From the book
Hipparchus
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordΠοτόν is drink, literally what is drunk; ὑγρός means wet or liquid; τροφή means nourishment.
- In HipparchusDrink is first added to food as another familiar case in which examples can share a kind while differing in goodness (230b).
- In this editionThe edition consistently renders ποτόν “drink,” ὑγρός “wet,” and τροφή “nourishment.”
- A place to readκαὶ ποτὸν καὶ τἆλλα πάντα — Drink extends the initial food analogy.
Meaning
Ποτόν is drink, literally what is drunk; ὑγρός means wet or liquid; τροφή means nourishment. At 230e–231a2 the dative phrase τῇ τοῦ σώματος ὑγρᾷ τροφῇ identifies that to which the name “drink” belongs. The article’s heading groups a named kind with the physical characteristic used to distinguish it from dry bodily nourishment.
The contrast is local and functional, not a complete scientific classification of liquids. Water or wine is not separately analyzed, and no claim is made that every wet substance nourishes. Likewise, the quality of a drink can vary while it remains drink. These limits are required by the example’s role in a conversation about gain.
Use in the book
Drink is first added to food as another familiar case in which examples can share a kind while differing in goodness (230b). Socrates then broadens the claim to other things and to decent and base human beings. Drink is therefore not incidental scenery: it reinforces the general pattern the companion is asked to recognize before applying it to gain.
At 230e–231a2 the answer about drink repeats the method just used for food. Food is dry nourishment of the body, drink wet nourishment. The parallel makes it possible to separate the common function, bodily nourishment, from the feature distinguishing the two kinds. Socrates immediately urges the companion to imitate that manner of answering. The pedagogical force lies in the form of the response, not in the originality of the nutritional account.
The Greek calls the drink decent or base, using the same evaluative pair that has characterized people and their gains. The edition retains those slightly unusual English expressions. They expose how easily adjectives move from the quality of an object to moral character and back. In the drink example, the words need not imply that a liquid is morally culpable; they can describe serviceable or poor quality. Applied to people or ways of profiting, their moral force becomes harder to detach.
This shift matters to the entire inquiry. A common noun may tolerate good and bad instances, as drink clearly does. It does not follow that every evaluative term applied across the examples has an identical meaning, or that gain has exactly the same relation to goodness as drink has. The analogy supports asking for a common definition; it does not replace the work of establishing that definition.
Places to read
- 230bκαὶ ποτὸν καὶ τἆλλα πάντα — Drink extends the initial food analogy.
- 230eτῇ τοῦ σώματος ὑγρᾷ τροφῇ — The working account identifies drink as wet bodily nourishment.
- 230e–231a2ἐάντε χρηστὴ ἐάντε πονηρὰ ᾖ — The common name remains despite differences of quality.
- 231aτοῦτο τὸ ὄνομά ἐστι, ποτόν — Socrates distinguishes the name from its explanatory account.
Translation in this edition
The edition consistently renders ποτόν “drink,” ὑγρός “wet,” and τροφή “nourishment.” Readers should resist silently rewriting “decent or base” as “healthy or unhealthy”: the latter would insert a particular bodily criterion before the dialogue’s subsequent health-and-disease example has introduced it.