But Hippias, how in the world do you explain this: in the old days people who are still famous for wisdom—Pittacus and Bias and the school of Thales of Miletus, and later ones down to Anaxagoras—that all or most of those people, we see, kept away from affairs of state?2
HIPPIAS: What do you think, Socrates? Isn’t it that they were weak and [d] unable to carry their good sense successfully into both areas, the public and the private?
SOCRATES: Then it’s really like the improvements in other skills, isn’t it, where early craftsmen are worthless compared to modern ones? Should we say that your skill—the skill of the sophists—has been improved in the same way, and that the ancients are worthless compared to you in wisdom?
HIPPIAS: Yes, certainly, you’re right.
SOCRATES: So if Bias came to life again in our time, Hippias, he would [282] make himself a laughingstock compared with you people, just as Daedalus3 also, according to the sculptors, would be laughable if he turned up now doing things like the ones that made him famous.
HIPPIAS: That’s right, Socrates, just as you say. However I usually praise the ancients who came before us before and more highly than I praise people of our own day, for while I take care to avoid the envy of the living, I fear the wrath of the dead.
[b] SOCRATES: You’re putting fine thoughts in fine words, Hippias; that’s what I think. I can support the truth of your claim; the skill you people have has really been improved in its ability to handle public business as well as private.
Why, Gorgias of Leontini, the well-known sophist, came here on public business as ambassador from his hometown—because he was best qualified in Leontini to handle community affairs. In the assembly, he won his case, [c] and in private, by giving displays and tutorials to young people, he made a lot of money and took it out of the city. Or, another case, our colleague Prodicus came often enough on public business; but just this last time, when he came on public business from Ceos, he made a great impression with his speech in the council, and in private he earned a wonderful sum of money giving displays and tutoring the young. But none of these early [d] thinkers thought fit to charge a monetary fee or give displays of his wisdom for all comers. They were so simple they didn’t realize the great value of money. But Gorgias and Prodicus each made more money from wisdom than any craftsman of any kind ever made from his skill. And Protagoras did the same even earlier.
HIPPIAS: Socrates, you haven’t the slightest idea how fine this can be. If [e] you knew how much money I’ve made, you’d be amazed. Take one case: I went to Sicily once, when Protagoras was visiting there (he was famous then, and an older man); though I was younger I made much more than a hundred and fifty minas in a short time—and from one very small place, Inycon, more than twenty minas. When I went home with this I gave it to my father, so that he and the other citizens were amazed and thunderstruck. And I almost think I’ve made more money than any other two sophists you like put together.
[283] SOCRATES: That’s a fine thing you say, Hippias, strong evidence of your own and modern wisdom, and of the superiority of men nowadays over the ancients. There was a lot of ignorance among our predecessors down to Anaxagoras, according to you. People say the opposite of what happened to you happened to Anaxagoras: he inherited a large sum, but lost everything through neglect—there was so little intelligence4 in his wisdom. And they tell stories like that about other early wise men. You make me see there’s fine evidence, here, I think, for the superiority of our contemporaries [b] over those who came before; and many will have the same opinion, that a wise man needs to be wise primarily for his own sake. The mark of being wise, I see, is when someone makes the most money. Enough said about that.
Tell me this: from which of the cities you visit did you make the most money? From Sparta, obviously, where you visited most often.
HIPPIAS: Lord no, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Really? Did you make the least?
HIPPIAS: Nothing at all, ever. [c]
SOCRATES: That’s weird, Hippias, and amazing! Tell me, isn’t the wisdom you have the sort that makes those who study and learn it stronger in virtue?
HIPPIAS: Very much so, Socrates.
SOCRATES: But while you were able to make the sons of Inycans better, you were powerless for the sons of Spartans?
HIPPIAS: Far from it.
SOCRATES: But then do Sicilians want to become better, but not Spartans?
HIPPIAS: Certainly the Spartans want to, as well, Socrates. [d]
SOCRATES: Well, did they stay away from you for lack of money?
HIPPIAS: No. They have enough.
