Complete Works
Page 142
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: But the examples I gave were not that way. Among them were “each” itself and “both.” Is that right?
HIPPIAS: It is.
[b] SOCRATES: With which of these do you put the fine, Hippias? With those you mentioned? If I am strong and so are you, we’re both strong too; and if I am just and so are you, we both are too. And if both, then each. In the same way, if I am fine and so are you, we both are too; and if both, then each. Or does nothing stop them from being like the things I said I saw clearly: when both of anything are even-numbered, each may be either odd- or possibly even-numbered. And again, when each of them is [c] inexpressible, both together may be expressible, or possibly inexpressible.14 And millions of things like that. With which do you place the fine? Do you see the matter the way I do? I think it’s a great absurdity for both of us to be fine, but each not; or each fine, but both not, or anything else like that.
Do you choose the way I do, or the other way?
HIPPIAS: The first way is for me, Socrates.
[d] SOCRATES: Well done, Hippias! We’ve saved ourselves a longer search. Because if the fine is with those, then the pleasant through sight and hearing is not fine anymore. “Through sight and hearing” makes both fine, but not each. But that’s impossible, as you and I agree, Hippias.
HIPPIAS: We do agree.
SOCRATES: Then it’s impossible for the pleasant through sight and hearing to be fine, since if it becomes fine it presents one of the impossibilities.
HIPPIAS: That’s right.
[e] SOCRATES: “Tell me again from the beginning,” he’ll say; “since you were quite wrong with that. What do you say that is—the fine in both pleasures, which made you value them above the others and call them fine?” Hippias, I think we have to say that they are the most harmless pleasures and the best, both and each as well. Or can you mention something else that distinguishes them from all the others?
HIPPIAS: Not at all. They really are best.
SOCRATES: He’ll say, “Then this is what you say is the fine—beneficial pleasure?”
“Apparently so,” I’ll say. And you?
HIPPIAS: Me too.
SOCRATES: He’ll say: “The maker of good is beneficial, but we just saw that the maker and what is made are different. Your account comes down [304] to the earlier account. The good would not be fine, or the fine good, if each of these were different.”
“Absolutely,” we’ll say, if we have any sense. It’s not proper to disagree with a man when he’s right.
HIPPIAS: But Socrates, really, what do you think of all that? It’s flakings and clippings of speeches, as I told you before, divided up small. But here’s what is fine and worth a lot: to be able to present a speech well [b] and finely, in court or council or any other authority to whom you give the speech, to convince them and go home carrying not the smallest but the greatest of prizes, the successful defense of yourself, your property, and friends. One should stick to that.
He should give up and abandon all that small-talking, so he won’t be thought a complete fool for applying himself, as he is now, to babbling nonsense.
SOCRATES: Hippias, my friend, you’re a lucky man, because you know which activities a man should practice, and you’ve practiced them too—[c] successfully, as you say. But I’m apparently held back by my crazy luck. I wander around and I’m always getting stuck. If I make a display of how stuck I am to you wise men, I get mud-spattered by your speeches when I display it. You all say what you just said, that I am spending my time on things that are silly and small and worthless. But when I’m convinced by you and say what you say, that it’s much the most excellent thing to be able to present a speech well and finely, and get things done in court [d] or any other gathering, I hear every insult from that man (among others around here) who has always been refuting me. He happens to be a close relative of mine, and he lives in the same house. So when I go home to my own place and he hears me saying those things, he asks if I’m not ashamed that I dare discuss fine activities when I’ve been so plainly refuted about the fine, and it’s clear I don’t even know at all what that is itself! “Look,” he’ll say. “How will you know whose speech—or any other action—is [e] finely presented or not, when you are ignorant of the fine? And when you’re in a state like that, do you think it’s any better for you to live than die?” That’s what I get, as I said. Insults and blame from you, insults from him. But I suppose it is necessary to bear all that. It wouldn’t be strange if it were good for me. I actually think, Hippas, that associating with both of you has done me good. The proverb says, “What’s fine is hard”—I think I know that.
