Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
When I had said all this, I thought I was done with the argument. But it turned out, apparently, to be only a prelude. For Glaucon, who is always the boldest man alive in everything, would not accept Thrasymachus's surrender, but said —Socrates, do you want to seem to have persuaded us, or to persuade us truly, that in every way it is better to be just
than unjust? —Truly, I said, is what I would choose, if it were up to me. —Well then, he said, you are not doing what you want. Tell me: does there seem to you to be a kind of good that we would choose to have not because we desire its consequences, but because we welcome it for its own sake — like enjoyment, and all the pleasures that are harmless and lead to nothing in later
time beyond the enjoyment of having them? —Yes, I said, there does seem to me to be something of that kind. —And what about this? Is there a kind we love both for its own sake and for what comes from it — like understanding, and sight, and being healthy? Things of that sort, I suppose, we welcome on both counts. —Yes, I said. —And do you see a third form of good, he said,
which includes exercise, and being treated when sick, and the practice of medicine, and money-making in general? These we would call burdensome, though they benefit us; and we would not choose to have them for their own sake, but for the sake of the wages and the other things that come from them. —Yes, I said, there is this third kind too. But what of it? —In
which of these, he said, do you place justice? —In the finest one, I believe, I said: the kind that must be loved both for itself and for what comes from it by anyone who is going to be blessed. —That is not what most people think, he said. They put it in the burdensome kind, the kind to be practiced for the sake of wages and the reputation that opinion brings, but to be avoided in itself as
something hard. —I know that is the common view, I said, and Thrasymachus has long been disparaging it on those grounds and praising injustice. But I, it seems, am a slow learner. —Come then, he said, hear me out too, and see whether you still think the same. Thrasymachus, it seems to me, was charmed by you like a snake, sooner than he should have been; but for my part the
proof about each of the two has not yet been given to my satisfaction. I want to hear what each of them is, and what power each has just by itself when it is in the soul — leaving aside the wages and what comes from them. So this is what I will do, if you agree: I will revive Thrasymachus's argument. First I will state what people say justice is and where it came from; second,
that all who practice it practice it unwillingly, as something necessary but not good; and third, that they are reasonable to do so — for the life of the unjust man is far better than that of the just, so they say. Not that it seems so to me, Socrates. But I am at a loss, my ears ringing from listening to Thrasymachus and countless others; and the argument on behalf
of justice, that it is better than injustice, I have never yet heard from anyone in the way I want — and what I want is to hear it praised just by itself. From you above all, I think, I might learn that. So I will speak at full stretch in praise of the unjust life, and in speaking I will show you the way I want to hear you in turn censure injustice and praise justice. See whether what I propose suits you. —Nothing could suit me more,
I said. What subject could a man of sense enjoy speaking and hearing about more often? —Excellently said, he replied. Then hear what I said I would speak of first: what justice is and where it came from. People say that doing injustice is by nature good and suffering it bad, but that the bad in suffering it outweighs the good in
doing it. So when men wrong one another and are wronged in turn and get a taste of both, those who lack the power to escape the one and seize the other decide it pays to make a compact with each other neither to do wrong nor to suffer it. From there, they say, men began to make laws and covenants among themselves, and to call what the law commands lawful and just. And this, they say, is the origin and
essence of justice: it lies midway between the best thing — doing wrong without paying the penalty — and the worst — being wronged without power of revenge. Justice, being in the middle between these two, is cherished not as a good but as something honored out of weakness in doing wrong; since anyone with the power to do it, a real man, would never make a compact with anybody neither to
wrong nor be wronged — he would be mad to. This then, Socrates, is the nature of justice and this is its kind, and these are the origins from which it grew, according to the argument. That even those who practice it do so unwillingly, from lack of power to do wrong, we would perceive most clearly if we did the following in thought: give each of them license to do whatever he wishes — the just man
and the unjust alike — then follow along and watch where desire leads each. We would catch the just man red-handed going the same way as the unjust, driven by the urge to have more, which every nature naturally pursues as good, though by law it is forced aside toward honoring equality. The license I mean would be most complete if they had the power
they say once came to the ancestor of Gyges the Lydian. He was a shepherd, they say, serving the man who then ruled Lydia. A great storm came, and an earthquake, and the ground split open and a chasm appeared at the place where he was pasturing his flock. Seeing it and marveling, he went down, and among the other wonders the story tells of he saw a bronze horse, hollow,
with window-like openings; stooping to look through them, he saw a corpse inside, larger, it seemed, than human size, wearing nothing else but a golden ring on its hand. He took the ring off and climbed out. When the customary gathering of the shepherds came round, at which they reported monthly to the king about the flocks, he came too, wearing the ring. As he sat with the others,
he happened to twist the bezel of the ring toward himself, into the inside of his hand; and when this happened he became invisible to those sitting beside him, and they talked of him as though he had gone. He marveled at this, and feeling for the ring again he twisted the bezel outward, and on twisting it became visible. Noticing this, he tested the ring to see whether it had this power, and
so it turned out for him: twisting the bezel inward, he became invisible; outward, visible. Once he had seen this, he immediately arranged to be one of the messengers sent to the king; arriving, he seduced the king's wife, and with her help set upon the king, killed him, and so seized the throne. Now if there were two such rings, and the just man put on one and the unjust
man the other, no one, it would seem, would prove so adamant as to stand fast in justice and bring himself to keep his hands off what belongs to others, when he could take whatever he wished from the marketplace without fear, go into houses and lie with anyone he chose, kill or release from bonds whomever he wished, and do everything else among
men like a god. Acting so, he would do nothing different from the other man; both would go the same way. And surely one would call this strong evidence that no one is just willingly but only under compulsion, justice not being a good for the individual — since wherever a man thinks he will be able to do wrong, he does wrong. For every man believes that injustice pays him far better
personally than justice — and he believes truly, as the proponent of this kind of argument will say. For if a man got hold of such license and never once chose to do wrong or touch what belongs to others, he would be thought most wretched by those who noticed, and most foolish — though to each other's faces they would sing his praises, deceiving one another out of fear of being wronged. So much, then,
for that. As for the actual judgment on the lives of those we are speaking of: if we set apart the most just man and the most unjust, we will be able to judge rightly; if not, not. What then is the separation? This: let us take nothing away from the unjust man's injustice nor from the just man's justice, but set each down as complete in his own way of life.
