Gonzalez Lodge, Commentary on Plato: Gorgias

ἡδύς: corresponds best to our naive. Callicles means that Socrates still keeps the point of view of a naive—hence interesting (but cf. 485 b, c)—child, inasmuch as he has not yet laid aside his childish prejudice in favor of σωφροσύνη. Hence the words τοὺς ἡλιθίους κτἑ. are a criticism of Socrates' view: “you mean those simple-minded fellows,— the temperate.” This passage shows that Callicles erases σωφροσύνη, as he did δικαιοσύνη, from the list of the virtues.

οὕτω: we should naturally expect τούτους. Of course there is a tinge of irony in the allusion to Cal licles' words.

πάνυ γε σφόδρα: sc. οὕτω λέγεις. Callicles, of course, means τοὺς ήλιθίους, and makes an effort in what follows to defend his words. For this purpose he unfolds his view of life more completely, and shows especially wherein he finds happiness. The beginning of his discourse bears a rhetorical stamp.

δουλεύων: not to be conceived literally of human servitude, but rather equiv. to ἀρχόμενος and that too αὐτὸς ὑφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ, which Callicles considers just as bad as if the slavery were to some one else, ὁτῷουν. The lot of thraldom is considered so unhappy that Callicles conceives δουλεύων, even in the sense which it has here, as the exact opposite to εὐδαίμων. That selfcontrol is not consistent with the generally held idea of freedom is spoken plainly in Meno 86 d ἐπειδὴ δὲ σὺ σαυτοῦ μὲν οὐδ᾽ ἐπιχειρεῖς ἄρχειν ἵνα δὴ ἐλεύθερος ᾖς, and is at the present day a principle of the opponents of the temperance movement.