“I said of Justice,” answered Glaucon, “what a man of knowledge should say.”
“He will not tell!—Veil your face, O Glaucon, for I am not modest for my friend!—Diocles and Timotheus overcrowed the envoys with the glories of the Athenian state. They sat with a downward look, and saw on the earth their bound hopes. Then arose Glaucon, and Apollo inspired him.”
“Fighting for the envoys and their country?”
“By Apollo!” said Glaucon, “fighting for the right of things!”
“First, good as any rhapsode, he gave five lines from Homer! Then he spoke of his own motion, or of Apollo’s motion. He would have Justice reign over the countries of men, and none take advantage of his neighbour!”
“Hmmm!”
“So sounded the Prytaneum.—I find that I cannot give all his arguments, but they were good ones. There was opposition—not from the envoys; they breathed softly and seemed to feel the warmth of the sun after winter—but Diocles and Timotheus and their following drove in in a mighty counter-current. Then might you have seen Odysseus fight the seas!”
“Justice—”
“Later he brought in friendship and alliance, and the love of a friend for the true and the beautiful in his friend, and the friend’s desire that always his friend should lift with him. So that, climbing the mountain, one should not cry down to another, ‘Lo, now the sea opens before me! lo, now I see all Hellas!’ while the other cries sorrowfully up to him, ‘Still am I in the woods and briars and among the caves!’ He made application to states.”
“By Ares!” interrupted Hippodamus, “that is not the way I look at it!”