First, then, let the unjust man act like clever craftsmen. A first-rate pilot or doctor distinguishes what is impossible in his art from what is possible; the latter he attempts, the former he leaves alone; and if he does slip somewhere, he is able to set it right. So too the unjust man, going about his injustices correctly, must escape notice, if he is to be thoroughly unjust. The man who gets caught
must be considered a bungler; for the height of injustice is to seem just without being so. So we must grant the completely unjust man the most complete injustice, taking nothing away, but allowing him, while doing the greatest wrongs, to have secured for himself the greatest reputation for justice; and if he does slip somewhere, to be able to set it right — capable of speaking persuasively if any of his wrongdoings comes to light, and of using force
where force is needed, thanks to his courage and strength and his supply of friends and wealth. Having set up this man so, let us in the argument station the just man beside him: a simple and noble man who, in Aeschylus's phrase, wants not to seem but to be good. We must strip away the seeming. For if he is going to seem just, there will be honors and gifts for him because he seems
so; and then it would be unclear whether he is such for justice's sake or for the sake of the gifts and honors. He must be stripped bare of everything except justice, and made the exact opposite of the previous man: doing no wrong, let him have the greatest reputation for injustice, so that he may be tested to the core for justice by not softening under ill repute and its consequences. Let him go on unchangeable until death, seeming
unjust all his life while being just, so that both men, having reached the extreme — the one of justice, the other of injustice — may be judged as to which of the two is the happier. —My word, I said, dear Glaucon, how vigorously you scour each of the two men clean for the judgment, like a statue. —As best I can, he said. And with the two being such, it is no longer difficult, I think, to go through
in the argument what sort of life awaits each. So it must be said — and if it is said rather crudely, do not suppose it is I who speak, Socrates, but those who praise injustice above justice. They will say this: that the just man so disposed will be whipped, racked, chained, have his eyes burned out, and at the end, after suffering every evil, will be impaled, and will learn that one should want not to be just but to seem so. And the
— so it turns out that Aeschylus's line was far more correctly said of the unjust man. For they will say that the unjust man, since he pursues a business that holds close to the truth and does not live for appearances, really wants not to seem unjust but to be so, "reaping a deep furrow along his mind, from which good counsels spring" — first ruling in the city because he is thought to be just, then marrying from wherever
he wishes, giving his children in marriage to whomever he wishes, entering into contracts and partnerships with whomever he pleases, and besides all this profiting because he has no scruples about doing wrong. So then, entering contests both private and public, he comes out ahead and gets the better of his enemies; and getting the better of them, he grows rich, does good to his friends, harms his enemies, and offers sacrifices and dedications to the gods in ample and
magnificent style, and serves the gods, and the men he wishes to favor, far better than the just man does — so that he is likely, in all reasonable probability, to be dearer to the gods than the just man is. That is how they say things stand, Socrates: that both from the gods and from men a better life is provided for the unjust than for the just. When Glaucon had said this,
I for my part had it in mind to say something in reply, when his brother Adeimantus said: Surely you don't think, Socrates, that the argument has been adequately stated? Why, what more is there? I said. The very point that most needed to be said, he replied, has not been said. Well then, said I, as the saying goes, let brother stand by brother; so you too, if
he has left anything out, come to his aid. And yet what he has already said is enough to throw me to the ground and make me unable to come to the defense of justice. And he said: Nonsense — listen further still. For we must also go through the arguments opposed to his — those that praise justice and censure injustice — so that what I take Glaucon to want may become clearer. Fathers, I think,
say to their sons, and everyone who cares for anyone, in urging them to be just, that they must be just — but they praise not justice itself but the good reputation that comes from it, so that the one who is thought to be just may gain from that reputation offices and marriages and everything else Glaucon just went through, all coming to the man because he is well regarded for being just. But these people take the matter of reputation still further.
For by adding in the good reputation one gets from the gods, they have no end of good things to say, which they claim the gods give to the pious — as the noble Hesiod and Homer say, the one saying that for the just the gods cause the oaks to bear acorns at their crown and bees in their middle, and "the fleecy sheep," he says, "are weighed down with wool," and many other good things of that
sort besides. And the other poet says much the same: that because of some blameless king, one who fears the gods and upholds justice, "the black earth bears wheat and barley, the trees are laden with fruit, the flocks bring forth steadily, and the sea yields fish." Musaeus and his son give the just still headier goods than these from the gods: they lead them in their account down to Hades,
lay them down, arrange a symposium of the pious, and have them spend all remaining time crowned with garlands, reclining and drunk — regarding an everlasting drunkenness as the finest reward for virtue. Others stretch the rewards from the gods out even further than this: they say that the pious and true-to-his-oath man leaves behind children's children and a line of descendants after him. This and other such things they say in praise of justice; but the unholy
and unjust they bury in mud in Hades, and force to carry water in a sieve, and even while they are still alive they bring them into ill repute — the very punishments Glaucon went through as belonging to the just man who is thought unjust, these people apply to the unjust, and have nothing else to say. Such, then, is the praise on one side and the blame on the other. Besides this, consider, Socrates,
another kind of talk about justice and injustice, spoken both in private and by the poets. For everyone with one voice sings that self-control and justice are fine things, but hard and laborious, while licentiousness and injustice are pleasant and easy to acquire, and shameful only by convention and law; and that unjust deeds are, in the main, more profitable than just ones, as most
people say, and they are quite willing to call wicked men happy and to honor them, publicly and privately, if they are rich or otherwise powerful, while they dishonor and look down on those who are in any way weak or poor, even while admitting that these are better men than the others. But of all these opinions, the strangest are those told about the gods and about virtue — that the gods themselves
have allotted misfortune and a bad life to many good men, and the opposite fate to their opposites. And begging priests and diviners go to the doors of the rich and persuade them that they possess a power, procured from the gods by sacrifices and incantations, such that if any wrong has been done by the man himself or by his ancestors, it can be healed with pleasures and festivities; and if a man wishes to harm some enemy,
