRATES: Won’t we have to seize some of our neighbors’ land, then, if we are to have enough for pasture and plowing? And won’t our neighbors want to seize part of ours in turn, if they too have abandoned themselves to the endless acquisition of money and overstepped the limit of their necessary desires? (e) GLAUCON: Yes, that is quite inevitable, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And the next step will be war, Glaucon, don’t you agree?

GLAUCON: I do.

SOCRATES: Now, let’s not say yet whether the effects of war are good or bad, but only that we have now found the origin of war: it comes from those same factors, the occurrence of which is the source of the greatest evils for cities and the individuals in them.

GLAUCON: Indeed, it does.

SOCRATES: The city must be further enlarged, then, my dear Glaucon, and not just a little, but by the size of a whole army. It will do battle with [17]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. rhapsode.

(374a) the invaders in defense of the city’s wealth, and of all the other things we just described.

GLAUCON: Why so? Aren’t the inhabitants themselves adequate for that purpose?

SOCRATES: No, not, at any rate, if the agreement that you and the rest of us made when we were founding the city was a good one. I think we agreed, if you remember, that it is impossible for a single person to practice many crafts well.

GLAUCON: True, we did say that. (b) SOCRATES: Well, then, don’t you think that warfare is a craft?

GLAUCON: It is, indeed.

SOCRATES: So, should we be more concerned about the craft of shoemak- ing than the craft of warfare?

GLAUCON: Not at all. (a) SOCRATES: Well, now, we prevented a shoemaker from trying to be farmer, weaver, or builder at the same time, instead of just a shoemaker, in order to ensure that the shoemaker’s job was done well. Similarly, we also assigned just the one job for which he had a natural aptitude to each of the other people, and said that he was to work at it his whole life, free from (c) having to do any of the other jobs, so as not to miss the opportune moments for performing it well. But isn’t it of the greatest importance that (a) warfare be carried out well? Or is ﬁghting a war so easy that a farmer, shoemaker, or any other artisan can be a soldier at the same time, even though no one can become so much as a good checkers player or dice player if he considers it only as a sideline and does not practice it from childhood? Can someone just pick up a shield, or any other weapon or (d) instrument of war and immediately become a competent ﬁghter in an infantry battle or whatever other sort of battle it may be, even though no other tool makes someone who picks it up a craftsman or an athlete, or is even of any service to him unless he has acquired knowledge of it and has had sufﬁcient practice?

GLAUCON: If tools could do that, they would be valuable indeed. (e) SOCRATES: Then to the degree that the guardians’ job is most important, it requires the most freedom from other things, as well as the greatest craft and practice.

GLAUCON: I should think so.

SOCRATES: And doesn’t it also require a person whose nature is suited to that very practice?

GLAUCON: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then our task, it seems, is to select, if we can, which natures, which sorts of natures, suit people to guard the city.

GLAUCON: Yes, that is our task.

SOCRATES: By Zeus, it is no trivial task that we have taken on, then. All the same, we must not shrink from it, but do the best we can. (375a) GLAUCON: No, we must not.

SOCRATES: Do you think that there is any difference, when it comes to (a) the job of guarding, between the nature of a noble hound and that of well-bred youth?

GLAUCON: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean that both of them have to be sharp-eyed, quick to catch what they see, and strong, too, in case they have to ﬁght what they capture.

GLAUCON: Yes, they need all these things.

SOCRATES: And they must be courageous, surely, if indeed they are to ﬁght well.

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: Now, will a horse, a dog, or any other animal be courageous if it is not spirited? Or haven’t you noticed just how invincible and unbeatable (b) spirit is, so that its presence makes the whole soul fearless and unconquer- able in any situation?

GLAUCON: I have noticed that.

SOCRATES: Then it is clear what physical qualities the guardians should have.

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: And as far as their souls are concerned, they must, at any rate, be spirited.

GLAUCON: That too.

SOCRATES: But with natures like that, Glaucon, how will they avoid behaving like savages to one another and to the other citizens?

