"Old age has its advantages to reasonable men (says Kephalus). If I have lost the pleasures of youth, I have at the same time lost the violent desires which then overmastered me. I now enjoy tranquillity and peace. Without doubt, this is in part owing to my wealth. But the best that wealth does for me is, that it enables me to make compensation for deceptions and injustice, practised on other men in my younger days--and to fulfil all vows made to the Gods. An old man who is too poor to render such atonement for past falsehood and injustice, becomes uneasy in his mind as death approaches; he begins to fear that the stories about Hades, which he has heard and ridiculed in his youth, may perhaps prove true."[2] [Footnote 2: Plato, Repub. i. pp. 330-331. Compare the language of Cato, more rhetorical and exaggerated than that of Kephalus, in Cic. De Senect. c. 13-14.] [Side-note: Definition of Justice by Simonides--It consists in rendering to every man what is owing to him.] "Is that your explanation of justice (asks Sokrates): that it consists in telling truth, and rendering to every one what you have had from him?" The old man Kephalus here withdraws; Polemarchus and the others prosecute the discussion. "The poet Simonides (says Polemarchus) gives an explanation like to that which you have stated--when he affirms, That just dealing consists in rendering to every man what is owing to him." [Side-note: Objections to it by Sokrates--There are cases in which it is not right to restore what is owing, or to tell the truth.] "I do not know what Simonides means," replies Sokrates. "He cannot mean that it is always right to tell the truth, or always right to give back a deposit. If my friend, having deposited arms with me, afterwards goes mad, and in that state demands them back, it would not be right in me either to restore the arms, or to tell the truth, to a man in that condition. Therefore to say that justice consists in speaking truth and in giving back what we have received, cannot be a good definition."[3] [Footnote 3: Plato, Repub. i. p. 331 C-D. The historical Sokrates argues in the same manner (in the Memorabilia of Xenophon. See his conversation with Euthydemus, iv. 2; and Cicero, De Offic. iii. 25, 94-95).] Polemarchus here gives a peculiar meaning to the phrase of Simonides: a man owes good to his friends--evil to his enemies: and he ought to pay back both. Upon this Sokrates comments.[4]