1. Elis was an independent city-state in the northwest Peloponnesus, not far from Olympia. Although geographically close to Sparta, Elis was tilting toward Athens in the contest for leadership between the two.
2. Pittacus ruled in Mytilene for ten years, about 600 B.C., and was famous as a lawgiver; Bias was a statesman of Priene, active in the mid–sixth century B.C.; and Thales is said to have predicted the eclipse of 585 B.C. All three were included in the “Seven Sages.” Anaxagoras (c. 500–c. 428) was a philosopher active in Athens in Socrates’ youth.
3. Daedalus was praised in legend as an inventor of lifelike statues for King Minos of Crete.
4. “Intelligence” (nous) was said to be prominent in Anaxagoras’ philosophy as the source of order for the entire universe.
5. The chief elected magistrates of Athens were called archons. Solon was a lawgiver, political reformer, and poet (c. 640/635 to soon after 561/560 B.C.).
6. Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, is the type of the young hero; Nestor, the oldest of the Greeks in the expedition against Troy, is a proverbial wise old man.
7. Eudicus was probably Hippias’ host in Athens (Lesser Hippias 363b). Nothing is known about Phidostratus.
8. Reading allōi at a4; Heraclitus B82 Diels-Kranz.
9. Phidias (b. ca. 490 B.C.), an Athenian sculptor, was best known as designer of the Parthenon sculptures. The statue of Athena mentioned in Socrates’ next speech was fashioned of ivory and gold for the Parthenon.
10. A dithyramb is a sort of choral ode heavily embellished with music.
11. Achilles’ mother, Thetis, was a goddess. His grandfather, Aeacus, was a son of Zeus. Heracles, Tantalus, Dardanus, and Zethus (below) were all said to be sons of Zeus. Pelops, son of Tantalus, was of human parentage.
12. Alternatively, “power.”
13. Sophroniscus’ son is Socrates himself.
14. By “inexpressible number” is probably meant an irrational surd (square root of a non-square number). If so, the claim is false. The sum of two such numbers is irrational.
LESSER HIPPIAS
Translated by Nicholas D. Smith.
The great sophist Hippias, who has come to Athens on his rounds of the Greek cities, has just exhibited his talents in a discourse on Homer. Socrates asks Hippias to explain further his view on Achilles and Odysseus, the heroes of the two Homeric poems. In the poems, says Hippias, Achilles is ‘best and bravest’ of the Greek heroes at Troy, and truthful, while Odysseus is ‘wily and a liar’—he speaks untruths. Homer implies, and Hippias agrees, that being truthful and being a liar (speaking untruths) are two distinct, contrasting things—one and the same person cannot be both truthful and a ‘liar’. But is that so, Socrates wants to know? Isn’t the one who has the truth about some matter the best able to tell an untruth? After all, only he is in a position even to know what would be an untruth to say! So the good and truthful man—Achilles, according to Hippias—would also be a liar, one accomplished at telling untruths. On this account, it could not be right to contrast Achilles, as a truthful person, with Odysseus as a liar—they would both have to be both. Hippias proves unable to sort these questions out satisfactorily, and so to explain adequately his own view about the differences between the two Homeric heroes: his self-proclaimed wisdom about the interpretation of Homer and indeed about everything else is
thus shown up as no wisdom at all.
