“What is my point? That the characteristic style of ancient philosophy [c] was laconic brevity. It was in this context that the saying of Pittacus—It is hard to be good—was privately circulated with approval among the sages. Then Simonides, ambitious for philosophical fame, saw that if he could score a takedown against this saying, as if it were a famous wrestler, and get the better of it, he would himself become famous in his own lifetime. So he composed this poem as a deliberate attack against this maxim. That’s how it seems to me.
“Let’s test my hypothesis together, to see whether what I say is true. If [d] all the poet wanted to say was that it is hard to become good, then the beginning of the poem would be crazy, for he inserted there an antithetical particle.17 It doesn’t make any sense to insert this unless one supposes that Simonides is addressing the Pittacus maxim as an opponent. Pittacus says it is hard to be good; Simonides rebuts this by saying, ‘No, but it is hard for a man to become good, Pittacus, truly.’ Notice that he does not say [e] truly good; he is not talking about truth in the context of some things being truly good and other things being good but not truly so. This would create an impression of naivete very unlike Simonides. The position of ‘truly’ in the verse must be a case of hyperbaton. We have to approach this maxim of Pittacus by imagining him speaking and Simonides replying, something like this: Pittacus: ‘Gentlemen, it is hard to be good.’ Simonides: [344] ‘What you say is not true, Pittacus, for it is not being but becoming good, in hands and feet and mind foursquare, blamelessly built—that is hard truly.’ This way the insertion of the antithetical particle makes sense, and the ‘truly’ feels correct in its position at the end. Everything that comes after is evidence for this interpretation. The poem is full of details that testify to its excellent composition; indeed, it is a lovely and exquisitely [b] crafted piece, but it would take a long time to go through it from that point of view. Let’s review instead the overall structure and intention of the ode, which is from beginning to end a refutation of Pittacus’ maxim.
“A few lines later he states (imagine he is making a speech): ‘To become good truly is hard, and although it may be possible for a short period of [c] time, to persist in that state and to be a good man, as you put it, Pittacus, is not humanly possible. God alone can have this privilege,
But that man inevitably is bad
whom incapacitating misfortune throws down.
“ ‘Whom does incapacitating misfortune throw down when it comes to, say, the command of a ship? Clearly not the ordinary passenger, who is always susceptible. You can’t knock down someone already supine; you can only knock down someone standing up and render him supine. In the [d] same way, incapacitating misfortune would overthrow only someone who is capable, not the chronically incapable. A hurricane striking a pilot would incapacitate him, a bad season will do it to a farmer, and the same thing applies to a doctor. For the good is susceptible to becoming bad, as another poet testifies:
The good man is at times bad, at times good.
“ ‘But the bad is not susceptible to becoming bad; it must always be bad. So that when incapacitating misfortune throws down a man who is capable, [e] wise, and good, he must “inevitably be bad.” You say, Pittacus, that it is hard to be good; in fact, to become good is hard, though possible, but to be good is impossible.
Faring well, every man is good;
Bad, faring ill.
“ ‘What does it mean to fare well in letters; what makes a man good at [345] them? Clearly, the learning of letters. What kind of faring well makes a good doctor? Clearly, learning how to cure the sick. ‘Bad, faring ill’: who could become a bad doctor? Clearly, someone who is, first, a doctor and, second, a good doctor. He could in fact become a bad doctor, but we who are medical laymen could never by faring ill become doctors or carpenters [b] or any other kind of professional. And if one cannot become a doctor by faring ill, clearly one cannot become a bad one either. In the same way a good man may eventually become bad with the passage of time, or through hardship, disease, or some other circumstance that involves the only real kind of faring ill, which is the loss of knowledge. But the bad man can never become bad, for he is so all the time. If he is to become bad, he must [c] first become good. So the tenor of this part of the poem is that it is impossible to be a good man and continue to be good, but possible for one and the same person to become good and also bad, and those are best for the longest time whom the gods love.’
“All this is directed at Pittacus, as the next few lines of the poem make even clearer:
Therefore never shall I seek for the impossible,
cast away my life’s lot on empty hope, a quixotic quest
for a blameless man among those who reap
the broad earth’s fruit,
[d] but if I find him you will have my report.
This is strong language, and he keeps up his attack on Pittacus’ maxim throughout the poem:
All who do no wrong willingly
I praise and love.
Necessity not even the gods resist.
