republic (books 1 - 5)   

They will tell you that the just man who is thought unjust will
be scourged, racked, bound--will have his eyes burnt out; and,
at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be impaled.
Then he will understand that he ought to seem only, and not
to be, just; the words of AEschylus may be more truly spoken
of the unjust than of the just. For the unjust is pursuing a
reality; he does not live with a view to appearances--he wants
to be really unjust and not to seem only--

"His mind has a soil deep and fertile,
Out of which spring his prudent counsels."

In the first place, he is thought just, and therefore bears rule
in the city; he can marry whom he will, and give in marriage
to whom he will; also he can trade and deal where he likes, and
always to his own advantage, because he has no misgivings
about injustice; and at every contest, whether in public or pri-
vate, he gets the better of his antagonists, and gains at their
expense, and is rich, and out of his gains he can benefit his
friends, and harm his enemies; moreover, he can offer sacri-
fices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly and magnifi-
cently, and can honor the gods or any man whom he wants to
honor in a far better style than the just, and therefore he is
likely to be dearer than they are to the gods. And thus, Soc-
rates, gods and men are said to unite in making the life of the
unjust better than the life of the just.

I was going to say something in answer to Glaucon, when
Adeimantus, his brother, interposed: Socrates, he said, you
do not suppose that there is nothing more to be urged?

Why, what else is there? I answered.

The strongest point of all has not been even mentioned, he
replied.

Well, then, according to the proverb, "Let brother help
brother"--if he fails in any part, do you assist him; although
I must confess that Glaucon has already said quite enough to
lay me in the dust, and take from me the power of helping
justice.

Nonsense, he replied. But let me add something more:
There is another side to Glaucon's argument about the praise
and censure of justice and injustice, which is equally required
in order to bring out what I believe to be his meaning. Parents
and tutors are always telling their sons and their wards that
they are to be just; but why? not for the sake of justice, but
for the sake of character and reputation; in the hope of obtain-
ing for him who is reputed just some of those offices, marriages,
and the like which Glaucon has enumerated among the ad-
vantages accruing to the unjust from the reputation of justice.
More, however, is made of appearances by this class of persons
than by the others; for they throw in the good opinion of the
gods, and will tell you of a shower of benefits which the heavens,
as they say, rain upon the pious; and this accords with the tes-
timony of the noble Hesiod and Homer, the first of whom says
that the gods make the oaks of the just--

"To bear acorns at their summit, and bees in the middle;
And the sheep are bowed down with the weight of their fleeces,"

and many other blessings of a like kind are provided for them.
And Homer has a very similar strain; for he speaks of one