he can, at small expense, injure just and unjust alike by means of certain spells and bindings, since they persuade the gods, so they say, to serve them. And for all these claims they call the poets to witness, some concerning the ease of vice, offering the line: "Wickedness can be had easily and in abundance; smooth is the road, and it dwells very close by"; whereas in front of virtue "the gods have placed sweat,"
and a road that is long and rough and steep. And others, to prove that men can lead the gods astray, call Homer to witness, since he too said this: "even the gods themselves can be swayed," and men turn them aside from their anger with sacrifices and gentle prayers, with libation and burnt offering, when they entreat them after having transgressed and sinned. And they produce a whole din of books by Musaeus
and Orpheus, offspring, they say, of the Moon and the Muses, according to which they perform their rites — persuading not only individuals but whole cities that there are indeed absolutions and purifications from wrongdoing, by means of sacrifices and pleasurable games, available both to the living and to the dead as well, rites which they call "initiations," which release us from evils in the world beyond, while terrible things await those who have not sacrificed. All these things,
my dear Socrates, said so often and in such quantity about virtue and vice, and the honor in which men and gods hold them — what do we suppose they do to the souls of the young who hear them, those who are naturally gifted and able to fly, so to speak, over all that is said and draw from it a conclusion as to what sort of person one should be and by what path one should travel to make the best of one's life? Such a young man might well say to himself,
in all likelihood, following Pindar's words: "Shall I scale the wall of justice on high, or of crooked deceit, and fence myself round with that, and so live out my life?" For what people say is that if I am just but not also thought to be, there is, they claim, no benefit in it, only manifest toil and loss; whereas if I am unjust but have secured for myself a reputation for justice, a marvelous life is promised. Since, then, mere seeming,
as the wise men make clear to me, "overpowers even the truth" and is the master of happiness, I must turn wholly to that: I must draw a façade and outward shape of virtue all around myself, like a stage-painting, and trail behind me the fox of the very wise Archilochus, cunning and full of tricks. But, someone says, it is not easy to always escape notice while being wicked. No, we will reply, nothing else that is great
is easy either. But still, if we are to be happy, this is the path we must take, since that is where the trail of the argument leads. To escape notice, we will form secret societies and factions; and there are teachers of persuasion who impart the skill needed for popular assemblies and law courts; and with these we will partly persuade, partly compel, so that we may get the better of others and not pay the penalty. But surely, one might say, it is impossible to escape the notice of the gods, or to compel them.
Well then — if the gods do not exist, or take no care at all for human affairs, why should we care about escaping notice? And if they do exist and do care, we know of them and have heard of them from no other source than the laws and the poets who have traced their genealogies; and these very same sources tell us that the gods can be swayed and turned aside by sacrifices, gentle prayers, and dedications.
To these two claims, either both must be believed or neither. And if indeed we are to believe them, then the thing to do is to act unjustly and offer sacrifice from the proceeds of our wrongdoing. For if we are just, we will only escape punishment at the hands of the gods, while forgoing what injustice would have gained us; but being unjust, we will gain those profits, and then, by transgressing and sinning and begging their forgiveness, we will persuade them and come off unpunished. "But surely," someone will say, "we will pay the penalty in Hades for whatever wrongs we commit here,"
either we ourselves or our children's children. But, my friend, he will say, reasoning it out, the initiations again have great power, and so do the gods of release, as the greatest cities say, and the children of the gods, who became poets and prophets of the gods, declare that these things are so. On what possible ground, then, would we still choose justice over the greatest injustice, when if we acquire it along with a counterfeit show of respectability,
we shall fare according to our wishes both with gods and with men, in life and in death, as the argument held by the many and by the eminent alike declares? Given all that has been said, Socrates, what device is there by which a man who has some power — of soul, of wealth, of body, or of birth — would be willing to honor justice, rather than laugh when he hears it praised? Indeed, if there is anyone who can show that what we have said is false,
and who has come to know well enough that justice is the best thing, he surely has much sympathy and no anger toward the unjust; for he knows that no one, apart from someone of divine nature who is disgusted by wrongdoing, or one who has gained knowledge and so abstains from it, is willingly just — that all the rest condemn injustice
only out of cowardice, or old age, or some other weakness, being unable to commit it themselves. That this is so is plain: for the first of such men to come into power is the first to act unjustly, to whatever extent he is able. And the sole cause of all this is nothing other than that from which this whole argument set out, both this fellow's and mine, to say to you, Socrates: that of all of you, whoever claim to be
praisers of justice — beginning from the heroes of old whose sayings have survived, down to the men of today — not one of them has ever censured injustice or commended justice except in terms of the reputations, honors, and gifts that come from them; but what each of these two things itself does, by its own power, dwelling within the soul of the one who has it, unnoticed by gods and men alike, no one has ever
gone through adequately in argument, whether in poetry or in private conversation — the claim that injustice is the greatest of all evils a soul can hold within itself, and justice the greatest good. For if this had been said from the start by all of you, and you had persuaded us of it from our youth, we would not now be guarding against one another to keep from doing wrong, but each man would be his own best guardian, fearing that in doing wrong
—lives with the greatest evil of all. This, Socrates, is roughly what Thrasymachus and others might say about justice and injustice, and perhaps even more than this, putting the case crudely, as it seems to me. But I—since I have no need to hide anything from you—am eager to hear the opposite from you, and so I state the case as forcefully as I can. So don't just
don't merely demonstrate in argument that justice outranks injustice; show what each of them does, in itself, to the one who has it, that makes the one bad and the other good. And take away the reputations, as Glaucon insisted. For if you don't strip away the true reputations from each side and attach the false ones instead, we will say that you are praising not justice but the appearance of it, and not blaming injustice
but its appearance, and that you are really urging a man to be unjust while escaping notice, and agreeing with Thrasymachus that justice is really someone else's good—the advantage of the stronger—while injustice is advantageous and profitable to oneself, but disadvantageous to the weaker. Since, then, you agreed that justice belongs among the greatest goods—those worth having both for their consequences and, far more, for their own sake—
