by Plato
6. banging on the door: Scenes that open with frantic door-banging are a trademark of Greek comedies (see, e.g., Aristophanes' Clouds 132, Acharnians 394, Peace 178, Frogs 37, 460). There are various allusions to comic drama in the Protagoras. The opening recalls The Clouds in particular, the play in which the main character wakes his son up very early in the morning and urges him to enrol with the crazy sophist, Socrates. In the Protagoras, Hippocrates wakes Socrates up early in the morning because he wants to enrol with the sophist Protagoras. Socrates' role is precisely reversed in what follows, so that the Protagoras is a kind of anti-Clouds. In other ways, the dialogue mimics Aristophanes’ most famous play, The Frogs (see n. 20). Even the traditional subtitle of the dialogue (The Sophists) imitates comedy titles (The Acharnians, The Knights, The Birds etc.), although we do not know exactly where or when that subtitle originated.
7. camp-bed: I.e. a skimpous; like an Indian charpoy, a web of netting on four stubby legs. Socrates was known for his asceticism. In Clouds (254) he is mocked for his skimpous in particular.
8. my boy, Satyros, ran away: This is the only time Plato ever gives a (fictional) slave a name, so it seems likely that there is some point to it. ‘Satyros’ is a name connected with Socrates: in the Symposium, (215 – 17) Alcibiades says that Socrates resembles a satyros (a satyr) both physically and in his disrespectful cheekiness. The name is also connected with comedy: one genre of comedy was the satyr-play (in which satyrs made up the chorus). Perhaps Socrates is being assigned a comic role: ‘My Satyr ran away, so I came to you.’
9. give him some money: Sophists charged for tuition. The dialogue is full of disparaging references to this practice (here, 313c, 328b, 349a, 357e). Plato's characters often imply that there is something vulgar about earning money. Sophists were not independently wealthy, and their professionalism was a mark of their social origin. The stratification of society, and the existence of slavery in particular, made labour, and by extension wage-earning, socially unacceptable for elite Athenians.
10. Callias, Hipponicus’ son: a very wealthy young aristocrat who was an enthusiastic fan and generous patron of sophists (see Apology 20a).
11. Hippocrates blushed: It is his aristocratic horror at the thought of earning a living by a ‘profession' (see n. 9) that makes his admiration for sophists a very different matter from wanting to be one, rather as Victorian aristocrats used to worship actresses while regarding them as socially equivalent to prostitutes.
12. guitar: I.e. a kithára (usually translated ‘lyre’); very like an East African kirar; a kind of guitar. Like the modern guitar, it was used to accompany songs.
13. taking up their profession: See nn. 9, 11. Cf. also Aristotle, Politics 1337b: ‘To acquire knowledge of liberal arts up to a certain point is not ungentlemanly… but to do so for others [i.e. professionally] makes you look rather low-class and slave-like.’
14. take care of your soul: Socrates is worried that Protagoras may corrupt Hippocrates' character. This section of the Protagoras undermines the accusation that Socrates was himself guilty of ‘corrupting the young.’
15. sophisticated knowledge: Hippocrates implies that ‘sophist’ literally means ‘a knower (-istes) of clever things (soph-)’. The word actually derives from the verb sophízomai, ‘to be clever’, ‘to be intellectual’.
16. what does a sophist… about?: Hippocrates means Protagoras is a teacher of rhetoric – the art of speaking – which does not enable people to speak about one particular subject but rather to speak well, whatever the subject may be. Socrates' remark at 334e shows us that he knows this perfectly well.
17. well or badly: I.e. having a good life depends on having a good soul (chiefly in the sense of being a good person). The same claim is found at Apology 30a, Crito 47e, Republic 445a, Meno 88e, Gorgias 477a, 504d. It is a view usually strongly contrasted with hedonism, which Socrates apparently advocates later in this dialogue.
18. He's busy!: He means his master, Callias. The grumpy slave at the door is another cliché of Greek comic drama (see, e.g., Clouds 133, Acharnians 396).
19. ‘chorus’: Perhaps a chorus of initiates, given the reference to Orpheus, the legendary singer and supposed founder of the various Mystery cults. But there is also the suggestion of a comic chorus doing a dance routine. Athenaeus describes this scene as an obvious imitation of comic drama (Deipnosophistae 11.115).
