by Plato
20. wanting bad things and then getting them: The usual view, for Greeks as for us, would be (to adapt the terminology) that to be a loser is a matter of not getting any good things, or of getting lots of very bad things you didn't want. Either might result from bad luck. Plato's redefinition makes failure in life fully one's own responsibility.
21. the ‘wanting’ part applies… the start: There is a connection here with the Socratic ‘paradox’ that being good is simply a matter of knowledge (or that ‘virtue is knowledge’). Since we all want the same thing – what's good for us – good people are those who realize or know that ethical actions are good for them.
22. that's my view exactly!: In fact, Meno has clearly been brought to this view by Socrates. But being a greedy young man, he's delighted (if a little surprised) by the idea that being good might just be a matter of acquiring things.
23. gold… silver… power… honour in your city: It might seem strange that Meno could take such things to be a mark of ‘being good’ (in any remotely ethical sense). Some commentators think that for Meno (and for many Greeks at the time), ‘being a good man’ simply meant ‘being powerful and successful’, with no ethical implication. On the contrary, Plato sees it as a delusion of the powerful that power and status make them ethically superior. This is not a specially Greek phenomenon at all. Cf. George Orwell's description of his aristocratic schoolmates: ‘Before the [first world] war the worship of money was entirely… untroubled by any pang of conscience. The goodness of money was as unmistakable as the goodness of health or beauty, and a glittering car, a title, or a horde of servants was mixed up in people's minds with the idea of actual moral virtue’ (‘Such, Such Were the Joys’, in Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003), p. 329).
24. the Great King!: I.e. the Persian King Artaxerxes II (ruled 405-359 BC). He had Meno executed a few years after this conversation (see n. 2). Plato reminds the reader that Meno's greed led to his destruction.
25. if they don't know… itself?: Socrates means that you can't explain something in terms that presuppose the listener already knows what it is. If someone asks, ‘What is a jabberwock?’ it's no good saying ‘A jabberwock is a thing made of jabberwock-parts.’ But is that what Meno has done? He has described being good as a disposition made up of respect for what's right, religiousness, bravery etc. – qualities that can quite well be understood independently of the fact that they are ‘parts of being good’.
26. a little while back: I.e. at 75c–d.
27. numbfish: The numbfish (nárke thalattía) is a genus of ray (the electric ray; also called the torpedo). It stuns prey with a powerful electric charge delivered from special organs in its pectoral fins. In saying that Socrates also looks just like a numbfish, Meno is probably referring to his famous snubbed nose (which gives him a flat face) and perhaps his boggly eyes (see Theaetetus 143e, Phaedo 117b; Xenophon, Symposium 5.3 – 8). Numbfish have very boggly eyes.
28. You can't try to find out…: ‘Meno's paradox’; a sophistic puzzle of unknown source. Consider the question ‘What is a black hole?’ If you know what a black hole is, why ask? If you don't know what a black hole is, how do you know what you're asking? This is discussed again by Plato at Theaetetus 165b, and by Aristotle (Posterior Analytics 2.7–10). The version given here by Socrates is not really the same as Meno's. (See Introduction, p. xxi.)
29. Pindar: (C. 518 – 440 BC). A lyric poet from Boeotia. His surviv-ing songs are delicately written eulogies of athletic champions. The quotation (from a lost song) that follows deals with the myth of Persephone, and is connected with Orphism and with Pythagorean beliefs about reincarnation; note the Pindaric detail that some good souls will be reincarnated as athletic champions. See Bowra (2000), pp. 89 – 98.
30. the grief, of long ago: Socrates seems to take this to refer to the pain caused to others by past crimes. Souls that have paid for their sins are granted a return to life (‘back to the sun-lit world above’); the implication is that most souls do not return (because their crimes are too great). Plato's own after-life myths describe it in rather similar terms (as a place of punishment and reward): see Phaedo 112 – 14, Gorgias 523 – 7, Republic 614 – 21.
31. home-bred: I.e. born and raised in Meno's household rather than bought (the same word is used of dogs and domestic birds).
