to the unjust they are all, including even health, the greatest of evils.  For in truth, to have sight, and hearing, and the use of the senses, or to live at all without justice and virtue, even though a man be rich in all the so-called goods of fortune, is the greatest of evils, if life be immortal; but not so great, if the bad man lives only a very short time.  These are the truths which, if I am not mistaken, you will persuade or compel your poets to utter with suitable accompaniments of harmony and rhythm, and in these they must train up your youth.  Am I not right?  For I plainly declare that evils as they are termed are goods to the unjust, and only evils to the just, and that goods are truly good to the good, but evil to the evil.  Let me ask again, Are you and I agreed about this?

Cleinias:  I think that we partly agree and partly do not.

Athenian:  When a man has health and wealth and a tyranny which lasts, and when he is pre-eminent in strength and courage, and has the gift of immortality, and none of the so-called evils which counter-balance these goods, but only the injustice and insolence of his own nature—­of such an one you are, I suspect, unwilling to believe that he is miserable rather than happy.

Cleinias:  That is quite true.

Athenian:  Once more:  Suppose that he be valiant and strong, and handsome and rich, and does throughout his whole life whatever he likes, still, if he be unrighteous and insolent, would not both of you agree that he will of necessity live basely?  You will surely grant so much?

Cleinias:  Certainly.

Athenian:  And an evil life too?

Cleinias:  I am not equally disposed to grant that.

Athenian:  Will he not live painfully and to his own disadvantage?

Cleinias:  How can I possibly say so?

Athenian:  How!  Then may Heaven make us to be of one mind, for now we are of two.  To me, dear Cleinias, the truth of what I am saying is as plain as the fact that Crete is an island.  And, if I were a lawgiver, I would try to make the poets and all the citizens speak in this strain, and I would inflict the heaviest penalties on any one in all the land who should dare to say that there are bad men who lead pleasant lives, or that the profitable and gainful is one thing, and the just another; and there are many other matters about which I should make my citizens speak in a manner different from the Cretans and Lacedaemonians of this age, and I may say, indeed, from the world in general.  For tell me, my good friends, by Zeus and Apollo tell me, if I were to ask these same Gods who were your legislators,—­Is not the most just life also the pleasantest? or are there two lives, one of which is the justest and the other the pleasantest?—­and they were to reply that there are two; and thereupon I proceeded to ask, (that would be the right way of pursuing the