And,

Cookery : medicine :: rhetoric : the art of justice.

And this is the true scheme of them, but when measured only by the
gratification which they procure, they become jumbled together and return
to their aboriginal chaos. Socrates apologizes for the length of his
speech, which was necessary to the explanation of the subject, and begs
Polus not unnecessarily to retaliate on him.

'Do you mean to say that the rhetoricians are esteemed flatterers?' They
are not esteemed at all. 'Why, have they not great power, and can they not
do whatever they desire?' They have no power, and they only do what they
think best, and never what they desire; for they never attain the true
object of desire, which is the good. 'As if you, Socrates, would not envy
the possessor of despotic power, who can imprison, exile, kill any one whom
he pleases.' But Socrates replies that he has no wish to put any one to
death; he who kills another, even justly, is not to be envied, and he who
kills him unjustly is to be pitied; it is better to suffer than to do
injustice. He does not consider that going about with a dagger and putting
men out of the way, or setting a house on fire, is real power. To this
Polus assents, on the ground that such acts would be punished, but he is
still of opinion that evil-doers, if they are unpunished, may be happy
enough. He instances Archelaus, son of Perdiccas, the usurper of
Macedonia. Does not Socrates think him happy?--Socrates would like to know
more about him; he cannot pronounce even the great king to be happy, unless
he knows his mental and moral condition. Polus explains that Archelaus was
a slave, being the son of a woman who was the slave of Alcetas, brother of
Perdiccas king of Macedon--and he, by every species of crime, first
murdering his uncle and then his cousin and half-brother, obtained the