ust men gentle, as Homer says?--or are you of
another mind?

CALLICLES: I agree.

SOCRATES: And yet he really did make them more savage than he received
them, and their savageness was shown towards himself; which he must have
been very far from desiring.

CALLICLES: Do you want me to agree with you?

SOCRATES: Yes, if I seem to you to speak the truth.

CALLICLES: Granted then.

SOCRATES: And if they were more savage, must they not have been more
unjust and inferior?

CALLICLES: Granted again.

SOCRATES: Then upon this view, Pericles was not a good statesman?

CALLICLES: That is, upon your view.

SOCRATES: Nay, the view is yours, after what you have admitted. Take
the case of Cimon again. Did not the very persons whom he was serving
ostracize him, in order that they might not hear his voice for ten
years? and they did just the same to Themistocles, adding the penalty
of exile; and they voted that Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, should be
thrown into the pit of death, and he was only saved by the Prytanis. And
yet, if they had been really good men, as you say, these things would
never have happened to them. For the good charioteers are not those
who at first keep their place, and then, when they have broken-in their
horses, and themselves become better charioteers, are thrown out--that
is not the way either in charioteering or in any profession.--What do
you think?

CALLICLES: I should think not.

SOCRATES: Well, but if so, the truth is as I have said already, that
in the Athenian State no one has ever shown himself to be a good
statesman--you admitted that this was true of our present statesmen, but
not true of former ones, and you preferred them to the others; yet they
have turned out to be no better than our present ones; and therefore, if
they were rhetoricians, they did not use the true art of rhetoric or of
flattery, or they would not have fallen out of favour.

CALLICLES: But surely, Socrates, no living man ever came near any one of
them in his performances.

SOCRATES: O, my dear friend, I say nothing against them regarded as the
serving-men of the State; and I do think that they were certainly more
serviceable than those who are living now, and better able to gratify
the wishes of the State; but as to transforming those desires and not
allowing them to have their way, and using the powers which they had,
whether of persuasion or of force, in the improvement of their fellow
citizens, which is th