SOCRATES: How could it be that they have money and the desire, and you have the ability to give them the greatest benefits, but they didn’t send you away loaded with money? Could it be this, that the Spartans educate their own children better than you would? Should we say this is so, do you agree?
HIPPIAS: Not at all. [e]
SOCRATES: Then weren’t you able to persuade the young men in Sparta that if they studied with you they would make more progress in virtue than if they stayed with their own teachers? Or couldn’t you persuade their fathers they should entrust the matter to you, rather than look after it themselves, if they cared at all for their sons? Surely they didn’t enviously begrudge their own sons the chance to become as good as possible.
HIPPIAS: I don’t think they begrudged it.
SOCRATES: But Sparta really is law-abiding.
HIPPIAS: Of course.
SOCRATES: And what’s most highly prized in law-abiding cities is virtue. [284]
HIPPIAS: Of course.
SOCRATES: And you, you know most finely of men how to pass virtue on to other people.
HIPPIAS: Very much so, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Well, a man who knew most finely how to teach skill with horses would be most honored, and get the most money, in Thessaly, or wherever else in Greece that skill is seriously studied.
HIPPIAS: That’s likely.
[b] SOCRATES: Then won’t a man who can teach lessons of the greatest value for virtue be given the highest honor, and make the most money, if he wishes, in Sparta, or in any other law-abiding Greek city? But you think it will be more in Sicily, more in Inycon? Should we believe all this, Hippias? If you give the order, it has to be believed.
HIPPIAS: An ancestral tradition of the Spartans, Socrates, forbids them to change their laws, or to give their sons any education contrary to established customs.
[c] SOCRATES: What do you mean? The Spartans have an ancestral tradition of not doing right, but doing wrong?
HIPPIAS: I wouldn’t say so, Socrates.
SOCRATES: But they would do right to educate their young men better, not worse?
HIPPIAS: Right, indeed. But foreign education is not lawful for them: because, mind you, if anybody else had ever taken money from there for education, I would have taken by far the most—they love my lectures and applaud—but, as I say, it’s against the law.
[d] SOCRATES: Do you call law harmful or beneficial to the city, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: I think it is made to be beneficial, but sometimes it does harm, too, if the law is made badly.
SOCRATES: But look here. Don’t lawmakers make law to be the greatest good to the city? Without that, law-abiding civilized life is impossible.
HIPPIAS: True.
SOCRATES: So when people who are trying to make laws fail to make them good, they have failed to make them lawful—indeed, to make them law. What do you say?
[e] HIPPIAS: In precise speech, Socrates, that is so. But men are not accustomed to use words in that manner.
SOCRATES: Do you mean those who know, Hippias, or those who don’t?
HIPPIAS: Ordinary people.
SOCRATES: Are they the ones who know the truth—ordinary people?
HIPPIAS: Of course not.
SOCRATES: But I suppose people who know, at least, believe that what is more beneficial is more lawful in truth for all men. Do you agree?
HIPPIAS: Yes,
I grant it’s that way in truth.
SOCRATES: Then it is and stays just the way those who know believe it to be?
HIPPIAS: Quite.
[285] SOCRATES: But, as you say, it would be more beneficial for the Spartans to be educated by your teaching, though it’s foreign—more beneficial than the local education?
HIPPIAS: And what I say is true.
SOCRATES: And that what is more beneficial is more lawful—do you say that too, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: I did say it.
SOCRATES: By your account it is more lawful for the sons of the Spartans to be educated by Hippias and less lawful by their fathers, if they will really be more benefited by you.
HIPPIAS: They certainly will be benefited, Socrates. [b]
SOCRATES: Then the Spartans are breaking the law by not giving you money and entrusting their sons to you.
HIPPIAS: I grant that. I think you said your say on my behalf, and there’s no need for me to oppose it.
SOCRATES: So we find the Spartans to be lawbreakers, and that on the most important issue, though they appear to be most lawful. So when they applaud you, really, Hippias, and enjoy your speech, what sort of things have they heard? Surely they’re those things you know most finely, things [c] about stars and movements in the sky?
