nothing about gymnastics; you tell me of men who are ministers and purveyors to desires, but who do not understand any thing great and good respecting them, and who, it may so happen, having filled men’s bodies, and made them gross, and having been praised by them, end by ruining their old flesh. These men, on the other hand, through their ignorance, will not blame those who have pampered their appetites, as being the causes of their diseases, and of the loss of their old flesh, but they who may happen to have been with them, and to have given them some advice, when, after a long time, repletion, having been indulged in without any regard to health, comes bringing disease with it, these they will accuse and blame, and do them some mischief if they can, but those others, who are the causes of their maladies, they will extol. 157. And now you, Callicles, act in very much the same way; you extol men who have pampered the Athenians by satiating their desires, and who they say have made the city great; and they do not perceive that it is swollen, and unsound through means of those ancient politicians: for, without considering temperance and justice, they have filled the city with harbours and docks, and walls and tributes, and such trifles. When, therefore, the crisis of their weakness comes, they will blame the advisers who are then present, but will extol Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles, who were the causes of the mischief: and you perhaps, unless you are on your guard, and my friend Alcibiades, they will seize, when they have lost what they had before in addition to what they have acquired, although you are not the causes of the mischief, but perhaps accomplices. 158. Moreover, I both now see a very foolish thing happening, and I hear of it with respect to men of former times. For I perceive that when a city punishes any of its politicians as guilty of wrong, they are angry, and complain bitterly that they are treated shamefully; and having done the city many good services, they are then unjustly ruined by it, as they allege. But the whole is a falsehood. For no president of a city can ever be unjustly ruined by the very city over which he presides. For the case seems to be the same with such as profess themselves to be politicians, as it is with the sophists. For the sophists, though wise in other things, commit this absurdity; whereas they affirm that they are teachers of virtue, they often accuse their disciples of acting unjustly towards them, by defrauding them of their wages, and not making other requitals for the benefits they have received from them. But what can be more unreasonable than such language as this, that men who have become good and just, who have been freed from injustice by their teacher, and have acquired justice, should yet act unjustly from that very quality which they have not? Does not this, my friend, appear to you to be absurd? Of a truth, Callicles, you have