4 Plato 3 · On Speech and on Names. Handed down at the Academy, from his Gorgias and Cratylus
This book is about persuasion and about names. The heaviest speech in it is Callicles’, and Plato did not strike it out, nor does this scripture. He predicted correctly what would happen to the prophet — predicting correctly is not the same as being right.
3.1The last man to speak that day was Callicles. He spoke the heaviest, and I have written him down without changing a word.
3.2He said: this justice of yours was made by the weak.
3.3He said: the weak are many and the strong are few. The many lay down a rule that all shall have a share, and that is how they hold the few in check.
3.4He said: look at nature. The lion does not go halves with the sheep.
3.5He said: that the stronger takes more — that is justice as it is born. Yours is a rope of shame tied round a lion.
3.6Then he turned to my teacher and said something heavier still.
3.7"Philosophy is a fine thing for a young man to play at."
3.8"A grown man still crouching in a corner splitting words has wasted himself."
3.9"He cannot manage affairs, he does not understand people, he does not know how to keep himself safe in a city."
3.10"One day somebody will bring a false charge against you and drag you into court, and any low man at all will be able to have you killed."
3.11"And you will stand there with your mouth open and not one useful word will come out of it."
3.12Nobody in the room answered him.
3.13I have a second thing to write down, and it is harder than the first: he was right.
3.14That is exactly what happened. Somebody brought a false charge and dragged him into court, and a low man had him killed. (cf. 1 Plato 4.13)
3.15I do not strike out Callicles’ speech. Strike it out and my book weighs less.
3.16I add only one sentence, and it is mine and not my teacher’s.
3.17He was right about what would happen. He was not right about whether it ought to happen.
3.18That a man reckoned in advance where the blade would fall does not mean he has shown the man holding it was in the right.