ABSTRACT
The first book of the Republic shows us Socrates at the house of Cephalus, whose natural unreflective assumption is that dikaiosune (the necessary practice of a just man) is 'telling the truth and paying one's debts' (331 B). When Socrates suggests to him that sometimes it may surely be the wrong thing to return what one has borrowed (e.g. the return of a knife to a delinquent bent on murder), Cephalus gives formal agreement, but immediately bows out of the argument, handing over to his son, Polemarchus.
