The
discussion concerning Sparta ended with Hippias’ boast that not long ago he got
much credit there with a talk on the honourable and beautiful practices (peri epitȇdeumatȏn kalȏn) to which a young man ought to
devote himself, on which theme he made a discourse beautifully (pankalȏs) composed, which he is to present at
Athens in three days: ‘Please be sure to come yourself, and bring with you
other good critics of such dissertations.’ – Socrates: ‘Certainly, Hippias, all
being well. But now answer me a trifling question on the subject; you have
reminded me of it in the nick of time. Quite lately, my noble friend, when I
was condemning as ugly some things in certain compositions (en logois tisi), and praising others as
beautiful (kala), somebody threw me
into confusion by interrogating me in a most offensive manner, rather to this
effect: “You, Socrates, pray how do you know what things are beautiful (kala) and what are ugly (aischra)? Come now, can you tell me what
beauty is (ti esti to kalon;)?” In my
incompetence I was confounded, and could find no proper answer to give him; so,
leaving the company, I was filled with anger and reproaches against myself, and
promised myself that the first time I met with one of you wise men, I would
listen to him and learn, and when I had mastered my lesson thoroughly, I would
go back to my questioner and join battle with him again. So you see that you
have come at a beautifully appropriate moment (eis kalon hȇkeis), and I ask you to teach me what is
beauty by itself (auto to kalon),
answering my questions with the utmost precision you can attain; I do not want
to be made to look a fool a second time by another cross-examination. Of course
you know perfectly, and it is only a scrap of your vast learning.’ – Hippias:
‘A scrap indeed, Socrates; and of no value, I may add.’ (286b7-e6)
All those
who knew Socrates would be dying with laughter at this moment, for the
‘somebody’ bringing him into confusion (eis
aporian) with the question ‘what is beauty itself’ (ti esti to kalon), was Socrates himself. The self-confidence with
which Hippias expressed his certainty that he knew the answer and that it was
just a scrap of his learning of no value (oudenos
axion) promised a discussion of the utmost philosophical importance, yet presented
in the form of comedy.
The way in
which Socrates thus humorously split himself into his uncritical and critical
self appears to have been a way of his thinking about himself, which he was in
the habit of using even when speaking of others. In the Phaedrus, when he wanted to hear the speech (logos) with which Lysias had entertained Phaedrus and other friends
in the morning, and the latter said he was not up to it, Socrates said to him:
‘Phaedrus – if I don’t know Phaedrus, I’ve forgotten who I am. But I do and I
haven’t; I know perfectly well that when he heard Lysias’ speech (logos) he did not hear it just once, but
repeatedly asked him to go through it for him, and Lysias responded readily …
Meeting a man who is sick with passion for hearing people speak – seeing him,
seeing, he was glad, because he would have a companion in his manic frenzy. But
when the one in love with speeches asked him to speak, he put on a pose, as if
not eager to speak; but he intended to speak in the end, even if he had to do
so forcibly to an unwilling listener. So
you ask him, Phaedrus, to do here and now what he will soon do anyway.’
(228a5-c5, tr. C.J. Rowe)
Hippias’
answer was welcome to Socrates: ‘Then I shall acquire it without trouble, and
nobody will confound me again.’ – Hippias: ‘Nobody at all, if I am not a
bungling amateur in my profession.’ – Socrates: ‘Bravo, Hippias; how splendid,
if we do defeat the adversary (ei
cheirȏsometha ton andra, ‘if we subdue the man’)! Will it be a nuisance to you if I act as
his understudy (mimoumenos egȏ ekeinon, ‘if
I imitate him’) and fasten on your answers with my objections, so that you may
put me through some vigorous practice? I have had a fair amount of experience
of his objections. If, therefore, it makes no difference to you, I should like
to play the critic.’ – Hippias: ‘Certainly; put your criticisms. As I said just
now, it is not a big question; I might teach you to answer much more difficult
ones with such cogency that no human being would be able to confute you.’
