HIPPIAS (major) by Plato - Complete text

Page 19

Soc.: "Perhaps, then, you are the man," he will say, "who says that it is beautiful for every one and always to be buried by one's offspring, and to bury one's parents; or was not Heracles included in ‘every one,' he and all those whom we just now mentioned?"

Hip.: But I did not say it was so for the gods.

Soc.: "Nor for the heroes either, apparently."

Hip.: Not those who were children of gods.

Soc.: "But those who were not?"

Hip.: Certainly.

Soc.: "Then again, according to your statement, among the heroes it is terrible and impious and disgraceful for Tantalus and Dardanus and Zethus, but beautiful for Pelops and the others who were born as he was?"

Hip.: I think so.

Soc.: "You think, then, what you did not say just now, that to bury one's parents and be buried by one's offspring is sometimes and for some persons disgraceful ; and it is still more impossible, as it seems, for this to become and to be beautiful for all, so that the same thing has happened to this as to the things we mentioned before, the maiden and the pot, in a still more ridiculous way than to them; it is beautiful for some and not beautiful for others. And you are not able yet, even today, Socrates," he will say, "to answer what is asked about the beautiful, namely what it is." With these words and the like he will rebuke me, if I reply to him in this way. For the most part, Hippias, he talks with me in some such way as that but sometimes, as if in pity for my inexperience and lack of training, he himself volunteers a question, and asks whether I think the beautiful is so and so or whatever else it is which happens to be the subject of our questions and our discussion.

Hip.: What do you mean by that, Socrates?

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Plato : HIPPIAS (major)

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