Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  When the applause for this speech of Protagoras had died down, I said, “Protagoras, I tend to be a forgetful sort of person, and if someone speaks [d] to me at length I tend to forget the subject of the speech. Now, if I happened to be hard of hearing and you were going to converse with me, you would think you had better speak louder to me than to others. In the same way, now that you have fallen in with a forgetful person, you will have to cut your answers short if I am going to follow you.”

  “How short are you ordering me to make my answers? Shorter than necessary?”

  “By no means.”

  “As long as necessary?”

  [e] “Yes.”

  “Then should I answer at the length I think necessary or the length you think necessary?”

  “Well, I have heard, anyway, that when you are instructing someone [335] in a certain subject, you are able to speak at length, if you choose, and never get off the subject, or to speak so briefly that no one could be briefer. So if you are going to converse with me, please use the latter form of expression, brevity.”

  “Socrates, I have had verbal contests with many people, and if I were to accede to your request and do as my opponent demanded, I would not be thought superior to anyone, nor would Protagoras be a name to be reckoned with among the Greeks.”

  [b] I could see he was uncomfortable with his previous answers and that he would no longer be willing to go on answering in a dialectical discussion, so I considered my work with him to be finished, and I said so: “You know, Protagoras, I’m not exactly pleased myself that our session has not gone the way you think it should. But if you are ever willing to hold a discussion in such a way that I can follow, I will participate in it with you. People say of you—and you say yourself—that you are able to discuss [c] things speaking either at length or briefly. You are a wise man, after all. But I don’t have the ability to make those long speeches: I only wish I did. It was up to you, who have the ability to do both, to make this concession, so that the discussion could have had a chance. But since you’re not willing, and I’m somewhat busy and unable to stay for your extended speeches—there’s somewhere I have to go—I’ll be leaving now. Although I’m sure it would be rather nice to hear them.”

  [d] Having had my say, I stood up to go, but as I was getting up, Callias took hold of my wrist with his right hand and grasped this cloak I’m wearing with his left. “We won’t let you go, Socrates,” he said. “Our discussions wouldn’t be the same without you, so please stay here with us, I beg you. There’s nothing I would rather hear than you and Protagoras in debate. Please do us all a favor.”

  [e] By now I was on my feet and really making as if to leave. I said, “Son of Hipponicus, I have always admired your love of wisdom, and I especially honor and hold it dear now. I would be more than willing to gratify you, if you would ask me something that is possible for me. As it is, you might as well be asking me to keep up with Crison of Himera, the champion sprinter, or to compete with the distance runners, or match strides with the couriers who run all day long. What could I say, except that I want it [336] for myself more than you want it for me, but I simply cannot match these runners’ pace, and if you want to watch me running in the same race with Crison, you must ask him to slow down to my speed, since I am not able to run fast, but he is able to run slowly. So if you have your heart set on hearing me and Protagoras, you must ask him to answer my questions now as he did at the outset—briefly. If he doesn’t, what turn will our [b] dialogue take? To me, the mutual exchange of a dialogue is something quite distinct from a public address.”

  “But you see, Socrates, Protagoras has a point when he says that he ought to be allowed, no less than you, to conduct the discussion as he sees fit.”

  At this point Alcibiades jumped in and said: “You’re not making sense, Callias. Socrates admits that long speeches are beyond him and concedes [c] to Protagoras on that score. But when it comes to dialectical discussion and understanding the give and take of argument, I would be surprised if he yields to anyone. Now, if Protagoras admits that he is Socrates’ inferior in dialectic, that should be enough for Socrates. But if he contests the point, let him engage in a question-and-answer dialogue and not spin out a long speech every time he answers, fending off the issues because he doesn’t want to be accountable, and going on and on until most of the listeners [d] have forgotten what the question was about, although I guarantee you Socrates won’t forget, no matter how he jokes about his memory. So I think that Socrates has a stronger case. Each of us ought to make clear his own opinion.”