(286e7-287b3)
In
fact, Hippias will prove to be unable even to grasp the question ‘what beauty
is’; he asks: ‘By putting this question he just wants to find out what is
beautiful (ti esti kalon)?’ –
Socrates: ‘I do not think so, Hippias; he wants to know what is beauty – the
beautiful (to kalon).’ – Hippias:
‘What is the difference between them?’ – Socrates: ‘You think there is none?’ –
Hippias: ‘There is no difference.’ – Socrates: ‘Obviously you know best (kallion, ‘more beautifully’). Still, my
good sir, look at it again; he asks you not what is beautiful (ti esti kalon), but what is beauty (hoti esti to kalon).’ – Hippias: ‘I
understand, my good sir, and I will indeed tell him what is beauty, defying
anyone to refute me. I assure you, Socrates, if I must speak the truth, that a
beautiful maiden is a beauty (parthenos
kalȇ kalon).’ (287d4-e4)
Now
I come to a passage where Jowett with all his learning is not much better than
Hippias in understanding Socrates: ‘Now, Hippias, let me recapitulate to myself
what you say. That man will question me something like this: “Come, Socrates,
give me an answer. Returning to your examples of beauty (tauta panta ha phȇis kala einai, ‘all
these things you say that they are beautiful’; Socrates did not give any
examples of beautiful things, examples will be brought in by the questioner), tell
me what must beauty by itself be in order to explain why we apply the word to
them? (ei ti estin auto to kalon,
taut’ an eiȇ kala; ‘they would be beautiful, if beauty itself is what?’) And you want
me to reply (egȏ de erȏ, ‘I shall say’) that if
a beautiful maiden is beauty (hoti ei parthenos
kalȇ kalon), we have found why
they are entitled to that name (esti
di ho taut’ an eiȇ kala; ‘is this because of which they would be beautiful?’ ((288a6-11) When
Socrates asks what beauty is, he is not interested in what entitles beautiful
things to be named beautiful, but what beauty is so that all beautiful things are beautiful because of it.
Then
come examples, which Socrates’ ‘interlocuter’ puts forward: ‘isn’t a beautiful
mare beautiful’ (288b8-9), ‘what about a beautiful lyre? Is that not a beauty?’
(288c6-7)
The
discussion of the next example breaths pure humour, unfolded in a relaxed atmosphere.
We must be now in the middle of Plato’s third reading, I believe, yet Socrates still
swaggered (brenthuei, Aristophanes, Clouds 362, brenthuomenos, Plato Symposium
221b2) along the streets of Athens. How could the Thirty put to death Socrates
who was such fun, without becoming a laughing stock not only in Athens, but in
all Greece?
Socrates:
‘Judging from his character, I feel pretty sure that he will then go on, “What
about a beautiful pot, my dear sir? Is not that a beauty?” – Hippias: ‘Who is
this fellow? What a boor, to dare to introduce such vulgar examples into a
grave discussion!’ – Socrates: ‘He is that sort of person, Hippias; not at all
refined, a common fellow caring for nothing but the truth. Still, he must have
his answer and I give my own first; if the pot is the work of a good potter,
smooth and round and properly fired, like some very beautiful pots I have seen,
the two-handled ones that hold six choes (‘the chous was about six pints’ remark Jowett’s editors) – if he were to
ask his question about a pot like that, we should have to admit that it is
beautiful. How could we assert (pȏs an phaimen) that what is beautiful (kalon on) is not a beauty (mȇ kalon einai;)?’ – Hippias: ‘No, we could not.’ (288c9-e3)
The
discussion of Hippias’ first definition ends with a question that Socrates’
critical self puts to Socrates: ‘Do you still think that absolute beauty (auto to kalon), by which all other
things are ordered in loveliness (hȏi kai t’alla panta kosmeitai, ‘by which all other things become lovely‘), and appear
beautiful (kai kala phainetai) when
its form is added (epeidan prosgenȇtai ekeino to eidos) – do you think that that is a maiden, or a mare, or lyre?’ – Hippias
answers by proposing a new definition of beauty: ‘Socrates, if this is what he
wants, it is the easiest thing in the world to tell him what is that beauty (ti esti to kalon) which orders all other
things in loveliness and makes them appear beautiful when it is added to them.