20. And whom next… my eyes upon?: Odyssey 11.601. Socrates is comparing their arrival to Odysseus' descent into the under world. Hippias is described as sitting in judgement, like Minos judging the souls of the dead, while Protagoras, with his band of followers, is like Orpheus and a chorus of initiates, who traditionally frolic around the sunnier parts of Hades (cf. Aristophanes' Frogs, 316ff). But why is Callias' house the underworld? The combination of allusions to comedy and to the underworld surely recalls Aristophanes' Frogs (in which Dionysus and his slave Xanthias go to the underworld to bring back Euripides). At any rate, the plot of the Protagoras, from this point, copies the Frogs quite consciously. The second half of the Frogs is a contest between the (dead) poets, Aeschylus and Euripides, in which they parody each other's styles to determine who is the better poet and better adviser of the citizens of Athens. Here Plato presents a similar contest between two (dead) philosophers, in which they try out each other's philosophical styles (with much parody from Socrates), similarly to decide which one is the better civic educator. (I speculate that there may be a kind of tribute to Aristophanes in these allusions. The Frogs itself was written as an explicit tribute to Euripides, who had just died. The Protagoras is reliably dated to the 380s BC; Aristophanes died in 386 BC.)
21. Tantalus as well!: Odyssey 11.582; continuing the underworld theme. Yet in what follows, Prodicus seems to be presented not as Tantalus but as some kind of strange animal (an underworld monster, perhaps).
22. sweetheart: I.e. his paidiká (‘boy-stuff’). Relationships of this kind were typically between an older man, who played the (traditionally) masculine role of the suitor, and an adolescent, who played a pseudo-feminine role as the object of desire. Pausanias and Agathon (who became a famous tragedian) are depicted as a still devoted couple in the Symposium (set about fifteen years later).
23. Critias, Callaeschrus' son: This completes the list of the people present. In addition to the sophists, it is an amazing assembly of the Athenian elite. We have Paralus and Xanthippus, sons of Pericles, the most powerful man in Athens; the young Alcibiades (see n. 2); Charmides and Critias (Plato's uncles, who were both involved in the anti-democratic coup of 404 BC); and various other major players. Several of those present have title-roles in Platonic dialogues (Critias, Phaedrus, Alcibiades, Hippias and Charmides) or appear in them. In effect, we have the whole world of Plato in one house. I suspect this continues the underworld theme. There, as here, all the famous people of the past are crammed into the same place at once: see Apology 41a–c. Intriguingly, all of the people who make speeches in Plato's Symposium, except one, are also present: Socrates, Eryximachus, Phaedrus, Agathon, Pausanias and Alcibiades. The one speaker conspicuously missing is Aristophanes.
24. resentment, and hostility, and ill-will: People were hostile to sophists because they saw them as innovators in matters of religion, and hence a threat to traditional morality. Protagoras was known as an agnostic, but he seems never to have come to any harm (going by Meno 91e).
25. Homer…Hesiod…Simonides: The claim that these poets were sophists disguised as poets, taken literally, is a tongue-in-cheek absurdity (typical of the sophistic style). But poets were widely regarded as moral educators, and that is how Protagoras sees himself.
26. Orpheus… Musaeus: In the Phaedo (69c), Socrates makes a rather similar claim about them – i.e. that the Mystery cults that these mythical singers were connected with, and supposedly founded, were perhaps a form of philosophy in disguise.
27. Iccus… Herodicus… Agathocles… Pythoclides: The first two were famous athletic trainers; the other two were
music teachers.
28. for many years: About twenty-five years, at this point. See Meno 91e.
29. ourselves: Rather than waiting for slaves to do it for them.
30. flute: I.e. an aulós, which was a wind instrument, a little like an oboe but double-barrelled, with internal reeds; the same as a modern mijwiz.
31. civic and ethical know-how: Translates politiké téchne, ‘citizen's skill/know-how’ (polítes means ‘citizen’; téchne means ‘skill’, ‘know-how’ or ‘craft’); see Glossary. It implies (especially in a democratic context) knowing how to contribute to civic decision-making, but also, more simply, knowing how to treat [fellow-] citizens. Plus, Socrates may well intend ‘managing one's house-hold' (i.e. looking after one's family) to be part of it. The traditional translation of the same phrase is ‘political art’ or ‘the art of politics’. This is a bit too narrow. Proper treatment of fellow-citizens (e.g. not stealing from them, not killing them) doesn't come under ‘the art of politics’ in its modern sense, and the traditional phrase now has an inappropriate Machiavellian ring to it.