like seeing, hearing, understanding, and health too, and all the other goods that are productive by their own nature and not merely by reputation—praise justice for just this: for what it does, in itself, to benefit the one who has it, and how injustice, in itself, harms him. Leave rewards and reputations for others to praise. I would accept it from others if they praised justice and blamed injustice in that way, extolling and abusing their
reputations and rewards. But from you I would not accept it, unless you yourself bid me to, because you have spent your whole life examining nothing else but this very question. So don't just show us in argument that justice is better than injustice, but also what each of them does, in itself, to the one who has it—whether it escapes the notice of gods and men or not—
that makes the one good and the other bad. When I heard this, I had always admired the nature of Glaucon and Adeimantus, but I was especially delighted just then, and I said: Not badly at all did that admirer of Glaucon begin his elegy about you, sons of that man, when you distinguished yourselves in the battle at Megara, saying—
'Sons of Ariston, godlike offspring of a famous man'—this seems well put to me, friends. For you really have suffered something godlike, if you are not persuaded that injustice is better than justice, being so capable of speaking on its behalf. You seem to me truly unpersuaded—I judge this from the rest of your character, since going by the arguments themselves I would have distrusted you—but the more I trust you, the more
at a loss I am about what to do. For I don't know how to come to justice's defense—I think myself incapable, and my evidence is that the arguments by which I thought I had shown Thrasymachus that justice is better than injustice you did not accept from me—yet I also don't know how not to defend it, for I fear it would be impious to stand by while justice is being slandered and fail to defend her, so long as I still have breath and the power to speak. So it is best
to help her in whatever way I can. Glaucon and the others begged me to come to justice's defense in every way and not to let the argument drop, but to investigate thoroughly what each of the two really is, and where the truth lies about their respective benefit. So I said what seemed right to me: that the inquiry we are undertaking is no trivial matter but requires sharp eyes, as it appears to me. Since, then,
we are not clever, I said, it seems to me we should conduct the inquiry the way one might if, when people with none-too-sharp eyesight were told to read small letters from a distance, someone then noticed that the same letters exist somewhere else, larger, and in a larger space—it would seem a stroke of luck, I think, to read those larger ones first and then examine the smaller ones, to see if they really are
the same. Certainly, said Adeimantus—but what do you see of that sort, Socrates, in our inquiry about justice? I'll tell you, I said. We say that justice can belong to one man, and also, presumably, to a whole city? Certainly, he said. Isn't a city larger than one man? Larger, he said. Then perhaps justice would be found in greater
quantity in the larger thing, and easier to discern. So if you're willing, let's first inquire what sort of thing it is in cities; then let's examine it the same way in the individual, looking for the resemblance of the larger in the form of the smaller. You seem to me, he said, to be speaking well. Then, I said, if we were to watch in argument a city coming into being, would we not also see its justice
coming into being, and its injustice? Perhaps we would, he said. And once it has come into being, is there hope of seeing more easily what we're looking for? Much more. Do you think, then, we should attempt to carry this through? I think it's no small task; so consider it well. It's been considered, said Adeimantus; don't do otherwise. A city comes into being, then, I said, as I understand it, because each of us is not
self-sufficient but is in need of many things. Or do you think there's some other origin for founding a city? None, he said. So then, one man takes on another for one need, another for another need, and since we need many things, we gather many partners and helpers into a single dwelling place, and to this community we give the name city. Isn't that right? Certainly. And each one shares with another,
if he shares anything, or receives a share, believing this is better for himself? Certainly. Come then, I said, let us build a city from the beginning in speech; and it seems our need will build it. How could it not? But surely the first and greatest of our needs is the provision of food, for the sake of existing and living. Absolutely. Second
is housing, and third is clothing and such things. That's so. Come then, I said, how will the city suffice for so great a provision? Won't there be one farmer, one builder, and some other weaver? Or shall we add a cobbler too, or someone else to tend the body's needs? Certainly. So the most basic city would consist
of four or five men. So it appears. What then? Should each one of these put his own work at the service of all in common—for instance, should the farmer, being one man, provide food for four, spending four times the time and labor on the provision of food and share it with the others, or should he neglect that and make only a quarter of that food for himself alone in a quarter of the time,
and spend the other three parts—one on providing his house, one on his cloak, one on his shoes—not sharing trouble with others, but doing his own business himself, by himself? And Adeimantus said: But perhaps, Socrates, the first way is easier than the second. There's nothing strange in that, I said. For I too, now that you've said it, realize
that, first of all, each of us is born not quite like every other, but differing in nature, one suited to one task, another to another. Or don't you think so? I do. Well then—would a single person do better working at many crafts, or when he practices just one? When, he said, a single person practices just one. And surely this too is clear, I think: if one
misses the right moment for some piece of work, it is ruined. Clearly. For the thing to be done, I think, is not willing to wait upon the leisure of the one doing it; rather the doer must attend closely to the thing being done, and not treat it as a secondary matter. Necessarily so. From this it follows that more things are produced, and better and more easily, when each person does one thing, according to his nature, and at the right time, being free from other tasks. Absolutely
so. Then we need more citizens than four, Adeimantus, for the provisions we were speaking of. For the farmer, it seems, will not make his own plow, if it's to be a good one, nor his own hoe, nor the other tools needed for farming. Nor will the builder; and he too needs many things. Likewise the weaver and the cobbler;
isn't that so? True. Carpenters, then, and smiths, and many craftsmen of that sort, becoming partners in our little city, will make it a sizable community. Certainly. But it still wouldn't be very large even if we added to them oxherds and shepherds and other herdsmen, so that the farmers might have oxen for plowing, and the builders
might use draft animals along with the farmers for hauling loads, and the weavers and cobblers might have hides and wool. Nor would it be a small city, he said, once it has all of this. But surely, I said, to found the city itself in such a place that it will need no imports is pretty much impossible. Impossible indeed. It will need still other people besides,
who will bring it what it needs from another city. It will. And surely if the agent goes empty-handed, carrying none of what those from whom he is to get what his own people need actually want, he will come back empty-handed. Isn't that so? So it seems to me. Then our people at home must not only produce enough for themselves, but also the sort of goods, and the quantity, that those others need. They must indeed.
