Even a pig would know · Lexicon

From the book

The Lovers

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordHys means a pig; hyn is the accusative singular used here as the understood subject of “know” in indirect construction.
In The LoversSocrates asks the athlete whether many or moderate labors put bodies in good condition.
In this editionThis is a textually exposed joke.
A place to readκἂν ὗν γνῶναι — Hermann’s conjecture, printed by Burnet, supplies the proverbial pig.

Meaning

Hys means a pig; hyn is the accusative singular used here as the understood subject of “know” in indirect construction. Kan combines kai and an in the expression kan hyn, “even a pig.” The particle combination helps make the extravagant hypothetical point: the relevant fact is so obvious that even an animal proverbially invoked for lack of discernment would recognize it. The article’s Greek phrase is the edited reading, not a separate ordinary noun phrase meaning a special kind of pig.

The target of the joke is human pretension. It does not offer an observation about porcine cognition or attribute a theory of bodily training to animals.

Use in the book

Socrates asks the athlete whether many or moderate labors put bodies in good condition. The answer combines a sound distinction with humiliating rhetoric: even a pig would know that moderate labors do so, so how could an allegedly cultivated man fail to know it? The athlete then makes his rival a sleepless, unfed, untrained figure thin with worries. The lads laugh and the target blushes.

The proverb lets the athlete reverse the insult that prompted the debate. Earlier he was dismissed as a creature of neck-twisting, eating, and sleeping; now he implies that the learned man lacks knowledge beneath the threshold of ordinary humanity. His rival’s previous declaration that he would not consider an enemy of philosophy a man gives this downward comparison additional bite.

The intellectual contribution nevertheless needs to be distinguished from the laughter it earns. The principle is moderate exertion, not “what amuses an audience must be true.” Socrates restates the point as a proposition about neither many nor few labors and asks for agreement, rather than treating ridicule as sufficient refutation.

Places to read

134aκἂν ὗν γνῶναι — Hermann’s conjecture, printed by Burnet, supplies the proverbial pig.
134aοἱ μέτριοι πόνοι εὖ ποιοῦσιν ἔχειν — The substantive claim concerns the benefit of moderate exertion.

Translation in this edition

This is a textually exposed joke. The edition’s note says Burnet adopts Hermann’s correction κἂν ὗν, “even a pig,” for the manuscripts’ καὶ νῦν, “and now.” The apparatus names B and T for the latter. The pig therefore belongs to the edited text followed by the translation, but must not be described as an uncontested transmitted reading. The edition compares a play on the proverb in Laches 196d. Reporting that parallel is not an independent proof of Hermann’s conjecture; it explains why the restored joke is recognizable and plausible.