He has no wealth and no honor and is believed to be unjust and is despised. Yet he is happy. He is fearless of everything. Fearless of death, fearless of dishonor and free from love of honor. He is indifferent to all of those. Socrates is content in the knowledge of his virtue and is free from everything else. This makes Socrates superior. Socrates explains that the philosopher is driven by love, the love of wisdom, but maintains control of his passions and is therefore free of them. He is a philosopher and there is no greater victory or honor than those won by the philosopher. Philosophic insight needs to be won, it requires extraordinary courage, and it is the rarest of victories, and therefore it is the most satisfying of victories, ( Book IX, 585b-e). By Socrates standards there is no greater honor because nothing else is as honorable, and even though it is not widely honored, the measure of the magnitude and the honor that comes with it makes it the most highly honored of enterprises. "When the soul is ruled by its philosophic part the result is that each part may, so far as other things are concerned, mind its own business and be just and, in particular, enjoy its own pleasures, the best pleasures, and, to the greatest possible extent, the truest pleasures" (Book IX, 586e-587; ). Socrates makes the weaker argument the stronger. He is the unshackled ('enlightened') man, and clearly has more freedom to choose than the shackled man. He can see all the alternatives. He need only select which of the alternatives to gaze upon. .
Plato puts Socrates at the center of his work he tends to present him as the perfect model of knowledge and for Plato man is really free when he can attend to philosophical studies to research. .
Cephalus is the freest after Socrates because of his old age. At this age he is free of the pleasures of youth and reminiscing about sex, about drinking and feast and all that goes with things of that sort.