So our city needs more farmers and other craftsmen. More indeed. And of course also other agents, to import and export each kind of goods. These are merchants, are they not? Yes. Then we shall need merchants too. Certainly. And if the trade is carried on by sea, we shall need still more people, and skilled ones,
for the work connected with the sea. Many indeed. But what about this: within the city itself, how will they share with each other whatever each produces? It was for the sake of just this that we formed a community and founded a city. Clearly, he said, by buying and selling. Then a marketplace, and currency as a token for exchange, will arise from this. Certainly. Suppose then
that a farmer brings to the market something he has produced, or some other craftsman does, but does not arrive at the same time as those who want to trade for his goods—will he sit idle in the marketplace, neglecting his own craft? Not at all, he said; there are people who, seeing this, appoint themselves to this service—in well-run cities, generally
those who are weakest in body and useless for any other work. They must stay right there in the marketplace, exchanging goods for money with those who want to sell something, and money for goods with those who want to buy something. This need, then, I said, creates for our city the class of retail traders. Or don't we call retailers
those stationed in the marketplace serving buying and selling, and the wandering merchants who travel to other cities? — Certainly. — There are also, I think, still other servants who, while their minds are not quite worth associating with, have bodily strength sufficient for labor. These, selling the use of their strength
and calling this price a wage, are called, I think, wage-earners. Isn't that so? — Certainly. — So wage-earners too are, it seems, part of the city's full complement. — So it seems to me. — Well then, Adeimantus, has our city by now grown to completion? — Perhaps. — Where in it, then, would justice and injustice be found? And together with what, once it had come into being,
of the things we've examined? — For my part, he said, I don't see, Socrates, unless it's somewhere in these people's very need of one another. — But perhaps, I said, you're right; we must look into it and not shrink from the task. Let's first consider what manner of life those so provided for will lead. Won't they simply produce grain and wine and clothes and shoes, and
build houses, and in summer for the most part work stripped and barefoot, but in winter adequately clothed and shod? They'll feed themselves by preparing barley-meal from barley and flour from wheat, baking some, kneading the rest, setting out fine loaves and cakes on some reed or on clean leaves, and reclining on beds strewn with yew
and myrtle, they'll feast, they and their children, drinking their wine, crowned with garlands, singing hymns to the gods, enjoying one another's company pleasantly, not having children beyond their means, guarding against poverty or war. And Glaucon broke in: You're feasting these men, it seems, without any relish. — True, I said. I forgot that they'll have relish too — salt,
obviously, and olives and cheese, and they'll boil onions and greens too, the sort of boiled dishes people have in the country. And we'll set desserts before them too — figs and chickpeas and beans — and by the fire they'll roast acorns and myrtle-berries, sipping their wine in moderation. And living this way, in peace and in health, they'll grow old and hand on a similar life
to their children in turn. And he said: But if you were founding a city of pigs, Socrates, what else would you fatten them on than this? — Well, how should it be, then, Glaucon? — As is customary, he said. Those who aren't going to suffer hardship should recline on couches, I imagine, and dine from tables, and have the same relishes and desserts that people have nowadays. — Fine, I
said, I understand. It's not merely how a city comes to be that we're examining, it seems, but a luxurious city as well. Perhaps there's nothing wrong with that either; by examining a city of that kind too we might well see how justice and injustice take root in cities. Now the true city, the one we've gone through, seems to me to be a healthy one, so to speak; but if you'd rather, let's look at
a feverish city too — nothing prevents it. For some people, it seems, this won't be enough, nor this way of life, but couches will have to be added, and tables and other furniture, and relishes too, and perfumes and incense and courtesans and pastries, and each of these in every variety. And indeed the things we mentioned at first — houses, clothes,
and shoes — must no longer be treated as the only necessities, but painting and embroidery must be set going, and gold and ivory and everything of that sort acquired. Isn't that so? — Yes, he said. — Then we must also make the city bigger; for that healthy city is no longer sufficient, but must now be filled out with bulk and multitude — things no longer there for necessity's sake in cities, such as
all the hunters, and all the imitators — many concerned with shapes and colors, many with music: poets and their attendants, rhapsodes, actors, chorus-dancers, contractors, craftsmen of goods of every sort, including those connected with women's adornment. And indeed we'll need more servants too — don't you think we'll need tutors, wet-nurses, nurses, hairdressers,
barbers, and again cooks and caterers? And we'll need swineherds besides — this we had no need of in the earlier city, since none of it was needed there, but in this one we'll need this too. And we'll need very many other livestock as well, if people are going to eat them. Isn't that so? — Of course. — And won't we be in need of doctors much more, living this way, than
before? — Much more. — And the territory, too, which was then sufficient to feed the people of that time, will now be too small though it was sufficient then. Or how shall we put it? — Just so, he said. — Then we'll have to cut off a piece of our neighbors' territory, if we're to have enough land to pasture and to plow, and they in turn a piece of ours, if they too let themselves go after unlimited acquisition of wealth,
overstepping the boundary of what is necessary? — Quite necessarily, Socrates, he said. — Then after that we'll go to war, Glaucon — or how will it be? — Just so, he said. — And let's not yet say, I said, whether war does harm or good, but only this much: that we have in turn found the origin of war, arising from those very things that cause the most evils for cities, both privately and
publicly, whenever they occur. — Quite so. — Then, my friend, the city needs to be still bigger, not by a small amount but by a whole army, which will go out and fight to the death for the whole of our property, and for all we were just now speaking of, against those attacking. — What? he said; aren't the citizens themselves sufficient? — No, not if you, and all of us
agreed rightly when we were shaping the city. We agreed, I think, if you remember, that it is impossible for one person to practice many crafts well. — True, he said. — Well then, I said, doesn't the struggle of war seem to be a matter of skill? — Very much so, he said. — Does it need more care, then, than shoemaking or farming? — Not at all. — But we forbade the shoemaker from trying at the same time to be a farmer,
