[326b]
who are right and true philosophers attains political supremacy, or else the class of those who hold power in the States becomes, by some dispensation of Heaven, really philosophic.1This was the view I held when I came to Italy and Sicily, at the time of my first arrival. And when I came I was in no wise pleased at all with “the blissful life,” as it is there termed, replete as it is with Italian and Syracusan banquetings2; for thus one's existence is spent in gorging food twice a day and never sleeping alone at night,
1 This echoes the famous passage in Plat. Rep. 5.473d; cf. Plat. L. 7.328a infra.
2 cf. Plat. Rep. 404d.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 7 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1966.
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