32. Tell me then, boy: ‘Boy’ (pai) is the term of address for a slave of any age, just as it was used in the us. (Cf. also French garçon, used of a waiter, or English ‘maid’, used of a domestic worker). Its use here gave rise to the perception that the slave is a child. There is no indication of this anywhere in the text. Evidently Plato doesn't care how old we take the slave to be. His being a slave guarantees his lack of education in ‘liberal arts’ like mathematics.
33. what you think: This phrase uses the impersonal verb dokeí (i.e. ‘what seems to you [to be the case]’). The point of the remark becomes clear at 85b (see n. 35).
34. he thought he could easily make perfectly good claims: Socrates is teasing Meno with a parody of the claim he (Meno) made at 8ob. His point is that Meno was as ignorant, and over-confident, about his knowledge of being good as the slave was about the square. To Socrates and Meno, the image of the slave discussing geometry in public is hilarious.
35. his own opinions: ‘Opinion’ translates dóxa; this is the noun derived from the impersonal verb dokeí, ‘it seems’. Dóxa is a matter of how things seem to you – i.e. what you think is the case; your opinion, untutored belief, intuition, impression, (rough) idea etc., with obvious application in both mathematics and ethics.
36. forever: I.e. ‘forever’ (aeí) in the sense of for all time, since all eternity. ‘At some point’ then means at some point since the beginning of time. The words could also easily mean ‘Either he acquired it at some point during his life, or he's always had it – i.e. since his birth.’ But Socrates seems to be saying, ‘Either (a) the slave had acquired this (now latent) knowledge at some point since the beginning of time, or (b) he had had it for all of time.’ On that reading, on option (b), his soul existed before his birth: and that inference is crucial to the argument. (See also n. 37.)
37. during the life he's living now: I.e. even if he got his bits of latent knowledge since the beginning of time, his soul still must have existed before his birth, because he didn't get them in his present life. There is also the possibility that he acquired them at birth rather than either before birth or ‘in the life he's living now’. That possibility is not considered here. In the Phaedo (76c), when Plato reworks this argument, he considers and dismisses it.
38. you prefer to be ‘free’: A sarcastic dig at the ideal of freedom (a democratic notion: see, e.g., Thucydides, 2.37.2; Aristotle, Politics, 1317 a4o). Plato implies that ‘freedom’, for Meno, is really just a lack of self-control. On this view, (politically) free people are often ‘slaves’ to their desires and delusions (so political freedom, for them, has no value). See Gorgias 491d and Republic 576a.
39. on a hypothesis: Literally, ‘on an under-laying’; an assumption. Socrates wants something they can ‘lay under’ – i.e. take for granted – that will make their question (whether being good can be taught) more manageable.
40. If the area is such that… done to it: The example illustrates the role of a hypothesis very clearly, but the details are baffling. For various explanations, see Bluck (1964), pp. 441– 61, or Sharples (1985), pp. 158 – 60. The question is whether an area can be inscribed as a triangle in a given circle. ‘Its given line’ is usually taken (awkwardly) to refer to the diameter of the circle, and ‘matching’ may mean either ‘identical in area to’ or ‘having the same proportions as’. Socrates' example may of course just be a mimicking of geometrical language without making sense. ‘If blah-de-blah, then dum-de-dum’ makes the point perfectly well.
41. a good thing: I.e. in a non-ethical sense: good for us, in the way that we might say that health and strength are ‘good things’. For Socrates this can
be taken for granted. It is a fundamental premise of Platonic ethics that being good is always in your own best interests. Elsewhere (especially Republic 335 – 66, 608 – 14 and Gorgias 483 – 92, Socrates has to argue for this view; here it is assumed (i.e. is a hypothesis).
42. in the general sphere of knowledge: I.e. itself a form of knowledge or somehow connected with knowledge, but not in the sense of merely being knowable.
43. if we are good, we do good: I.e. if we are agathoí (good), then we are ophélimoi (people who do good). See Glossary.
44. all good things do us good, don't they?: Two different claims in one: (1) that good things must do us some kind of good, and (2) that good people do good to those around them (a kind of utilitarian view).
45. features of the soul: I.e. in this context, qualities of mind and character – ‘internal good things’ – as opposed to the ‘external good things’ just discussed.
