HIPPIAS MAJOR — HIPPIAS MINOR.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Grote, George
Hippias Major — situation supposed — character of the dialogue. Sarcasm and mockery against Hippias.
Both these two dialogues are carried on between Sokrates and the Eleian Sophist Hippias. The general conception of Hippias — described as accomplished, eloquent, and successful, yet made to say vain and silly things — is the same in both dialogues: in both also the polemics of Sokrates against him are conducted in a like spirit, of affected deference mingled with insulting sarcasm. Indeed the figure assigned to Hippias is so contemptible, that even an admiring critic like Stallbaum cannot avoid noticing the “petulans pene et proterva in Hippiam oratio,” and intimating that Plato has handled Hippias more coarsely than any one else. Such petulance Stallbaum attempts to excuse by saying that the dialogue is a youthful composition of Plato:1 while Schleiermacher numbers it among the reasons for suspecting the dialogue, and Ast, among the reasons for declaring positively that Plato is not the author.2 This last conclusion I do not at all accept: nor even the hypothesis of Stallbaum, if it be tendered as an excuse for improprieties of tone: for I believe that the earliest of Plato’s dialogues was composed after he was twenty-eight years of age — that is, after the death of Sokrates. It is however noway improbable, that both the Greater and Lesser Hippias may have been among Plato’s earlier compositions.
We see by the Memorabilia of Xenophon that there was repeated and acrimonious controversy between Sokrates and Hippias: so that we may probably suppose feelings of special dislike, determining Plato to compose two distinct dialogues, in which an imaginary Hippias is mocked and scourged by an imaginary Sokrates.
Real debate between the historical Sokrates and Hippias in the Xenophontic Memorabilia — subject of that debate.
One considerable point in the Hippias Major appears to have a bearing on the debate between Sokrates and Hippias in the Xenophontic Memorabilia: in which debate, Hippias taunts Sokrates with always combating and deriding the opinions of others, while evading to give opinions of his own. It appears that some antecedent debates between the two had turned upon the definition of the Just, and that on these occasions Hippias had been the respondent, Sokrates the objector. Hippias professes to have reflected upon these debates, and to be now prepared with a definition which neither Sokrates nor any one else can successfully assail, but he will not say what the definition is, until Sokrates has laid down one of his own. In reply to this challenge, Sokrates declares the Just to be equivalent to the Lawful or Customary: he defends this against various objections of Hippias, who concludes by admitting it.3 Probably this debate, as reported by Xenophon, or something very like it, really took place. If so, we remark with surprise the feebleness of the objections of Hippias, in a case where Sokrates, if he had been the objector, would have found such strong ones — and the feeble replies given by Sokrates, whose talent lay in starting and enforcing difficulties, not in solving them.4 Among the remarks which Sokrates makes in illustration to Hippias, one is — that Lykurgus had ensured superiority to Sparta by creating in the Spartans a habit of implicit obedience to the laws.5 Such is the character of the Xenophontic debate.
Opening of the Hippias Major — Hippias describes the successful circuit which he had made through Greece, and the renown as well as the gain acquired by his lectures.
Here, in the beginning of the Hippias Major, the Platonic Sokrates remarks that Hippias has been long absent from Athens: which absence, the latter explains, by saying that he has visited many cities in Greece, giving lectures with great success, and receiving high pay: and that especially he has often visited Sparta, partly to give lectures, but partly also to transact diplomatic business for his countrymen the Eleians, who trusted him more than any one else for such duties. His lectures (he says) were eminently instructive and valuable for the training of youth: moreover they were so generally approved, that even from a small Sicilian town called Inykus, he obtained a considerable sum in fees.
Hippias had met with no success at Sparta. Why the Spartans did not admit his instructions — their law forbids.
Upon this Sokrates asks — In which of the cities were your gains the largest: probably at Sparta? Hip. — No; I received nothing at all at Sparta. Sokr. — How? You amaze me! Were not your lectures calculated to improve the Spartan youth? or did not the Spartans desire to have their youth improved? or had they no money? Hip. — Neither one nor the other. The Spartans, like others, desire the improvement of their youth: they also have plenty of money: moreover my lectures were very beneficial to them as well as to the rest.6 Sokr. — How could it happen then, that at Sparta, a city great and eminent for its good laws, your valuable instructions were left unrewarded; while you received so much at the inconsiderable town of Inykus? Hip. — It is not the custom of the country, Sokrates, for the Spartans to change their laws, or to educate their sons in a way different from their ordinary routine. Sokr. — How say you? It is not the custom of the country for the Spartans to do right, but to do wrong? Hip. — I shall not say that, Sokrates. Sokr. — But surely they would do right, in educating their children better and not worse? Hip. — Yes, they would do right: but it is not lawful for them to admit a foreign mode of education. If any one could have obtained payment there for education, I should have obtained a great deal; for they listen to me with delight and applaud me: but, as I told you, their law forbids.
