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<h1> LESSER HIPPIAS </h1>
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<h2> by Plato </h2>
<h3> Translated by Benjamin Jowett </h3>
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<h2> APPENDIX I. </h2>
<p>It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of
Plato from the spurious. The only external evidence to them which is of
much value is that of Aristotle; for the Alexandrian catalogues of a
century later include manifest forgeries. Even the value of the
Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty
concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to
him. And several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato, and
some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are taken.
Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular author,
general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the
genuineness of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more
likely to have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation,
than longer ones; and some kinds of composition, such as epistles or
panegyrical orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those,
again, which have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later
age, or the slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a
motive or some affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which
seem to have originated in a name or statement really occurring in some
classical author, are also of doubtful credit; while there is no instance
of any ancient writing proved to be a forgery, which combines excellence
with length. A really great and original writer would have no object in
fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator, the 'literary
hack' of Alexandria and Athens, the Gods did not grant originality or
genius. Further, in attempting to balance the evidence for and against a
Platonic dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the Platonic
writing was common to several of his contemporaries. Aeschines, Euclid,
Phaedo, Antisthenes, and in the next generation Aristotle, are all said to
have composed dialogues; and mistakes of names are very likely to have
occurred. Greek literature in the third century before Christ was almost
as voluminous as our own, and without the safeguards of regular
publication, or printing, or binding, or even of distinct titles. An
unknown writing was naturally attributed to a known writer whose works
bore the same character; and the name once appended easily obtained
authority. A tendency may also be observed to blend the works and opinions
of the master with those of his scholars. To a later Platonist, the
difference between Plato and his imitators was not so perceptible as to
ourselves. The Memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are but
a part of a considerable Socratic literature which has passed away. And we
must consider how we should regard the question of the genuineness of a
particular writing, if this lost literature had been preserved to us.</p>
<p>These considerations lead us to adopt the following criteria of
genuineness: (1) That is most certainly Plato's which Aristotle attributes
to him by name, which (2) is of considerable length, of (3) great
excellence, and also (4) in harmony with the general spirit of the
Platonic writings. But the testimony of Aristotle cannot always be
distinguished from that of a later age (see above); and has various
degrees of importance. Those writings which he cites without mentioning
Plato, under their own names, e.g. the Hippias, the Funeral Oration, the
Phaedo, etc., have an inferior degree of evidence in their favour. They
may have been supposed by him to be the writings of another, although in
the case of really great works, e.g. the Phaedo, this is not credible;
those again which are quoted but not named, are still more defective in
their external credentials. There may be also a possibility that Aristotle
was mistaken, or may have confused the master and his scholars in the case
of a short writing; but this is inconceivable about a more important work,
e.g. the Laws, especially when we remember that he was living at Athens,
and a frequenter of the groves of the Academy, during the last twenty
years of Plato's life. Nor must we forget that in all his numerous
citations from the Platonic writings he never attributes any passage found
in the extant dialogues to any one but Plato. And lastly, we may remark
that one or two great writings, such as the Parmenides and the Politicus,
which are wholly devoid of Aristotelian (1) credentials may be fairly
attributed to Plato, on the ground of (2) length, (3) excellence, and (4)
accordance with the general spirit of his writings. Indeed the greater
part of the evidence for the genuineness of ancient Greek authors may be
summed up under two heads only: (1) excellence; and (2) uniformity of
tradition—a kind of evidence, which though in many cases sufficient,
is of inferior value.</p>
<p>Proceeding upon these principles we appear to arrive at the conclusion
that nineteen-twentieths of all the writings which have ever been ascribed
to Plato, are undoubtedly genuine. There is another portion of them,
including the Epistles, the Epinomis, the dialogues rejected by the
ancients themselves, namely, the Axiochus, De justo, De virtute,
Demodocus, Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and
external evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there
still remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either that
they are genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth, or
possibly like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly the
compositions of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some
contemporary transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato,
or of some Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his
master. Not that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should
lightly reject them. Some difference of style, or inferiority of
execution, or inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive
of their spurious character. For who always does justice to himself, or
who writes with equal care at all times? Certainly not Plato, who exhibits
the greatest differences in dramatic power, in the formation of sentences,
and in the use of words, if his earlier writings are compared with his
later ones, say the Protagoras or Phaedrus with the Laws. Or who can be
expected to think in the same manner during a period of authorship
extending over above fifty years, in an age of great intellectual
activity, as well as of political and literary transition? Certainly not
Plato, whose earlier writings are separated from his later ones by as wide
an interval of philosophical speculation as that which separates his later
writings from Aristotle.</p>
<p>The dialogues which have been translated in the first Appendix, and which
appear to have the next claim to genuineness among the Platonic writings,
are the Lesser Hippias, the Menexenus or Funeral Oration, the First
Alcibiades. Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are cited
by Aristotle; the first in the Metaphysics, the latter in the Rhetoric.
