Horseman and horse · Lexicon

From the book

Hipparchus

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordHippikos means equestrian or skilled in horsemanship; the text’s hippikon andra, an accusative phrase, is rendered “a horseman.”
In HipparchusAt 226a–b the horseman extends the farmer’s case while changing its mechanism.
In this editionThe edition keeps “food” for sition in both contexts, permitting this connection without inventing a separate Greek term for fodder.
A place to readἱππικὸν ἄνδρα — The occupational description is an adjective with “man”.

Meaning

Hippikos means equestrian or skilled in horsemanship; the text’s hippikon andra, an accusative phrase, is rendered “a horseman.” Hippos is a horse. Sition is food, with the plural sitia used for the horse’s provisions. Diaphtheirō means to destroy, spoil or ruin; its present form diaphtheirei describes the damage the man does to the animal. “Horseman” here identifies practical knowledge, not a stated cavalry rank or a particular social class.

Use in the book

At 226a–b the horseman extends the farmer’s case while changing its mechanism. A plant may fail to produce a valuable result; worthless food positively ruins an existing horse. Socrates asks whether the knowledgeable horseman could be ignorant of that consequence. Once the companion denies the ignorance, Socrates concludes that the man does not think he gains from the food. The case links knowledge of an input’s quality to knowledge of damage caused by its use.

The horse is thus not merely one more object labelled worthless. It is a valuable dependent object whose condition is changed by what the practitioner supplies. The example makes the relation between immediate acquisition and subsequent loss vivid before loss becomes the explicit opposite of gain at 226e–227a. A cheap provision may be disastrous when assessed through the continuing activity it supports.

Even so, the actual question is not whether every equestrian practitioner always feeds a horse well. Socrates stipulates that the man knows the food is worthless and asks what he thinks follows. Nor is a complete account of veterinary or nutritional knowledge supplied. The argument depends on the companion granting this inference in a deliberately obvious case. It has not yet excluded every situation in which someone knowingly accepts damage to one possession for an advantage elsewhere.

The animal disappears from the dialogue, but its food returns lexically in the later comparison between good and bad food at 230a–231a2 3. There the point is that both remain food regardless of quality. This is a significant change of question. Earlier bad provisions rule out expected gain from their use; later bad food retains membership in its kind. A reader should not assume that being genuinely food makes it beneficial. The free feast that produces disease at 231b gives a human counterpart to nourishment that damages its recipient.

Places to read

226aἱππικὸν ἄνδρα — The occupational description is an adjective with “man”.
226aτὸν ἵππον διαφθείρει — The known consequence is ruining the horse.
226bτῶν σιτίων τῶν μηδενὸς ἀξίων — The denial of gain concerns the worthless provisions.
230aσιτίον ἐστίν τι ἀγαθόν τε καὶ κακόν — Food later illustrates the difference between a kind and its quality.

Translation in this edition

The edition keeps “food” for sition in both contexts, permitting this connection without inventing a separate Greek term for fodder. It translates the printed present diaphtheirei as “is ruining.” The apparatus records Cobet’s proposed future diaphtherei; it does not print that proposal as the text. The difference concerns how the consequence is presented in time, not whether damage to the horse counts as the relevant result.