The women who draw down the moon
SocratesFor perhaps this—living for however long a time—is something that one who is truly a man should let go, and not cling to his life; he should leave all that to the god and believe the women when they say that not a single person could escape his fate, and then consider the next thing: in what way he might live the time he is to live as well as possible, and whether it is by making himself like the constitution under which he lives. And in that case you must now become as like as possible to the Athenian demos, if you are to be dear to it and have great power in the city. See whether this pays, for you and for me, so that we do not, my strange friend, suffer what they say happens to the women who draw down the moon, the Thessalians: our choice of this power in the city will cost us what is dearest.
But if you think that anyone at all will hand on to you some art of the kind that will make you have great power in this city while you are unlike its constitution, whether for the better or for the worse, then, as it seems to me, you are not deciding rightly, Callicles. For you must not be an imitator but like them by your very nature, if you are to achieve anything genuine by way of friendship with the Athenian demos and, yes, by Zeus, Pyrilampes’ Demos into the bargain. So whoever makes you most like them is the one who will make you a politician, as you desire to be, and a rhetorician; for every people enjoys speeches spoken in its own character and is vexed by those spoken in a foreign one—unless you say something different, my dear fellow. Have we anything to say against this, Callicles?
CalliclesI don’t know how, Socrates, but you seem to me to speak well; yet I feel what the many feel: I’m not altogether persuaded by you.