Socrates “It was indeed,” said he, “a strange potion for a man in that condition.” “Not strange,” said I, “if you reflect that the former Asclepiads made no use of our modern coddling¹ medication of diseases before the time of Herodicus. But Herodicus² was a trainer and became a valetudinarian, and blended 406b gymnastics and medicine, for the torment first and chiefly of himself and then of many successors.” “How so?” he said. “By lingering out his death,” said I; “for living in perpetual observance of his malady, which was incurable, he was not able to effect a cure, but lived through his days unfit for the business of life, suffering the tortures of the damned if he departed a whit from his fixed regimen, and struggling against death by reason of his science he won the prize of a doting old age.³” “A noble prize⁴ indeed for his science,” he said. 406c “The appropriate one,” said I, “for a man who did not know that it was not from ignorance or inacquaintance with this type of medicine that Aesculapius did not discover it to his descendants, but because he knew that for all well-governed peoples there is a work assigned to each man in the city which he must perform, and no one has leisure to be sick⁵ and doctor himself all his days. And this we absurdly enough perceive in the case of a craftsman, but don’t see in the case of the rich and so-called fortunate.” “How so?” he said. 406d

“A carpenter,” said I, “when he is sick expects his physician to give him a drug which will operate as an emetic on the disease, or to get rid of it by purging⁶ or the use of cautery or the knife. But if anyone prescribes for him a long course of treatment with swathings⁷ about the head and their accompaniments, he hastily says that he has no leisure to be sick and that such a life of preoccupation with his illess and neglect of the work that lies before him isn’t worth living. And thereupon he bids farewell to that kind of physician, 406e enters upon his customary way of life, regains his health, and lives attending to his affairs—or, if his body is not equal to strain, he dies and is freed from all his troubles.⁸” “For such a man,” he said, “that appears to be the right use of medicine.”

“And is not the reason,” I said, 407a “that he had a task and that life wasn’t worth acceptance on condition of not doing his work?” “Obviously,” he said. “But the rich man, we say, has no such appointed task, the necessity of abstaining from which renders life intolerable.” “I haven’t heard of any.” “Why, haven’t you heard that saying of Phocylides,⁹ that after a man has “made his pile” he ought to practice virtue?” “Before, too, I fancy,” he said. “Let us not quarrel with him on that point,” I said, “but inform ourselves whether this virtue is something for the rich man to practise, 407b

and life is intolerable if he does not, or whether we are to suppose that while valetudinarianism is a hindrance to single-minded attention to carpentry and the other arts, it is no obstacle to the fulfilment of Phocylides’ exhortation.” “Yes, indeed,” he said, “this excessive care for the body that goes beyond simple gymnastics¹⁰ is the greatest of all obstacles. For it is troublesome in household affairs and military service and sedentary offices in the city.” “And, chief of all, it puts difficulties in the way of any kind of instruction, thinking, or private meditation, 407c forever imagining headaches¹¹ and dizziness and attributing their origin to philosophy. So that wherever this kind of virtue is practiced¹² and tested it is in every way a hindrance.¹³ For it makes the man always fancy himself sick and never cease from anguishing about his body.” “Naturally,” he said. “Then, shall we not say that it was because Asclepius knew this—that for those who were by nature and course of life sound of body 407d but had some localized disease, that for such, I say, and for this habit he revealed the art of medicine, and, driving out their disease by drugs and surgery, prescribed for them their customary regimen in order not to interfere with their civic duties, but that, when bodies were diseased inwardly and throughout, he did not attempt by diet and by gradual evacuations and infusions to prolong a wretched existence for the man and have him beget in all likelihood similar wretched offspring? 407e But if a man was incapable of living in the established round¹⁴ and order of life, he did not think it worth while to treat him, since such a fellow is of no use either to himself or to the state.” “A most politic Asclepius you’re telling us of,¹⁵” he said.