Neither of them are expressly attributed to Plato, but in his citation of
both of them he seems to be referring to passages in the extant dialogues.
From the mention of 'Hippias' in the singular by Aristotle, we may perhaps
infer that he was unacquainted with a second dialogue bearing the same
name. Moreover, the mere existence of a Greater and Lesser Hippias, and of
a First and Second Alcibiades, does to a certain extent throw a doubt upon
both of them. Though a very clever and ingenious work, the Lesser Hippias
does not appear to contain anything beyond the power of an imitator, who
was also a careful student of the earlier Platonic writings, to invent.
The motive or leading thought of the dialogue may be detected in Xen.
Mem., and there is no similar instance of a 'motive' which is taken from
Xenophon in an undoubted dialogue of Plato. On the other hand, the
upholders of the genuineness of the dialogue will find in the Hippias a
true Socratic spirit; they will compare the Ion as being akin both in
subject and treatment; they will urge the authority of Aristotle; and they
will detect in the treatment of the Sophist, in the satirical reasoning
upon Homer, in the reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine that vice is
ignorance, traces of a Platonic authorship. In reference to the last point
we are doubtful, as in some of the other dialogues, whether the author is
asserting or overthrowing the paradox of Socrates, or merely following the
argument 'whither the wind blows.' That no conclusion is arrived at is
also in accordance with the character of the earlier dialogues. The
resemblances or imitations of the Gorgias, Protagoras, and Euthydemus,
which have been observed in the Hippias, cannot with certainty be adduced
on either side of the argument. On the whole, more may be said in favour
of the genuineness of the Hippias than against it.</p>
<p>The Menexenus or Funeral Oration is cited by Aristotle, and is interesting
as supplying an example of the manner in which the orators praised 'the
Athenians among the Athenians,' falsifying persons and dates, and casting
a veil over the gloomier events of Athenian history. It exhibits an
acquaintance with the funeral oration of Thucydides, and was, perhaps,
intended to rival that great work. If genuine, the proper place of the
Menexenus would be at the end of the Phaedrus. The satirical opening and
the concluding words bear a great resemblance to the earlier dialogues;
the oration itself is professedly a mimetic work, like the speeches in the
Phaedrus, and cannot therefore be tested by a comparison of the other
writings of Plato. The funeral oration of Pericles is expressly mentioned
in the Phaedrus, and this may have suggested the subject, in the same
manner that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested by the slight mention
of Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus in the Republic; and the
Theages by the mention of Theages in the Apology and Republic; or as the
Second Alcibiades seems to be founded upon the text of Xenophon, Mem. A
similar taste for parody appears not only in the Phaedrus, but in the
Protagoras, in the Symposium, and to a certain extent in the Parmenides.</p>
<p>To these two doubtful writings of Plato I have added the First Alcibiades,
which, of all the disputed dialogues of Plato, has the greatest merit, and
is somewhat longer than any of them, though not verified by the testimony
of Aristotle, and in many respects at variance with the Symposium in the
description of the relations of Socrates and Alcibiades. Like the Lesser
Hippias and the Menexenus, it is to be compared to the earlier writings of
Plato. The motive of the piece may, perhaps, be found in that passage of
the Symposium in which Alcibiades describes himself as self-convicted by
the words of Socrates. For the disparaging manner in which Schleiermacher
has spoken of this dialogue there seems to be no sufficient foundation. At
the same time, the lesson imparted is simple, and the irony more
transparent than in the undoubted dialogues of Plato. We know, too, that
Alcibiades was a favourite thesis, and that at least five or six dialogues
bearing this name passed current in antiquity, and are attributed to
contemporaries of Socrates and Plato. (1) In the entire absence of real
external evidence (for the catalogues of the Alexandrian librarians cannot
be regarded as trustworthy); and (2) in the absence of the highest marks