GLAUCON: By Zeus, it won’t be easy for them. (c) SOCRATES: But surely they must be gentle to their own people and harsh to their enemies. Otherwise, they will not wait around for others to destroy them, but will do it themselves ﬁrst.

GLAUCON: That’s true.

SOCRATES: What are we to do, then? Where are we to ﬁnd a character (a) that is both gentle and high-spirited at the same time? For, of course, gentle nature is the opposite of the spirited kind.

GLAUCON: Apparently.

SOCRATES: But surely if someone lacks either of these qualities, he cannot be a good guardian.Yet the combination of them seems to be impossible. (d) And so it follows, then, that a good guardian is impossible.

GLAUCON: I am afraid so.

I could not see a way out, and on reexamining what had gone before, I said: We deserve to be stuck, my dear Glaucon. For we have lost track of the analogy we put forward.

GLAUCON: How do you mean?

SOCRATES: We have overlooked the fact that there are natures of the sort we thought impossible, ones that include these opposite qualities.

GLAUCON: Where?

SOCRATES: You can see the combination in other animals, too, but espe- cially in the one to which we compared the guardian. For you know, of (e) course, that noble hounds naturally have a character of that sort.They are as gentle as can be to those they are familiar with and know, but the opposite to those they do not know.

GLAUCON: Yes, I do know that.

SOCRATES: So the combination we want is possible, after all, and what we are seeking in a good guardian is not contrary to nature.

GLAUCON: No, I suppose not.

SOCRATES: Now, don’t you think that our future guardian, besides being spirited, must also be, by nature, philosophical?18

(376a) GLAUCON: How do you mean? I don’t understand.

SOCRATES: It too is something you see in dogs, and it should make us wonder at the merit of the beast.

GLAUCON: In what way?

SOCRATES: In that when a dog sees someone it does not know, it gets angry even before anything bad happens to it. But when it knows some- one, it welcomes him, even if it has never received anything good from him. Have you never wondered at that? (a) GLAUCON: I have never paid it any mind until now. But it is clear that dog does do that sort of thing.

SOCRATES: Well, that seems to be a naturally reﬁned quality, and one that (b) is truly philosophical.

[18]: Philosophos: used here in its general sense to refer to intellectual curiosity or want- ing knowledge for its own sake.

GLAUCON: In what way?

SOCRATES: In that it judges anything it sees to be either a friend or an enemy on no other basis than that it knows the one and does not know the other. And how could it be anything besides a lover of learning19 if it deﬁnes what is its own and what is alien to it in terms of knowledge and ignorance?

GLAUCON: It surely could not be anything but.

SOCRATES: But surely the love of learning and philosophy are the same, aren’t they?

GLAUCON: Yes, they are the same. (a) SOCRATES: Then can’t we conﬁdently assume that the same holds for human being too—that if he is going to be gentle to his own and those he (c) knows, he must be, by nature, a lover of learning and a philosopher?

GLAUCON: We can.

SOCRATES: Philosophy, then, and spirit, speed, and strength as well, must all be combined in the nature of anyone who is going to be a really ﬁne and good guardian of our city.

GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: Then that is what he would have to be like at the outset. But how are we to bring these people up and educate them? Will inquiring into that topic bring us any closer to the goal of our inquiry, which is to dis- (d) cover the origins of justice and injustice in a city? We want our account to be adequate, but we do not want it to be any longer than necessary.

And Glaucon’s brother replied: I for one certainly expect that this inquiry will help us.

SOCRATES: By Zeus, in that case, my dear Adeimantus, we must not aban- don it, even if it turns out to be a somewhat lengthy affair.

ADEIMANTUS: No, we must not.

SOCRATES: Come on, then, and like people in a fable telling stories at their leisure, let’s in our discussion educate these men. (e) ADEIMANTUS: Yes, let’s. (a) SOCRATES: What, then, will the education be? Or is it difﬁcult to ﬁnd better one than the one that has been discovered over a long period of time—physical training for bodies and musical training for the soul?20 [19]: Philomathês.

[20]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. physical training, musical training.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, it is.

SOCRATES: Now, won’t we start musical training before physical training?