  After Alcibiades it was Critias, I think, who spoke next: “Well, Prodicus and Hippias, it seems to be that Callias is very much on Protagoras’ side, [e] while Alcibiades as usual wants to be on the winning side of a good fight. But there’s no need for any of us to lend partisan support to either Socrates or Protagoras. We should instead join in requesting them both not to break up our meeting prematurely.”

  Prodicus spoke up next: “That’s well said, Critias. Those who attend [337] discussions such as this ought to listen impartially, but not equally, to both interlocutors. There is a distinction here. We ought to listen impartially but not divide our attention equally: More should go to the wiser speaker and less to the more unlearned. For my part, I think that the two of you [b] ought to debate the issues, but dispense with eristics. Friends debate each other on good terms; eristics are for enemies at odds. In this way our meeting would take a most attractive turn, for you, the speakers, would then most surely earn the good opinion, rather than the praise, of those of us listening to you. For a good opinion is guilelessly inherent in the souls of the listeners, but praise is all too often merely a deceitful verbal expression. And then, too, we, your audience, would be most cheered, but [c] not pleased, for to be cheered is to learn something, to participate in some intellectual activity, and is a mental state; but to be pleased has to do with eating or experiencing some other pleasure in one’s body.”

  Prodicus’ remarks were enthusiastically received by the majority of us, and then the wise Hippias spoke: “Gentlemen, I regard all of you here [d] present as kinsmen, intimates, and fellow citizens by nature, not by convention. For like is akin to like by nature, but convention, which tyrannizes the human race, often constrains us contrary to nature. Therefore it would be disgraceful for us to understand the nature of things and not—being as we are the wisest of the Greeks and gathered here together in this veritable hall of wisdom, in this greatest and most august house of the [e] city itself—not, I say, produce anything worthy of all this dignity, but bicker with each other as if we were the dregs of society. I therefore implore and counsel you, Protagoras and Socrates, to be reconciled and to compromise, under our arbitration, as it were, on some middle course. [338] You, Socrates, must not insist on that precise, excessively brief form of discussion if it does not suit Protagoras, but rather allow free rein to the speeches, so that they might communicate to us more impressively and elegantly. And you, Protagoras, must not let out full sail in the wind and leave the land behind to disappear into the Sea of Rhetoric. Both of you [b] must steer a middle course. So that’s what you shall do, and take my advice and choose a referee or moderator or supervisor who will monitor for you the length of your speeches.”

  Everyone there thought this was a fine idea and gave it their approval. Callias said he wouldn’t let me go, and they requested me to choose a moderator. I said it would be unseemly to choose someone to umpire our speeches. “If the person chosen is going to be our inferior, it is not right for an inferior to supervise his superiors. If he’s our peer that’s no good [c] either, because he will do the same as we would and be superfluous. Choose someone who’s our superior? I honestly think it’s impossible for you to choose someone wiser than Protagoras. And if you choose someone who is not his superior but claim that he is, then you’re insulting him. Protagoras is just not the insignificant sort of person for whom you appoint a supervisor. For myself, I don’t care one way or another.
But you have your heart set on this conference and these discussions proceeding, and [d] if that’s going to happen, this is what I want to do. If Protagoras is not willing to answer questions, let him ask them, and I will answer, and at the same time I will try to show him how I think the answerer ought to answer. When I’ve answered all the questions he wishes to ask, then it’s his turn to be accountable to me in the same way. So if he doesn’t seem ready and willing to answer the actual question asked, you and I will unite in urgently requesting him, as you have requested me, not to ruin [e] our conference. This will not require any one supervisor, since you will all supervise together.”

  Everyone agreed this was the thing to do. Protagoras wanted no part of it, but he had to agree to ask questions, and when he had asked enough, to respond in turn with short answers.

  [339] So he began to ask questions something like this: “I consider, Socrates, that the greatest part of a man’s education is to be in command of poetry, by which I mean the ability to understand the words of the poets, to know when a poem is correctly composed and when not, and to know how to either, because he will do the same as we would and be superfluous. analyze a poem and to respond to questions about it. So my line of questioning now will still concern the subject of our present discussion, namely virtue, but translated into the sphere of poetry. Now, Simonides somewhere says to Scopas, the son of Creon of Thessaly:

  For a man to become good truly is hard, [b]

  in hands and feet and mind foursquare,

  blamelessly built …

  Do you know this lyric ode, or shall I recite it all for you?”