either of poetical or philosophical excellence; and (3) considering that
we have express testimony to the existence of contemporary writings
bearing the name of Alcibiades, we are compelled to suspend our judgment
on the genuineness of the extant dialogue.</p>
<p>Neither at this point, nor at any other, do we propose to draw an absolute
line of demarcation between genuine and spurious writings of Plato. They
fade off imperceptibly from one class to another. There may have been
degrees of genuineness in the dialogues themselves, as there are certainly
degrees of evidence by which they are supported. The traditions of the
oral discourses both of Socrates and Plato may have formed the basis of
semi-Platonic writings; some of them may be of the same mixed character
which is apparent in Aristotle and Hippocrates, although the form of them
is different. But the writings of Plato, unlike the writings of Aristotle,
seem never to have been confused with the writings of his disciples: this
was probably due to their definite form, and to their inimitable
excellence. The three dialogues which we have offered in the Appendix to
the criticism of the reader may be partly spurious and partly genuine;
they may be altogether spurious;—that is an alternative which must
be frankly admitted. Nor can we maintain of some other dialogues, such as
the Parmenides, and the Sophist, and Politicus, that no considerable
objection can be urged against them, though greatly overbalanced by the
weight (chiefly) of internal evidence in their favour. Nor, on the other
hand, can we exclude a bare possibility that some dialogues which are
usually rejected, such as the Greater Hippias and the Cleitophon, may be
genuine. The nature and object of these semi-Platonic writings require
more careful study and more comparison of them with one another, and with
forged writings in general, than they have yet received, before we can
finally decide on their character. We do not consider them all as genuine
until they can be proved to be spurious, as is often maintained and still
more often implied in this and similar discussions; but should say of some
of them, that their genuineness is neither proven nor disproven until
further evidence about them can be adduced. And we are as confident that
the Epistles are spurious, as that the Republic, the Timaeus, and the Laws
are genuine.</p>
<p>On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under the
name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves
and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by
those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may
have taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth debatable
portion scarcely in any degree affects our judgment of Plato, either as a
thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting questions to
the scholar and critic, is of little importance to the general reader.</p>
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<h1> LESSER HIPPIAS </h1>
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<h2> INTRODUCTION. </h2>
<p>The Lesser Hippias may be compared with the earlier dialogues of Plato, in
which the contrast of Socrates and the Sophists is most strongly
exhibited. Hippias, like Protagoras and Gorgias, though civil, is vain and
boastful: he knows all things; he can make anything, including his own
clothes; he is a manufacturer of poems and declamations, and also of
seal-rings, shoes, strigils; his girdle, which he has woven himself, is of
a finer than Persian quality. He is a vainer, lighter nature than the two
great Sophists (compare Protag.), but of the same character with them, and
equally impatient of the short cut-and-thrust method of Socrates, whom he
endeavours to draw into a long oration. At last, he gets tired of being
defeated at every point by Socrates, and is with difficulty induced to
proceed (compare Thrasymachus, Protagoras, Callicles, and others, to whom
the same reluctance is ascribed).</p>
<p>Hippias like Protagoras has common sense on his side, when he argues,
citing passages of the Iliad in support of his view, that Homer intended
Achilles to be the bravest, Odysseus the wisest of the Greeks. But he is
easily overthrown by the superior dialectics of Socrates, who pretends to
show that Achilles is not true to his word, and that no similar
inconsistency is to be found in Odysseus. Hippias replies that Achilles