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: And you include stories under musical training, don’t you?

ADEIMANTUS: I do.

SOCRATES: But aren’t there two kinds of stories, one true and the other false?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And education must make use of both, but ﬁrst of the false (377a) ones?

ADEIMANTUS: I do not understand what you mean.

SOCRATES: Don’t you understand that we ﬁrst begin by telling stories to children? And surely they are false on the whole, though they have some truth in them. And we use stories on children before physical training.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s true.

SOCRATES: That, then, is what I meant by saying that musical training should be taken up before physical training.

ADEIMANTUS: And you were right.

SOCRATES: Now, you know, don’t you, that the beginning of any job is the most important part, especially when we are dealing with anything (b) young and tender? For that is when it is especially malleable and best takes on whatever pattern one wishes to impress on it.

ADEIMANTUS: Precisely so.

SOCRATES: Shall we carelessly allow our children to hear any old stories made up by just anyone, then, and to take beliefs into their souls that are, for the most part, the opposite of the ones we think they should hold when they are grown up?

ADEIMANTUS: We certainly won’t allow that at all.

SOCRATES: So our ﬁrst task, it seems, is to supervise the storytellers: if they make up a good story, we must accept it; if not, we must reject it.We (c) will persuade nurses and mothers to tell the acceptable ones to their chil- dren, and to spend far more time shaping their souls with these stories than they do shaping their bodies by handling them. Many of the stories they tell now, however, must be thrown out.

ADEIMANTUS: Which sorts?

SOCRATES: In the more signiﬁcant stories, we will see the less signiﬁcant ones as well. For surely the more signiﬁcant ones and the less signiﬁcant

ones both follow the same pattern and have the same effects. Don’t you (d) think so?

ADEIMANTUS: Indeed, I do. But I do not understand at all what more sig- niﬁcant ones you mean.

SOCRATES: The ones Homer, Hesiod, and other poets tell us. After all, they surely composed false stories, which they told and are still telling to people.

ADEIMANTUS: Which stories do you mean? And what is the fault you ﬁnd in them?

SOCRATES: The ﬁrst and most important fault that one ought to ﬁnd, especially if the falsehood has no good features.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, but what is it? (e) SOCRATES: Using a story to create a bad image of what the gods and heroes are like, just as a painter might paint a picture that is not at all like the things he is trying to paint.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, you are right to ﬁnd fault with that. But what cases in particular, what sorts of cases, do you mean?

SOCRATES: First, the biggest falsehood about the most important things has no good features—I mean Hesiod telling us about how Uranus behaved, how Cronus punished him for it, and how he was in turn pun- ished by his own son.21 But even if these stories were true, they should be (378a) passed over in silence, I would think, and not told so casually to the foolish and the young. And if, for some reason, they must be told, only a very few people should hear them—people who are pledged to secrecy and have had to sacriﬁce not just a pig, but something so large and scarce that the num- ber of people who hear them is kept as small as possible.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, those stories are certainly troubling. (b) SOCRATES: And they should not be told in our city, Adeimantus. No young person should hear it said that if he were to commit the worst crimes, he would be doing nothing amazing, or that if he were to inﬂict every sort of punishment on an unjust father, he would only be doing the same as the ﬁrst and greatest of the gods.

ADEIMANTUS: No, by Zeus, I do not think myself that these stories are ﬁt to be told.

[21]: Uranus prevented his wife, Gaia, from giving birth to his children by blocking them up inside her. Gaia gave a sickle to one of these children, Cronus, which he used to castrate his father when the latter next had intercourse with her. Cronus ate the children he had by his wife, Rhea, until, by deceiving him with a stone, she was able to save Zeus from suffering this fate. Zeus then overthrew his father. See Hesiod,Theogony 154–210, 453–506.

