le of Megara (anno
456?)...The character of Adeimantus is deeper and graver, and the
profounder objections are commonly put into his mouth. Glaucon is more
demonstrative, and generally opens the game. Adeimantus pursues the
argument further. Glaucon has more of the liveliness and quick sympathy
of youth; Adeimantus has the maturer judgment of a grown-up man of
the world. In the 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 fails 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. 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State; in the next book he is again superseded, and Glaucon continues to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 to