question, and he listens to the paradoxes, as they appear to him, of
Socrates with evident astonishment. He can hardly understand the meaning
of Archelaus being miserable, or of rhetoric being only useful in self-
accusation. When the argument with him has fairly run out,

Callicles, in whose house they are assembled, is introduced on the stage:
he is with difficulty convinced that Socrates is in earnest; for if these
things are true, then, as he says with real emotion, the foundations of
society are upside down. In him another type of character is represented;
he is neither sophist nor philosopher, but man of the world, and an
accomplished Athenian gentleman. He might be described in modern language
as a cynic or materialist, a lover of power and also of pleasure, and
unscrupulous in his means of attaining both. There is no desire on his
part to offer any compromise in the interests of morality; nor is any
concession made by him. Like Thrasymachus in the Republic, though he is
not of the same weak and vulgar class, he consistently maintains that might
is right. His great motive of action is political ambition; in this he is
characteristically Greek. Like Anytus in the Meno, he is the enemy of the
Sophists; but favours the new art of rhetoric, which he regards as an
excellent weapon of attack and defence. He is a despiser of mankind as he
is of philosophy, and sees in the laws of the state only a violation of the
order of nature, which intended that the stronger should govern the weaker
(compare Republic). Like other men of the world who are of a speculative
turn of mind, he generalizes the bad side of human nature, and has easily
brought down his principles to his practice. Philosophy and poetry alike
supply him with distinctions suited to his view of human life. He has a
good will to Socrates, whose talents he evidently admires, while he
censures the puerile use which he makes of them. He expresses a keen
intellectual interest in the argument. Like Anytus, again, he has a
sympathy with other men of the world; the Athenian statesmen of a former