SOCRATES: Indeed, we must not allow any stories about gods warring, ﬁghting, or plotting against one another if we want the guardians of our city to think that it is shameful to be easily provoked into mutual hatred. (c) After all, those stories are not true either. Still less should battles between gods and giants, or the many other multifarious hostilities of gods and heroes toward their families and friends, occur in the stories the guardians hear or in the embroidered pictures they see. On the contrary, if we are somehow going to persuade our people that no citizen has ever hated another, and that it is impious to do so, then those are the things their male (d) and female elders should tell them from childhood on. And the poets they listen to as they grow older should be compelled to tell them the same sort of thing. Stories about Hera being chained by her son, on the other hand, or about Hephaestus being hurled from heaven by his father when he tried to save his mother from a beating, or about the battle of the gods in Homer, should not be admitted into our city, either as allegories or non- allegories. For the young cannot distinguish what is allegorical from what is not. And the beliefs they absorb at that age are difﬁcult to erase and tend to (e) become unalterable. For these reasons, then, we should probably take the utmost care to ensure that the ﬁrst stories they hear about virtue are the best ones for them to hear.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, that makes sense. But if, at this point too,22 someone were once again to ask us what stories these are, how should we reply?

SOCRATES: You and I are not poets at present, Adeimantus, but we are (379a) founding a city. And it is appropriate for the founders to know the patterns on which the poets must base their stories, and from which they must not deviate. But they should not themselves make up any poems.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s right. But what precisely are the patterns that stories about the gods must follow?23 SOCRATES: Something like this: whether in epic, lyric, or tragedy, a god must always be represented as he is.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, he must.

SOCRATES: Now, gods,24 of course, are really good, aren’t they, and must (b) be described as such?

ADEIMANTUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And surely nothing good is harmful, is it?

[22]: As at 377d10.

[23]: Theologia: theology.

[24]: Ho theos: literally,“the god.” But the deﬁnite article is almost certainly functioning as a universal quantiﬁer, as in “The swallow is a migratory bird,” which means (all) swallows migrate.

ADEIMANTUS: I suppose not.

SOCRATES: Well, can what is not harmful do any harm?

ADEIMANTUS: No, never.

SOCRATES: And can what does no harm do anything bad?

ADEIMANTUS: No, it can’t do that either.

SOCRATES: But what does nothing bad could not be the cause of anything bad, could it?

ADEIMANTUS: No, it could not.

SOCRATES: What about what is good? Is it beneﬁcial?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: So, it is the cause of doing well?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: What is good is not the cause of all things, then. Instead, it is [15]: the cause of things that are good, while of bad ones it is not the cause. (c) ADEIMANTUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: So, since gods are good, they are not—as the masses claim—the cause of everything. Instead, they are a cause of only a few things that hap- pen to human beings, while of most they are not the cause. For good things are fewer than bad ones in our lives. Of the good things, they alone are the cause, but we must ﬁnd some other cause for the bad ones, not the gods.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s absolutely true in my view.

SOCRATES: Then we won’t accept from Homer—or from anyone else— (d) the foolish mistake he makes about the gods when he says: “There are two urns at the threshold of Zeus, one ﬁlled with good fates, the other with bad ones,” and the person to whom Zeus gives a mixture of these “sometimes meets with a bad fate, sometimes with a good one.” But the one who receives his fate entirely from the second urn, “evil famine drives over the (e) divine earth.” Nor will we tolerate the saying that “Zeus is the dispenser of both good and bad to mortals.” As for the breaking of the oaths and the truce by Pandarus, if anyone tells us that it was brought about by Athena and Zeus, or that Themis and Zeus were responsible for strife and conten- tion among the gods, we won’t praise him. Nor will we allow the young to (380a) hear the words of Aeschylus: “A god makes mortals guilty, when he wants to destroy a house utterly.”25 And if anyone composes a poem, such as the one those lines are from, about the sufferings of Niobe, or about the house [25]: The ﬁrst three quotations are from Iliad 24.527–32.The sources for the fourth, and for the quotation from Aeschylus, are unknown. The story of Athena urging Pandarus to break the truce is told at Iliad 4.73–126.

of Pelops, or the tale of Troy, or anything else of that sort, he should be required to say that these things are not the works of a god. Or, if they are the works of a god, then the poet must look for roughly the sort of account of them we are now seeking: he must say that the actions of the gods are (b) good and just, and that the people they punish are beneﬁted by them.We won’t allow him to say that those who are punished are made wretched, and that it was a god who made them so; but we will allow him to say that bad people are wretched because they are in need of punishment, and that (a) in paying the penalty they are beneﬁted by that god. But as for saying that god, who is himself good, is the cause of evils, we will ﬁght that in every way.We won’t allow anyone to say it in his own city, if it is to be well gov- erned, or anyone to hear it either—whether young or old, whether with (c) meter or without meter. For these stories are impious, disadvantageous to us, and not in concord with one another.

