is friend if he did anything wrong, and that to this end he should
use his rhetoric--all those consequences are true. And that which you
thought that Polus was led to admit out of modesty is true, viz., that,
to do injustice, if more disgraceful than to suffer, is in that degree
worse; and the other position, which, according to Polus, Gorgias
admitted out of modesty, that he who would truly be a rhetorician ought
to be just and have a knowledge of justice, has also turned out to be
true.

And now, these things being as we have said, let us proceed in the next
place to consider whether you are right in throwing in my teeth that
I am unable to help myself or any of my friends or kinsmen, or to save
them in the extremity of danger, and that I am in the power of another
like an outlaw to whom any one may do what he likes,--he may box my
ears, which was a brave saying of yours; or take away my goods or banish
me, or even do his worst and kill me; a condition which, as you say, is
the height of disgrace. My answer to you is one which has been already
often repeated, but may as well be repeated once more. I tell you,
Callicles, that to be boxed on the ears wrongfully is not the worst evil
which can befall a man, nor to have my purse or my body cut open, but
that to smite and slay me and mine wrongfully is far more disgraceful
and more evil; aye, and to despoil and enslave and pillage, or in any
way at all to wrong me and mine, is far more disgraceful and evil to the
doer of the wrong than to me who am the sufferer. These truths, which
have been already set forth as I state them in the previous discussion,
would seem now to have been fixed and riveted by us, if I may use an
expression which is certainly bold, in words which are like bonds of
iron and adamant; and unless you or some other still more enterprising
hero shall break them, there is no possibility of denying what I say.
For my position has always been, that I myself am ignorant how these
things are, but that I have never met any one who could say otherwise,
any more than you can, and not appear ridiculous. This is my position
still, and if what I am saying is true, and injustice is the greatest of
evils to the doer of injustice, and yet there is if possible a greater
than this greatest of evils (compare Republic), in an unjust man not
suffering retribution, what is that defence of which the want will make
a man truly ridiculous? Must not the defence be one which will