Fleeing the doctor

479aSocratesThen isn’t this the one who, doing injustice on the greatest scale and making use of the greatest injustice, manages not to be admonished or punished or to pay the penalty—as you say Archelaus and the other tyrants and orators and potentates have arranged things for themselves?

PolusIt seems so.

479bSocratesFor these people, my excellent friend, have managed, I suppose, much the same thing as if someone gripped by the greatest illnesses were to manage not to pay the doctors the penalty for the faults of his body, and not to be treated, afraid, just like a child, of being burned and cut, because it is painful. Or doesn’t it seem so to you too?

PolusIt seems so to me.