“Obviously,” said I, “that was his character. And his sons too, don’t you in see that at Troy they approved 408a themselves good fighting-men and practised medicine as I described it? Don’t you remember¹⁶ that in the case of Menelaus too from the wound that Pandarus inflicted They sucked the blood, and soothing simples sprinkled? ^{17 18} But what he was to eat or drink thereafter they no more prescribed than for Eurypylus, taking it for granted that the remedies sufficed to heal men who before their wounds were healthy and temperate in diet 408b even if they did happen for the nonce to drink a posset; but they thought that the life of a man constitutionally sickly and intemperate was of no use to himself or others, and that the art of medicine should not be for such nor should they be given treatment even if they were richer than Midas.¹⁹” “Very ingenious fellows,” he said, “you make out these sons of Asclepius to be.”

“’Tis fitting,” said I; “and yet in disregard of our principles the tragedians and Pindar²⁰ affirm that Asclepius, though he was the son of Apollo, was bribed by gold 408c to heal a man already at the point of death, and that for this cause he was struck by the lightning. But we in accordance with the aforesaid principles²¹ refuse to believe both statements, but if he was the son of a god he was not avaricious, we will insist, and if he was greedy of gain he was not the son of a god.” “That much,” said he, “is most certainly true. But what have you to say to this, Socrates, must we not have good physicians in our city? And they would be the most likely to be good who had treated the greatest number of healthy and diseased men, 408d and so good judges would be those who had associated with all sorts and conditions of men.” “Most assuredly I want them good,” I said; “but do you know whom I regard as such?” “I’ll know if you tell,²²” he said. “Well, I will try,” said I. “You, however, have put unlike cases in one question.” “How so?” said he. “Physicians, it is true,” I said, “would prove most skilled if, from childhood up, in addition to learning the principles of the art they had familiarized themselves with the greatest possible number of the most sickly bodies, 408e and if they themselves had suffered all diseases and were not of very healthy constitution. For you see they do not treat the body by the body.²³ If they did, it would not be allowable for their bodies to be or to have been in evil condition. But they treat the body with the mind—and it is not competent for a mind that is or has been evil to treat anything well.” “Right,” he said.

“But a judge, mark you, my friend, 409a rules soul with soul and it is not allowable for a soul to have been bred from youth up among evil souls and to have grown familiar with them, and itself to have run the gauntlet of every kind of wrong-doing and injustice so as quickly to infer from itself the misdeeds of others as it might diseases in the body, but it must have been inexperienced in evil natures and uncontaminated by them while young, if it is to be truly fair and good and judge soundly of justice. For which cause the better sort seem to be simple-minded in youth and are easily deceived by the wicked, 409b since they do not have within themselves patterns answering to the affections of the bad.” “That is indeed their experience,” he said. “Therefore it is,” said I, “that the good judge must not be a youth but an old man, a late learner²⁴ of the nature of injustice, one who has not become aware of it as a property in his own soul, but one who has through the long years trained himself to understand it as an alien thing in alien souls, and to discern how great an evil it is 409c by the instrument of mere knowledge and not by experience of his own.” “That at any rate,” he said, “appears to be the noblest kind of judge.” “And what is more, a good one,” I said, “which was the gist of your question. For he who has a good soul is good. But that cunning fellow quick to suspect evil,²⁵ and who has himself done many unjust acts and who thinks himself a smart trickster, when he associates with his like does appear to be clever, being on his guard and fixing his eyes on the patterns within himself. But when the time comes for him to mingle with the good and his elders, 409d then on the contrary he appears stupid. He is unseasonably distrustful and he cannot recognize a sound character because he has no such pattern in himself. But since he more often meets with the bad than the good, he seems to himself and to others to be rather wise than foolish.” “That is quite true,” he said.

“Well then,” said I, “such a one must not be our ideal of the good and wise judge but the former. For while badness could never come to know both virtue and itself, native virtue through education 409e will at last acquire the science both of itself and badness.²⁶ This one, then, as I think, is the man who proves to be wise and not the bad man.²⁷” “And I concur,” he said.