Socrates “In the first place, the unjust man must act as clever craftsmen do: a first-rate pilot or physician, for example, feels the difference between impossibilities¹ and possibilities in his art 361a and attempts the one and lets the others go; and then, too, if he does happen to trip, he is equal to correcting his error. Similarly, the unjust man who attempts injustice rightly must be supposed to escape detection if he is to be altogether unjust, and we must regard the man who is caught as a bungler.² For the height of injustice³ is to seem just without being so. To the perfectly unjust man, then, we must assign perfect injustice and withhold nothing of it, but we must allow him, while committing the greatest wrongs, to have secured for himself the greatest reputation for justice; 361b and if he does happen to trip,⁴ we must concede to him the power to correct his mistakes by his ability to speak persuasively if any of his misdeeds come to light, and when force is needed, to employ force by reason of his manly spirit and vigor and his provision of friends and money; and when we have set up an unjust man of this character, our theory must set the just man at his side—a simple and noble man, who, in the phrase of Aeschylus, does not wish to seem but be good. Then we must deprive him of the seeming.⁵ For if he is going to be thought just 361c he will have honors and gifts because of that esteem. We cannot be sure in that case whether he is just for justice’s sake or for the sake of the gifts and the honors. So we must strip him bare of everything but justice and make his state the opposite of his imagined counterpart.⁶ Though doing no wrong he must have the repute of the greatest injustice, so that he may be put to the test as regards justice through not softening because of ill repute and the consequences thereof. But let him hold on his course unchangeable even unto death, 361d seeming all his life to be unjust though being just, that so, both men attaining to the limit, the one of injustice, the other of justice, we may pass judgement which of the two is the happier.”

“Bless me, my dear Glaucon,” said I, “how strenuously you polish off each of your two men for the competition for the prize as if it were a statue.⁷” “To the best of my ability,” he replied, “and if such is the nature of the two, it becomes an easy matter, I fancy, to unfold the tale of the sort of life that awaits each. 361e We must tell it, then; and even if my language is somewhat rude and brutal,⁸ you must not suppose, Socrates, that it is I who speak thus, but those who commend injustice above justice.”

“What they will say is this: that such being his disposition the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains, 362a the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified,⁹ and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what we ought to desire. And the saying of Aeschylus¹⁰ was, it seems, far more correctly applicable to the unjust man. For it is literally true, they will say, that the unjust man, as pursuing what clings closely to reality, to truth, and not regulating his life by opinion, desires not to seem but to be unjust,Exploiting the deep furrows of his wit 362b From which there grows the fruit of counsels shrewd, ¹¹ first office and rule in the state because of his reputation for justice, then a wife from any family he chooses, and the giving of his children in marriage to whomsoever he pleases, dealings and partnerships with whom he will, and in all these transactions advantage and profit for himself because he has no squeamishness about committing injustice; and so they say that if he enters into lawsuits, public or private, he wins and gets the better of his opponents, and, getting the better,¹² is rich and benefits his friends 362c and harms his enemies¹³; and he performs sacrifices and dedicates votive offerings to the gods adequately and magnificently,¹⁴ and he serves and pays court¹⁵ to men whom he favors and to the gods far better than the just man, so that he may reasonably expect the favor of heaven¹⁶ also to fall rather to him than to the just. So much better they say, Socrates, is the life that is prepared for the unjust man from gods and men than that which awaits the just.”

When Glaucon had thus spoken, I had a mind 362d to make some reply thereto, but his brother Adeimantus said, “You surely don’t suppose, Socrates, that the statement of the case is complete?” “Why, what else?” I said. “The very most essential point,” said he, “has not been mentioned.” “Then,” said I, “as the proverb has it, “Let a brother help a man”¹⁷—and so, if Glaucon omits any word or deed, do you come to his aid. Though for my part what he has already said is quite enough to overthrow me and 362e incapacitate me for coming to the rescue of justice.” “Nonsense,” he said, “but listen to this further point. We must set forth the reasoning and the language of the opposite party, of those who commend justice and dispraise injustice, if what I conceive to be Glaucon’s meaning is to be made more clear.”

“Fathers, when they address exhortations to their sons, and all those who have others in their charge,¹⁸ 363a urge the necessity of being just, not by praising justice itself, but the good repute with mankind that accrues from it, the object that they hold before us being that by seeming to be just the man may get from the reputation office and alliances and all the good things that Glaucon just now enumerated as coming to the unjust man from his good name. But those people draw out still further this topic of reputation. For, throwing in good standing with the gods, they have no lack of blessings to describe, which they affirm the gods give to pious men, even as the worthy Hesiod and Homer declare, 363b the one that the gods make the oaks bear for the just: Acorns on topmost branches and swarms of bees on their mid-trunks, and he tells how the Flocks of the fleece-bearing sheep are laden and weighted with soft wool, ¹⁹ and of many other blessings akin to these; and similarly the other poet: Even as when a good king, who rules in the fear of the high gods, Upholds justice and right, and the black earth yields him her foison, 363c Barley and wheat, and his trees are laden and weighted with fair fruits, Increase comes to his flocks and the ocean is teeming with fishes. ²⁰

And Musaeus and his son²¹ have²² a more excellent song²³ than these of the blessings that the gods bestow on the righteous. For they conduct them to the house of Hades in their tale and arrange a symposium of the saints,²⁴ where, reclined on couches crowned with wreaths, 363d they entertain the time henceforth with wine, as if the fairest meed of virtue were an everlasting drunk. And others extend still further the rewards of virtue from the gods. For they say that the children’s children²⁵ of the pious and oath-keeping man and his race thereafter never fail. Such and such-like are their praises of justice. But the impious and the unjust they bury in mud²⁶ in the house of Hades and compel them to fetch water in a sieve,²⁷ and, while they still live, 363e they bring them into evil repute, and all the sufferings that Glaucon enumerated as befalling just men who are thought to be unjust, these they recite about the unjust, but they have nothing else to say.²⁸ Such is the praise and the censure of the just and of the unjust.”

“Consider further, Socrates, another kind of language about justice and injustice 364a employed by both laymen and poets. All with one accord reiterate that soberness and righteousness are fair and honorable, to be sure, but unpleasant and laborious, while licentiousness and injustice are pleasant and easy to win and are only in opinion and by convention disgraceful. They say that injustice pays better than justice, for the most part, and they do not scruple to felicitate bad men who are rich or have other kinds of power to do them honor in public and private, and to dishonor 364b and disregard those who are in any way weak or poor, even while admitting that they are better men than the others. But the strangest of all these speeches are the things they say about the gods²⁹ and virtue, how so it is that the gods themselves assign to many good men misfortunes and an evil life but to their opposites a contrary lot; and begging priests³⁰ and soothsayers go to rich men’s doors and make them believe that they by means of sacrifices and incantations have accumulated a treasure of power from the gods³¹ that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals 364c any misdeed of a man or his ancestors, and that if a man wishes to harm an enemy, at slight cost he will be enabled to injure just and unjust alike, since they are masters of spells and enchantments³² that constrain the gods to serve their end. And for all these sayings they cite the poets as witnesses, with regard to the ease and plentifulness of vice, quoting: Evil-doing in plenty a man shall find for the seeking; 364d Smooth is the way and it lies near at hand and is easy to enter; But on the pathway of virtue the gods put sweat from the first step, ³³and a certain long and uphill road. And others cite Homer as a witness to the beguiling of gods by men, since he too said:The gods themselves are moved by prayers, And men by sacrifice and soothing vows, 364e And incense and libation turn their wills Praying, whenever they have sinned and made transgression. ³⁴”