ADEIMANTUS: I like your law, and I will vote with you for it.

SOCRATES: This, then, will be one of the laws or patterns relating to gods that speakers and poets will have to follow: that gods are not the cause of all things, but only of good ones.

ADEIMANTUS: And an entirely satisfactory one it is.

SOCRATES: Now, what about this second law? Do you think that gods are (d) sorcerers who deliberately take different forms at different times, sometimes by changing on their own and altering their own form into a large number of shapes, sometimes by deceiving us into thinking they have done so? Or are they simple beings, and least of all likely to abandon their own form?

ADEIMANTUS: I can’t say offhand.

SOCRATES: Well, if something abandons its own form, mustn’t it either (e) cause the change itself or be changed by something else?

ADEIMANTUS: It must.

SOCRATES: Now, the best things are least liable to alteration or change, aren’t they? For example, a body is altered by food, drink, and labors, and all plants by sun, winds, and other similar affections—but the healthiest and strongest is least altered, isn’t that so? (381a) ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: And wouldn’t a soul that is most courageous and most knowl- edgeable be least disturbed or altered by any outside inﬂuence?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the same account surely also applies even to manufac- tured items, such as implements, houses, and clothes: those that are good and well made are least altered by time or any other inﬂuences.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s right.

SOCRATES: So whatever is in good condition—whether due to nature or (b) craft or both—is least subject to change by something else.

ADEIMANTUS: It seems so.

SOCRATES: But gods, of course, as well as the things belonging to them, are best in every way.

ADEIMANTUS: They certainly are.

SOCRATES: So, on this view, gods would be least likely to have many forms.

ADEIMANTUS: Least likely, indeed.

SOCRATES: Then would they change or alter themselves?

ADEIMANTUS: Clearly so, if indeed they are altered at all.

SOCRATES: Do they change themselves into something better and more beautiful, or into something worse and uglier, than themselves?

ADEIMANTUS: It would have to be into something worse, if indeed they (c) are altered at all. For surely we won’t say that gods are deﬁcient in either beauty or virtue.

SOCRATES: You are absolutely right. And do you think, Adeimantus, that anyone, whether god or human, would deliberately make himself worse in any way?

ADEIMANTUS: No, that is impossible.

SOCRATES: It is also impossible, then, for a god to want to alter himself.

On the contrary, since each god is, it seems, as beautiful and as good as pos- sible, he must always unqualiﬁedly retain his own form.

ADEIMANTUS: In my view, at least, that is absolutely necessary. (d) SOCRATES: None of our poets, then, my very good man, is to say that “The gods, like strangers from foreign lands, assume many disguises when they visit our cities.”26 Nor must they tell lies about Proteus and Thetis, or

present Hera, in their tragedies or other poems, disguised as a priestess col- lecting alms for “the life-giving sons of the Argive river Inachus,”27 or tell us (e) any of the many other such lies. Nor should mothers, inﬂuenced by these stories, which terrify children, tell bad tales about gods who go wandering around at night in the guises of many strange and multifarious beings, lest they blaspheme the gods and, at the same time, make their children too cowardly.

[26]: Odyssey 17. 485–6.

[27]: Inachus was the father of Io, who was persecuted by Hera because Zeus was in love with her.The source for the part of the story Plato quotes is unknown.

ADEIMANTUS: Indeed, they should not.

SOCRATES: But, though the gods themselves are the sorts of things that cannot change, do they make us think that they appear in multifarious guises, deceiving us and using sorcery on us?

