“But he always spoke true things,” said the young man, “and things that were to the real profit of his hearers.”
“Just so,” replied Simmias, “but that they were true and profitable did not make them pleasant, or the speaker of them welcome. What think you would happen to a school-master if his pupils whom he daily corrects and disciplines, sometimes with hard tasks and sometimes with blows, were permitted to judge him, or to a physician if the children whom he seeks to cure of their ailments with nauseous drugs, or, it may be, with the knife or cautery, had him in their power?”
“Truly, it might fare ill with him,” Callias confessed, thinking to himself of certain angry thoughts that in his own boyhood he had cherished against his own teacher and doctor.
“Yes,” said Crito, “Simmias is right, nor did this matter escape the notice of us Athenians, though we did not perceive it so plainly. You, I know, have been much absent from Athens since you grew to manhood, yet you must have seen something of this. You were here, for example, when the admirals were condemned after the battle at Arginusæ. Is it not so?”
“I was here,” said Callias.
“And you know how Socrates set himself against the will of the people, refusing to put to the vote a proposal which he believed to be unconstitutional. Well, he suffered nothing at that time, because their will prevailed in spite of him. Yet we saw that there were many who remembered this against him, and only waited for the opportunity of avenging themselves upon him. Nor was he less constant in opposing the few, when he believed them to be acting wrongfully, than in opposing the many. Listen now, to what he did and said in the days of the Thirty. Were you in Athens at that time?”
“No,” replied Callias, “I left the city, or rather was carried away from it—” at this there was a general laugh, most of the company having heard of the curious story of his abduction—“after the murder of the Generals, and did not set foot in it till the other day.”
“But you know what manner of men these Thirty were.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, among other vile things that they did was this, that they put to death many excellent men whom they conceived to be enemies to themselves. Then Socrates, in that free way of his, said, ‘If a herdsman were so to manage his herd that the cattle became fewer and not more, men would consider him a bad herdsman. Still more would they consider him to be a bad ruler of a city who should so manage it that the citizens became not more but less numerous.’ This being reported to Critias, who was a chief among the Thirty, he sent for Socrates, and said to him, ‘There is a law that no man shall teach or use the art of words.’ Socrates said, ‘Mean you by this, the art of words rightly spoken or the art of words wrongly spoken?’ On this, one Charicles, who was a colleague of Critias, and was standing by him, broke in violently: ‘Since, Socrates, you find it so hard to understand an altogether easy thing, take this as a plain rule, that you are not to talk with young men at all.’ ‘Truly I desire to obey the law,’ said Socrates; ‘tell me then what you mean by young men. How young? Up to what age?’ Charicles said, ‘Up to thirty, at which age men are able to take part in affairs of the State.’ ‘But,’ said Socrates, ‘if I desire to buy a thing of a man who is under thirty, is it permitted me to ask what it costs?’ ‘Yes,’ said Charicles, ‘you may say so much.’ ‘And if a man under thirty asks me where Critias lives or Charicles lives, may I answer him?’ ‘Yes, you may answer such questions,’ said Charicles. Then Critias broke in, ‘But you must not talk about blacksmiths and coppersmiths and tanners; and indeed you have worn these themes pretty well threadbare by this time.’ ‘Nor about righteousness and wickedness and such things, I suppose,’ said Socrates. ‘No, indeed, nor about herdsmen. If you speak of herdsmen and of the herd being diminished, take care that it be not diminished by one more, even by you.’”