But the others will not let him go, and Socrates adds a humble but earnest request that he will not desert them at such a crisis of their fate.

'And what can I do more for you ?' he says; 'would you have me put the words bodily into your souls ?' God forbid! replies Socrates; but we want you to be consistent in the use of terms, and not to employ 'physician' in an exact sense, and then again 'shepherd' or 'ruler' in an inexact,--if the words are strictly taken, the ruler and the shepherd look only to the good of their people or flocks and not to their own: whereas you insist that rulers are solely actuated by love of office.

'No doubt about it,' replies Thrasymachus.

Then why are they paid?
Is not the reason, that their interest is not comprehended in their art, and is therefore the concern of another art, the art of pay, which is common to the arts in general, and therefore not identical with any one of them?
Nor would any man be a ruler unless he were induced by the hope of reward or the fear of punishment;--the reward is money or honour, the punishment is the necessity of being ruled by a man worse than himself.

And if a State (or Church) were composed entirely of good men, they would be affected by the last motive only; and there would be as much 'nolo episcopari' as there is at present of the opposite...
The satire on existing governments is heightened by the simple and apparently incidental manner in which the last remark is introduced.
There is a similar irony in the argument that the governors of mankind do not like being in office, and that therefore they demand pay.
...Enough of this: the other assertion of Thrasymachus is far more important--that the unjust life is more gainful than the just.