The fellow must be a perfect fool, knowing nothing of things of beauty; if you
reply to him that this about which he is asking, beauty, is nothing else but
gold, he will be at a loss and will not attempt to refute you. For I suppose we
all know that if anything has gold added to it, it will appear beautiful when
so adorned even though it appeared ugly before.’ – Socrates: ‘You do not know
what a ruffian he is; he accepts nothing without making difficulties.’ –
Hippias: ‘What do you mean? He must accept an accurate statement, on pain of
ridicule.’ – Socrates: ‘Well, my friend, this answer of yours he will not only
refuse to accept, but he will even scoff at me viciously, saying, “You
blockhead! Do you reckon Pheidias a bad artist” (289d2-290a5) … The point is
that he did not give his Athena eyes of gold or use gold for the rest of her
face, or for her hands, or for her feet, as he would have done if supreme
beauty could be given to them only by the use of gold; he made them of ivory.
Clearly he made this mistake through ignorance, not knowing that it is really
gold that confers beauty on everything to which it is added.” How are we to
answer him then, Hippias?’ – Hippias: ‘Quite easy. We shall reply that Pheidias
was artistically right (hoti orthȏs epoiȇse ‘that he did it right’); for ivory
too is beautiful, I suppose (290b2-c2) … We shall at any rate admit that
whatever is appropriate (prepon) to a
particular thing makes that thing beautiful.’ – Socrates: ‘He will continue,
“Then when a man boils the pot of which we spoke [within the discussion of
Hippias’ first definition], the beautiful pot full of beautiful soup, which is
the more appropriate to it – a ladle of gold or a ladle of fig-wood?”’ –
Hippias: ‘Really, Socrates, what a creature (hoion legeis anthrȏpon ‘what a man you are talking about’)!
Please tell me who he is.’ – Socrates: ‘You would not know him if I told you
his name.’ – Hippias: ‘I know enough about him at this moment to know that he
is a dolt (amathȇs
‘ignorant’).’ – Socrates: ‘He is a terrible nuisance (mermeros ‘a fearsome fellow’), Hippias; still, how shall we answer?
Which of the two ladles are we to choose as appropriate to the soup and the
pot? Obviously the one of fig-wood? For it gives the pot a better smell, I
suppose; and moreover, my friend, it would not break our pot and spill the soup
and put out fire and deprive the guests at our dinner of a truly noble dish,
whereas the golden ladle would do all this; and therefore, if you do not
object, I think I should say that the wooden ladle is more appropriate than the
golden.’ – Hippias: ‘Yes, it is more appropriate; but I should not myself go on
talking with the fellow while he asks such questions.’ (290c7-e10) … Socrates:
‘Can we then avoid the admission that the wooden ladle is more beautiful than
the golden?’ – Hippias: ‘Would you like me to give you a definition of beauty
by which you can save yourself from prolonged discussion?’ – Socrates:
‘Certainly, but first please tell me which of the two ladles I have just
mentioned is appropriate, and the more beautiful?’ – Hippias: ‘Well, if you
like, answer him that it is the one made of fig-wood.’ – Socrates: ‘Say now
what a moment ago you were proposing to say; for following your answer, if I
take the line that beauty is gold, I shall apparently have to face the fact
that gold is no more beautiful than fig-wood. Now, once more, what according to
you is beauty (ti au legeis to kalon
einai)?’ (291b5-c9)
As in
discussing Hippias’ first definition of beauty, the discussion of his second
definition is pure entertainment, only enhanced. How will Hippias fare with his
third definition?
Hippias: ‘You
are looking, I think, for a reply ascribing to beauty such a nature that it
will never appear ugly to anyone anywhere … Now please attend; if anyone can
find any fault with what I say, I give you full leave to call me an imbecile …
I maintain that always, everywhere, and for every man it is most beautiful to
be rich, healthy, honoured by the Greeks, to reach old age, and after burying
his parents nobly, himself to be borne to the tomb with solemn ceremony by his
own children.’ (291d1-e2)
Hippias’ answer goes
back to Solon, whose visit at the court of the fabulously rich king Croesus is
narrated by Herodotus: ‘Croesus entertained him hospitably in the palace, and
three or four days after his arrival instructed some servants to take him on a
tour of the royal treasuries and point out the riches and magnificence of
everything. When Solon had made as thorough an inspection as opportunity
allowed, Croesus said: “Well, my Athenian friend, I have heard a great deal
about your wisdom, and how widely you have travelled in the pursuit of
knowledge (philosopheȏn;
on the margin of my Oxford edition of Herodotus I noted Legrand’s remark: Le
mot philosophein paraȋt ici, je croit, pour la premièr foit; la valeur n’en est pas très precise. ‘I believe that the word philosophein appears here for the first
time; its meaning is not very precise.’). I cannot resist my desire to ask you
a question: who is the happiest man you have ever seen?” The point of the
question was that Croesus supposed himself to be the happiest man. Solon,
however, refused to flatter, and answered in strict accordance with his view of
the truth (tȏi eonti chrȇsamenos ‘in strict accordance with the truth’; ‘with his view
of’ is the translator’s addition) (I.30.1-3) … You are very rich, and you rule
a numerous people; but the question you asked me I will not answer, until I
know that you have died happily. Great wealth can make a man no happier than
moderate means, unless he has the luck to continue in prosperity to the end
(I.32.5) … These sentiments were not of the sort to give Croesus any pleasure;
he let Solon go with cold indifference, firmly convinced that he was a fool.
