Superphysics
The Words of Simonides
5 minutes • 872 words
Protagoras was obliged to give short answer even if it was very much against his will.
Simonides says to Scopas the son of Creon the Thessalian: ‘Hardly on the one hand can a man become truly good, built four-square in hands and feet and mind, a work without a flaw.’
Do you know this poem?
Yes, I have made a careful study of it. It is both good and true.
But if there is a contradiction, the composition cannot be good or true. The contradiction is that poet says: ‘I do not agree with the word of Pittacus, albeit the utterance of a wise man: Hardly can a man be good’
Do you think that the two sayings are consistent?
Yes (at the same time I could not help fearing that there might be something in what he said). And you think otherwise?
How can he be consistent in both?
First he was premising as his own thought, ‘Hardly can a man become truly good’
Then a little further on, he forgets and blames Pittacus, refusing to agree with him: ‘Hardly can a man be good’.
Yet when he blames him who says the same with himself, he blames himself; so that he must be wrong either in his first or his second assertion.
Many of the audience cheered and applauded this. I felt at first giddy and faint, as if I had received a blow from the hand of an expert boxer, when I heard his words and the sound of the cheering.
Honestly, I wanted to get time to think what the meaning of the poet really was. So I turned to Prodicus and called him.
Prodicus, Simonides is a countryman of yours. You should help him for I am afraid that Protagoras will make an end of Simonides.
Now is the time to rehabilitate Simonides, by the application of your philosophy of synonyms.
This enables you to distinguish ‘will’ and ‘wish,’ and make other charming distinctions like those which you drew just now.
I think that there is no contradiction in the words of Simonides.
Do you think that ‘being’ is the same as ‘becoming.’
Not the same. He blames Pittacus not, as Protagoras imagines, for repeating what he said himself, but for saying something different from himself.
Protagoras, Prodicus would maintain that being is not the same as becoming. If they are not the same, then Simonides is not inconsistent with himself.
Your correction, Socrates, involves a greater error than is contained in the sentence which you are correcting.
Everyone thinks that virtue is the hardest of all things. Simonides could never have made such a mistake as to say that virtue can be easily retained.
You do not use the word ‘hard’ (chalepon) in the sense which Simonides intended.
I must correct you, as Prodicus corrects me when I use the word ‘awful’ (deinon) as a term of praise.
If I say that Protagoras or any one else is an ‘awfully’ wise man, he asks me if I am not ashamed of calling that which is good ‘awful’.
Then he explains to me that the term ‘awful’ is always taken in a bad sense, and that no one speaks of being ‘awfully’ healthy or wealthy, or of ‘awful’ peace, but of ‘awful’ disease, ‘awful’ war, ‘awful’ poverty, meaning by the term ‘awful,’ evil.
I think that Simonides and his countrymen the Ceans, when they spoke of ‘hard’ meant ’evil,’ or something which you do not understand.
Prodicus, what did Simonides mean by the term ‘hard’?
Evil, said Prodicus.
And therefore, I said, Prodicus, he blames Pittacus for saying, ‘Hard is the good,’ just as if that were equivalent to saying, Evil is the good.
Yes, that was certainly his meaning.
He is twitting Pittacus with ignorance of the use of terms, which in a Lesbian, who has been accustomed to speak a barbarous language, is natural.
You are entirely mistaken, Prodicus.
Simonides used the word ‘hard’ to mean not easy, not evil. It means that which takes a lot of trouble.
I said: I also incline to believe, Protagoras, that this was the meaning of Simonides, of which our friend Prodicus was very well aware, but he thought that he would make fun, and try if you could maintain your thesis; for that Simonides could never have meant the other is clearly proved by the context, in which he says that God only has this gift.
He cannot surely mean to say that to be good is evil, when he afterwards proceeds to say that God only has this gift, and that this is the attribute of him and of no other. For if this be his meaning, Prodicus would impute to Simonides a character of recklessness which is very unlike his countrymen.
What I imagine to be the real meaning of Simonides in this poem, if you will test what, in your way of speaking, would be called my skill in poetry; or if you would rather, I will be the listener.
To this proposal Protagoras replied: As you please;—and Hippias, Prodicus, and the others told me by all means to do as I proposed.