Toward the end of this short dialogue Socrates presses Hippias to admit that those who make moral errors ‘voluntarily’—e.g., the just person, who knows what the just thing to do is, but precisely through knowing that does the unjust thing instead—are better people than those who act unjustly ‘involuntarily’, from ignorance and by being unjust. Given his earlier inability to show how the good, knowledgeable, truthful person is not also the liar—the person most adept at telling untruths—Hippias is in no position to reject this suggestion, however unpalatable the thought may be that just people are exquisitely good at doing injustice! Nonetheless, he resists—no doubt correctly, however illogically, given his own earlier statements. As usual, in pressing him to accept this conclusion, Socrates is arguing only on the basis of assertions Hippias has made, not his own personal views. Indeed, Socrates indicates his own disavowal of this conclusion when he introduces at the end of the dialogue his own ‘if’: if there is anyone who voluntarily does what is unjust, then perhaps that person would be a ‘good’ doer of injustice. So we have no good reason to doubt, as some scholars have done, fearing for Socrates’ moral reputation, that this dialogue is Plato’s work. It is cited by Aristotle under the simple title Hippias (we call it Lesser to distinguish it from the longer or Greater Hippias dialogue). As often in citing Plato, Aristotle names no author, but—provided, as seems reasonable, that he means the reader to know it as Plato’s—his citation seems to assure its genuineness.
Elsewhere in Plato we hear nothing about Eudicus, the third speaker of the dialogue, except in Greater Hippias, where Hippias says Eudicus has invited him to give the exhibition on Homer that provides the occasion for our dialogue. From this evidence he would appear to be Hippias’ host in Athens, and so one of his more prominent Athenian admirers—though he is not mentioned in Protagoras among those attending him.
J.M.C.
EUDICUS: Why are you silent, Socrates, after Hippias has given such an [363] exhibition? Why don’t you either join us in praising some point or other in what he said, or else put something to the test, if it seems to you anything was not well said—especially since we who most claim to have a share in the practice of philosophy are now left to ourselves?
SOCRATES: Indeed, Eudicus, there are some things in what Hippias said just now about Homer that I’d like to hear more about. For your father [b] Apemantus used to say that the Iliad of Homer is a finer poem than the Odyssey, to just the extent that Achilles is a better man than Odysseus; for, he said, one of these poems is about Odysseus and the other about Achilles. I’d like to ask about that, then, if Hippias is willing. What does he think about these two men? Which of them does he say is the better? For in his [c] exhibition he’s told us all sorts of other things both about other poets and about Homer.
EUDICUS: It’s plain that Hippias won’t object to answering any question you ask him. Right, Hippias? If Socrates asks you something, will you answer, or what will you do?
HIPPIAS: Well, it would be strange behavior if I didn’t, Eudicus. I always go from my home at Elis to the festival of the Greeks at Olympia when it [d] is held and offer myself at the temple to speak on demand about any subject I have prepared for exhibition, and to answer any questions anyone wants to ask. I can hardly flee now from answering the questions of Socrates.
SOCRATES: What a godlike state of mind you’re in, Hippias, if you go to [364] the temple at every Olympiad so confident about your soul’s wisdom! I’d be amazed if any of the athletes of the body goes there to take part in the contests as fearless and trusting about his body as you say you are about your intellect!
HIPPIAS: It is reasonable for me to be in that state of mind, Socrates. Ever since I began taking part in the contests at the Olympic games, I have never met anyone superior to me in anything.
[b] SOCRATES: A fine reply, Hippias. Your fame is a monument for wisdom to the city of Elis and to your parents. But what do you say to us about Achilles and about Odysseus? Which do you say is the better man, and in what respect? When there were many of us inside, and you were giving your exhibition, I couldn’t keep up with what you were saying, but I hesitated to keep asking questions. There were so many people inside, and I didn’t want to hinder your display by raising questions. But now, since there are fewer of us and Eudicus here urges me to question you, [c] speak, and instruct us clearly. What were you saying about these two men? How were you distinguishing them?
HIPPIAS: Well, I am glad to explain to you even more clearly than before what I say about these men and others, too. I say that Homer made Achilles the “best and bravest” man of those who went to Troy, and Nestor the wisest, and Odysseus the wiliest.
SOCRATES: What? Hippias, will you do me the favor of not laughing at [d] me if I have difficulty understanding what you are saying and often repeat my questions? But try to answer me gently and in a good–natured way.
HIPPIAS: It would be shameful, Socrates, if I, who teach others to do that very thing and demand a fee for it, should not myself be lenient when questioned by you and answer gently.
