of gymnastics; those of whom you are
speaking to me are only the ministers and purveyors of luxury, who have
no good or noble notions of their art, and may very likely be filling
and fattening men's bodies and gaining their approval, although the
result is that they lose their original flesh in the long run, and
become thinner than they were before; and yet they, in their
simplicity, will not attribute their diseases and loss of flesh to their
entertainers; but when in after years the unhealthy surfeit brings the
attendant penalty of disease, he who happens to be near them at the
time, and offers them advice, is accused and blamed by them, and if they
could they would do him some harm; while they proceed to eulogize the
men who have been the real authors of the mischief. And that, Callicles,
is just what you are now doing. You praise the men who feasted the
citizens and satisfied their desires, and people say that they have made
the city great, not seeing that the swollen and ulcerated condition of
the State is to be attributed to these elder statesmen; for they have
filled the city full of harbours and docks and walls and revenues and
all that, and have left no room for justice and temperance. And when the
crisis of the disorder comes, the people will blame the advisers of the
hour, and applaud Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles, who are the real
authors of their calamities; and if you are not careful they may assail
you and my friend Alcibiades, when they are losing not only their new
acquisitions, but also their original possessions; not that you are
the authors of these misfortunes of theirs, although you may perhaps be
accessories to them. A great piece of work is always being made, as
I see and am told, now as of old; about our statesmen. When the State
treats any of them as malefactors, I observe that there is a great
uproar and indignation at the supposed wrong which is done to them;
'after all their many services to the State, that they should unjustly
perish,'--so the tale runs. But the cry is all a lie; for no statesman
ever could be unjustly put to death by the city of which he is the head.
The case of the professed statesman is, I believe, very much like that
of the professed sophist; for the sophists, although they are wise men,
are nevertheless guilty of a strange piece of folly; professing to be
teachers of virtue, they will often accuse their disciples of wronging
them, and defrauding them of their pay,