Then what is that joint use of silver or gold in which the just man is to be preferred? [Sidenote: especially in the safe-keeping of deposits.] When you want a deposit to be kept safely. You mean when money is not wanted, but allowed to lie? {9} Precisely. [Sidenote: But not in the use of money: and if so, justice is only useful when money or anything else is useless.] That is to say, justice is useful when money is useless? *333D* That is the inference. And when you want to keep a pruning-hook safe, then justice is useful to the individual and to the state; but when you want to use it, then the art of the vine-dresser? Clearly. And when you want to keep a shield or a lyre, and not to use them, you would say that justice is useful; but when you want to use them, then the art of the soldier or of the musician? Certainly. And so of all other things;--justice is useful when they are useless, and useless when they are useful? That is the inference. *333E* Then justice is not good for much. But let us consider this further point: Is not he who can best strike a blow in a boxing match or in any kind of fighting best able to ward off a blow? Certainly. And he who is most skilful in preventing or escaping[2] from a disease is best able to create one? [Footnote 2: Reading [Greek: phula/xasthai kai\ lathei=n, (ou=tos, ktl].] True. [Sidenote: A new point of view: Is not he who is best able to do good best able to do evil?] And he is the best guard of a camp who is best able to *334A* steal a march upon the enemy? Certainly. Then he who is a good keeper of anything is also a good thief? That, I suppose, is to be inferred. Then if the just man is good at keeping money, he is good at stealing it. That is implied in the argument. Then after all the just man has turned out to be a thief. And this is a lesson which I suspect you must have learnt out of Homer; *334B* for he, speaking of Autolycus, the maternal grandfather of Odysseus, who is a favourite of his, affirms that 'He was excellent above all men in theft and perjury.' And so, you and Homer and Simonides are agreed that {10} justice is an art of theft; to be practised however 'for the good of friends and for the harm of enemies,'--that was what you were saying? No, certainly not that, though I do not now know what I did say; but I still stand by the latter words. *334C* Well, there is another question: By friends and enemies do we mean those who are so really, or only in seeming? [Sidenote: Justice an art of theft to be practised for the good of friends and the harm of enemies. But who are friends and enemies?] Surely, he said, a man may be expected to love those whom he thinks good, and to hate those whom he thinks evil. Yes, but do not persons often err about good and evil: many who are not good seem to be so, and conversely? That is true. Then to them the good will be enemies and the evil will be their friends? True.