asses may be truly said to be better than itself, and may
be justly praised, where such a victory is gained, or censured in the
opposite case.

ATHENIAN: Whether the better is ever really conquered by the worse, is
a question which requires more discussion, and may be therefore left for
the present. But I now quite understand your meaning when you say
that citizens who are of the same race and live in the same cities may
unjustly conspire, and having the superiority in numbers may overcome
and enslave the few just; and when they prevail, the state may be truly
called its own inferior and therefore bad; and when they are defeated,
its own superior and therefore good.

CLEINIAS: Your remark, Stranger, is a paradox, and yet we cannot
possibly deny it.

ATHENIAN: Here is another case for consideration;--in a family there
may be several brothers, who are the offspring of a single pair; very
possibly the majority of them may be unjust, and the just may be in a
minority.

CLEINIAS: Very possibly.

ATHENIAN: And you and I ought not to raise a question of words as to
whether this family and household are rightly said to be superior when
they conquer, and inferior when they are conquered; for we are not
now considering what may or may not be the proper or customary way of
speaking, but we are considering the natural principles of right and
wrong in laws.

CLEINIAS: What you say, Stranger, is most true.

MEGILLUS: Quite excellent, in my opinion, as far as we have gone.

ATHENIAN: Again; might there not be a judge over these brethren, of whom
we were speaking?

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Now, which would be the better judge--one who destroyed the
bad and appointed the good to govern themselves; or one who, while
allowing the good to govern, let the bad live, and made them voluntarily
submit? Or third, I suppose, in the scale of excellence might be placed
a judge, who, finding the family distracted, not only did not destroy
any one, but reconciled them to one another for ever after, and gave
them laws which they mutually observed, and was able to keep them
friends.

CLEINIAS: The last would be by far the best sort of judge and
legislator.

ATHENIAN: And yet the aim of all the laws which he gave would be the
reverse of war.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: And will he who constitutes the state and orders the life
of man have in view external war, or that kind of intestine war called
civil, which no one, if h