Cimon, Themistocles, Miltiades
SocratesThen Pericles was not good at politics, on this argument.
CalliclesNot according to you, at any rate.
SocratesBy Zeus, nor according to you either, going by what you were agreeing to. But tell me again about Cimon: didn’t these people he cared for ostracise him, so that they would not hear his voice for ten years? And didn’t they do these same things to Themistocles, and punish him with exile besides? And Miltiades, the man of Marathon, did they not vote to throw him into the pit, and would he not have fallen in but for the presiding officer? And yet, if these were good men, as you say, they would never have suffered these things. It is not good charioteers, at any rate, who stay in their chariots at the start and then, once they have cared for their horses and become worthier charioteers themselves, are thrown out; that is not how it is either in charioteering or in any other work. Or does it seem so to you?
CalliclesI don’t think so.
SocratesThen our earlier words were true, it seems, that we know of no man who has proved good at politics in this city. You agreed that none of the present ones had, though some of those before had, and you picked out these men; but these have turned out to be on a level with the present ones, so that, if these men were orators, they used neither the true rhetoric—for then they would not have been thrown out—nor the flattering kind.
CalliclesBut surely, Socrates, none of the present ones will ever come anywhere near achieving such works as whichever of these men you want has achieved.