y are quite right.

Then how can you be justified in saying that cities will not cease from
evil until philosophers rule in them, when philosophers are acknowledged
by us to be of no use to them?

You ask a question, I said, to which a reply can only be given in a
parable.

Yes, Socrates; and that is a way of speaking to which you are not at all
accustomed, I suppose.

I perceive, I said, that you are vastly amused at having plunged me into
such a hopeless discussion; but now hear the parable, and then you will
be still more amused at the meagreness of my imagination: for the manner
in which the best men are treated in their own States is so grievous
that no single thing on earth is comparable to it; and therefore, if
I am to plead their cause, I must have recourse to fiction, and put
together a figure made up of many things, like the fabulous unions of
goats and stags which are found in pictures. Imagine then a fleet or a
ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of
the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight,
and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. The sailors are
quarrelling with one another about the steering--every one is of opinion
that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of
navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will
further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in
pieces any one who says the contrary. They throng about the captain,
begging and praying him to commit the helm to them; and if at any time
they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the
others or throw them overboard, and having first chained up the noble
captain's senses with drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take
possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating
and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such manner as might be
expected of them. Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in
their plot for getting the ship out of the captain's hands into their
own whether by force or persuasion, they compliment with the name of
sailor, pilot, able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they
call a good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention
to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else
belongs to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the command
of a ship, and that he must and will be the ste