YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand.

STRANGER: I will try to make the thought, which is at this moment present
in my mind, clearer to us both.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.

STRANGER: There were many arts of shepherding, and one of them was the
political, which had the charge of one particular herd?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And this the argument defined to be the art of rearing, not
horses or other brutes, but the art of rearing man collectively?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: Note, however, a difference which distinguishes the king from
all other shepherds.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?

STRANGER: I want to ask, whether any one of the other herdsmen has a rival
who professes and claims to share with him in the management of the herd?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: I mean to say that merchants, husbandmen, providers of food, and
also training-masters and physicians, will all contend with the herdsmen of