SOCRATES: You, sweet Hippias, like Odysseus, are a deceiver yourself.

HIPPIAS: Certainly not, Socrates; what makes you say so?

SOCRATES: Because you say that Achilles does not speak falsely from
design, when he is not only a deceiver, but besides being a braggart, in
Homer's description of him is so cunning, and so far superior to Odysseus
in lying and pretending, that he dares to contradict himself, and Odysseus
does not find him out; at any rate he does not appear to say anything to
him which would imply that he perceived his falsehood.

HIPPIAS: What do you mean, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Did you not observe that afterwards, when he is speaking to
Odysseus, he says that he will sail away with the early dawn; but to Ajax
he tells quite a different story?

HIPPIAS: Where is that?

SOCRATES: Where he says,--

'I will not think about bloody war until the son of warlike Priam,
illustrious Hector, comes to the tents and ships of the Myrmidons,
slaughtering the Argives, and burning the ships with fire; and about my
tent and dark ship, I suspect that Hector, although eager for the battle,
will nevertheless stay his hand.'

Now, do you really think, Hippias, that the son of Thetis, who had been the
pupil of the sage Cheiron, had such a bad memory, or would have carried the