Question, What is law? The law-makers always aim at the Profitable, but sometimes fail to attain it. When they fail, they fail to attain law. The lawful is the Profitable: the Unprofitable is also unlawful.
Sokr. — Do you call law a hurt or benefit to the city? Hip. — Law is enacted with a view to benefit: but it sometimes hurts if it be badly enacted.7 Sokr. — But what? Do not the enactors enact it as the maximum of good, without which the citizens cannot live a regulated life? Hip. — Certainly: they do so. Sokr. — Therefore, when those who try to enact laws miss the attainment of good, they also miss the lawful and law itself. How say you? Hip. — They do so, if you speak with strict propriety: but such is not the language which men commonly use. Sokr. — What men? the knowing? or the ignorant? Hip. — The Many. Sokr. — The Many; is it they who know what truth is? Hip. — Assuredly not. Sokr. — But surely those who do know, account the profitable to be in truth more lawful than the unprofitable, to all men. Don’t you admit this? Hip. — Yes, I admit they account it so in truth. Sokr. — Well, and it is so, too: the truth is as the knowing men account it. Hip. — Most certainly. Sokr. — Now you affirm, that it is more profitable to the Spartans to be educated according to your scheme, foreign as it is, than according to their own native scheme. Hip. — I affirm it, and with truth too. Sokr. — You affirm besides, that things more profitable are at the same time more lawful? Hip. — I said so. Sokr. — According to your reasoning, then, it is more lawful for the Spartan children to be educated by Hippias, and more unlawful for them to be educated by their fathers — if in reality they will be more benefited by you? Hip. — But they will be more benefited by me.
Sokr. — The Spartans therefore act unlawfully, when they refuse to give you money and to confide to you their sons? Hip. — I admit that they do: indeed your reasoning seems to make in my favour, so that I am noway called upon to resist it. Sokr. — We find then, after all, that the Spartans are enemies of law, and that too in the most important matters — though they are esteemed the most exemplary followers of law.8
Source notes
1 Stallbaum, Prolegg. in Hipp. Maj. p. 149-150; also Steinhart (Einleitung, p. 42-43), who says, after an outpouring of his usual invective against the Sophist: “Nevertheless the coarse jesting of the dialogue seems almost to exceed the admissible limit of comic effect,” &c. Again, p. 50, Steinhart talks of the banter which Sokrates carries on with Hippias, in a way not less cruel (grausam) than purposeless, tormenting him with a string of successive new propositions about the definition of the Beautiful, which propositions, as fast as Hippias catches at them, he again withdraws of his own accord, and thus at last dismisses him (as he had dismissed Ion) uninstructed and unimproved, without even leaving behind in him the sting of anger, &c.
It requires a powerful hatred against the persons called Sophists, to make a critic take pleasure in a comedy wherein silly and ridiculous speeches are fastened upon the name of one of them, in his own day not merely honoured but acknowledged as deserving honour by remarkable and varied accomplishments — and to make the critic describe the historical Hippias (whom we only know from Plato and Xenophon — see Steinhart, note 7, p. 89; Socher, p. 221) as if he had really delivered these speeches, or something equally absurd.
How this comedy may be appreciated is doubtless a matter of individual taste. For my part, I agree with Ast in thinking it misplaced and unbecoming: and I am not surprised that he wishes to remove the dialogue from the Platonic canon, though I do not concur either in this inference, or in the general principle on which it proceeds, viz., that all objections against the composition of a dialogue are to be held as being also objections against its genuineness as a work of Plato. The Nubes of Aristophanes, greatly superior as a comedy to the Hippias of Plato, is turned to an abusive purpose when critics put it into court as evidence about the character of the real Sokrates.
K. F. Hermann, in my judgment, takes a more rational view of the Hippias Major (Gesch. und Syst. der Plat. Phil. p. 487-647). Instead of expatiating on the glory of Plato in deriding an accomplished contemporary, he dwells upon the logical mistakes and confusion which the dialogue brings to view; and he reminds us justly of the intellectual condition of the age, when even elementary distinctions in logic and grammar had been scarcely attended to.
Both K. F. Hermann and Socher consider the Hippias to be not a juvenile production of Plato, but to belong to his middle age.
2 Schleierm. Einleitung. p. 401; Ast, Platon’s Leben und Schriften, p. 457-459.
3 Xenoph. Mem. iv. 4, 12-25.
4 Compare the puzzling questions which Alkibiades when a youth is reported to have addressed to Perikles, and which he must unquestionably have heard from Sokrates himself, respecting the meaning of the word Νόμος (Xen. Mem. i. 2, 42). All the difficulties in determining the definition of Νόμος, occur also in determining that of Νόμιμον, which includes both Jus Scriptum and Jus Moribus Receptum.
5 Xen. Mem. iv. 4, 15.
6 Plato, Hipp. Maj. 283-284.