ADEIMANTUS: Perhaps they do. (382a) SOCRATES: What? Would a god be willing to lie by presenting in word or deed what is only an illusion?

ADEIMANTUS: I don’t know.

SOCRATES: Don’t you know that all gods and humans hate a true lie, if one may call it that?

ADEIMANTUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean that no one intentionally wants to lie about the most important things to what is most important in himself. On the contrary, he fears to hold a lie there more than anything.

ADEIMANTUS: I still don’t understand.

SOCRATES: That is because you think I am saying something deep. I sim- ply mean that to lie and to have lied to the soul about the things that are,28 (b) and to be ignorant, and to have and hold a lie there, is what everyone would least of all accept; indeed, they especially hate it there.

ADEIMANTUS: They certainly do.

SOCRATES: But surely, as I was saying just now, it would be most correct to say that it is truly speaking a lie—the ignorance in the soul of the one to whom the lie was told. For a lie in words is a sort of imitation of this affection in the soul, an image of it that comes into being after it, and not an altogether (c) pure lie. Isn’t that so?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, it is.

SOCRATES: A real lie, then, is hated not only by the gods, but also by human beings.

ADEIMANTUS: I think it is.

SOCRATES: What about a lie in words? Aren’t there times when it is useful, and so does not merit hatred? What about when we are dealing with ene- mies, or with so-called friends who, because of insanity or ignorance, are attempting to do something bad? Isn’t it a useful drug for preventing them?

And consider the case of those stories we were talking about just now— (d) those we tell because we do not know the truth about those ancient events: by making the lies that they contain as much like the truth as possible, don’t we make them useful?

[28]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. thing that is.

ADEIMANTUS: We most certainly do.

SOCRATES: In which of these ways, then, could a lie be useful to a god?

Would he lie by making likenesses of the truth about ancient events because of his ignorance of them?

ADEIMANTUS: It would be ridiculous to think that.

SOCRATES: Then there is nothing of the lying poet in a god?

ADEIMANTUS: Not in my view.

SOCRATES: Would he lie, then, through fear of his enemies? (e) ADEIMANTUS: Hardly.

SOCRATES: Because of the foolishness or insanity of his family or friends, then?

ADEIMANTUS: No one who is foolish or mad is a friend of the gods.

SOCRATES: So a god has no reason to lie?

ADEIMANTUS: None.

SOCRATES: So both what is daimonic29 and what is divine are entirely free of lies.

ADEIMANTUS: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: A god, then, is altogether simple, true in both word and deed.

He does not change himself or deceive others by means of images, by words, or by sending signs, whether they are awake or dreaming.

ADEIMANTUS: That is my view—at any rate, now that I have heard what (383a) you have to say.

SOCRATES: You agree, then, that this is the second pattern people must follow when speaking or composing poems about the gods: the gods are not sorcerers who change themselves, nor do they mislead us by telling lies in word or deed.

ADEIMANTUS: I agree.

SOCRATES: Even though we praise many things in Homer, then, we won’t approve of Zeus’ sending the dream to Agamemnon, nor of Aeschylus (b) when he makes Thetis say that Apollo sang, in prophecy at her wedding:

About the good luck my children would have, Free of disease throughout their long lives, And of all the blessings the friendship of the gods would bring me.

I hoped that Phoebus’ divine mouth would be free of lies, [29]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. daimon.

Endowed as it is with the craft of prophecy.

But the very god who sang, the one at the feast, The one who said all that, he himself it is Who killed my son.30 Whenever anyone says such things about a god, we will be angry with him, refuse him a chorus,31 and not allow teachers to use what he says for the (c) education of the young—not if our guardians are going to be as god-fearing and godlike as human beings can be.

ADEIMANTUS: I agree completely about these patterns, and I would use them as laws.

[30]: At Iliad 2.1–34, Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon to promise success if he attacks Troy immediately. The promise is false. The source for the quotation from Aeschylus is unknown.

[31]: I.e., deny him the funding necessary to hire a chorus of actors and produce his play.

Book 2 ​

Book 2