For what could be more stupid than to keep telling him to look at the “end” of
everything, without any regard to present prosperity? (I.33).
Herodotus
goes on to narrate the subsequent misfortunes that befell Croesus, which culminated
with the defeat of his army by the invading Persian king Cyrus: ‘Cyrus chained
Croesus and placed him with fourteen Lydian boys on a great pyre that he had
built (I.86.2) … and Croesus, for all his misery, as he stood on the pyre,
remembered with what divine truth Solon had declared that no man could be
called happy until he was dead. Till then Croesus had not uttered a sound; but
when he remembered, he sighed bitterly and three times, in anguish of spirit,
pronounced Solon’s name. Cyrus heard the name and told his interpreters to ask
who Solon was … “He was a man,” he said, “who ought to have talked with every
king in the world. I would give a fortune to have had it so” … He then related
how Solon the Athenian once came to Sardis, and made light of the splendour
which he saw there, and how everything he said had proved true, and not only
for him but for all men and especially for those who imagine themselves
fortunate – had in his own case proved all too true … The interpreters told
Cyrus what Croesus had said, and the story touched him. He himself was a mortal
man and was burning alive another who had once been as prosperous as he. The
thought of that … made him change his mind and give orders that the flames
should at once be put out, and Croesus and the boys brought down from the
pyre.’ (I.86.3-6, translation by Aubrey de Sélincourt, revised by A.R. Burn)
Against this
wisdom, anchored in the best Athenian tradition, Plato transgressed in the Phaedrus. For Socrates’ second speech on
love culminates with the assertion that the lover and beloved, if they live
their lives guided by philosophy, ‘their days on earth will be blessed with
happiness and concord’ (256a8-b1). It ends with Socrates’ prayer to Eros. He prays
that Eros turns Lysias to philosophy as his brother Polemarchus has been turned
‘so that his lover here [i.e. Phaedrus] may no longer waver between the two
choices, but may single-mindedly direct his life towards love accompanied by
talk (logoi) of a philosophic kind.’
(257b4-6, translation C.J. Rowe). Polemarchus has been executed by the Thirty,
his enormous property confiscated. Lysias describes his brother’s death and
funeral as follows: ’Polemarchus received from the Thirty their accustomed order
to drink hemlock, with no statement made as to the reason for his execution: so
far did he come short of being tried and defending himself. And when he was
being brought away dead from prison, although we had three houses amongst us,
they did not permit his funeral to be conducted from any of them, but they
hired a small hut in which to lay him out. We had plenty of cloaks, yet they
refused the request of one for the funeral; but our friends gave either a
cloak, or a pillow, or whatever each had to spare, for his internment.’ (Against Eratosthenes, who had been one of
the Thirty 17-18, translation W.R.M. Lamb)
Polemarchus’
death inevitably cast a shadow over the Phaedrus.
In the discussion that followed Hippias’ identification of beauty with the
Solonic view of life that deserved to be called happy, Socrates did his best to
dispel the shadow: ‘Bravo, bravo, Hippias; those are words wonderful, sublime,
worthy of you, and you have my grateful admiration for your kindness in
bringing all your ability to my assistance (boȇthein). Still,
our shafts are not hitting our man, and I warn you that he will now deride us
more than ever.’ – Hippias: ‘A poor sort of derision, Socrates, for in deriding
us when he can find no objection to our view, he will be deriding himself and
will be derided by the company.’ – Socrates: ‘Perhaps so; perhaps, however,
when he has the answer you suggest he may not be content just to laugh at me.
