Socrates’s conversation with Gorgias comes to an end when the young and brash Polus interjects himself into the proceedings: Unlike the too-squeamish Gorgias, he, Polus, will say the truth and hold back nothing. Rhetoric, according to him, is the art of persuading others so that you yourself may exercise the greatest possible power without fear of punishment. To drive home his point, he praises as supremely happy a certain notorious tyrant, who is as happy as he is unjust. With this argument, the Gorgias turns away from rhetoric and toward the question of the goodness of justice. Whereas Socrates insists, to Polus’s initial dismay, that committing injustice is the greatest evil for a human being, Polus maintains that successful or unpunished injustice is a very great good. Yet Socrates masterfully demonstrates that Polus retains a lingering respect for justice—he thinks it is noble, if not profitable—a respect that demonstrates his failure to have thought through what it would mean to