Alc. It would seem that everything which the majority, in the exercise
of its power over the possessors of wealth, and without persuading
them, chooses to enact, is of the nature of violence rather than of
law?

To be sure (answered Pericles), adding: At your age we were clever
hands at such quibbles ourselves. It was just such subtleties which we
used to practise our wits upon; as you do now, if I mistake not.

To which Alcibiades replied: Ah, Pericles, I do wish we could have met
in those days when you were at your cleverest in such matters.

Well, then, as soon as the desired superiority over the politicians of
the day seemed to be attained, Critias and Alcibiades turned their
backs on Socrates. They found his society unattractive, not to speak
of the annoyance of being cross-questioned on their own shortcomings.
Forthwith they devoted themselves to those affairs of state but for
which they would never have come near him at all.

No; if one would seek to see true companions of Socrates, one must
look to Crito,[24] and Chaerephon, and Chaerecrates, to Hermogenes, to
Simmias and Cebes, to Phaedondes and others, who clung to him not to
excel in the rhetoric of the Assembly or the law-courts, but with the
nobler ambition of attaining to such beauty and goodliness of soul as
would enable them to discharge the various duties of life to house and
family, to relatives and friends, to fellow-citizens, and to the state
at large. Of these true followers not one in youth or old age was ever
guilty, or thought guilty, of committing any evil deed.

[24] For these true followers, familiar to us in the pages of Plato,