A doctor at a shared table
SocratesThen, by your account, one intelligent man is often superior to ten thousand unintelligent ones, and he must rule and they be ruled, and the ruler must have more than the ruled. For that is what you seem to me to want to say—and I’m not hunting a phrase—if the one is superior to the ten thousand.
CalliclesWell, that is what I mean. For this is what I think is just by nature: that the one who is better and more intelligent both rules the lesser and has more than them.
SocratesHold it there. What on earth do you mean this time? If we are in the same place, as we are now, many of us gathered together, and we have plenty of food and drink in common, and we are of every sort, some strong, some weak, and one of us is more intelligent about these things, being a doctor, and is, as is likely, stronger than some and weaker than others—won’t this man, being more intelligent than we are, be better and superior in these matters?
CalliclesCertainly.