Hipparchus

Use in the book

Hipparchus enters as the answer to an apparent ethical difficulty. Accused of deceiving his companion, Socrates says that he obeys a good and wise man. The companion asks who; Socrates supplies a fellow citizen with a genealogy and an impressive programme of cultural patronage. Only after Homer, the poets and the roadside educational scheme does the relevant command emerge: do not deceive a friend. The long identification makes the authority of the command depend partly on the character and accomplishments of its attributed author.

The portrait joins several kinds of power. Hipparchus controls recitation, transports a poet, pays another, selects exemplary wisdom and places his name before travellers. His professed wish to make citizens as good as possible accompanies his wish to rule over them. Giving wisdom freely and gathering admiration are both part of the narrative; neither should be removed to make him either an uncomplicated benefactor or an obvious villain. His rivalry with Delphi, followed by his fatal rivalry with private educators, keeps the question of what a teacher gains within a dialogue nominally concerned with gain.

Socrates calls him the eldest and wisest of Pisistratus’ sons. This is the dialogue’s claim, not an agreed historical datum. Thucydides expressly identifies Hippias as the eldest and ruling son; the supplied edition also compares the Aristotelian Constitution. The account of intellectual rivalry as the cause of Hipparchus’ murder likewise belongs to this dialogue’s distinctive presentation. A reader can find these departures provocative without pretending that their literary purpose is certain.

The companion’s response supplies the decisive dramatic limit on the praise. He does not dispute the genealogy or the cultural history. He objects that Socrates must either deny their friendship or disobey Hipparchus, since the argument still feels deceptive. The story therefore furnishes a standard by which Socrates can be judged; it does not by itself acquit him.

Places to read

1. 228bπρεσβύτατος καὶ σοφώτατος — “Eldest and wisest”: a paired assertion whose historical and evaluative components need separate scrutiny.
2. 228cβουλόμενος παιδεύειν τοὺς πολίτας — The stated purpose of the cultural benefactions is citizen education.
3. 229bμὴ φίλον ἐξαπάτα — The maxim makes the historical portrait immediately relevant to the conversation.

Translation in this edition

The edition consistently attributes the story to Socrates and warns that its history differs from the historians’. Its “a fine and good man” preserves a conspicuous ethical commendation at 228c; it should not be silently reduced to social rank. The title’s prominence does not mean that Hipparchus, rather than the unnamed companion, is Socrates’ interlocutor.