32. pretty smart people: He means that Athenian democratic institutions presumably make sense. This is probably ironic. At any rate, it is not what Plato thinks.
33. how our city should be run: Socrates means public ethical questions: whether a given policy, or institution, or public decision, is right or wrong, fair or unfair, good or bad. He does not mean administrative or logistical questions.
34. what it is that makes them good: Translates areté (by a paraphrase); see Glossary.
35. his own kind of knowledge: He means that Pericles was a good man and a good citizen, and is making the further assumption that those qualities were a form of knowledge or expertise (sophía). (See Meno 93a – 94e for a similar but longer discussion.)
36. holy cows: Cows (and various other animals) were sometimes deemed sacred to a god and roamed free, sometimes within cities or temple precincts.
37. guardian: Alcibiades' father, Clinias, died in battle in 446 BC, when Alcibiades was four. Pericles was Alcibiades' and the younger Clinias' joint guardian, with Ariphron, his brother.
38. you can't make… by teaching them: I.e. ‘areté cannot be taught.’
39. A long, long time ago: Protagoras' story (and much of the speech that follows it) is presented as an exhibition piece: something that he has carefully composed and publicly recited many times. The story is written in polished, artificially rhythmic language with many unusual turns of phrase. It is not a traditional Greek myth. It seems to be an allegorical reworking of (part of) an existing rationalist account of the origins of the world. It bears a fairly strong resemblance (with some close verbal echoes) to such a passage preserved by Diodorus (Universal History I, 8) and thought by some to be based on a lost work of the materialist and humanist philosopher Democritus of Abdera (see Diels and Kranz (1985), vol. 2, p. 135), who is reported (perhaps apocryphally) to have been Protagoras' teacher. We know nothing certain about that connection or about what exactly Plato was drawing from.
40. Thinxahead and Thinxtoolate: In Greek, Prometheus and Epime-theus. The names have a deliberate literal sense. Protagoras has borrowed these characters, and some of the details, from the poet Hesiod (see Theogonia 511, Works and Days 84).
41. scattered here and there: This probably means as solitary individuals, not as scattered groups. Protagoras skirts over the formation of families, because he is emphasizing the role of society.
42. a sense of right and wrong: I.e. dikë and aidós. See Glossary. This is the crux of the story. Protagoras means that the human ethical sense evolved because of the material benefits of cooperation and reciprocation (with the implication that it is based partly on self-interest, as he states again, more frankly, at 327 b). Plato himself rejects this view of the origins of (true) ethical understanding: elsewhere he treats it as equivalent to amoralism (perhaps because it bases morality on nothing ‘higher' than our shared material needs). He puts it in the mouth of a nasty hedonist, Callicles, in the Gorgias (from 483 a); and it appears as part of a cynical dismissal of morality in the Republic (see 358 e). It was also the ethical theory adopted by the later hedonist Epicurus (see his Principle Doctrines 31 – 6).
43. ‘Give it out to all of them,’ said Zeus: The top god, in the story, gives us our sense of right and wrong. In fact, this stands for a theory consistent with Protagoras' well-known agnosticism: ‘without this widespread sense of right and wrong, people could not have survived; [so it arose naturally].’ This may be a social-contract theory (i.e. implying that people consciously agreed to help one another); it also bears a striking resemblance to an evolutionary theory: people who did not have this ethical sense did not survive, while those who did, flourished; that's why it exists.
44. ‘straightenings’: I.e. the euthúnai. This was the name, in Athens, for public audits that were a check on corruption and inefficiency in political office. Euthúnein means ‘to straighten’. Protagoras means that this is the punishment for people who don't ‘govern… according to [the] laws’.
45. everyone has to be an expert: More precisely, ‘no one is allowed to be an idiótes (a non-expert, a layman, an idiot).’
46. Pherecrates: A comic playwright. The play referred to is presumably Hoi Agrioi (The Wild Ones), which does not survive. It was produced in 421 BC, as far as we know – so this is a slight anachronism.
47. Eurybatos… Phrynondas: Notorious criminal characters.
48. aren't a patch on their father: I.e. not nearly as good as their father at sculpture. By analogy, why should we expect (ethically) good men to have (ethically) good sons?
