verses
which the admirer of Glaucon made in honour of you after you had
distinguished yourselves at the battle of Megara:--

'Sons of Ariston,' he sang, 'divine offspring of an illustrious hero.'

The epithet is very appropriate, for there is something truly divine in
being able to argue as you have done for the superiority of injustice,
and remaining unconvinced by your own arguments. And I do believe that
you are not convinced--this I infer from your general character, for had
I judged only from your speeches I should have mistrusted you. But
now, the greater my confidence in you, the greater is my difficulty in
knowing what to say. For I am in a strait between two; on the one hand I
feel that I am unequal to the task; and my inability is brought home to
me by the fact that you were not satisfied with the answer which I made
to Thrasymachus, proving, as I thought, the superiority which justice
has over injustice. And yet I cannot refuse to help, while breath and
speech remain to me; I am afraid that there would be an impiety in being
present when justice is evil spoken of and not lifting up a hand in her
defence. And therefore I had best give such help as I can.

Glaucon and the rest entreated me by all means not to let the question
drop, but to proceed in the investigation. They wanted to arrive at the
truth, first, about the nature of justice and injustice, and secondly,
about their relative advantages. I told them, what I really thought,
that the enquiry would be of a serious nature, and would require very
good eyes. Seeing then, I said, that we are no great wits, I think that
we had better adopt a method which I may illustrate thus; suppose that
a short-sighted person had been asked by some one to read small letters
from a distance; and it occurred to some one else that they might be
found in another place which was larger and in which the letters were
larger--if they were the same and he could read the larger letters
first, and then proceed to the lesser--this would have been thought a
rare piece of good fortune.

Very true, said Adeimantus; but how does the illustration apply to our
enquiry?

I will tell you, I replied; justice, which is the subject of our
enquiry, is, as you know, sometimes spoken of as the virtue of an
individual, and sometimes as the virtue of a State.

True, he replied.

And is not a State larger than an individual?

It is.

Then in the larger the quantity of justice is likely to