  I told him there was no need, for I knew the poem, and it happened to be one to which I had given especially careful attention.

  “Good,” he said. “So, do you think it’s well made or not?”

  “Very well made.”

  “And do you think it’s well made if the poet contradicts himself?”

  “No.”

  ”Take a better look then.” [c]

  “As I’ve said, I’m already familiar enough with it.”

  “Then you must know that at some point later in the ode he says:

  Nor is Pittacus’ proverb in tune

  however wise a man he was.

  Hard it is to be good, he said.

  “You do recognize that both these things are said by the same person?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, do you think that the latter is consistent with the former?”

  “It seems so to me,” I said (but as I said it I was afraid he had a point there). “Doesn’t it seem so to you?”

  “How can anyone who says both these things be consistent? First, he [d] asserts himself that it is hard for a man truly to become good, and then, a little further on in his poem he forgets and criticizes Pittacus for saying the same thing as he did, that it is hard for a man to be good, and refuses to accept from him the same thing that he himself said. And yet, when he criticizes him for saying the same thing as himself, he obviously criticizes himself as well, so either the earlier or the later must not be right.”

  Protagoras got a noisy round of applause for this speech. At first I felt [e] as if I had been hit by a good boxer. Everything went black and I was reeling from Protagoras’ oratory and the others’ clamor. Then, to tell you the truth, to stall for time to consider what the poet meant, I turned to Prodicus and, calling on him, “Prodicus,” I said, “Simonides was from your hometown, wasn’t he? It’s your duty to come to the man’s rescue, [340] so I don’t mind calling for your help, just as Homer says Scamander called Simoïs to help him when he was besieged by Achilles:

  Dear brother, let’s buck this hero’s strength together.15

  So also do I summon your aid, lest to our dismay Protagoras destroy [b] Simonides. But really, Prodicus, Simonides’ rehabilitation does require your special art, by which you distinguish ‘wanting’ from ‘desiring’ and make all the other fine distinctions that you did just a while ago. So tell me if you agree with me, because it’s not clear to me that Simonides does in fact contradict himself. Just give us your offhand opinion. Are becoming and being the same or different?”

  “Good heavens, different.”

  “All right. Now, in the first passage, Simonides declared as his own opinion that it is hard for a man truly to become good.”

  [c] “That’s right,” Prodicus said.

  “Then he criticizes Pittacus not for saying the same thing as himself, as Protagoras thinks, but for saying something different. Because Pittacus did not say that it is hard to become good, as Simonides said, but to be good. As Prodicus here says, being and becoming are not the same thing, [d] Protagoras. And if being is not the same as becoming, Simonides does not contradict himself. Perhaps Prodicus and many others might agree with Hesiod that it is difficult to become good:

  The gods put Goodness where we have to sweat

  To get at her. But once you reach the top

  She’s as easy to have as she was hard at first.”16

  Prodicus applauded me when he heard this, but Protagoras said, “Your rehabilitation, Socrates, has a crippling error greater than the one you are correcting.”

  “Then I’ve done my work badly,” I said, “and I am the ridiculous sort of physician whose cure is worse than the disease.”

  “That’s exactly right,” he said.

  [e] “That’s exactly right,”

  ”How so?” said I.

  “The poet’s ignorance would be monumental if he says the possession of virtue is so trivial when everyone agrees it is the hardest thing in the world.”

  Then I said, “By heaven, Prodicus’ participation in our discussion [341] couldn’t be more timely. It may well be, Protagoras, that Prodicus’ wisdom is of ancient and divine origin, dating back to the time of Simonides or even earlier. But although your experience is very broad, it does not seem to extend to this branch of wisdom, which I have been schooled in as a pupil of Prodicus. And now it appears that you do not understand that Simonides may well have not conceived of the word ‘hard’ as you do. In much the same way Prodicus corrects me each time I use the word ‘terrible’ to praise you or someone else, as, for example, ‘Protagoras is a terribly [b] wise man.’ When I say that, he asks me if I am not ashamed to call good things terrible. For terrible, he says, is bad. No one ever speaks of terrible wealth, or terrible peace, or terrible well-being, but we do hear of terrible disease, terrible war, and terrible poverty, ‘terrible’ here being ‘bad.’ So perhaps the Ceans and Simonides conceived of ‘hard’ as ‘bad’ or something else that you do not understand. Let’s ask Prodicus. He’s just the right person to consult on Simonides’ dialect. Prodicus, what did Simonides [c] mean by ‘hard’?”