46. a sort of fearlessness… a kind of wisdom: For this idea of bravery as mere fearlessness, see Laches 193a, where Socrates suggests that foolish fearlessness – e.g. taking on a vastly superior army – is especially brave. Plato more often treats bravery as having ethical and prudential implications (see, e.g., Protagoras 359 – 60, where Socrates insists that you can't be both brave and stupid). ‘Wisdom’ translates phrónesis – i.e. practical understanding (embracing our grasp of what is good and bad, right and wrong). So the practical/ethical implications of our term wisdom are appropriate. Throughout the dialogue, Plato apparently uses the word interchangeably with both epistéme (knowledge) and sophía (knowledge, expertise, cleverness) and nous (sense, understanding), even though it is his distinctive view, rather than obvious, that these are all the same thing. Aristotle, for one (see Nicomachean Ethics 6.7, 6.12) strongly disagrees with the view that phrónesis is the same as knowledge.
47. our having a good life: I.e. eudaimonía.
48. in and of themselves: Here, ‘good in themselves’ means unconditionally good – i.e. always good, no matter what. Plato is straining to set these goods apart from knowledge. But by Plato's own view, is knowledge unconditionally good? Plato asks ‘What's the good of money, if you don't know how to use it?’ But, likewise, what's the good of knowing how to use it if you don't have any?
49. a kind of wisdom… entirely or partly: This seems the easiest way to take the phrase (considered in itself). Some interpreters take the line like this: ‘Being good is wisdom; either all of wisdom or part of wisdom.’ Then, either way, it is nothing but wisdom, making it fully teachable. (Because if it were not fully teachable, then perhaps that rather messes up the argument.) That may be right. But note that a good man's bravery was analysed as fearlessness plus wisdom; and there was the implication of self-control plus wisdom and generosity plus wisdom, and so on (88a – b). So being good, there at least, was not just wisdom. In the Republic, Plato claims that the soul of a good man is part wisdom and part traits of character (see 442 – 4).
50. it can't be… naturally good: I.e. because wisdom (equated by Plato with knowledge) does not come naturally; it has to be taught, or acquired through philosophy.
51. just as we do with public gold: The Athenians used the west section of the Parthenon, on the Acropolis, as a treasury. This remark seems to allude to the plan Plato endorsed in the Republic (see bks 3 – 7) of setting aside genetically superior children (with ‘natures of gold’) and training them up to be the elite rulers of the state.
52. Anytus: (Active c. 415 – 390 BC). An Athenian politician, patriotic and conservative, who played a major role in the restoration of the democracy, with Thrasybulus, in 403 BC, after the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. At this time he was one of the most important politicians in Athens. It is implied that he is Meno's host. Most importantly, he was one of the men who, in 399 BC, prosecuted Socrates for impiety and for ‘corrupting the young’.
53. Polycrates' bribe: Ismenias was a Theban democratic political leader. Plato appears to be taking a swipe at him. There is no satisfactory explanation of who Polycrates is. My own guess is that the name should in fact be Timocrates. Ismenias allegedly took a large bribe from Timocrates, an agent of a Persian general, Tithraustes, as payment for stirring up trouble between Thebes and Sparta (Xenophon, Hellenica 3.5.1, 5.2.35; Hellenica Oxyrhynchia 7.2). (This took place in 395 BC; by Plato's rather rough chronology that seems fine.)
54. brains and diligence: Socrates is describing Anthemion as a self-made man, someone who has acquired his own wealth as a businessman and then entered the political domain (Xenophon implies that he and Anytus were leather-tanners: Apology 29.1). This sounds like praise but his comments are probably ironic. At any rate, Plato has no respect for men of this kind. A measure of his disdain is the fact that in his ideal state (described in the Republic), this kind of social mobility – the rise of a man of trade into political responsibility – is declared the greatest possible crime against the state (see 434a – d).
55. the great Athenian public: Ironic. For Plato, the election of men like Anytus to public office (he was, at least, elected strategós in 409 BC) demonstrates the folly of democracy.
56. a shocking suggestion: Anytus has a typical anti-intellectual view of sophists and philosophers. Men of his type equated intellectual innovation with perversity, and scientific curiosity with religious scepticism and ethical relativism. That is why he feels that sophists are ‘depraved’ (see 91c). Aristophanes' Clouds provides easily the best picture of this sort of attitude.