This is spoken to the same end. For Simonides was not so uneducated as [e] to say that he praised all who did nothing bad willingly, as if there were anyone who willingly did bad things. I am pretty sure that none of the wise men thinks that any human being willingly makes a mistake or willingly does anything wrong or bad. They know very well that anyone who does anything wrong or bad does so involuntarily. So also Simonides, [346] who does not say that he praises those who willingly do nothing bad; rather he applies the term ‘willingly’ to himself. He perceived that a good man, an honorable man, often forces himself to love and praise someone utterly different from himself, one’s alienated father perhaps, or mother, or country. Scoundrels in a similar situation are almost happy to see their parents’ or country’s trouble and viciously point it out and denounce it [b] so that their own dereliction of duty toward them will not be called into question. They actually exaggerate their complaints and add gratuitous to unavoidable hostility, whereas good men conceal the trouble and force themselves to give praise, and if they are angry because their parents or country wronged them, they calm themselves down and reconcile themselves to it, and they force themselves to love and praise their own people. I think that Simonides reflected that on more than one occasion he himself had eulogized some tyrant or other such person, not willingly but because [c] he had to. So he is saying to Pittacus: ‘Pittacus, it is not because I am an overcritical person that I am criticizing you, since,
enough for me a man who is not bad
nor too intractable, who knows civic Right, a sound man.
I shall not blame him,
for I am not fond of blame.
Infinite the tribe of fools,’
the implication being that a censorious person would have his hands full blaming them.
‘All is fair in which foul is not mixed.’
The sense here is not that all is white in which black is not mixed, which [d] would be ludicrous in many ways, but rather that he himself accepts without any objection what is in between. ‘I do not seek,’ he says,
‘for a blameless man among those who reap
the broad earth’s fruit,
but if I find him you will have my report.’
The meaning is that ‘on those terms I will never praise anyone, but I am happy with an average man who does no wrong, since I willingly
praise and love all’—
—note the Lesbian dialect form of the verb ‘praise,’ since he is addressing [e] Pittacus—
‘all who do no wrong’
(this is where the pause should be, before ‘willingly’)
‘willingly
I praise and love
but there are some whom I praise and love unwillingly. So if you spoke something even moderately reasonable and true, Pittacus, I would never [347] censure you. But the fact is that you have lied blatantly yet with verisimilitude about extremely important issues, and for that I do censure you.’
&
nbsp; “And that, Prodicus and Protagoras,” I concluded, “is what I think was going through Simonides’ mind when he composed this ode.”
[b] Then Hippias said, “I am favorably impressed by your analysis of this ode, Socrates. I have quite a nice talk on it myself, which I will present to you if you wish.”
“Yes, Hippias,” Alcibiades said, “some other time, though. What should be done now is what Socrates and Protagoras agreed upon, which is for Socrates to answer any questions Protagoras may still have to ask, or if he so chooses, to answer Socrates’ questions.”
[c] Then I said, “I leave it up to Protagoras, but if it’s all right with him, why don’t we say good-bye to odes and poetry and get back to what I first asked him, a question, Protagoras, which I would be glad to settle in a joint investigation with you. Discussing poetry strikes me as no different from the second-rate drinking parties of the agora crowd. These people, largely uneducated and unable to entertain themselves over their wine by [d] using their own voices to generate conversation, pay premium prices for flute-girls and rely on the extraneous voice of the reed flute as background music for their parties. But when well-educated gentlemen drink together, you will not see girls playing the flute or the lyre or dancing, but a group that knows how to get together without these childish frivolities, conversing [e] civilly no matter how heavily they are drinking. Ours is such a group, if indeed it consists of men such as most of us claim to be, and it should require no extraneous voices, not even of poets, who cannot be questioned on what they say. When a poet is brought up in a discussion, almost everyone has a different opinion about what he means, and they wind up arguing about something they can never finally decide. The best people [348] avoid such discussions and rely on their own powers of speech to entertain themselves and test each other. These people should be our models. We should put the poets aside and converse directly with each other, testing the truth and our own ideas. If you have more questions to ask, I am ready to answer them; or, if you prefer, you can render the same service to me, and we can resume where we broke off and try to reach a conclusion.”
[b] I went on in this vein, but Protagoras would not state clearly which alternative he preferred. So Alcibiades looked over at Callias and said, “Callias, do you think Protagoras is behaving well in not making it clear whether he will participate in the discussion or not? I certainly don’t. He should either participate or say he is not going to, so we will know how he stands, and Socrates, or whoever, can start a discussion with someone else.”
[c] It looked to me that Protagoras was embarrassed by Alcibiades’ words, not to mention the insistence of Callias and practically the whole company. In the end he reluctantly brought himself to resume our dialogue and indicated he was ready to be asked questions.