or a weaver, or a builder, but only a shoemaker, so that the work of shoemaking might come out well for us, and to each of the others likewise we assigned one thing, the one for which each was naturally suited and at which each was meant to spend his life free of the other tasks, working at it and not letting the right occasions slip by, so as to finish it well. But as for the matters of war —
aren't these of the greatest importance to have carried out well? Or is it so easy a thing that a farmer, while farming, will also be a soldier, and a shoemaker, while shoemaking, and anyone else practicing any other craft whatever, while no one could become an adequate player at checkers or dice unless he practiced that very thing from childhood, treating it merely as a sideline? And a man who picks up a shield or some other weapon or instrument of war will, on that same day,
be a competent contestant in hoplite fighting or any other kind of combat in war — while none of the other instruments, if merely picked up, will make anyone a craftsman or an athlete, nor be of use to one who has gained neither the knowledge proper to each nor sufficient practice in it? — The tools would be worth a great deal, he said, if that were so. — Then, I said, the greater the guardians' task is,
the more it would require, more than anything else, the greatest amount of leisure, and in turn the greatest skill and diligence. — I think so myself, he said. — Doesn't it also, then, need a nature suited to this very pursuit? — Of course. — Then it would be our task, it seems, if we're capable of it, to select which natures, and of what kind, are suited for the guarding of
the city. — Ours indeed. — By Zeus, I said, it's no trivial matter, then, that we've taken on. Still, we mustn't play the coward, as far as our ability allows. — No indeed, he said. — Do you think, then, I said, that the nature of a well-bred puppy differs at all, for guarding, from that of a well-born young man? — What do you mean? — For instance, each of the two must be keen in perception, and quick
to pursue whatever it perceives, and strong too, if it must overtake something and fight it out. — Yes, it needs all of these, he said. — And spirited too, indeed, if it's to fight well. — Of course. — But will something that isn't spirited be willing to be courageous — horse or dog or any other creature at all? Or haven't you noticed how invincible and unconquerable spirit is, in whose presence a soul,
faced with anything at all, is utterly fearless and unyielding? — I have noticed. — Then what the body of the guardian must be like is clear. — Yes. — And indeed the qualities of his soul too — that he must be spirited. — That too. — Then how, Glaucon, I said, will they avoid being savage toward one another and toward the rest of the citizens, being natures of this kind? — By Zeus, he
said, not easily. But surely they must be gentle toward their own people and harsh toward enemies; otherwise they won't wait for others to destroy them, but will be the first to do it themselves. — True, he said. — What then, I said, shall we do? Where shall we find a character that is at once gentle and great-spirited? For a gentle nature is somehow the opposite of a spirited one. — So it appears.
But surely, whichever of the two he's deprived of, he could never become a good guardian; and these requirements look impossible, and so it turns out that a good guardian is impossible to produce. — It looks that way, he said. And I, at a loss, and reflecting on what had gone before, said: We're right to be at a loss, my friend, for we've fallen short of the image we set before ourselves. — What do you mean? — We haven't noticed that there are natures
of a kind we didn't think existed, having these opposite qualities. — Where, then? — One could see it in other animals too, but not least in the very one we compared to the guardian. You know, I imagine, of well-bred dogs, that this is their natural character: toward those they know and are familiar with, to be as gentle as can be, but toward strangers, the opposite.
I do know that. — This, then, I said, is possible, and it isn't against nature that we're seeking our guardian to be of this kind. — It doesn't seem so. — Then does it still seem to you that the one who's going to be fit for guarding needs something more — besides being spirited, to also be, by nature, a lover of learning? — How do you mean? he said; I don't understand. — This too, I said, you'll observe in dogs, which
is worth admiring in the creature. — What is it? — That when it sees someone it doesn't know, it gets angry, even though it has suffered no harm from him beforehand; but when it sees someone familiar, it greets him warmly, even if it has never received any good from him. Or haven't you wondered at that before now? — Not really, he said; I hadn't paid attention to it until now; but that it does this is clear. — Well, this affection of its does look like a refined thing
of that nature, and truly philosophic. —In what way? —In this, I said: that it distinguishes a friendly face from a hostile one by nothing other than having learned the one and being ignorant of the other. And how could a creature be anything but a lover of learning, when it defines what is its own and what is alien by understanding and ignorance? —There is no way, he said, that it could not be. —And surely, I said,
the love of learning and the love of wisdom are the same thing? —The same, he said. —Then may we confidently lay it down for a human being too: if he is to be gentle toward his own people and those he knows, he must be, by his nature, a lover of learning and of wisdom? —Let us lay it down, he said. —Philosophic, then, and spirited and swift and strong by nature will be our man who is to be a fine and good guardian of the city. —Absolutely so,
he said. —This, then, is how he would start out. But how are these men to be reared and educated? And does examining this help us at all toward seeing what all our examining is for — how justice and injustice arise in a city? We do not want to leave out what matters, or drag through more than we need. —And Glaucon's brother said: For my part, I fully
expect this inquiry to help toward that. —By Zeus, then, my dear Adeimantus, I said, we must not drop it, even if it turns out rather long. —No indeed. —Come then, like men telling stories in a story, and at our leisure, let us educate these men in speech. —Yes, we must. —What, then, is the education? Or is it hard to find a better one than that
discovered over long ages? There is, I take it, gymnastic training for the body, and for the soul, music. —There is. —Shall we not begin educating in music before gymnastic? —Of course. —And under music, I said, do you include stories, or not? —I do. —And of stories there are two kinds, one true, the other false? —Yes. —And we must educate in both,
but first in the false ones? —I do not understand, he said, what you mean. —Don't you see, I said, that the first thing we give children is fables? And a fable, taken as a whole, is false, though there is truth in it too. And we use fables with children before we use gymnastic exercises. —That is so. —That is what I meant by saying music must be taken up before gymnastic. —Rightly, he said.
