[405c]
and cunningly to try
every dodge and practice,1 every evasion, and wriggle2 out of
every hold in defeating justice, and that too for trifles and worthless
things, because he does not know how much nobler and better it is to arrange
his life so as to have no need3 of a nodding juryman?” “That
is,” said he, “still more shameful than the
other.” “And to require medicine,” said I,
“not merely for wounds or the incidence of some seasonal maladies,
1 The phrasing of this passage recalls passages of Aristophanes'Clouds, and the description of the pettifogging lawyer and politician in the Theaetetus 172 E. Cf. 519, also Euthydemus 302 B, and Porphyry, De abstinentia, i. 34. The metaphors are partly from wrestling.
2 Cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Knights 263.
3 Cf. Gorgias 507 D, Thucydides iii. 82, Isocrates Antidosis 238, Antiphanes, fr. 288 Kock ὁ μηδὲν ἀδικῶν οὐδενὸς δεῖται νόμου.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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