  “Bad.”

  “Then this is why he criticizes Pittacus for saying it is hard to be good, just as if he had heard him say it is bad to be good. Right, Prodicus?”

  “What else do you think Simonides meant, Socrates? He was censuring Pittacus, a man from Lesbos brought up in a barbarous dialect, for not distinguishing words correctly.”

  ”Well, Protagoras, you hear Prodicus. Do you have anything to say [d] in response?”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Prodicus,” Protagoras said. “I am positive that Simonides meant by ‘hard’ the same thing we do: not ‘bad,’ but whatever is not easy and takes a lot of effort.”

  “Oh, but I think so too, Protagoras,” I said. “This is what Simonides meant, and Prodicus knows it. He was joking and thought he would test your ability to defend your own statement. The best proof that Simonides [e] did not mean that ‘hard’ is ‘bad’ is found in the very next phrase, which says:

  God alone can have this privilege.

  He cannot very well mean that it is bad to be good if he then says that God alone has this privilege. Prodicus would call Simonides a reprobate for that and no Cean at all. But I would like to tell you what I think [342] Simonides’ purpose is in this ode, if you would like to test my command (to
use your term) of poetry. If you’d rather, though, I’ll listen to you.”

  Protagoras heard me out and said, “If you please, Socrates,” and then Prodicus, Hippias, and the others urged me on.

  “All right, then,” I said, “I will try to explain to you what I think this poem is about. Philosophy, first of all, has its most ancient roots and is most widespread among the Greeks in Crete and Lacedaemon, and those [b] regions have the highest concentration of sophists in the world. But the natives deny it and pretend to be ignorant in order to conceal the fact that it is by their wisdom that they are the leaders of the Greek world, something like those sophists Protagoras was talking about. Their public image is that they owe their superiority to their brave fighting men, and their reason for promoting this image is that if the real basis for their superiority were discovered, i.e., wisdom, everyone else would start cultivating it. This is top secret; not even the Spartanizing cults in the other cities know about [c] it, and so you have all these people getting their ears mangled aping the Spartans, lacing on leather gloves, exercising fanatically and wearing short capes, as if Sparta’s political power depended on these things. And when the citizens in Sparta want some privacy to have free and open discussions with their sophists, they pass alien acts against any Spartanizers and other foreigners in town, and conceal their meetings from the rest of the world. [d] And so that their young men won’t unlearn what they are taught, they do not permit any of them to travel to other cities (the Cretans don’t either). Crete and Sparta are places where there are not only men but women also who take pride in their education. You know how to test the truth of my contention that the Spartans have the best education in philosophy and [e] debate? Pick any ordinary Spartan and talk with him for a while. At first you will find he can barely hold up his end of the conversation, but at some point he will pick his spot with deadly skill and shoot back a terse remark you’ll never forget, something that will make the person he’s talking with (in this case you) look like a child. Acute observers have known this for a long time now: To be a Spartan is to be a philosopher [343] much more than to be an athlete. They know that to be able to say something like that is the mark of a perfectly educated man. We’re talking about men like Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mytilene, Bias of Priene, our own Solon, Cleobulus of Lindus, Myson of Chen, and, the seventh in the list, Chilon of Sparta. All of these emulated, loved, and studied Spartan culture. You [b] can see that distinctive kind of Spartan wisdom in their pithy, memorable sayings, which they jointly dedicated as the first fruits of their wisdom to Apollo in his temple at Delphi, inscribing there the maxims now on everyone’s lips: ‘Know thyself’ and ‘Nothing in excess.’