second book, when Glaucon insists that
justice and injustice shall be considered without regard to their
consequences, Adeimantus remarks that they are regarded by mankind in
general only for the sake of their consequences; and in a similar vein
of reflection he urges at the beginning of the fourth book that
Socrates falls in making his citizens happy, and is answered that
happiness is not the first but the second thing, not the direct aim but
the indirect consequence of the good government of a State. In the
discussion about religion and mythology, Adeimantus is the respondent,
but Glaucon breaks in with a slight jest, and carries on the
conversation in a lighter tone about music and gymnastic to the end of
the book. It is Adeimantus again who volunteers the criticism of
common sense on the Socratic method of argument, and who refuses to let
Socrates pass lightly over the question of women and children. It is
Adeimantus who is the respondent in the more argumentative, as Glaucon
in the lighter and more imaginative portions of the Dialogue. For
example, throughout the greater part of the sixth book, the causes of
the corruption of philosophy and the conception of the idea of good are
discussed with Adeimantus. Then Glaucon resumes his place of principal
respondent; but he has a difficulty in apprehending the higher
education of Socrates, and makes some false hits in the course of the
discussion. Once more Adeimantus returns with the allusion to his
brother Glaucon whom he compares to the contentious State; in the next
book he is again superseded, and Glaucon continues to the end.

Thus in a succession of characters Plato represents the successive
stages of morality, beginning with the Athenian gentleman of the olden
time, who is followed by the practical man of that day regulating his
life by proverbs and saws; to him succeeds the wild generalization of
the Sophists, and lastly come the young disciples of the great teacher,
who know the sophistical arguments but will not be convinced by them,
and desire to go deeper into the nature of things. These too, like
Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, are clearly distinguished from one
another. Neither in the Republic, nor in any other Dialogue of Plato,
is a single character repeated.

The delineation of Socrates in the Republic is not wholly consistent.
In the first book we have more of the real Socrates, such as he is
depicted in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, in th