Roads and Steiria

Use in the book

Roads provide the practical setting for Hipparchus’ distribution of wisdom. The Herms are not described as objects hidden in a ruler’s house or as texts requiring a special journey to Delphi. They stand where people already pass up and down. Their location turns movement between town and country into an opportunity for reading, while the promised taste of wisdom is meant to prompt a new journey toward further teaching.

One road is singled out because its inscription gives Socrates the command he needs: the Steirian road bears the injunction not to deceive a friend. The specification supplies local concreteness to the quoted rule. It does not mean that the dialogue’s speakers are currently on that road, that Socrates has just read its Herm, or that the monument stood at Steiria itself. The stated network places monuments at intermediate points.

The other quoted saying turns the physical action of a passer-by into an ethical instruction. “Go your way with just thoughts” leaves the traveller travelling but asks that the mental direction of the journey be just. It is an economical fit between site and maxim. Reading the command as purely metaphorical would lose the actual road; reading it as only traffic advice would lose the moral demand.

Strabo locates Steiria in a coastal sequence in eastern Attica, between Prasia and Brauron. That helps explain the edition’s description of the route from Athens toward an east-coast deme. The dialogue itself gives no itinerary, length, specific branch road or archaeological identification of the friendship Herm.

Places to read

1. 228dκατὰ τὰς ὁδοὺς — The monuments are distributed along roads.
2. 229aΣτειριακῇ ὁδῷ — The specifically named road carries the friendship injunction.
3. 229aστεῖχε δίκαια φρονῶν — The travelling imperative combines movement and ethical thought.

Translation in this edition

“The Steirian road” reproduces the adjectival expression rather than turning it into an otherwise unspecified street called “Steiria.” The supplied note cites Strabo 9.1.22 for the deme’s location. The verb “go your way” retains the address to a moving person, which a free rendering such as “be just” would suppress.