SOCRATES: Finely put. But really, when you said that the poet made Achilles the “best and bravest,” and when you said that he made Nestor [e] the wisest, I thought I understood you. But when you said that he made Odysseus the wiliest—well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know in the least what you mean by that. But tell me this; maybe it’ll make me understand better. Doesn’t Homer make Achilles wily?
HIPPIAS: Not in the least, Socrates, but most simple and truthful; for in the “Prayers,” when he has them conversing, he has Achilles say to Odysseus:
[365] Son of Laertes, sprung from Zeus, resourceful Odysseus,
I must speak the word bluntly,
How I will act and how I think it shall be accomplished,
For as hateful to me as the gates of Hades
[b] Is he who hides one thing in his mind, and says another.
As for me, I will speak as it shall also be accomplished.1
In these lines he clearly shows the way of each man, that Achilles is truthful and simple, and Odysseus is wily and a liar;2 for he presents Achilles as saying these words to Odysseus.
SOCRATES: Now, Hippias, it may be that I understand what you mean. You mean that the wily person is a liar, or so it appears.
HIPPIAS: Certainly, Socrates. Homer presents Odysseus as that kind of [c] person in many places, both in the Iliad and in the Odyssey.
SOCRATES: So Homer, it seems, thought the truthful man was one kind of person, and the liar another, and not the same.
HIPPIAS: How could he not, Socrates?
SOCRATES: And do you yourself think so, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Certainly, Socrates. It would be very strange if it were otherwise.
SOCRATES: Let’s dismiss Homer, then, since it’s impossible to ask him [d] what he had in mind when he wrote these lines. But since you’re evidently taking up the cause, and agree with what you say he meant, answer for both Homer and yourself.
HIPPIAS: So be it. Ask briefly what you wish.
SOCRATES: Do you say that liars, like sick people, don’t have the power to do anything, or that they do have the power to do something?
HIPPIAS: I say they very much have the power to do many things, and especially to deceive people.
SOCRATES: So according to your argument they are powerful, it would [e] seem, and wily. Right?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Are they wily and deceivers from dimwittedness and foolishness, or by cunning and some kind of intelligence?
HIPPIAS: From cunning, absolutely, and intelligence.
SOCRATES: So they are intelligent, it seems.
HIPPIAS: Yes, by Zeus. Too much so.
SOCRATES: And being intelligent, do they not know what they are doing, or do they know?
HIPPIAS: They know very well. That’s how they do their mischief.
SOCRATES: And knowing the things that they know, are they ignorant, or wise?
> HIPPIAS: Wise, surely, in just these things: in deception. [366]
SOCRATES: Stop. Let us recall what it is that you are saying. You claim that liars are powerful and intelligent and knowledgeable and wise in those matters in which they are liars?
HIPPIAS: That’s what I claim.
SOCRATES: And that the truthful and the liars are different, complete opposites of one another?
HIPPIAS: That’s what I say.
SOCRATES: Well, then. The liars are among the powerful and wise, according to your argument.
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And when you say that the liars are powerful and wise in [b] these very matters, do you mean that they have the power to lie if they want, or that they are without power in the matters in which they are liars?
HIPPIAS: I mean they are powerful.
SOCRATES: To put it in a nutshell, then, liars are wise and have the power to lie.
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So a person who did not have the power to lie and was ignorant would not be a liar.
HIPPIAS: That’s right.
[c] SOCRATES: But each person who can do what he wishes when he wishes is powerful. I mean someone who is not prevented by disease or other such things, someone like you with regard to writing my name. You have the power to do this whenever you wish to. That’s what I mean. Or don’t you say that one in such a condition is powerful?
HIPPIAS: I do.
SOCRATES: Now tell me, Hippias: aren’t you experienced in calculating and arithmetic?
HIPPIAS: Most experienced of all, Socrates.
SOCRATES: So if someone were to ask you what three times seven hundred is, couldn’t you tell him the truth about this most quickly and best of all, if you wished?
[d] HIPPIAS: Of course.
SOCRATES: Because you are most powerful and wisest in these matters?