—Then you know that the beginning of any work is the most important part, especially for anything young and tender? For it is then above all that it is molded, and takes on whatever stamp anyone wishes to impress on it. —Exactly so. —Shall we then carelessly allow our children to hear just any fables, fashioned by just anybody, and to take into their souls opinions for the
most part contrary to those we will think they ought to hold when they are grown? —We shall not allow it in any way whatever. —First, then, it seems, we must supervise the makers of fables: whatever fine fable they make, we must approve, and whatever is not, reject. And the approved ones we will persuade the nurses and mothers to tell the children, and to mold their souls with fables far
more than their bodies with their hands. Most of the ones they tell now must be thrown out. —Which ones? he said. —In the greater fables, I said, we shall see the lesser too. For the greater and the lesser must bear the same stamp and have the same power. Don't you think so? —I do, he said; but I don't even see which ones you call the greater.
—The ones, I said, that Hesiod and Homer told us, and the other poets. For they, surely, composed false fables and told them to mankind, and tell them still. —Which fables, he said, and what is it in them that you object to? —The fault, I said, that ought first and foremost to be found, especially if the falsehood is not well told. —What is that?
—When someone in his account misrepresents the nature of gods and heroes — what they are like — as a painter does whose picture bears no resemblance to what he wanted to portray. —Yes, he said, it is right to find fault with such things. But how do we mean this, and what sort of cases? —First, I said, the greatest falsehood, and about the greatest matters, was not well
told by the man who said that Uranus did what Hesiod says he did, and how Cronus in turn took vengeance on him. 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 casually to the young and thoughtless, but best of all kept silent; and if there were some necessity to tell them, then as secrets,
for as few as possible to hear, after sacrificing not a pig but some great victim hard to procure, so that as few as possible would get to hear them. —Yes indeed, he said, these stories are troublesome. —And they are not to be told, Adeimantus, I said, in our city. Nor is a young listener to be told that in committing the most extreme wrongs he would be doing nothing surprising, nor in punishing an offending father
by any means whatever — that he would only be doing what the first and greatest of the gods have done. —No, by Zeus, he said; to me too such things seem unfit to be said. —Nor at all, I said, that gods make war on gods and plot against them and fight — for it is not even true — at least if those who are going to guard our city must consider it most shameful
to fall out with one another lightly. Far be it from us to tell them tales and embroideries of battles of giants, and all the many and various feuds of gods and heroes with their own kin and household. Rather, if we are somehow to persuade them that no citizen has ever quarreled with another and that to do so is unholy, that is the kind of thing that must be told to children from the start, by old men and old women, and as they grow older too,
and the poets must be compelled to compose along these lines. But Hera bound by her son, and Hephaestus hurled from heaven by his father for trying to defend his mother from a beating, and all the battles of gods that Homer has composed — these must not be admitted into the city, whether composed with hidden meanings or without them. For the young are not able to judge what is a hidden meaning and what is not; whatever
opinions they take in at that age tend to become hard to wash out and immovable. For these reasons, surely, we should treat it as supremely important that the first things they hear be fables told as beautifully as possible with a view to virtue. —That makes sense, he said. But if someone should ask us further what these things are, and which the fables are, what would we say? —And I said:
Adeimantus, you and I are not poets at present but founders of a city. Founders should know the patterns within which the poets must tell their tales — patterns which the poets may not transgress in their compositions — but they need not compose fables themselves. —Right, he said. But this very thing, the patterns for speech about the gods — what would they be? —Something like this,
I said: as the god actually is, so he must always be represented, whether someone portrays him in epic verse or in songs or in tragedy. —Yes, that is required. —Now the god is truly good, and must be spoken of as such? —Certainly. —But surely nothing good is harmful, is it? —Not in my view. —Then does what is not harmful do
harm? —In no way. —Does what does no harm do any evil? —Not that either. —And what does no evil could not be the cause of any evil? —How could it? —Well then: is the good beneficial? —Yes. —The cause, then, of faring well? —Yes. —Then the good is not the cause of everything: it is the cause of things that are in good state, but of evils it is not the cause. —Entirely so, he said.
—Then neither, I said, could the god, since he is good, be the cause of everything, as most people say. Of few things among men is he the cause, of many he is not; for our goods are far fewer than our evils. Of the goods we must count no other cause than him; but for the evils we must look for other causes — anything but the god. —What you say, he said, seems to me
perfectly true. —Then, I said, we must not accept from Homer or any other poet this error about the gods, foolishly committed when he says that two jars stand on Zeus's floor, full of dooms — one of good ones, the other of wretched — and that the man to whom Zeus gives a mixture of both meets sometimes with evil,
sometimes with good; but the man to whom he gives not the mixed but the unmixed second kind, him fierce famine drives over the bright earth. Nor that Zeus is dispenser to us of good and evil alike. And the violation of the oaths and truces which Pandarus committed — if anyone says it came about through Athena and Zeus, we will not approve; nor the strife and contest of the gods
through Themis and Zeus; nor again must the young be allowed to hear, as Aeschylus says, that god plants guilt in mortals when he wills to ruin a house utterly. If anyone composes a work containing these iambic lines — on the sufferings of Niobe, or the house of Pelops, or the Trojan matter, or anything of the kind — either he must not
be allowed to say these are the deeds of a god; or, if of a god, he must find out for them roughly the account we are now seeking, and say that the god did what was just and good, and the sufferers were benefited by their punishment. But that those who paid the penalty were wretched, and that the one who did it was a god — that the poet must not be allowed to say. If, however, they should say that the wicked were wretched because they needed
punishment, and that in paying the penalty they were benefited by the god, that may be allowed. But to claim that a god, being good, becomes the cause of evils to anyone — this must be fought in every way: no one is to say such things in his own city, if it is to be well governed, nor anyone to hear them, whether younger or older, whether the tale is told in verse or without verse; because such things, if said, would be neither holy
to say, nor advantageous to us, nor consistent with themselves. —I vote with you for this law, he said, and it pleases me. —This, then, I said, would be one of the laws and patterns concerning the gods, within which speakers must speak and poets compose: that the god causes not everything, but the good things alone.
