Gorgias

​SOCRATES: And what about the training of choruses and the poetry of dithyrambs? Does not some such thing appear to you to be of this kind? Or do you think that Cinesias, the son of Meles, cares at all about saying something of such a kind from which the listeners might become better, or rather that he is about to gratify the crowd of spectators? CALLICLES: This is certainly clear, Socrates, at least concerning Cinesias. SOCRATES: And what about his father, Meles? Did he seem to you to play the cithara and sing looking toward what is best? Or did he not look even toward what is most pleasant? For he used to annoy the spectators by his singing. But consider: do you not think that all cithara-playing and the poetry of dithyrambs have been invented for the sake of pleasure? CALLICLES: I do. SOCRATES: And what indeed about this stately and wonderful poetry, that of tragedy, for what is it zealous? Is its endeavor and zeal, as it seems to you, only to gratify the spectators, or also to fight against them, if something is pleasant and gratifying to them but bad, so as not to say this, and if something happens to be unpleasant and beneficial, to say and sing this, whether they enjoy it or not? In which of the two ways do you think the poetry of tragedies is prepared? CALLICLES: This is certainly clear, Socrates, that it is more impelled toward pleasure and gratifying the spectators. SOCRATES: And did we not say just now, Callicles, that such a thing is flattery? CALLICLES: Yes, indeed. SOCRATES: Come then, if one should strip all poetry of its melody, rhythm, and meter, does anything else remain than speech? CALLICLES: Necessarily. SOCRATES: And is not this speech spoken to a large crowd and people? CALLICLES: Yes. SOCRATES: Poetry, then, is a kind of popular speech. CALLICLES: So it appears. SOCRATES: Then it would be a rhetorical popular speech; or do the poets not seem to you to practice rhetoric in the theaters? CALLICLES: They do to me. SOCRATES: Now, then, we have found a certain rhetoric directed to such a people as is composed of children, women, and men, both slaves and free, which we do not altogether admire; for we say it is of a flattering kind. CALLICLES: Yes, indeed. SOCRATES: Very well. And what about the rhetoric directed to the Athenian people and the other peoples in the cities who are composed of free men, what in the world is this to us? Do the rhetoricians seem to you to speak always looking to what is best, aiming at this, that the citizens will be as good as possible through their speeches, or are these too impelled toward gratifying the citizens, neglecting the common good for the sake of their own private interest, associating with the peoples as if they were children, trying only to gratify them, but whether they will be better or worse through these things, caring not at all?

​CALLICLES: This question you ask is no longer simple; for there are some who say what they say because they care for the citizens, but there are also such as those you speak of. SOCRATES: That is enough. For if this too is twofold, one of them, I suppose, would be flattery and shameful popular speech, whereas the other is beautiful—preparing so that the souls of the citizens will be as good as possible, and fighting to say what is best, whether it will be more pleasant or more unpleasant to the listeners. But you have never yet seen this rhetoric; or if you can mention any such person among the rhetoricians, why did you not tell me who he is? CALLICLES: But, by Zeus, I have no one to tell you among the current rhetoricians. SOCRATES: Well, what about the ancient ones? Can you mention anyone because of whom the Athenians are said to have become better, after that man began to speak in public, whereas they had been worse in the time before? For I, for my part, do not know who this is. CALLICLES: What? Do you not hear that Themistocles was a good man, and Cimon, and Miltiades, and Pericles here who has recently died, whom you also have heard? SOCRATES: If indeed, Callicles, that which you previously called virtue is true—namely, to satisfy one’s desires, both one’s own and those of others. But if it is not this, but what we were forced to agree upon in the later argument—that we should fulfill those desires which make a man better when satisfied, but not those which make him worse, and that this is a certain craft—I, for my part, do not know how I can say that any of these men was such. CALLICLES: But if you search well, you will find one. SOCRATES: Let us see then, looking at it quietly in this way, if any of these has been such. For come, the good man who speaks looking toward what is best, whatever he says, will he not say it not at random, but looking toward something? Just as all the other craftsmen, each looking toward his own work, does not select and apply at random, but so that the thing he is working on may have a certain form.