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.

For if you had all spoken in this way from the beginning and from our youth up had sought to convince us, we should not now be guarding against one another’s injustice, but each would be his own best guardian, for fear lest by working injustice he should dwell in communion with the greatest of evils.Cf. 363 E. This, Socrates, and perhaps even more than this, Thrasymachus and haply another might say in pleas for and against justice and injustice, inverting their true potencies, as I believe, grossly. But I— for I have no reason to hide anything from you—am laying myself out to the utmost on the theory, because I wish to hear its refutation from you. Do not merely show us by argument that justice is superior to injustice, but make clear to us what each in and of itself does to its possessor, whereby the one is evil and the other good. But do away with the repute of both, as Glaucon urged. For, unless you take away from either the true repute and attach to each the false, we shall say that it is not justice that you are praising but the semblance, nor injustice that you censure, but the seeming, and that you really are exhorting us to be unjust but conceal it, and that you are at one with Thrasymachus in the opinion that justice is other man’s good,Cf. 343 C. the advantage of the other, and that injustice is advantageous and profitible to oneself but disadvantageous to the inferior. Since, then, you have admitted that justice belongs to the class of those highest goods which are desirable both for their consequences and still more for their own sake, as sight, hearing, intelligence, yes and health too, and all other goods that are productiveAdam’s note on γόνιμα: i.q. γνήσια is, I think, wrong. by their very nature and not by opinion, this is what I would have you praise about justice—the benefit which it and the harm which injustice inherently works upon its possessor. But the rewards and the honors that depend on opinion, leave to others to praise. For while I would listen to others who thus commended justice and disparaged injustice, bestowing their praise and their blame on the reputation and the rewards of either, I could not accept that sort of thing from you unless you say I must, because you have passed your entire lifeCf. 506 C. in the consideration of this very matter. Do not then, I repeat, merely prove to us in argument the superiority of justice to injustice, but show us what it is that each inherently does to its possessor—whether he does or does not escape the eyes of gods and men—whereby the one is good and the other evil.