Musicians and instruments

Use in the book

The two musicians enter in the rapid series after the general at 226c. The first has wind instruments worth nothing; the second a lyre. The question, completed only after the archer and the generalisation to craftsmen, asks whether any of these men thinks he gains from such equipment. The shorter second phrase relies on the first for the worthless condition. Its brevity is not permission to imagine that the lyre has a different valuation.

Music broadens the practical setting of the test. The previous examples involved cultivation, care of an animal, navigation and war; professional performance equally requires usable means. A musician’s possession of an instrument does not automatically count as a gain when the object cannot serve its relevant purpose. The inference depends on the musician’s intelligent assessment of the equipment, as the surrounding series makes clear, rather than on the instrument’s bare presence.

No fee, audience, competition or sale is specified. One can reasonably understand gain as an advantage obtainable through performance, but the text does not restrict it to a wage. Nor does it examine whether a defective instrument might have another valuable use, or whether a performer might sell it dishonestly. Such possibilities distinguish the concrete practitioner’s judgment from the broader moral class the companion first intended to condemn.

The dialogue later makes cultural production central to Hipparchus’ reputation: Homeric recitation, Anacreon’s arrival and Simonides’ large fees and gifts appear at 228b–c. Those figures are not the unnamed musicians of the craft list, and the later passage does not describe their instruments. It does, however, place practical expenditure beside a claimed educational benefit. The earlier performers test whether worthless means can yield advantage; the patronage narrative presents resources spent to acquire culturally valuable people and performances. The relationship is thematic, not a stated proof that the expenditure was good.

The musicians also help resist a narrowly commercial reading of the whole opening. Socrates chooses activities with intelligible standards of successful use. The sequence can then move from those standards toward worth and benefit without ever offering a technical account of market profit.

Places to read

1. 226cαὐλητὴς αὐλοὺς οὐδενὸς ἀξίους ἔχων — The wind-player explicitly possesses worthless instruments.
2. 226cκιθαριστὴς λύραν — Performer and instrument use different but related Greek names.
3. 228cμεγάλοις μισθοῖς καὶ δώροις πείθων — Simonides’ fees and gifts supply a later, different connection between culture and material advantage.

Translation in this edition

The edition’s paired English expressions make the parallel easy to hear, but “lyre-player” smooths the difference between kitharistēs and lyra. The gloss should therefore preserve both Greek lemmas. “Flute” is the translation’s chosen term for aulos; it should not be taken as a precise identification with a modern orchestral flute. The passage needs usable instruments, not an organological classification.