can overreach the enemy as well as protect himself, Justice, if it can guard, must also steal; and the just man is a sort of thief, like Homer's Autolycus—
"Who best could steal, and swear he never stole."[1]
Your poets have brought Justice to a pretty pass! And may not men make mistakes, and injure their real friends?"
"Yes," says Polemarchus; "but by a friend I mean one who both seems and really is one; and it is just to injure one's enemy if he is bad, and to help one's friend if he is good."
"But hurting a man is the same as making him worse with respect to virtue, and such moral injury belongs not to good, but to its contrary, evil; just as it is not heat that chills, but its contrary, cold. So it can never be just to injure either friend or foe; and this definition must have been invented not by Simonides but by Periander, or some other potentate, who thought his power irresistible."
Then Thrasymachus, who had been growing more and more impatient, takes advantage of a pause, and, "like a wild beast gathering itself up for a spring," bursts in upon the argument.
"No more of this foolish complaisance, Socrates; answer yourself, instead of asking what justice is; and don't tell me that it is 'the due,' or 'the profitable,' or 'the expedient,' or 'the lucrative,' or any nonsense of that sort. And let us have none of your usual affectation of ignorance, if you please."
- ↑ Hom. Odyss., xix. 395.
