Platos Gorgias
CALLICLES: This man will never cease talking nonsense.
me, I am not:tell me, then, whom you mean, by the bet-At your age, Socrates, are you not ashamed to be catching ter?
at words and chuckling over some verbal slip? do you not seehave I not told you already, that by superior I mean CALLICLES: I mean the more excellent.
better: do you imagine me to say, that if a rabble of slaves and nondescripts, who are of no use except perhaps for SOCRATES: Do you not see that you are yourself using their physical strength, get together, their ipsissima verba words which have no meaning and that you are explaining are laws?
nothing?will you tell me whether you mean by the better and superior the wiser, or if not, whom?
SOCRATES: Ho! my philosopher, is that your line?
CALLICLES: Most assuredly, I do mean the wiser.
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then according to you, one wise man may SOCRATES: I was thinking, Callicles, that something of often be superior to ten thousand fools, and he ought to the kind must have been in your mind, and that is why I rule them, and they ought to be his subjects, and he ought repeated the question,What is the superior? I wanted to to have more than they should. This is what I believe that know clearly what you meant; for you surely do not think you mean (and you must not suppose that I am word-catch-that two men are better than one, or that your slaves are ing), if you allow that the one is superior to the ten thou-better than you because they are stronger? Then please to sand?
begin again, and tell me who the better are, if they are not the stronger; and I will ask you, great Sir, to be a little milder CALLICLES: Yes; that is what I mean, and that is what I in your instructions, or I shall have to run away from you.
conceive to be natural justicethat the better and wiser should rule and have more than the inferior.
CALLICLES: You are ironical.
SOCRATES: Stop there, and let me ask you what you SOCRATES: No, by the hero Zethus, Callicles, by whose would say in this case: Let us suppose that we are all to-aid you were just now saying many ironical things against gether as we are now; there are several of us, and we have a 109
Platos Gorgias
large common store of meats and drinks, and there are all SOCRATES: And ought not the better to have a larger sorts of persons in our company having various degrees of share?
strength and weakness, and one of us, being a physician, is wiser in the matter of food than all the rest, and he is prob-CALLICLES: Not of meats and drinks.
ably stronger than some and not so strong as others of us
will he not, being wiser, be also better than we are, and our SOCRATES: I understand: then, perhaps, of coatsthe superior in this matter of food?
skilfullest weaver ought to have the largest coat, and the greatest number of them, and go about clothed in the best CALLICLES: Certainly.
and finest of them?
SOCRATES: Either, then, he will have a larger share of CALLICLES: Fudge about coats!
the meats and drinks, because he is better, or he will have the distribution of all of them by reason of his authority, SOCRATES: Then the skilfullest and best in making shoes but he will not expend or make use of a larger share of ought to have the advantage in shoes; the shoemaker, clearly, them on his own person, or if he does, he will be punished; should walk about in the largest shoes, and have the great-
his share will exceed that of some, and be less than that of est number of them?
others, and if he be the weakest of all, he being the best of all will have the smallest share of all, Callicles:am I not CALLICLES: Fudge about shoes! What nonsense are you right, my friend?
talking?
CALLICLES: You talk about meats and drinks and physi-SOCRATES: Or, if this is not your meaning, perhaps you cians and other nonsense; I am not speaking of them.
would say that the wise and good and true husbandman should actually have a larger share of seeds, and have as SOCRATES: Well, but do you admit that the wiser is the much seed as possible for his own land?
better? Answer Yes or No.
CALLICLES: How you go on, always talking in the same CALLICLES: Yes.
way, Socrates!