w energetically you polish them
up for the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were two
statues.

I do my best, he said. And now that we know what they are like there
is no difficulty in tracing out the sort of life which awaits either
of them. This I will proceed to describe; but as you may think the
description a little too coarse, I ask you to suppose, Socrates, that
the words which follow are not mine.--Let me put them into the mouths of
the eulogists of injustice: They will tell you that the just man who is
thought unjust will be scourged, racked, bound--will have his eyes
burnt out; and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be
impaled: Then he will understand that he ought to seem only, and not to
be, just; the words of Aeschylus may be more truly spoken of the unjust
than of the just. For the unjust is pursuing a reality; he does not live
with a view to appearances--he wants to be really unjust and not to seem
only:--

'His mind has a soil deep and fertile, Out of which spring his prudent
counsels.'

In the first place, he is thought just, and therefore bears rule in the
city; he can marry whom he will, and give in marriage to whom he
will; also he can trade and deal where he likes, and always to his own
advantage, because he has no misgivings about injustice; and at every
contest, whether in public or private, he gets the better of his
antagonists, and gains at their expense, and is rich, and out of his
gains he can benefit his friends, and harm his enemies; moreover, he
can offer sacrifices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly and
magnificently, and can honour the gods or any man whom he wants to
honour in a far better style than the just, and therefore he is likely
to be dearer than they are to the gods. And thus, Socrates, gods and men
are said to unite in making the life of the unjust better than the life
of the just.

I was going to say something in answer to Glaucon, when Adeimantus, his
brother, interposed: Socrates, he said, you do not suppose that there is
nothing more to be urged?

Why, what else is there? I answered.

The strongest point of all has not been even mentioned, he replied.

Well, then, according to the proverb, 'Let brother help brother'--if
he fails in any part do you assist him; although I must confess that
Glaucon has already said quite enough to lay me in the dust, and take
from me the power of helping justice.

Nonsense, he replied. But