PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Eudicus, Socrates, Hippias.


EUDICUS: Why are you silent, Socrates, after the magnificent display which
Hippias has been making? Why do you not either refute his words, if he
seems to you to have been wrong in any point, or join with us in commending
him? There is the more reason why you should speak, because we are now
alone, and the audience is confined to those who may fairly claim to take
part in a philosophical discussion.

SOCRATES: I should greatly like, Eudicus, to ask Hippias the meaning of
what he was saying just now about Homer. I have heard your father,
Apemantus, declare that the Iliad of Homer is a finer poem than the Odyssey
in the same degree that Achilles was a better man than Odysseus; Odysseus,
he would say, is the central figure of the one poem and Achilles of the
other. Now, I should like to know, if Hippias has no objection to tell me,
what he thinks about these two heroes, and which of them he maintains to be
the better; he has already told us in the course of his exhibition many
things of various kinds about Homer and divers other poets.

EUDICUS: I am sure that Hippias will be delighted to answer anything which
you would like to ask; tell me, Hippias, if Socrates asks you a question,
will you answer him?

HIPPIAS: Indeed, Eudicus, I should be strangely inconsistent if I refused
to answer Socrates, when at each Olympic festival, as I went up from my
house at Elis to the temple of Olympia, where all the Hellenes were
assembled, I continually professed my willingness to perform any of the
exhibitions which I had prepared, and to answer any questions which any one