363a
Eud.
Why, then, are you silent, Socrates, when Hippias has been delivering such a fine display? Why do you not join us in praising some part of his speech, or else, if he seems to you to have been wrong in any point, refute him—especially now that we who might best claim to have a share in philosophical discussion have been left to ourselves?
Soc.
Indeed, Eudicus, there are some points in what Hippias was just now saying of Homer,
363b
about which I should like to question him. For I used to hear your father Apemantus say that Homer’s
Iliad was a finer poem than the
Odyssey, and just as much finer as Achilles was finer than Odysseus for he said that one of these poems was made with Odysseus; the other with Achilles as its subject. So that is a point about which, if it is agreeable to Hippias, I should like to ask—what he thinks about these two men, which of them he says is the better;
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for he has told us in his exhibition many other things of sorts about Homer and other poets.
Eud.
It is plain enough that Hippias will not object answering if you ask him a question. Oh, Hippias, if Socrates asks you a question, will you answer? or what will you do?
Hipp.
Why, Eudicus, it would be strange conduct on my part, if I, who always go up to
Olympia
to the festival of the Greeks from my home at
Elis
, and entering the sacred precinct, offer to speak on anything that anyone chooses of those subjects
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which I prepared for exhibition, and to answer any questions that anyone asks—should now avoid being questioned by Socrates.
Hippias Minor. Plato. Harold North Fowler (Translator), ed. Walter Rangeley Maitland Lamb. Cambridge, MA. 1926.
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