appropriately engaged in
offering a sacrifice. He is the pattern of an old man who has almost
done with life, and is at peace with himself and with all mankind. He
feels that he is drawing nearer to the world below, and seems to linger
around the memory of the past. He is eager that Socrates should come
to visit him, fond of the poetry of the last generation, happy in the
consciousness of a well-spent life, glad at having escaped from the
tyranny of youthful lusts. His love of conversation, his affection,
his indifference to riches, even his garrulity, are interesting traits
of character. He is not one of those who have nothing to say, because
their whole mind has been absorbed in making money. Yet he
acknowledges that riches have the advantage of placing men above the
temptation to dishonesty or falsehood. The respectful attention shown
to him by Socrates, whose love of conversation, no less than the
mission imposed upon him by the Oracle, leads him to ask questions of
all men, young and old alike, should also be noted. Who better suited
to raise the question of justice than Cephalus, whose life might seem
to be the expression of it? The moderation with which old age is
pictured by Cephalus as a very tolerable portion of existence is
characteristic, not only of him, but of Greek feeling generally, and
contrasts with the exaggeration of Cicero in the De Senectute. The
evening of life is described by Plato in the most expressive manner,
yet with the fewest possible touches. As Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic.
iv. 16), the aged Cephalus would have been out of place in the
discussion which follows, and which he could neither have understood
nor taken part in without a violation of dramatic propriety.

His "son and heir" Polemarchus has the frankness and impetuousness of
youth; he is for detaining Socrates by force in the opening scene, and
will not "let him off" on the subject of women and children. Like
Cephalus, he is limited in his point of view, and represents the
proverbial stage of morality which has rules of life rather than
principles; and he quotes Simonides as his father had quoted Pindar.
But after this he has no more to say; the answers which he makes are
only elicited from him by the dialectic of Socrates. He has not yet
experienced the influence of the Sophists like Glaucon and Adeimantus,
nor is he sensible of the necessity of refuting them; he belongs to the
pre-Socratic or pre-dialectical age.