Lawsuits and fine speaking

Use in the book

The legal speakers appear in an aside within the farmer example. Having asked in what “time and clime” plants are worth planting, Socrates remarks that he too is inserting one of the wise expressions with which people clever at lawsuits speak finely. The immediate object of attention is a rhyming phrase, not an actual lawsuit. Neither litigants nor an audience nor a disputed legal question enters the scene.

The aside makes verbal competence visible while the exchange is asking about practical competence. Agricultural expertise can justify a judgment about plants; elegant phrasing does not by itself justify the judgment expressed. Socrates knows how to produce the verbal effect and points it out as he does so. The reader is invited to hear both the useful content of the question and its self-conscious ornament.

It would go beyond the passage to identify these clever men with a named sophist or to infer a comprehensive condemnation of forensic speech. “Speak finely” can carry irony in this setting, but the dialogue offers no history of the formula. Nor does its mention of lawsuits prove that the companion is a litigant. Socrates’ preceding suggestion that he answers as though someone had wronged him is a comparison, not a disclosure of his biography.

Rhēma returns prominently at 228e, where Hipparchus wants his sayings thought wiser than the inscriptions at Delphi. That recurrence links the opening aside to the long narrative’s competition over wise formulations. Rhyming forensic language and public maxims are different forms of verbal display, and neither is refuted merely by being memorable. The issue is the authority a striking expression claims and the understanding its audience gains.

The distinction becomes personally charged when the companion says he is being twisted about in arguments at 228a and cannot be persuaded at 229e. A speaker can control the language of an exchange without making the other participant understand why its conclusion is right. Socrates’ concession of a revisable move and his later model answers respond to that difficulty. The final admission of compulsion rather than persuasion keeps the difference open.

Places to read

1. 225cοἱ δεξιοὶ περὶ τὰς δίκας — The cleverness is specifically connected with lawsuits.
2. 225cκαλλιεποῦνται — The verb concerns finely shaped speech.
3. 228eτὰ Ἱππάρχου ῥήματα — The word for sayings returns in the competition for wisdom.

Translation in this edition

The edition keeps “clever,” “lawsuits” and “speak finely,” avoiding both the professional title “lawyers” and the unqualified accusation “deceive.” Its “time and clime” reproduces the sound-play identified in the note. The apparatus also records variation in the clause introducing the borrowed sayings; Burnet’s printed embālōmen hōn supports “may throw in some of those … with which.” The grammatical choice enables the joke but does not identify its source.

Use in the book

Some speakers claim to help in lawsuits through the strength of their speaking (976b). Their effective practice uses memory and the routine of opinion while attending to characters. The Athenian then says they have slipped outside the truth of things really just. Persuasive facility and knowledge of justice are distinguished. The objection is not merely that the speaker forgets facts or expresses himself poorly: skillful attention to an audience may itself operate without the required truth.

The “helpers” are introduced through what they say of themselves. Their practical claim remains at issue. The passage does not identify them by the noun sophist or offer the full constitutional organization of Athenian courts. It would therefore be imprecise to define an unattested occupational label as though it were the dialogue's own classification. What the text gives is a functional description of assistance in lawsuits.

Doxa has more than one role across the opening. A childish opinion affects one's reckoning of life at 974a; practices are guessed at by opinions at 976a; a reputation for wisdom is at stake at 976b; and true opinion reappears in the treatment of counting out the just, good, and fine at 978b. These uses are connected by judgment or appearance, but their objects differ. The existence of an expressly true opinion prevents a simple rule that every doxa in the work is false.

The text's positive demand is correspondingly stronger than winning assent. Number is linked with the ability to give an account, and at 978b knowledge and true opinion enter a claim about persuading oneself and another concerning the evaluative terms. The clause is compressed and should not be rewritten as a fully developed theory of the relation between knowledge and true opinion. It does, however, oppose the earlier distance between speaking power and truth.

Memory itself is not condemned. Its sufficiency is denied, and its good use later depends on what is learned and how. The same capacity can serve habitual forensic adaptation or the best educational natures. This prevents the criticism of rhetoric from becoming an indiscriminate criticism of remembering.

