Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/411

KALLIKLES. 380 iressed to the chiefs, b.it by blows of his stick, accompanied with contemptuous reprimand, to the common people. The indirect evidence thus afforded, that Sokrates countenanced unequal dealing and ill usage towards the many, told much against him in the minds of the dikasts. What would they have felt then towards a sophist who publicly professed the political morality of Kallikles ? The truth is, not only was it impossible that any such morality, or anything of the same type even much diluted, could find its way into the educational lectures of profes- sors at Athens, but the fear would be in the opposite direction. If the sophist erred in either way, it would be in that which Sokrates imputes, by making his lectures over-democratical. Nay, if we suppose any opportunity to have arisen of discussing the doctrine of Kallikles, he would hardly omit to flatter the ears cf the surrounding democrats by enhancing the beneficent results of legality and equal dealing, and by denouncing this ' natural despot," or undisclosed Napoleon, as one who must either take his place under such restraints, or find a place in some other city. . I have thus shown, even from Plato himself, that the doctrine ascribed to Kallikles neither did enter, nor could have entered, into the lectures of a sophist or professed teacher. The same conclusion may be maintained respecting the doctrine of Thra- symachus in the first book of the " Republic." Thrasymachus was a rhetorical teacher, who had devised precepts respecting the construction of an oration and the training of young men for public speaking. It is most probable that he confined himself, like Gorgias, to this department, and that he did not profess to give moral lectures, like Protagoras and Prodikus. But grant- ing him to have given such, he would not talk about justice in the way in which Plato makes him talk, if he desired to give any satisfaction to an Athenian audience. The mere brutality and ferocious impudence of demeanor even to exaggeration, with which Plato invests him, is in itself a strong proof that the doc- trine, ushered in with such a preface, was not that of a popular and acceptable teacher, winning favor in public audiences. He defines justice to be " the interest of the superior power ; that rule, which, in every society, the dominant power prescribes, as being for its own advantage." A man is just, he says, for the acvan tage of another, not for his own : he is weak, cannot help himself,