So I forebode.’ – Hippias: ‘What do you mean?’ – Socrates: ‘If he happens to
have a stick with him, he will attempt to get at me with it very forcibly,
unless I escape by running away.’ – Hippias: ‘What? Is the fellow somehow your
lord and master? Surely he will be arrested and punished for such a behaviour?
Or has Athens no system of justice, that she allows her citizens to commit
wrongful assaults on one another?’ – Socrates: ‘She forbids it absolutely.’ –
Hippias: ‘Then he will be punished for his wrongful assaults.’ – Socrates: ‘I
do not think so, Hippias – emphatically not, if that were the answer I gave
him; I think his assault would be justified.’ – Hippias: ‘Since that is your
opinion, well, I think so too.’ – Socrates: ‘But may I go on to explain why, in
my own opinion, that answer would justify an assault upon me? Or will you too
assault me without trial, refusing me a hearing?’ – Hippias: ‘No: such a
refusal would be monstrous. But what have you to say?’ (291e3-292c2)
The last
exchange between Socrates and Hippias – ‘will you too assault me without trial,
refusing me a hearing’ / ‘No: such a refusal would be monstrous’ – gets its
special weight if we read it in full awareness of the time in which Plato
composed the dialogue. As we know from Lysias’ speech, his brother Polemarchus was
ordered to drink hemlock with no statement made as to the reason for his
execution: ‘so far did he come short of being tried and defending himself’
(XII,17). The whole discussion on beauty in the Hippias Major appears to have been written after the Thirty
imprisoned and executed Polemarchus and the other chosen rich aliens. When
Socrates opened it by saying that during a discussion he quite recently
condemned some things as contemptible and others praised as beautiful, he pointed
to his discussion in the Phaedrus in
which he criticised Lysias’ speech in praise of sex without love and his own
first speech ‘on the same subject’, and praised his own second speech, the
Palinode, in which he extoled love focussed on the love of beauty that turns
the soul of the lover and the beloved to the beauty itself.
On the way
to Hippias’ third definition Plato again reminded the reader of the Phaedrus: he did so when Socrates’
critical self opened his criticism of Hippias’ second definition with the words
“You blockhead (Ō tetuphȏmene su)!” For in Phaedrus 229e to 230a Socrates says, in
Jowett’s translation: ‘I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription
says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, why I am still in
ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous … I want to know … about myself:
am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion (epitethummenon) than the serpent Typho, or
a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner
and lowlier (atuphou) destiny?’ The word tetuphȏmenos (perfect
passive participle of the verb tuphoȏ, rare in active form meaning ‘delude’) means
‘to be crazy, demented’. But since Plato uses it here with reference to the
hundred-headed monster Typho buried under Vulcano, Mount Etna, and opposes it
to the adjective atuphos, Plato clearly
links the verb tuphoȏ with the verb tuphȏ, which means ‘to smoke’, this
brings us to epitethummenon in our passage in the Hippias Major, for tethummenos is the perfect participle of the word tuphȏ. The epithet tetuphȏmene, with which Socrates’
critical self faces Hippias’ self-confident second definition of beauty, not
only refers to the quoted passage in the Phaedrus,
but throws a welcome light on tit: It censures the greatest ignorance, which
consists in thinking that one knows what in fact he does not know.
When Hippias
presented his third definition, Socrates praised his kindness ‘in bringing all
your ability to my assistance (boȇthein)’; in
the Phaedrus the true philosopher is
distinguished by his ability to defend (boȇthein, 277a1)
his pronouncements. But Hippias was unable to say anything that could be
defended, whereas the whole discussion of love in the Hippias Major, as it has unfolded so far, ironically, provides
assistance to the Phaedrus by putting
Socrates’ philosophic ignorance into well-defined lines. Why ironically? In the
Phaedrus Socrates attributed the
ability to provide philosophic boȇtheia
exclusively to the spoken word, viewing the written word as its illegitimate sibling,
which needs help of the spoken word whenever it is ill-treated and unfairly
abused, ‘being unable to defend or help itself (oute amunasthai oute boȇthȇsai dunatos hautȏi, 275e5). Plato fully appreciated the
ability of the spoken word to come to the aide of the written text – this is
why I believe that he read his dialogues to interested audience, section by
section, as he was writing it – but with the Charmides and the Hippias
Major, each of which reflects on the Phaedrus,
he began to discover the ability of the written word to come to the assistance
when the previously written and published word was in need of it.
