Complete Works (187 page)

C
ALLICLES
: Yes, I do.

[515]
S
OCRATES
: But now, my most excellent fellow, seeing that you yourself are just now beginning to be engaged in the business of the city and you call on me and take me to task for not doing so, shall we not examine each other? “Well now, has Callicles ever improved any of the citizens? Is there anyone who was wicked before, unjust, undisciplined, and foolish, a visitor or townsman, a slave or free man, who because of Callicles has turned out admirable and good?” Tell me, Callicles, what will you say if [b] somebody asks you these scrutinizing questions? Whom will you say you’ve made a better person through your association with him? Do you shrink back from answering—if there even
is
anything you produced while still in private practice before attempting a public career?

C
ALLICLES
: You love to win, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: But it’s not for love of winning that I’m asking you. It’s rather because I really do want to know the way, whatever it is, in which you [c] suppose the city’s business ought to be conducted among us. Now that you’ve advanced to the business of the city, are we to conclude that you’re devoted to some objective other than that we, the citizens, should be as good as possible? Haven’t we agreed many times already that this is what a man active in politics should be doing? Have we or haven’t we? Please answer me. Yes we have. (I’ll answer for you.) So, if this is what a good man should make sure about for his own city, think back now to those men whom you were mentioning a little earlier and tell me whether you [d] still think that Pericles, Cimon, Miltiades, and Themistocles have proved to be good citizens.

C
ALLICLES
: Yes, I do.

S
OCRATES
: So if they were good ones, each of them was obviously making the citizens better than they were before. Was he or wasn’t he?

C
ALLICLES
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: So when Pericles first began giving speeches among the people, the Athenians were worse than when he gave his last ones?

C
ALLICLES
: Presumably.

S
OCRATES
: Not “presumably,” my good man. It necessarily follows from what we’ve agreed, if he really was a good citizen.

C
ALLICLES
: So what? [e]

S
OCRATES
: Nothing. But tell me this as well. Are the Athenians said to have become better because of Pericles, or, quite to the contrary, are they said to have been corrupted by him? That’s what
I
hear, anyhow, that Pericles made the Athenians idle and cowardly, chatterers and moneygrubbers, since he was the first to institute wages for them.

C
ALLICLES
: The people you hear say this have cauliflower ears, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: Here, though, is something I’m not just hearing. I do know clearly and you do, too, that at first Pericles had a good reputation, and when they were worse, the Athenians never voted to convict him in any shameful deposition. But after he had turned them into “admirable and good” people, near the end of his life, they voted to convict Pericles of
[516]
embezzlement and came close to condemning him to death, because they thought he was a wicked man, obviously.

C
ALLICLES
: Well? Did that make Pericles a bad man?

S
OCRATES
: A man like that who cared for donkeys or horses or cattle would at least look bad if he showed these animals kicking, butting, and biting him because of their wildness, when they had been doing none of these things when he took them over. Or don’t you think that any caretaker [b] of any animal is a bad one who will show his animals to be wilder than when he took them over, when they were gentler? Do you think so or not?

C
ALLICLES
: Oh yes, so I may gratify you.

S
OCRATES
: In that case gratify me now with your answer, too. Is man one of the animals, too?

C
ALLICLES
: Of course he is.

S
OCRATES
: Wasn’t Pericles a caretaker of men?

C
ALLICLES
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: Well? Shouldn’t he, according to what we agreed just now, have turned them out more just instead of more unjust, if while he cared for them he really was good at politics? [c]

C
ALLICLES
: Yes, he should have.

S
OCRATES
: Now as Homer says, the just are gentle.
²⁵
What do you say? Don’t you say the same?

C
ALLICLES
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: But Pericles certainly showed them to be wilder than they were when he took them over, and that toward himself, the person he’d least want this to happen to.

C
ALLICLES
: Do you want me to agree with you?

S
OCRATES
: Yes, if you think that what I say is true.

C
ALLICLES
: So be it, then.