Places to read

1. 976bβοηθοὶ δίκαις — The claimed service is assistance in lawsuits
2. 976bἐν τῇ τοῦ λέγειν ῥώμῃ — Its vehicle is the strength of speaking
3. 976bμνήμῃ καὶ τριβῇ δόξης — Memory and the routine of opinion describe the method
4. 976bἤθεσιν προσέχοντες τὸν νοῦν — Attention is directed to characters
5. 976bἀληθείας δὲ τῶν ὄντως δικαίων ἐκτὸς παρεσφαλμένοι — The decisive deficit is missing the truth of the really just
6. 978bἀληθοῦς δόξης ἐπιλαβόμενος — True opinion later occurs within a different demand for justified persuasion

Translation in this edition

“Routine” retains tribē as distinct from craft. The note's Gorgias comparison is explicitly a comparison with what Socrates says there; this work's speaker is the Athenian. “Characters” follows Burnet's ἤθεσιν rather than the conjectural division ἢ ἔθεσιν reported in the apparatus.

Object of forensic attention — ἦθος (ēthos)

ἦθος (ēthos)

Object of forensic attention. Characters are what the lawsuit helpers attend to, using memory and routine. The adopted word is not the apparatus conjecture habits divided differently. Attested: ἤθεσιν (976b). Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.

Real justice — δίκαιος (dikaios)

δίκαιος (dikaios)

Real justice. The substantivized plural concerns what is really just, whose truth the forensic helpers miss. Attested: δικαίων (976b). Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.

Forensic case — δίκη (dikē)

δίκη (dikē)

Forensic case. The plural names lawsuits in which speakers claim to help by the strength of their speaking. Attested: δίκαις (976b). Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.

Forensic technique — μνήμη (mnēmē)

μνήμη (mnēmē)

Forensic technique. Memory works with the routine of opinion in the practice of persuasive assistance, which can remain outside the truth of justice. Attested: μνήμῃ (976b). Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.

Routine of opinion — δόξα (doxa)

δόξα (doxa)

Routine of opinion. Forensic helpers use memory and habitual opinion while attending to characters, without the truth of real justice. Attested: δόξης (976b). Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.

Practiced facility in persuasion — τριβή (tribē)

τριβή (tribē)

Practiced facility in persuasion. Routine of opinion accompanies memory in attending to characters; its repeated use does not make it knowledge of real justice. Attested: τριβῇ (976b). Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.

Forensic misdirection — παρασφάλλεσθαι (parasphallesthai)

παρασφάλλεσθαι (parasphallesthai)

Forensic misdirection. The perfect participle presents speakers as having fallen outside the truth of the really just, rather than merely failing to speak fluently. Attested: παρεσφαλμένοι (976b). Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.

Power of speaking — ῥώμη (rhōmē)

ῥώμη (rhōmē)

Power of speaking. Forensic helpers claim effectiveness through speaking’s strength; persuasive power remains separate from knowledge of what is really just. Attested: ῥώμῃ (976b). Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.

Truth of real justice — ἀλήθεια (alētheia)

ἀλήθεια (alētheia)

Truth of real justice. The standard from which the forensic helpers have slipped aside, despite the strength and practiced effectiveness of their speaking. Attested: ἀληθείας (976b). Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.

Memory and the routine of opinion (contextual phrase)

μνήμῃ καὶ τριβῇ δόξης (976b)

The datives describe how forensic speakers attend to characters. The genitive δόξης is retained as printed and associates the routine with opinion; the apparatus reports alternate construals, but they are not adopted here. The context contrasts this practiced attention with truth about what is really just. Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.

Outside the truth of what is really just (contextual phrase)

ἀληθείας δὲ τῶν ὄντως δικαίων ἐκτὸς παρεσφαλμένοι (976b)

The perfect participle gives the forensic helpers a settled result of having slipped aside. The nested genitive identifies the truth missed as truth concerning the really just. Their deficiency is therefore compatible with speaking strongly and remembering effectively; persuasive success alone does not meet the standard. Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.

Persuading oneself as well as another (contextual phrase)

πρὸς τὸ ἑαυτόν τε καὶ ἕτερον πεῖσαι (978b)

The purpose construction makes justified persuasion reflexive and interpersonal. It follows the demand involving knowledge, true opinion, and counting out the just, good, and fine. The aim therefore exceeds the lawsuit helpers’ ability to influence a hearer by attending to characters. Lawsuits persuasive power and the routine of opinion.