to him, of Socrates with evident astonishment. He can hardly
understand the meaning of Archelaus being miserable, or of rhetoric
being only useful in self-accusation. When the argument with him has
fairly run out.

Callicles, in whose house they are assembled, is introduced on the
stage: he is with difficulty convinced that Socrates is in earnest;
for if these things are true, then, as he says with real emotion, the
foundations of society are upside down. In him another type of character
is represented; he is neither sophist nor philosopher, but man of the
world, and an accomplished Athenian gentleman. He might be described in
modern language as a cynic or materialist, a lover of power and also of
pleasure, and unscrupulous in his means of attaining both. There is no
desire on his part to offer any compromise in the interests of morality;
nor is any concession made by him. Like Thrasymachus in the Republic,
though he is not of the same weak and vulgar class, he consistently
maintains that might is right. His great motive of action is political
ambition; in this he is characteristically Greek. Like Anytus in the
Meno, he is the enemy of the Sophists; but favours the new art of
rhetoric, which he regards as an excellent weapon of attack and defence.
He is a despiser of mankind as he is of philosophy, and sees in the laws
of the state only a violation of the order of nature, which intended
that the stronger should govern the weaker (compare Republic). Like
other men of the world who are of a speculative turn of mind, he
generalizes the bad side of human nature, and has easily brought down
his principles to his practice. Philosophy and poetry alike supply him
with distinctions suited to his view of human life. He has a good will
to Socrates, whose talents he evidently admires, while he censures the
puerile use which he makes of them. He expresses a keen intellectual
interest in the argument. Like Anytus, again, he has a sympathy with
other men of the world; the Athenian statesmen of a former generation,
who showed no weakness and made no mistakes, such as Miltiades,
Themistocles, Pericles, are his favourites. His ideal of human character
is a man of great passions and great powers, which he has developed to
the utmost, and which he uses in his own enjoyment and in the government
of others. Had Critias been the name instead of Callicles, about whom
we know nothing from other sources, the opinions of the man would have
seemed