49. great expectations: There is a deliberate sadness in this remark. Paralus and Xanthippus both died just a few years later, during the plague, shortly before Pericles himself (see Plutarch, Pericles 36). His death marked the end of Athens' golden age.
50. having knowledge: The phrase translates sophía; see Glossary.
51. I think it's a thing: This claim that respect for what's right is a thing lets Socrates assign properties to it. Exactly what he means is not totally clear. (He may be punning on the simpler claim: ‘I think there is such a thing.’) The claim that follows, that ‘respect for what's right (dikaiosúne) is itself right (díkaion)’ is probably a fairly ordinary claim (Protagoras apparently thinks so). Dikaiosúne can have a behavioural sense – i.e. it can mean ‘doing what's right’ – and doing what's right is right. Even taken strictly as referring to a disposition, the term can still self-predicate: ‘… righteousness – i.e. the state of being righteous – is right, i.e. required of us ethically’; likewise ‘… being religious (hosiótes) is required of us by religion (hósion).’ This is one among various possible interpretations of a rather unusual passage.
52. doing what's right: I.e. dikaiosúne. See previous note (and Glossary).
53. Is that what you're saying: Socrates is questioning the claim that respect for what's right is something different from religiousness. He in effect slides Protagoras' claim that they are ‘not like’ one another into the less plausible claim that they have nothing in common at all. On the latter view, if doing what's right is right, then being religious must be not right. (This is like arguing that anyone who says a car is not like an aeroplane must also think that, since an aeroplane has wheels, a car doesn't have wheels.)
54. similarity between the two?: To do what religion requires (i.e. what is hósion) in the Greek context means, most prominently, to commit no murder, to look after your parents, to keep your promises, to observe codes of hospitality etc. The overlap with doing what is right is not minor. For a very good discussion of this whole issue, see Plato's Euthyphro.
55. lots of people who think so: I.e. lots of people think that behaving unethically can get you ahead, and be a ‘sensible’ (i.e., here, a reasonable or rational) thing to do. For versions of this view, see the amoralism of Thrasymachus in the Republic (esp. 343 – 4), and of Polus (469 – 71) and Callicles (483 – 6) in the
Gorgias. The view that taking advantage of people, if you can get away with it, is a good idea, is also attributed, as here, to ‘most people’ in the Republic (from 358 a). Protagoras is contradicting his speech, in which he spoke highly of ordinary people's ethical sense.
56. And could we say… beneficial to people: The argument is abandoned. Socrates was clearly going to argue that ‘good sense’ (sophrosúne) and ‘respect for what's right’ (dikaiosúne) are much the same thing, probably on the grounds that doing wrong to others is shameful (aischrón) and therefore never something you ‘do well out of’, so never the sensible option; in which case good sense will always make you do what's right – but that's also what respect for what's right does; so they must be the same quality.
57. I really must be going: Plato has made sure that we know this is not true. When Socrates met his friend, right after coming from Protagoras (as described at the start), he mentioned that he had nothing to do.
58. violation of our nature: Hippias' little speech is gratuitous, and he comes across as pompous. Yet this distinction – between law (or convention) and nature – was an important one in the Greek enlightenment. The most interesting application of it is as an anti-slavery argument, as follows: ‘People are, by nature, created equal, members of the same human family; it is only certain tyrannical laws and social conventions that declare one person free and another a slave, in violation of our common nature.’ Aristotle discusses the argument at Politics 1253 – 4. It is perhaps because Plato has no sympathy for it that it appears so obscurely and unflatteringly here (and nowhere else in his works). (See also Popper (2003), chap. 4, esp. p. 72, and p. 374.)
59. Simonides: (c. 555–470 BC). A famous poet from the island of Ceos; author of songs, including victory odes, dithyrambs and laments; also of epigrams, eulogies and drinking songs. His surviving work displays a down-to-earth generosity and a roughly humanist outlook. This long discussion of a song (after the intervention by the ‘chorus’ of sophists) works as a literal choral interlude, continuing, in my view, the parallels with Greek comedy. (Socrates' pedantic analysis is also highly reminiscent of Frogs 1119 – 1200.) Plato also disagrees with the song very strongly (see nn. 60, 66, 68, 69, 72) on philosophical grounds.