—And it is quite sufficient, he said. —Then what about this second one? Do you think the god is a sorcerer, apt to appear insidiously now in one form, now in another — at one time actually becoming different and changing his own shape into many forms, at another deceiving us and making us think such things about him? Or is he simple, and of all beings least likely to depart from
—step outside its own form? I can't say, offhand. But what about this: isn't it necessary, if anything departs from its own form, that it be changed either by itself or by something else? Necessary. And things that are in the best condition are least altered and moved by something else—a body, say, by food and drink and exertion, and every plant by
sunlight and winds and that sort of thing—isn't it the healthiest and strongest that is least altered? Of course. And a soul—wouldn't the most courageous and most intelligent soul be least disturbed and altered by any outside affection? Yes. And surely all composite things too—furniture, buildings, clothes—by the same reasoning, the ones well
made and in good condition are least altered by time and other affections. That's so. So everything that is in fine condition, whether by nature or by craft or by both, admits the least change from anything else. So it seems. But god, at least, and what belongs to god, is in every way in the best condition. Of course. On this score, then, god would least of all take on many shapes.
Least of all indeed. But might god change and alter himself? Clearly, he said, if he is altered at all. Then does he change himself for the better and more beautiful, or for the worse and more shameful than himself? Necessarily for the worse, he said, if he is altered at all—for surely we won't say god is lacking in beauty or in virtue.
Quite right, I said, what you say. And given that, do you think anyone, god or man, would willingly make himself worse in any way at all? Impossible, he said. Then it is impossible, I said, even for a god to want to alter himself; rather, it seems, being the most beautiful and best possible, each of them remains forever simply in his own form. That, he said, seems to me
entirely necessary. Then, I said, no poet is to recite to us that— 'gods in the guise of strangers from far countries, assuming every shape, go roaming through the cities'— nor let anyone tell lies about Proteus and Thetis, nor bring Hera on stage, in tragedies or any other poems, transformed, as though she were a priestess gathering alms for the life-giving children of Inachus, the Argive river; and let them not tell us many other such falsehoods. Nor
again, led on by these poets, should mothers frighten their children with wicked stories, saying that certain gods go about at night disguised as all sorts of strangers, so that they may avoid both blaspheming the gods and making their children more cowardly at the same time. Let them not, he said. But is it, I asked, that the gods themselves are of such a nature as not to change, yet make
us think they appear in every sort of shape, deceiving us and playing tricks? Perhaps, he said. What then, I asked—would a god consent to deceive, either in speech or in act, by putting forward a phantom? I don't know, he said. Are you unaware, I said, that the lie in the true sense—if such a phrase is allowed—is a thing all gods and all men detest? What do you mean? he said.
I mean this, I said: that no one is willingly willing to lie about the most authoritative part of himself and concerning the most important things, but everyone fears above all to possess falsehood there. I still don't understand, he said. You think I mean something grand, I said; but I mean that to be deceived and to be ignorant about the things that are, and
there to have and hold falsehood—that is what everyone would least of all accept, and that is what everyone hates most, when it is there. Very much so, he said. Well then, this—what I was just now saying—would most correctly be called the true lie: the ignorance in the soul of the one who has been deceived. For the falsehood in words is a kind of imitation of that
affection in the soul, an image that comes into being afterward, not an entirely unmixed lie. Isn't that so? Quite so. Then the lie that truly is a lie is hated not only by gods but also by men. So it seems to me. But what about the lie in words—when and for whom is it useful, so as not to deserve hatred? Is it not useful against enemies,
and among those called friends, whenever, through madness or some folly, they attempt to do something bad—then, to turn them away from it, it becomes useful, like a drug? And in those stories we were just discussing, since we don't know the truth about ancient times, don't we make the falsehood useful by making it resemble the truth as much as possible? Yes, he said, that is very much so.
In which of these ways, then, is falsehood useful to god? Would he lie by making a likeness of ancient things through ignorance of them? That would be absurd, he said. So there is no lying poet in god. It doesn't seem so to me. But would he lie out of fear of enemies? Far from it. Or on account of the folly or madness of his own people? But no one who is foolish or
mad is dear to the gods. Then there is no reason for which a god would lie. There is not. Then the divine and the godly are in every way free of falsehood. Entirely so, he said. So god is altogether simple and truthful, in deed and in word alike; he neither changes himself nor deceives others, whether by apparitions or by words or by the sending of signs, whether
waking or in dreams. It appears that way to me too, he said, as you speak. So you grant, I said, this as our second pattern for how one must speak and compose about the gods—that they are not sorcerers who transform themselves, nor do they lead us astray with falsehoods, in word or in deed? I agree. Then, though we praise Homer in many things, we will not praise this—the
sending of the dream to Agamemnon by Zeus—nor Aeschylus, when he has Thetis say that Apollo, singing at her wedding, celebrated her good fortune as a mother—'freedom from disease and a long life,' and, having recounted all my fortunes as beloved of the gods, sang out a paean, cheering my heart. And I thought the divine mouth of Phoebus was free of falsehood, brimming with the art of prophecy; but he, the very one singing,
the very one present at the feast, the very one who said these things, is himself the one who killed my son—whenever anyone says such things about the gods, we will be angry and refuse them a chorus, nor will we allow the teachers to use them in the education of the young, if our guardians are to become god-fearing and godlike, so far as that is possible for a human being. Entirely so, he said,
I too agree to these patterns, and would use them as laws.