And they produce a bushelὅμαδον, lit. noise, hubbub, babel, here contemptuous. There is no need of the emendation ὁπμαθόν. Cf. 387 A, and Kern, , p. 82; cf. John Morley, , p. 184, A bushel of books. of books of Musaeus and Orpheus, the offspring of the Moon and of the Muses, as they affirm, and these books they use in their ritual, and make not only ordinary men but states believe that there really are remissions of sins and purifications for deeds of injustice, by means of sacrifice and pleasant sportCf. 819 B. for the living, and that there are also special rites for the defunct, which they call functions, that deliver us from evils in that other world, while terrible things await those who have neglected to sacrifice. What, Socrates, do we suppose is the effect of all such sayings about the esteem in which men and gods hold virtue and vice upon the souls that hear them, the souls of young men who are quick-witted and capable of flitting, as it were, from one expression of opinion to another and inferring from them all the character and the path whereby a man would lead the best life? Such a youthCf. , p. 25: His (Plato’s) imagination was beset by the picture of some brilliant young Alcibiades standing at the crossways of life and debating in his mind whether the best chance for happiness lay in accepting the conventional moral law that serves to police the vulgar or in giving rein to the instincts and appetites of his own stronger nature. To confute the one, to convince the other, became to him the main problem of moral philosophy. Cf. Introduction x-xi; also , p. 214. would most likely put to himself the question Pindar asks, Is it by justice or by crooked deceit that I the higher tower shall scale and so live my life out in fenced and guarded security? Pindar, Fr. The consequences of my being just are, unless I likewise seem so, not assets,φανερὰ ζημία is familiar and slightly humorous. Cf. Starkie on Aristoph. Ach. 737. they say, but liabilities, labor and total loss; but if I am unjust and have procured myself a reputation for justice a godlike life is promised. Then since it is the seeming Simonides, Fr. 76 Bergk, and Eur. Orest. 236 as the wise men show me, that masters the reality and is lord of happiness, to this I must devote myself without reserve. For a front and a showA Pindaric mixture of metaphors beginning with a portico and garb, continuing with the illusory perspective of scene-painting, and concluding with the craftly fox trailed behind. I must draw about myself a shadow-line of virtue, but trail behind me the fox of most sage Archilochus,Cf. Fr. 86-89 Bergk, and Dio Chrysost. . 55. 285 R. κεπδαλέαν is a standing epithet of Reynard. Cf. Gildersleeve on Pindar . ii. 78. shifty and bent on gain. Nay, ’tis objected, it is not easy for a wrong-doer always to lie hid.Cf. my review of Jebb’s , 1907, vol. ii. p. 235. Neither is any other big thing facile, we shall reply. But all the same if we expect to be happy, we must pursue the path to which the footprints of our arguments point. For with a view to lying hid we will organize societies and political clubs,Cf. George Miller Calhoun, , University of Chicago Dissertation, 1911. and there are teachers of cajoleryLit. persuasion. Cf. the defintion of rhetoric, 453 A. who impart the arts of the popular assembly and the court-room. So that, partly by persuasion, partly by force, we shall contrive to overreach with impunity. But against the gods, it may be said, neither secrecy nor force can avail. Well, if there are no gods, or they do not concern themselves with the doings of men, neither need we concern ourselves with eluding their observation.For the thought compare Tennyson, : But he that holdsThe gods are careless, wherefore need he careGreatly for them? Cf. also Euripides . 1034-1035, . x. 34. If they do exist and pay heed, we know and hear of them only from such discourses and from the poets who have described their pedigrees. But these same authorities tell us that the gods are capable of being persuaded and swerved from their course by sacrifice and soothing vows and dedications. We must believe them in both or neither.

And if we are to believe them, the thing to do is to commit injustice and offer sacrifice from fruits of our wrongdoing.Cf. Verres’ distribution of his three years’ spoliation of Sicily, Cicero 14 (40), and Plato 906 C-D, Lysias xxvii. 6. For if we are just, we shall, it is true, be unscathed by the gods, but we shall be putting away from us the profits of injustice; but if we are unjust, we shall win those profits, and, by the importunity of our prayers, when we transgress and sin, we shall persuade them and escape scot-free. Yes, it will be objected, but we shall be brought to judgement in the world below for our unjust deeds here, we or our children’s children. Nay, my dear sir, our calculating friendHis morality is the hedonistic calculus of the or the commercial religion of other-wordliness. will say, here again the rites for the deadFor these τελεταί cf. 365 A. have much efficacy, and the absolving divinities, as the greatest cities declare, and the sons of gods, who became the poets and prophetsOr rather mouthpieces. of the gods, and who reveal that this is the truth. On what further ground, then, could we prefer justice to supreme injustice? If we combine this with a counterfeit decorum, we shall prosper to our heart’s desire, with gods and men in life and death, as the words of the multitude and of men of the highest authority declare. In consequence, then, of all that has been said, what possibility is there, Socrates, that any man who has the power of any resources of mind, money, body, or family should consent to honor justice and not rather laughAristophanes 1241. when he hears her praised? In sooth, if anyone is able to show the falsity of these arguments, and has come to know with sufficient assurance that justice is best, he feels much indulgence for the unjust, and is not angry with them, but is aware that except a man by inborn divinity of his nature disdains injustice, or, having won to knowledge, refrains from it, no one else is willingly just, but that it is from lack of manly spirit or from old age or some other weaknessCf. 492 A. that men dispraise injustice, lacking the power to practise it. The fact is patent. For no sooner does such one come into the power than he works injustice to the extent of his ability. And the sole cause of all this is the fact that was the starting-point of this entire plea of my friend here and of myself to you, Socrates, pointing out how strange it is that of all you self-styled advocates of justice, from the heroes of old whose discourses survive to the men of the present day, not one has ever censured injustice or commended justice otherwise than in respect of the repute, the honors, and the gifts that accrue from each. But what each one of them is in itself, by its own inherent force, when it is within the soul of the possessor and escapes the eyes of both gods and men, no one has ever adequately set forth in poetry or prose—the proof that the one is the greatest of all evils that the soul contains within itself, while justice is the greatest good.