S
OCRATES
: And if wilder, then both more unjust and worse?

[d] C
ALLICLES
: So be it.

S
OCRATES
: So on this reasoning Pericles wasn’t good at politics.

C
ALLICLES
: You at least deny that he was.

S
OCRATES
: By Zeus, you do, too, given what you were agreeing to. Let’s go back to Cimon. Tell me: didn’t the people he was serving ostracize him so that they wouldn’t hear his voice for ten years? And didn’t they do the very same thing to Themistocles, punishing him with exile besides? And didn’t they vote to throw Miltiades, of Marathon fame, into the pit, and [e] if it hadn’t been for the prytanis he would have been thrown in?
²⁶
And yet these things would not have happened to these men if they were good men, as you say they were. At least it’s not the case that good drivers are the ones who at the start don’t fall out of their chariots but who do fall out after they’ve cared for their horses and become better drivers themselves. This doesn’t happen either in driving or in any other work. Or do you think it does?

C
ALLICLES
: No, I don’t.

[517]
S
OCRATES
: So it looks as though our earlier statements were true, that we don’t know any man who has proved to be good at politics in this city. You were agreeing that none of our present-day ones has, though you said that some of those of times past had, and you gave preference to these men. But these have been shown to be on equal footing with the men of today. The result is that if these men were orators, they practiced neither the true oratory—for in that case they wouldn’t have been thrown out—nor the flattering kind.

C
ALLICLES
: But surely, Socrates, any accomplishment that any of our present-day men produces is a far cry from the sorts of accomplishments [b] produced by any one of the others you choose.

S
OCRATES
: No, my strange friend, I’m not criticizing these men either, insofar as they were servants of the city. I think rather that they proved to be better servants than the men of today, and more capable than they of satisfying the city’s appetites. But the truth is that in redirecting its appetites and not giving in to them, using persuasion or constraint to get [c] the citizens to become better, they were really not much different from our contemporaries. That alone is the task of a good citizen. Yes, I too agree with you that they were more clever than our present leaders at supplying ships and walls and dockyards and many other things of the sort.

Now you and I are doing an odd thing in our conversation. The whole time we’ve been discussing, we constantly keep drifting back to the same point, neither of us recognizing what the other is saying. For my part, I believe you’ve agreed many times and recognized that after all this subject of ours has two parts, both in the case of the body and the soul. The one [d] part of it is the servient one, enabling us to provide our bodies with food whenever they’re hungry or with drink whenever they’re thirsty, and whenever they’re cold, with clothes, wraps, shoes, and other things our bodies come to have an appetite for. I’m purposely using the same examples in speaking to you, so that you’ll understand more easily. For these, I think you agree, are the very things a shopkeeper, importer, or producer can provide, a breadbaker or pastrychef, a weaver or cobbler or tanner, [e] so it isn’t at all surprising that such a person should think himself and be thought by others to be a caretaker of the body—by everyone who doesn’t know that over and above all these practices there’s a craft, that of gymnastics and medicine, that really does care for the body and is entitled to rule all these crafts and use their products because of its knowledge of what food or drink is good or bad for bodily excellence, a knowledge which all
[518]
of the others lack. That’s why the other crafts are slavish and servient and ill-bred, and why gymnastics and medicine are by rights mistresses over them. Now, when I say that these same things hold true of the soul, too, I think you sometimes understand me, and you agree as one who knows what I’m saying. But then a little later you come along saying that there have been persons who’ve proved to be admirable and good citizens in [b] the city, and when I ask who they are, you seem to me to produce people who in the area of politics are very much the same sort you would produce if I asked you, “Who have proved to be or are good caretakers of bodies?” and you replied in all seriousness, “Thearion the breadbaker, and Mithaecus the author of the book on Sicilian pastry baking, and Sarambus the shopkeeper, because these men have proved to be wonderful caretakers of bodies, the first by providing wonderful loaves of bread, the second pastry, and the third wine.” [c]

