[Sidenote: _Lesser Hippias._]
[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]
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 (cp. Protag. 314, 337), 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).
[Sidenote: _Analysis 372-376._]
Hippias like Protagoras has common sense on his side, =Steph.= -363
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 369
in Odysseus. Hippias replies that Achilles unintentionally, but
Odysseus intentionally, speaks falsehood. But is it better to do 370
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 -372
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,’ reminds 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 -376
Homeric poems....
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 (cp. Protagoras, sub
fin.). 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.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]
[Sidenote: _The Dialogue probably genuine._]
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 285, 286 A, B
(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. II. 8, § 1). Some passages in which
the Lesser Hippias may be advantageously compared with the undoubtedly
genuine dialogues of Plato are the following:—Less. Hipp. 369 B: cp.
Rep. vi. 487 (Socrates’ cunning in argument): || ib. D, E: cp. Laches
188 (Socrates’ feeling about arguments): || 372 B, C: cp. Rep. i. 338
B (Socrates not unthankful): || 373 B: cp. Rep. i. 340 D (Socrates
dishonest in argument).
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.