: cookery: medicine:: sophistic: legislation.

And,

Cookery: medicine:: rhetoric: the art of justice.

And this is the true scheme of them, but when measured only by the
gratification which they procure, they become jumbled together and
return to their aboriginal chaos. Socrates apologizes for the length of
his speech, which was necessary to the explanation of the subject, and
begs Polus not unnecessarily to retaliate on him.

'Do you mean to say that the rhetoricians are esteemed flatterers?' They
are not esteemed at all. 'Why, have they not great power, and can they
not do whatever they desire?' They have no power, and they only do what
they think best, and never what they desire; for they never attain the
true object of desire, which is the good. 'As if you, Socrates, would
not envy the possessor of despotic power, who can imprison, exile, kill
any one whom he pleases.' But Socrates replies that he has no wish to
put any one to death; he who kills another, even justly, is not to be
envied, and he who kills him unjustly is to be pitied; it is better to
suffer than to do injustice. He does not consider that going about with
a dagger and putting men out of the way, or setting a house on fire, is
real power. To this Polus assents, on the ground that such acts would
be punished, but he is still of opinion that evil-doers, if they
are unpunished, may be happy enough. He instances Archelaus, son
of Perdiccas, the usurper of Macedonia. Does not Socrates think him
happy?--Socrates would like to know more about him; he cannot pronounce
even the great king to be happy, unless he knows his mental and moral
condition. Polus explains that Archelaus was a slave, being the son of
a woman who was the slave of Alcetas, brother of Perdiccas king of
Macedon--and he, by every species of crime, first murdering his uncle
and then his cousin and half-brother, obtained the kingdom. This was
very wicked, and yet all the world, including Socrates, would like to
have his place. Socrates dismisses the appeal to numbers; Polus, if he
will, may summon all the rich men of Athens, Nicias and his brothers,
Aristocrates, the house of Pericles, or any other great family--this is
the kind of evidence which is adduced in courts of justice, where truth
depends upon numbers. But Socrates employs proof of another sort; his
appeal is to one witness only,--that is to say, the person with whom
he is speaking; him he will convict out of his own mouth. And h