In the Phaedrus Socrates emphasized his own
not-knowing, but he did so in a nebulous manner, which few readers were prepared
to take quite seriously. Thus, when Socrates considers making a rival speech to
the composition of Lysias, he says: ‘There is something welling up within my
breast, which makes me feel that I could find something different, and
something better, to say. I am of course well aware it can’t be originating in
my own mind, for I know my own ignorance; so I suppose it can only be that it
has been poured into me, through my ears, as into a vessel, from some external
source; though in my stupid fashion I have actually forgotten how, and from
whom I heard it.’ (235c4-d3, tr. R. Hackforth) In his second speech, the
Palinode, he then focusses his eyes on ‘that form of Beauty (pros tȇn tou callous phusin) which he saw ‘enthroned by the side
of Temperance upon her holy seat’ (meta sȏphrosunȇs en hagnȏi bathrȏi bebȏsan, 254b5-6).
The Hippias Major makes it abundantly
clear that it was not Socrates who saw the Beauty ‘in the place beyond heaven’
(huperouranios topos, 247c3); hs
critical self asks him ‘what beauty is’, but he cannot find the answer.
When we
return to the discussion of Hippias’ third definition, we stumble upon another
reference to the Phaedrus. Socrates:
‘I will continue on the same plan as a moment ago, pretending to be that fellow
but not using to you the kind of offensive and grotesque words he would to me.
He will say, I feel sure, “Do you not think, Socrates, that you deserve a
threshing after chanting so badly out of tune (amousȏs) a dithyramb so long and so
irrelevant to the question you were asked?”’ In the Phaedrus philosophy was identified with mousikȇ of the highest kind (259d) and Socrates in his first speech
on love gave an almost dithyrambic (ouketi
porrȏ dithurambȏn) definition of erȏs (238d2-3), for which he asked Eros
for forgiveness at the end of his second speech.
***
That Socrates
himself did not think that Polemarchus’ end cast any shadow over his life we
can infer from the very fact that when the Thirty summoned him and four others
to Tholos, ordering them to bring Leon the Salaminian from Salamis as they
wanted to put him to death, he went home in full knowledge that he was to
expect untimely death in the hands of the Thirty. Reflecting on this incident,
he said at his trial: ‘And then I showed again, not in word only but in deed,
that, if I may be allowed to use such an expression, I care not a straw for
death, and that my great and only care is lest I should do an unrighteous or
unholy thing.’ (32c8-d3) He said that he was well aware that Anytos might succeed
in getting him sentenced to death, or driven into exile, or deprived of civil
rights, and that he might imagine, and others might imagine, that he was
inflicting a great injury upon him: ‘But there I do not agree,’ said Socrates.
’For the evil is much rather to be doing as he is doing – the evil of seeking
unjustly to take the life of another.’ (Plato, Apology 30d1-5)
Let me end
by giving a few lines in which Socrates’ questioner begins to refute Hippias’
third definition of beauty, and by viewing them in the light of what Socrates
said at his trial. Hippias: ‘I am quite sure, Socrates, that what I specified
is beautiful to all, and will so appear to all.’ – Socrates: ‘He [the questioner,
Socrates’ critical self] will reply, “And will be so in the future? For beauty,
I take it, is always beautiful?” – Hippias: ‘Certainly.’ – Socrates: “And it
was beautiful, too, in the past?” – Hippias: ‘It was.’ – Socrates: ‘Then he
will go on, “So this stranger from Elis asserted that it would have been
beautiful for Achilles to be buried after his parents?”’ (292e4-293a1)
At his trial
Socrates proclaimed: ‘Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a
course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may
fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not
to calculate the chance of living or dying. He ought only to consider whether
in doing anything he is doing right or wrong – acting the part of a good man or
bad. Whereas upon your view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not good for
much, and the son of Thetis [i.e. Achilles] above all, who altogether despised
danger in comparison with disgrace.’ (Plato, Apology 28b3-c4)
No comments:
Post a Comment