The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: rule the worse, the noble have more than the mean? Am I not right in my
recollection?
CALLICLES: Yes; that is what I was saying, and so I still aver.
SOCRATES: And do you mean by the better the same as the superior? for I
could not make out what you were saying at the time--whether you meant by
the superior the stronger, and that the weaker must obey the stronger, as
you seemed to imply when you said that great cities attack small ones in
accordance with natural right, because they are superior and stronger, as
though the superior and stronger and better were the same; or whether the
better may be also the inferior and weaker, and the superior the worse, or
whether better is to be defined in the same way as superior:--this is the
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