HIPPIAS (major) by Plato - Complete text

Page 18

Soc.: I will tell you, imitating him in the same way as a while ago, that I may not use to you such harsh and uncouth words as he uses to me. For you may be sure, "Tell me, Socrates," he will say, "do you think it would be unjust if you got a beating for singing such a long dithyramb so unmusically and so far from the question?" "How so?" I shall say. "How so?" he will say ; "are you not able to remember that I asked for the absolute beautiful, by which everything to which it is added has the property of being beautiful, both stone and stick and man and god and every act and every acquisition of knowledge? For what I am asking is this, man : what is absolute beauty? and I cannot make you hear what I say any more than if you were a stone sitting beside me, and a millstone at that, having neither ears nor brain." Would you, then, not be angry, Hippias, if I should be frightened and should reply in this way? "Well, but Hippias said that this was the beautiful ; and yet I asked him, just as you asked me, what is beautiful to all and always." What do you say? Will you not be angry if I say that?

Hip.: I know very well, Socrates, that this which I said was beautiful is beautiful to all and will seem so.

Soc.: And will it be so, too he will say for the beautiful is always beautiful, is it not?

Hip.: Certainly.

Soc.: "Then was it so, too?" he will say.

Hip.: It was so, too.

Soc.: "And," he will say, "did the stranger from Elis say also that for Achilles it was beautiful to be buried later than his parents, and for his grandfather Aeacus, and all the others who were born of gods, and for the gods themselves?"

Hip.: What's that? Confound it ! These questions of the fellow's are not even respectful to religion.

Soc.: Well, then, when another asks the question, perhaps it is not quite disrespectful to religion to say that these things are so?

Hip.: Perhaps.

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Plato : HIPPIAS (major)

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