unintentionally, but Odysseus intentionally, speaks falsehood. But is it
better to do wrong intentionally or unintentionally? Socrates, relying on
the analogy of the arts, maintains the former, Hippias the latter of the
two alternatives...All this is quite conceived in the spirit of Plato, who
is very far from making Socrates always argue on the side of truth. The
over-reasoning on Homer, which is of course satirical, is also in the
spirit of Plato. Poetry turned logic is even more ridiculous than
'rhetoric turned logic,' and equally fallacious. There were reasoners in
ancient as well as in modern times, who could never receive the natural
impression of Homer, or of any other book which they read. The argument of
Socrates, in which he picks out the apparent inconsistencies and
discrepancies in the speech and actions of Achilles, and the final
paradox, 'that he who is true is also false,' remind us of the
interpretation by Socrates of Simonides in the Protagoras, and of similar
reasonings in the first book of the Republic. The discrepancies which
Socrates discovers in the words of Achilles are perhaps as great as those
discovered by some of the modern separatists of the Homeric poems...</p>
<p>At last, Socrates having caught Hippias in the toils of the voluntary and
involuntary, is obliged to confess that he is wandering about in the same
labyrinth; he makes the reflection on himself which others would make upon
him (compare Protagoras). He does not wonder that he should be in a
difficulty, but he wonders at Hippias, and he becomes sensible of the
gravity of the situation, when ordinary men like himself can no longer go
to the wise and be taught by them.</p>
<p>It may be remarked as bearing on the genuineness of this dialogue: (1)
that the manners of the speakers are less subtle and refined than in the
other dialogues of Plato; (2) that the sophistry of Socrates is more
palpable and unblushing, and also more unmeaning; (3) that many turns of
thought and style are found in it which appear also in the other
dialogues:—whether resemblances of this kind tell in favour of or
against the genuineness of an ancient writing, is an important question
which will have to be answered differently in different cases. For that a
writer may repeat himself is as true as that a forger may imitate; and
Plato elsewhere, either of set purpose or from forgetfulness, is full of
repetitions. The parallelisms of the Lesser Hippias, as already remarked,
are not of the kind which necessarily imply that the dialogue is the work
of a forger. The parallelisms of the Greater Hippias with the other
dialogues, and the allusion to the Lesser (where Hippias sketches the
programme of his next lecture, and invites Socrates to attend and bring
any friends with him who may be competent judges), are more than
suspicious:—they are of a very poor sort, such as we cannot suppose
to have been due to Plato himself. The Greater Hippias more resembles the
Euthydemus than any other dialogue; but is immeasurably inferior to it.
The Lesser Hippias seems to have more merit than the Greater, and to be
more Platonic in spirit. The character of Hippias is the same in both
dialogues, but his vanity and boasting are even more exaggerated in the
Greater Hippias. His art of memory is specially mentioned in both. He is
an inferior type of the same species as Hippodamus of Miletus (Arist.
Pol.). Some passages in which the Lesser Hippias may be advantageously
compared with the undoubtedly genuine dialogues of Plato are the
following:—Less. Hipp.: compare Republic (Socrates' cunning in
argument): compare Laches (Socrates' feeling about arguments): compare
Republic (Socrates not unthankful): compare Republic (Socrates dishonest
in argument).</p>
<p>The Lesser Hippias, though inferior to the other dialogues, may be
reasonably believed to have been written by Plato, on the ground (1) of
considerable excellence; (2) of uniform tradition beginning with Aristotle
and his school. That the dialogue falls below the standard of Plato's
other works, or that he has attributed to Socrates an unmeaning paradox
(perhaps with the view of showing that he could beat the Sophists at their
own weapons; or that he could 'make the worse appear the better cause'; or
merely as a dialectical experiment)—are not sufficient reasons for
doubting the genuineness of the work.</p>
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