ABSTRACT
Plato takes great care to formulate precisely the challenge which Glaucon and Adeimantus put to Socrates at the beginning of Book II of the Republic and is equally precise when, in Book X, he claims that the challenge has been met. Socrates is to commend StKatoavi^j, morality, or righteousness, for the real benefits it brings its possessor compared with what aSiKta, wrongdoing, or immorality, does, and leave it to others to dwell on rewards and reputation. He is to prove ‘not only that StKotiocrvinr7, morality, is superior to aSiKta, immorality, but that, irrespective of whether gods or men know it or not, one is good and the other evil because of its inherent effects on its possessor’ (II 376d2-e5). And at the end he claims, ‘I think our argument has fulfilled the conditions you laid down and, in particular, has avoided mentioning the rewards and reputation which biKotioovvr), integrity, (dikaiosune), brings, as you complain Homer and Hesiod do’ (X 612a8-bl).