HIPPIAS: Not at all. They can’t stand the subject.
SOCRATES: Then do they enjoy hearing about geometry?
HIPPIAS: No. Many of them can’t even, well, count.
SOCRATES: Then they’re a long way from putting up with your displays of arithmetic.
HIPPIAS: Good god, yes. A long way.
SOCRATES: Well, do they like those things on which you know how to [d] make the sharpest distinctions of anybody—the functions of letters, syllables, rhythms, and harmonies?
HIPPIAS: Harmonies and letters, indeed!
SOCRATES: Well just what is it they love to hear about from you, and applaud? Tell me yourself; I can’t figure it out.
HIPPIAS: The genealogies of heroes and men, Socrates, and the settlements (how cities were founded in ancient times), and in a word all ancient [e] history—that’s what they most love to hear about. So because of them I have been forced to learn up on all such things and to study them thoroughly.
SOCRATES: Good lord, Hippias, you’re lucky the Spartans don’t enjoy it when someone lists our archons from the time of Solon.5 Otherwise, you’d have had a job learning them.
HIPPIAS: How come, Socrates? Let me hear them once and I’ll memorize fifty names.
SOCRATES: That’s right. I forgot you had the art of memory. So I [286] understand: the Spartans enjoy you, predictably, because you know a lot of things, and they use you the way children use old ladies, to tell stories for pleasure.
HIPPIAS: Yes—and, good lord, actually about fine activities, Socrates. Just now I made a great impression there speaking about the activities a young man should take up. I have a speech about that I put together really finely, and I put the words particularly well. My setting and the starting point of [b] the speech are something like this: After Troy was taken, the tale is told that Neoptolemus asked Nestor6 what sort of activities are fine—the sort of activities that would make someone most famous if he adopted them while young. After that the speaker is Nestor, who teaches him a very great many very fine customs. I displayed that there and I expect to display it here the day after tomorrow, in Phidostratus’ schoolroom—with many [c] other fine things worth hearing. Eudicus,7 Apemantus’ son, invited me. But why don’t you come too, and bring some more people, if they are capable of hearing and judging what is said?
SOCRATES: Certainly, Hippias, if all goes well. But now answer me a short question about that; it’s a fine thing you reminded me. Just now someone got me badly stuck when I was finding fault with parts of some speeches for being foul, and praising other parts as fine. He questioned me this [d] way, really insultingly: “Socrates, how do you know what sorts of things are fine and foul? Look, would you be able to say what the fine is?” And I, I’m so worthless, I was stuck and I wasn’t able to answer him properly. As I left the gathering I was angry and blamed myself, and I made a threatening resolve, that whomever of you wise men I met first, I would listen and learn and study, then return to the questioner and fight the argument back. So, as I say, it’s a fine thing you came now. Teach me [e] enough about what the fine is itself, and try to answer me with the greatest precision possible, so I won’t be a laughingstock again for having been refuted a second time. Of course you know it clearly; it would be a pretty small bit of learning out of the many things you know.
HIPPIAS: Small indeed, Socrates, and not worth a thing, as they say.
SOCRATES: Then I’ll learn it easily, and no one will ever refute me again.
[287] HIPPIAS: No one will. Or what I do would be crude and amateurish.
SOCRATES: Very well said, Hippias—if we defeat the man! Will it hurt if I act like him and take the other side of the argument when you answer, so that you’ll give me the most practice? I have some experience of the other side. So if it’s the same to you I’d like to take the other side, to learn more strongly.
[b] HIPPIAS: Take the other side. And, as I just said, the question is not large. I could teach you to answer much harder things than that so no human being could refute you.
SOCRATES: That’s amazingly well said! Now, since it’s your command, let me become the man as best I can and try to question you. If you displayed that speech to him, the one you mentioned about the fine activities, he’d listen, and when you stopped speaking he’d ask not about anything else but about the fine—that’s a sort of habit with him—and he’d say: “O [c] visitor from Elis, is it not by justice that just people are just?” Answer, Hippias, as if he were the questioner.
