plies,
that the sorrows and discontents of age are to be attributed to the
tempers of men, and that age is a time of peace in which the tyranny
of the passions is no longer felt. Yes, replies Socrates, but the world
will say, Cephalus, that you are happy in old age because you are rich.
'And there is something in what they say, Socrates, but not so much as
they imagine--as Themistocles replied to the Seriphian, "Neither you, if
you had been an Athenian, nor I, if I had been a Seriphian, would ever
have been famous," I might in like manner reply to you, Neither a good
poor man can be happy in age, nor yet a bad rich man.' Socrates remarks
that Cephalus appears not to care about riches, a quality which he
ascribes to his having inherited, not acquired them, and would like
to know what he considers to be the chief advantage of them. Cephalus
answers that when you are old the belief in the world below grows upon
you, and then to have done justice and never to have been compelled to
do injustice through poverty, and never to have deceived anyone, are
felt to be unspeakable blessings. Socrates, who is evidently preparing
for an argument, next asks, What is the meaning of the word justice? To
tell the truth and pay your debts? No more than this? Or must we admit
exceptions? Ought I, for example, to put back into the hands of my
friend, who has gone mad, the sword which I borrowed of him when he
was in his right mind? 'There must be exceptions.' 'And yet,' says
Polemarchus, 'the definition which has been given has the authority
of Simonides.' Here Cephalus retires to look after the sacrifices,
and bequeaths, as Socrates facetiously remarks, the possession of the
argument to his heir, Polemarchus...

The description of old age is finished, and Plato, as his manner is, has
touched the key-note of the whole work in asking for the definition of
justice, first suggesting the question which Glaucon afterwards pursues
respecting external goods, and preparing for the concluding mythus of
the world below in the slight allusion of Cephalus. The portrait of the
just man is a natural frontispiece or introduction to the long discourse
which follows, and may perhaps imply that in all our perplexity about
the nature of justice, there is no difficulty in discerning 'who is
a just man.' The first explanation has been supported by a saying of
Simonides; and now Socrates has a mind to show that the resolution of
justice into two unconnected prece