Perhaps you’d be upset if I said to you, “My man, you don’t have the slightest understanding of gymnastics. The men you’re mentioning to me are servants, satisfiers of appetites! They have no understanding whatever of anything that’s admirable and good in these cases. They’ll fill and fatten people’s bodies, if they get the chance, and besides that, destroy their original flesh as well, all the while receiving their praise! The latter, in their turn, thanks to their inexperience, will lay the blame for their illnesses [d] and the destruction of their original flesh not on those who threw the parties, but on any people who happen to be with them at the time giving them advice. Yes, when that earlier stuffing has come bringing sickness in its train much later, then, because it’s proved to be unhealthy, they’ll blame these people and scold them and do something bad to them if they can, and they’ll sing the praises of those earlier people, the ones responsible [e] for their ills. Right now you’re operating very much like that, too, Callicles. You sing the praises of those who threw parties for these people, and who feasted them lavishly with what they had an appetite for. And they say that
they
have made the city great! But that the city is swollen and festering,
[519]
thanks to those early leaders, that they don’t notice. For they filled the city with harbors and dockyards, walls, and tribute payments and such trash as that, but did so without justice and self-control. So, when that fit of sickness comes on, they’ll blame their advisers of the moment and sing the praises of Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles, the ones who are to blame for their ills. Perhaps, if you’re not careful, they’ll lay their hands [b] on you, and on my friend Alcibiades, when they lose not only what they gained but what they had originally as well, even though you aren’t responsible for their ills but perhaps accessories to them.

And yet there’s a foolish business that I, for one, both see happening now and hear about in connection with our early leaders. For I notice that whenever the city lays its hands on one of its politicians because he does what’s unjust, they resent it and complain indignantly that they’re suffering terrible things. They’ve done many good things for the city, and so they’re [c] being unjustly brought to ruin by it, so their argument goes. But that’s completely false. Not a single city leader could ever be brought to ruin by the very city he’s the leader of. It looks as though those who profess to be politicians are just like those who profess to be sophists. For sophists, too, even though they’re wise in other matters, do this absurd thing: while they claim to be teachers of excellence, they frequently accuse their students of doing them wrong, depriving them of their fees and withholding other forms of thanks from them, even though the students have been well served by them. Yet what could be a more illogical business than this [d] statement, that people who’ve become good and just, whose injustice has been removed by their teacher and who have come to possess justice, should wrong him—something they can’t do? Don’t you think that’s absurd, my friend? You’ve made me deliver a real popular harangue, Callicles, because you aren’t willing to answer.

C
ALLICES
: And you couldn’t speak unless somebody answered you?

[e] S
OCRATES
: Evidently I could. Anyhow I
am
stretching my speeches out at length now, since you’re unwilling to answer me. But, my good man, tell me, by the god of friendship: don’t you think it’s illogical that someone who says he’s made someone else good should find fault with that person, charging that he, whom he himself made to become and to be good, is after all wicked?

C
ALLICLES
: Yes, I do think so.

S
OCRATES
: Don’t you hear people who say they’re educating people for excellence saying things like that?

[520]
C
ALLICLES
: Yes, I do. But why would you mention completely worthless people?

S
OCRATES
: Why would you talk about those people who, although they say they’re the city’s leaders and devoted to making it as good as possible, turn around and accuse it, when the time comes, of being the most wicked? Do you think they’re any different from those others? Yes, my blessed man, they are one and the same, the sophist and the orator, or nearly so and pretty similar, as I was telling Polus. But because you don’t see this, you suppose that one of them, oratory, is something wonderful, while you [b] sneer at the other. In actuality, however, sophistry is more to be admired than oratory, insofar as legislation is more admirable than the administration of justice, and gymnastics more than medicine. And I, for one, should have supposed that public speakers and sophists are the only people not in a position to charge the creature they themselves educate with being wicked to them, or else they simultaneously accuse themselves as well, by this same argument, of having entirely failed to benefit those whom they say they benefit. Isn’t this so?