Hesiod

Use in the book

Critias invokes Hesiod to authorize his distinction between making, doing, and working. The maxim “work is no disgrace,” from Works and Days 311, might appear to license every occupation. Critias refuses that result, listing cobbling, selling salt fish, and sitting in a brothel as activities he will not place under honorable work. He therefore makes “work” a selective evaluative term: what is made finely and beneficially counts as work, whereas harmful things are alien rather than properly one's own.

This is Critias' interpretation of Hesiod, not an independently quoted Hesiodic analysis of the three Greek verbs. The difference is philosophically important. The authority of a familiar verse assists a new stipulation about vocabulary, and Socrates answers that he will allow the verbal assignments if the intended claim is made clear. The discussion then proceeds to the explicit definition of temperance as doing good things.

The neighboring Homeric appeal is handled differently. Homer supplies a counterexample to Charmides; Hesiod is made to support a revised account by distinguishing senses of work. External Socratic testimony adds a striking parallel: Xenophon's Memorabilia reports an accusation that Socrates used the same Hesiodic line to sanction discreditable gain, and replies by restricting good work. That resemblance establishes a shared interpretive controversy, but it does not license treating Critias' speech here as a transcript of the historical Socrates' teaching.

Places to read

1. 163b–cCritias uses Hesiod to separate making from honorable working and doing
2. 163d–eSocrates converts the interpretive speech into a clearer claim about doing good

Translation in this edition

Burnet brackets δ’ in the indirect quotation at 163b4. Its presence in the poetic line does not require it to stand in Plato's converted syntax. The edition distinguishes “make,” “do,” and “work” so that Critias' maneuver remains visible.

Ἡσίοδος

Attested: Ἡσιόδου / Ἡσίοδον (hēsiodou / hēsiodon). Hesiod, the poet Critias invokes for the maxim that work is no disgrace. References: 163b, 163c. Lexical identification: lemma: Ἡσίοδος. See Hesiod.