HIPPIAS (major) by Plato - Complete text

Page 13

Soc.: Listen then. For I am sure that after this he will say : "Yes, but, Socrates, if we compare maidens with gods, will not the same thing happen to them that happened to pots when compared with maidens? Will not the most beautiful maiden appear ugly? Or does not Heracleitus, whom you cite, mean just this, that the wisest of men, if compared with a god, will appear a monkey, both in wisdom and in beauty and in everything else?" Shall we agree, Hippias, that the most beautiful maiden is ugly if compared with the gods?

Hip.: Yes, for who would deny that, Socrates?

Soc.: If, then, we agree to that, he will laugh and say : "Socrates, do you remember the question you were asked?" "I do," I shall say, "the question was what the absolute beautiful is." "Then," he will say, "when you were asked for the beautiful, do you give as your reply what is, as you yourself say, no more beautiful than ugly?" "So it seems," I shall say ; or what do you, my friend, advise me to say?

Hip.: That is what I advise ; for, of course, in saying that the human race is not beautiful in comparison with gods, you will be speaking the truth.

Soc.: "But if I had asked you," he will say, "in the beginning what is beautiful and ugly, if you had replied as you now do, would you not have replied correctly? But do you still think that the absolute beautiful, by the addition of which all other things are adorned and made to appear beautiful, when its form is added to any of them — do you think that is a maiden or a mare or a lyre?"

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Plato : HIPPIAS (major)

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