That is to say, justice is useful when money is useless?
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?
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?
And so of all other things;--justice is useful when they are useless, and useless when they are useful?
*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?
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].]
[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?
Then he who is a good keeper of anything is also a good thief?
Then if the just man is good at keeping money, he is good at stealing it.
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?