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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: answer for you. But if this is what the good man ought to effect for the
benefit of his own state, allow me to recall to you the names of those whom
you were just now mentioning, Pericles, and Cimon, and Miltiades, and
Themistocles, and ask whether you still think that they were good citizens.
CALLICLES: I do.
SOCRATES: But if they were good, then clearly each of them must have made
the citizens better instead of worse?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And, therefore, when Pericles first began to speak in the
assembly, the Athenians were not so good as when he spoke last?
CALLICLES: Very likely.
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