HIPPIAS: I shall answer that it is by justice.
SOCRATES: “And is this justice something?”
HIPPIAS: Very much so.
SOCRATES: “And by wisdom wise people are wise, and by the good all good things are good?”
HIPPIAS: How could they be otherwise?
SOCRATES: “… by these each being something? Of course, it can’t be that they’re not.”
HIPPIAS: They are.
SOCRATES: “Then all fine things, too, are fine by the fine, isn’t that so?”
HIPPIAS: Yes, by the fine. [d]
SOCRATES: “… by that being something?”
HIPPIAS: It is. Why not?
SOCRATES: “Tell me then, visitor,” he’ll say, “what is that, the fine?”
HIPPIAS: Doesn’t the person who asks this want to find out what is a fine thing?
SOCRATES: I don’t think so, Hippias. What is the fine.
HIPPIAS: And what’s the difference between the one and the other?
SOCRATES: You don’t think there is any?
HIPPIAS: There’s no difference.
SOCRATES: Well, clearly your knowledge is finer. But look here, he’s [e] asking you not what is a fine thing, but what is the fine.
HIPPIAS: My friend, I understand. I will indeed tell him what the fine is, and never will I be refuted. Listen, Socrates, to tell the truth, a fine girl is a fine thing.
SOCRATES: That’s fine, Hippias; by Dog you have a glorious answer. So you really think, if I gave that answer, I’d be answering what was asked, [288] and correctly, and never will I be refuted?
HIPPIAS: Socrates, how could you be refuted when you say what everyone thinks, when everyone who hears you will testify that you’re right?
SOCRATES: Very well. Certainly. Now, look, Hippias, let me go over what you said for myself. He will question me somewhat like this: “Come now, Socrates, give me an answer. All those things you say are fine, will they be fine if the fine itself is what?” Shall I say that if a fine girl is a fine thing, those things will be fine because of that?
HIPPIAS: Then do you think that man will still try to refute you—that what [b] you say is not a fine thing—or if he does try, he won’t be a laughingstock?
HIPPIAS: Tell me.
SOCRATES: “How sweet you are, Socrates,” he’ll say. “Isn’t a fine Elean [c] mare a fine thing? The god praised mares in his oracle.” What shall we say, Hippias? Mustn’t we say that the mare is a fine thing? At least if it’s a fine one. How could we dare deny that the fine thing is a fine thing?
HIPPIAS: That’s true, Socrates. And the god was right to say that too. We breed very fine mares in our country.
SOCRATES: “Very well,” he’ll say. “What about a fine lyre? Isn’t it a fine thing?” Shouldn’t we say so, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then after that he’ll ask—I know fairly well, judging from the way he is—“Then what about a fine pot, my good fellow? Isn’t it a fine thing?”
[d] HIPPIAS: Who is the man, Socrates? What a boor he is to dare in an august proceeding to speak such vulgar speech that way!
SOCRATES: He’s like that, Hippias, not refined. He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth. Still the man must have an answer; so here’s my first opinion: If the pot should have been turned by a good potter, smooth and round and finely fired, like some of those fine two-handled [e] pots that hold six choes, very fine ones—if he’s asking about a pot like that, we have to agree it’s fine. How could we say that what is fine is not a fine thing?
HIPPIAS: We couldn’t, Socrates.
SOCRATES: “Then is a fine pot a fine thing too? Answer me!” he’ll say.
HIPPIAS: But I think that’s so, Socrates. Even that utensil is fine if finely [289] made. But on the whole that’s not worth judging fine, compared to a horse and a girl and all the other fine things.
SOCRATES: Very well. Then I understand how we’ll have to answer him when he asks this question, here: “Don’t you know that what Heraclitus said holds good—‘the finest of monkeys is foul put together with another class’,8 and the finest of pots is foul put together with the class of girls, so says Hippias the wise.” Isn’t that so, Hippias?
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