Loss and suffering loss · Lexicon

From the book

Hipparchus

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordZēmia means loss or damage and, in other contexts, a penalty or fine.
In HipparchusThe pilot at 226b already knows that worthless sails and rudders will cause loss and expose him, the ship and its cargo to destruction.
In this editionThe edition keeps “loss” and “suffer loss” throughout, including where “damage” would be idiomatic.
A place to readὅτι ζημιωθήσεται — The pilot’s projected loss is an anticipated consequence of deficient equipment.

Meaning

Zēmia means loss or damage and, in other contexts, a penalty or fine. Zēmiousthai means to suffer loss or incur damage. The noun names the loss; the middle-passive infinitive marks undergoing it. Here the legal sense is not the controlling one, even though lawsuits occur in an earlier joke. Economic diminution and practical injury provide the operative examples.

The expression “at a loss” at 231c belongs to a different Greek family, aporein, being perplexed or unable to find a way forward. English can make the companion’s intellectual difficulty sound like a final specimen of financial loss, but the Greek does not repeat zēmia there.

Use in the book

The pilot at 226b already knows that worthless sails and rudders will cause loss and expose him, the ship and its cargo to destruction. Loss is therefore introduced through concrete stakes before it becomes an abstract opposite. It need not mean only a reduced balance of money: failure in a practice can destroy the very agent or equipment required for further activity.

At 226e–227a, the companion accepts that gain is opposite to loss, that suffering loss is good for nobody, and that people are harmed by it. Socrates then identifies loss as bad and gain as good. The universal “for no one” matters: the argument is treating loss as an already adverse overall result. It has not considered whether losing some possession, paying a beneficial penalty or surrendering one advantage might help a person in a larger respect. To import such possibilities as explicit examples would go beyond the dialogue, but their possibility explains why the level of assessment needs care.

The companion tries at 227e to preserve precisely a distinction of levels. Some gains cause harm, and harm is agreed to mean suffering loss. He consequently allows men to suffer loss both from loss and from base gain. On a net-benefit sense of gain this sounds contradictory; on a sense of acquiring money or an object while incurring another injury it is intelligible. Socrates answers with the previous opposition rather than disaggregating kinds of outcome. The quarrel is partly about the standard under which the word is being used.

When offered a retraction at 229e, the companion retains the badness of loss and the opposition between loss and gain. He retracts the universal goodness of gaining. At 231b–c disease is treated as a loss despite being acquired without expense, and at 231d getting more silver can still be loss because its value falls short of the gold surrendered. The later examples support an evaluative rather than merely subtractive use: adding something can constitute loss.

Places to read

226bὅτι ζημιωθήσεται — The pilot’s projected loss is an anticipated consequence of deficient equipment.
227aΚακὸν ἄρα ἡ ζημία. — Loss is classified as bad.
227eκαὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ κέρδους τοῦ πονηροῦ — The companion insists that base gain can itself cause loss.
231dκέρδος ἢ ζημίαν εἴληφεν; — The exchange asks whether a larger quantity received is gain or loss.

Translation in this edition

The edition keeps “loss” and “suffer loss” throughout, including where “damage” would be idiomatic. Its note 20 expressly separates perplexity from loss. The apparatus records alternative future forms at 227e; these do not remove the distinction between what is acquired and whether its acquisition benefits its possessor.