“Protagoras,” I said, “I don’t want you to think that my motive in talking with you is anything else than to take a good hard look at things that continually perplex me. I think that Homer said it all in the line,
Going in tandem, one perceives before the other.18 [d]
Human beings are simply more resourceful this way in action, speech, and thought. If someone has a private perception, he immediately starts going around and looking until he finds somebody he can show it to and have it corroborated. And there is a particular reason why I would rather talk with you than anyone else: I think you are the best qualified to investigate the sort of things that decent and respectable individuals ought [e] to examine, and virtue especially. Who else but you? Not only do you consider yourself to be noble and good but, unlike others who are themselves decent and respectable individuals yet unable to make others so, you are not only good yourself but able to make others good as well, and you have so much self-confidence that instead of concealing this skill, as others do, you advertise it openly to the whole Greek world, calling yourself [349] a sophist, highlighting yourself as a teacher of virtue, the first ever to have deemed it appropriate to charge a fee for this. How could I not solicit your help in a joint investigation of these questions? There is no way I could not.
“So right now I want you to remind me of some of the questions I first asked, starting from the beginning. Then I want to proceed together to [b] take a good hard look at some other questions. I believe the first question was this: Wisdom, temperance, courage, justice, and piety—are these five names for the same thing, or is there underlying each of these names a unique thing, a thing with its own power or function, each one unlike any of the others? You said that they are not names for the same thing, that [c] each of these names refers to a unique thing, and that all these are parts of virtue, not like the parts of gold, which are similar to each other and to the whole of which they are parts, but like the parts of a face, dissimilar to the whole of which they are parts and to each other, and each one having its own unique power or function. If this is still your view, say so; if it’s changed in any way, make your new position clear, for I am certainly not going to hold you accountable for what you said before if you want [d] to say something at all different now. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were just trying out something on me before.”
“What I am saying to you, Socrates, is that all these are parts of virtue, and that while four of them are reasonably close to each other, courage is completely different from all the rest. The proof that what I am saying is true is that you will find many people who are extremely unjust, impious, intemperate, and ignorant, and yet exceptionally courageous.”
[e] “Hold it right there,” I said. “This is worth looking into. Would you say courageous men are confident, or something else?”
“Confident, yes, and ready for action where most men would be afraid.”
“Well, then, do you agree that virtue is something fine, and that you offer yourself as a teacher of it because it is fine?”
“The finest thing of all, unless I am quite out of my mind.”
“Then is part of it worthless and part of it fine, or all of it fine?”
“Surely it is all as fine as can be.”
[350] “Do you know who dives confidently into wells?”
“Of course, divers.”
“Is this because they know what they are doing, or for some other reason?”
“Because they know what they are doing.”
“Who are confident in fighting from horseback? Riders or nonriders?”
“Riders.”
“And in fighting with shields? Shieldmen or nonshieldmen?”
“Shieldmen, and so on down the line, if that’s what you’re getting at. Those with the right kind of knowledge are always more confident than those without it, and a given individual is more confident after he acquires it than he was before.”
[b] “But haven’t you ever seen men lacking knowledge of all of these things yet confident in each of them?”
“I have, all too confident.”
“Is their confidence courage?”
“No, because courage would then be contemptible. These men are out of their minds.”
“Then what do you mean by courageous men? Aren’t they those who are confident?”
[c] “I still hold by that.”
“Then these men who are so confident turn out to be not courageous but mad? And, on the other side, the wisest are the most confident and the most confident are the most courageous? And the logical conclusion would be that wisdom is courage?”
“You are doing a poor job of remembering what I said when I answered your questions, Socrates. When I was asked if the courageous are confident, I agreed. I was not asked if the confident are courageous. If you had asked [d] me that, I would have said, ‘Not all of them.’ You have nowhere shown that my assent to the proposition that the courageous are confident was in error. What you did show next was that knowledge increases one’s confidence and makes one more confident than those without knowledge. In consequence of this you conclude that courage and wisdom are the same thing. But by following this line of reasoning you could conclude that strength a
nd wisdom are the same thing. First you would ask me if [e] the strong are powerful, and I would say yes. Then, if those who know how to wrestle are more powerful than those who do not, and if individual wrestlers became more powerful after they learn than they were before. Again I would say yes. After I had agreed to these things, it would be open to you to use precisely these points of agreement to prove that wisdom is strength. But nowhere in this process do I agree that the powerful are strong, only that the strong are powerful. Strength and power are not [351] the same thing. Power derives from knowledge and also from madness and passionate emotion. Strength comes from nature and proper nurture of the body. So also confidence and courage are not the same thing, with the consequence that the courageous are confident, but not all those who are confident are courageous. For confidence, like power, comes from skill (and from passionate emotion and madness as well); courage, from nature and the proper nurture of the soul.”
Complete Works Page 120