n completely upset, Thrasymachus,
instead of replying to me, said: Tell me, Socrates, have you got a
nurse?

Why do you ask such a question, I said, when you ought rather to be
answering?

Because she leaves you to snivel, and never wipes your nose: she has not
even taught you to know the shepherd from the sheep.

What makes you say that? I replied.

Because you fancy that the shepherd or neatherd fattens or tends the
sheep or oxen with a view to their own good and not to the good of
himself or his master; and you further imagine that the rulers of
states, if they are true rulers, never think of their subjects as sheep,
and that they are not studying their own advantage day and night. Oh,
no; and so entirely astray are you in your ideas about the just and
unjust as not even to know that justice and the just are in reality
another's good; that is to say, the interest of the ruler and stronger,
and the loss of the subject and servant; and injustice the opposite; for
the unjust is lord over the truly simple and just: he is the stronger,
and his subjects do what is for his interest, and minister to his
happiness, which is very far from being their own. Consider further,
most foolish Socrates, that the just is always a loser in comparison
with the unjust. First of all, in private contracts: wherever the unjust
is the partner of the just you will find that, when the partnership is
dissolved, the unjust man has always more and the just less. Secondly,
in their dealings with the State: when there is an income-tax, the just
man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income;
and when there is anything to be received the one gains nothing and the
other much. Observe also what happens when they take an office; there is
the just man neglecting his affairs and perhaps suffering other losses,
and getting nothing out of the public, because he is just; moreover he
is hated by his friends and acquaintance for refusing to serve them in
unlawful ways. But all this is reversed in the case of the unjust man.
I am speaking, as before, of injustice on a large scale in which the
advantage of the unjust is most apparent; and my meaning will be most
clearly seen if we turn to that highest form of injustice in which the
criminal is the happiest of men, and the sufferers or those who refuse
to do injustice are the most miserable--that is to say tyranny, which by
fraud and force takes away the property of others, not little by l