s own virtue?

ANYTUS: Yes certainly,--if he wanted to be so.

SOCRATES: But would he not have wanted? He would, at any rate, have
desired to make his own son a good man and a gentleman; he could not
have been jealous of him, or have intentionally abstained from
imparting to him his own virtue. Did you never hear that he made his son
Cleophantus a famous horseman; and had him taught to stand upright on
horseback and hurl a javelin, and to do many other marvellous things;
and in anything which could be learned from a master he was well
trained? Have you not heard from our elders of him?

ANYTUS: I have.

SOCRATES: Then no one could say that his son showed any want of
capacity?

ANYTUS: Very likely not.

SOCRATES: But did any one, old or young, ever say in your hearing that
Cleophantus, son of Themistocles, was a wise or good man, as his father
was?

ANYTUS: I have certainly never heard any one say so.

SOCRATES: And if virtue could have been taught, would his father
Themistocles have sought to train him in these minor accomplishments,
and allowed him who, as you must remember, was his own son, to be
no better than his neighbours in those qualities in which he himself
excelled?

ANYTUS: Indeed, indeed, I think not.

SOCRATES: Here was a teacher of virtue whom you admit to be among
the best men of the past. Let us take another,--Aristides, the son of
Lysimachus: would you not acknowledge that he was a good man?

ANYTUS: To be sure I should.

SOCRATES: And did not he train his son Lysimachus better than any other
Athenian in all that could be done for him by the help of masters? But
what has been the result? Is he a bit better than any other mortal?
He is an acquaintance of yours, and you see what he is like. There is
Pericles, again, magnificent in his wisdom; and he, as you are aware,
had two sons, Paralus and Xanthippus.

ANYTUS: I know.

SOCRATES: And you know, also, that he taught them to be unrivalled
horsemen, and had them trained in music and gymnastics and all sorts of
arts--in these respects they were on a level with the best--and had
he no wish to make good men of them? Nay, he must have wished it. But
virtue, as I suspect, could not be taught. And that you may not suppose
the incompetent teachers to be only the meaner sort of Athenians and
few in number, remember again that Thucydides had two sons, Melesias and
Stephanus, whom, besides giving them a good education in other things,
he trained