head of them, who would rather
be any other Macedonian than Archelaus!

SOCRATES: I praised you at first, Polus, for being a rhetorician rather
than a reasoner. And this, as I suppose, is the sort of argument with
which you fancy that a child might refute me, and by which I stand
refuted when I say that the unjust man is not happy. But, my good
friend, where is the refutation? I cannot admit a word which you have
been saying.

POLUS: That is because you will not; for you surely must think as I do.

SOCRATES: Not so, my simple friend, but because you will refute me after
the manner which rhetoricians practise in courts of law. For there the
one party think that they refute the other when they bring forward a
number of witnesses of good repute in proof of their allegations, and
their adversary has only a single one or none at all. But this kind of
proof is of no value where truth is the aim; a man may often be
sworn down by a multitude of false witnesses who have a great air of
respectability. And in this argument nearly every one, Athenian and
stranger alike, would be on your side, if you should bring witnesses in
disproof of my statement;--you may, if you will, summon Nicias the son
of Niceratus, and let his brothers, who gave the row of tripods which
stand in the precincts of Dionysus, come with him; or you may summon
Aristocrates, the son of Scellius, who is the giver of that famous
offering which is at Delphi; summon, if you will, the whole house of
Pericles, or any other great Athenian family whom you choose;--they will
all agree with you: I only am left alone and cannot agree, for you do
not convince me; although you produce many false witnesses against me,
in the hope of depriving me of my inheritance, which is the truth. But
I consider that nothing worth speaking of will have been effected by me
unless I make you the one witness of my words; nor by you, unless you
make me the one witness of yours; no matter about the rest of the world.
For there are two ways of refutation, one which is yours and that of the
world in general; but mine is of another sort--let us compare them,
and see in what they differ. For, indeed, we are at issue about matters
which to know is honourable and not to know disgraceful; to know or
not to know happiness and misery--that is the chief of them. And what
knowledge can be nobler? or what ignorance more disgraceful than this?
And therefore I will begin by asking you whether you do not t