Athenian:  You are aware,—­are you not?—­that there are often said to be as many forms of laws as there are of governments, and of the latter we have already mentioned all those which are commonly recognized.  Now you must regard this as a matter of first-rate importance.  For what is to be the standard of just and unjust, is once more the point at issue.  Men say that the law ought not to regard either military virtue, or virtue in general, but only the interests and power and preservation of the established form of government; this is thought by them to be the best way of expressing the natural definition of justice.

Cleinias:  How?

Athenian:  Justice is said by them to be the interest of the stronger
(Republic).

Cleinias:  Speak plainer.

Athenian:  I will:—­’Surely,’ they say, ’the governing power makes whatever laws have authority in any state’?

Cleinias:  True.

Athenian:  ‘Well,’ they would add, ’and do you suppose that tyranny or democracy, or any other conquering power, does not make the continuance of the power which is possessed by them the first or principal object of their laws’?

Cleinias:  How can they have any other?

Athenian:  ’And whoever transgresses these laws is punished as an evil-doer by the legislator, who calls the laws just’?

Cleinias:  Naturally.

Athenian:  ’This, then, is always the mode and fashion in which justice exists.’

Cleinias:  Certainly, if they are correct in their view.

Athenian:  Why, yes, this is one of those false principles of government to which we were referring.

Cleinias:  Which do you mean?

Athenian:  Those which we were examining when we spoke of who ought to govern whom.  Did we not arrive at the conclusion that parents ought to govern their children, and the elder the younger, and the noble the ignoble?  And there were many other principles, if you remember, and they were not always consistent.  One principle was this very principle of might, and we said that Pindar considered violence natural and justified it.

Cleinias:  Yes; I remember.

Athenian:  Consider, then, to whom our state is to be entrusted.  For there is a thing which has occurred times without number in states—­

Cleinias:  What thing?

Athenian:  That when there has been a contest for power, those who gain the upper hand so entirely monopolize the government, as to refuse all share to the defeated party and their descendants—­they live watching one another, the ruling class being in perpetual fear that some one who has a recollection of former wrongs will come into power and rise up against them.  Now, according to our view, such governments are not polities at all, nor are laws right which