oming a warning to them. The latter class are generally kings and
potentates; meaner persons, happily for themselves, have not the same
power of doing injustice. Sisyphus and Tityus, not Thersites, are
supposed by Homer to be undergoing everlasting punishment. Not that
there is anything to prevent a great man from being a good one, as is
shown by the famous example of Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus. But to
Rhadamanthus the souls are only known as good or bad; they are stripped
of their dignities and preferments; he despatches the bad to Tartarus,
labelled either as curable or incurable, and looks with love and
admiration on the soul of some just one, whom he sends to the islands of
the blest. Similar is the practice of Aeacus; and Minos overlooks them,
holding a golden sceptre, as Odysseus in Homer saw him

'Wielding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.'

My wish for myself and my fellow-men is, that we may present our souls
undefiled to the judge in that day; my desire in life is to be able to
meet death. And I exhort you, and retort upon you the reproach which you
cast upon me,--that you will stand before the judge, gaping, and with
dizzy brain, and any one may box you on the ear, and do you all manner
of evil.

Perhaps you think that this is an old wives' fable. But you, who are the
three wisest men in Hellas, have nothing better to say, and no one will
ever show that to do is better than to suffer evil. A man should study
to be, and not merely to seem. If he is bad, he should become good, and
avoid all flattery, whether of the many or of the few.

Follow me, then; and if you are looked down upon, that will do you no
harm. And when we have practised virtue, we will betake ourselves to
politics, but not until we are delivered from the shameful state of
ignorance and uncertainty in which we are at present. Let us follow
in the way of virtue and justice, and not in the way to which you,
Callicles, invite us; for that way is nothing worth.

We will now consider in order some of the principal points of the
dialogue. Having regard (1) to the age of Plato and the ironical
character of his writings, we may compare him with himself, and with
other great teachers, and we may note in passing the objections of his
critics. And then (2) casting one eye upon him, we may cast another upon
ourselves, and endeavour to draw out the great lessons which he
teaches for all time, stripped of the accidental form in w