ng themselves to have neither; hence there arise
laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed
by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature
of justice;--it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which
is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is
to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice,
being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good,
but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men
to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would
ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be
mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature
and origin of justice.

Now that those who practise justice do so involuntarily and because
they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine
something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust
power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will
lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust
man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest,
which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the
path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are
supposing may be most completely given to them in the form of such a
power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges the ancestor of
Croesus the Lydian. According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd
in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an
earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was
feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening,
where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having
doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature,
as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold
ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the
shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their
monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he
came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he
chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly
he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak
of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and
again touching the rin