57. Phidias: (Active 465 – 425 BC). He was responsible, notably, for the huge gold and ivory statues of Athena in the Parthenon and of Zeus at Olympia, and for the design of the Parthenon frieze.
58. or a local: Anytus is hinting, with some menace, that Socrates himself may be a ‘local’ sophist.
59. family friend: The implication is that, at the very least, Anytus' father, Anthemion, had some kind of guest-friendship (xenía) with Meno's father or grandfather.
60. decent: Translates kalós k'agathós (‘fine-and-good’), a phrase that (often) has class connotations as well as ethical ones (rather like English ‘gentleman’); but Anytus here seems to be speaking of Athenian men in general. This view is the same as the one Plato attributes to Meletus, another of Socrates' prosecutors, in the Apology (24 – 5); see also Protagoras 323 – 8. It is the democratic view: if plenty of Athenians are ‘decent men’, it makes sense that there should be broad access to the political process.
61. Themistocles: (C. 524 – 459 BC); most famous for developing Athenian naval power and leading Athens in the face of the Persian invasion of 480 BC.
62. lacking natural ability: Plato seems to be thinking of the boy's ‘nature’ very broadly: he means ‘he wasn't congenitally incapable of learning things.’
63. Aristides: (Active c. 495 – 467 BC); a contemporary and rival of Themistocles; nicknamed ‘the Righteous’. Socrates names him at Gorgias 526b as a man who was not corrupted by power. He commanded the Athenian forces at the battle of Plataea in 480 BC and had a hand in the setting up of the Delian League.
64. Lysimachus: He appears in Plato's Laches (179c), where he complains that his father both spoiled and neglected him, and that that's why he never amounted to much.
65. Thucydides: (C. 500 – 420 BC). Not the historian (though perhaps his uncle); a prominent conservative politician and rival of Pericles.
66. allies: I.e. the city-states of the Aegean that were allied with Athens (and, later, governed by Athens) after the Persian wars.
67. watch your back: This is a threat. There is also dramatic irony. The reader knows that this is a man who later had Socrates put to death.
68. what it… means to ‘badmouth' a man: Perhaps an allusion by Plato to later events, as with Anytus’ last remark. A very late source (Diogenes Laertius, 2.43) says that the Athenians regretted executing Socrates and sent Anytus into exile. There may be something in the story. Plato refers indirectly, with some bitterness, to their swift change of heart (Crito 48c5); and Xenopho
n confirms Anytus' posthumous bad name (Apology 35). So Plato, writing fifteen to twenty years later, has Socrates saying to Anytus: ‘You think that's bad? You have no idea. Wait till you find out what people are going to say about you.’ Note that the Meno itself fulfils the prophecy pretty well. For a different interpretation, see Bluck (1964), p. 338, and Sharples (1985) p. 178.
69. That's what most impresses me about Gorgias: In the Gorgias there is a discussion of this point (455b – 461b). Gorgias claims, at one point, that as you shouldn't blame a boxing-coach if one of his athletes uses his skills to beat up his own father, likewise you shouldn't blame a teacher of public speaking if one of his pupils uses his speaking skills unethically (456d – 457b). I.e. it is not the business of the teacher of rhetoric to make people good.
70. Theognis: (Active c. 550 BC); a writer of elegiacs – i.e. songs written in couplets – from Megara; his surviving work contains much friendly advice of this kind.
71. people who claim to teach it: I.e. sophists (or rather, some of them).
72. bad at the… thing they claim to teach. I.e. bad at being good, i.e. simply bad (in an ethical sense). He means that sophists are considered immoral by people like Anytus.
73. and in my case, Prodicus: In the Protagoras Socrates similarly claims that he is Prodicus' student, but the context suggests friendly sarcasm (339 – 41). Elsewhere he says he once went to one of his one-drachma (i.e. bargain) lectures (Cratylus 384b).
74. We were right to agree… weren't we?: I.e. at 87e.
75. ‘show us the way’: Socrates and Meno did not exactly agree that good people do good by ‘showing [others] the way’. What was agreed (at 88d – 89a) was that for an individual person's life to go well, wisdom has to be ‘showing [that person] the way’. This (perhaps unconscious) shift suggests an analogy in Plato's mind between the two – i.e. an analogy (developed in the Republic) between good rulers directing the other citizens and parts of the soul directing the rest of the soul.