Euthydemus

Soc.

These were my words, Crito; and I set about giving the closest attention to what should follow, and observing in what fashion they would deal with the question, and how they would start exhorting the youth to practise wisdom and virtue. So then the elder of them, Dionysodorus, entered first upon the discussion, and we all turned our eyes on him expecting to hear, there and then, some wonderful arguments. And this result we certainly got; for wondrous, in a way, Crito, was the argument that the man then ushered forth, which is worth your hearing as a notable incitement to virtue. Tell me, Socrates, he said, and all you others who say you desire this youth to become wise, whether you say this in jest or truly and earnestly desire it. At this I reflected that previously, as it seemed, they took us to be jesting, when we urged them to converse with the youth, and hence they made a jest of it and did not take it seriously. This reflection therefore made me insist all the more that we were in deadly earnest. Then Dionysodorus said: Yet be careful, Socrates, that you do not have to deny what you say now. I know what I am about, I said: I know I shall never deny it. Well now, he proceeded; you tell me you wish him to become wise? Certainly. And at present, he asked, is Cleinias wise or not? He says he is not yet so—he is no vain pretender. And you, he went on, wish him to become wise, and not to be ignorant? We agreed. So you wish him to become what he is not, and to be no longer what he now is. When I heard this I was confused; and he, striking in on my confusion, said: Of course then, since you wish him to be no longer what he now is, you wish him, apparently, to be dead. And yet what valuable friends and lovers they must be, who would give anything to know their darling was dead and gone! Ctesippus, on hearing this, was annoyed on his favorite’s account, and said: Stranger of Thurii, were it not rather a rude thing to say, I should tell you, ill betide your design of speaking so falsely of me and my friends as to make out—what to me is almost too profane even to repeat—that I could wish this boy to be dead and gone!

Soc.

Why, Ctesippus, said Euthydemus, do you think it possible to lie? To be sure, I do, he replied: I should be mad otherwise. Do you mean, when one tells the thing about which one is telling, or when one does not? When one tells it, he said. Then if you tell it, you tell just that thing which you tell, of all that are, and nothing else whatever? Of course, said Ctesippus. Now the thing that you tell is a single one, distinct from all the others there are. Certainly. Then the person who tells that thing tells that which is? Yes. But yet, surely he who tells what is, and things that are, tells the truth: so that Dionysodorus, if he tells things that are, tells the truth and speaks no lie about you. Yes, said Ctesippus; but he who speaks as he did, Euthydemus, does not say things that are. Then Euthydemus asked him: And the things which are not, surely are not? They are not. Then nowhere can the things that are not be? Nowhere. Then is it possible for anyone whatever so to deal with these things that are not as to make them be when they are nowhere? I think not, said Ctesippus. Well now, when orators speak before the people, do they do nothing? No, they do something, he replied. Then if they do, they also make? Yes. Now, is speaking doing and making? He agreed that it is. No one, I suppose, speaks what is not—for thereby he would be making something; and you have agreed that one cannot so much as make what is not—so that, by your account, no one speaks what is false, while if Dionysodorus speaks, he speaks what is true and is. Yes, in faith, Euthydemus, said Ctesippus; but somehow or other he speaks what is, only not as it is.[*](The quibbling throughout this passage is a willful confusion of the two very different uses of the verb to be (εἶναι), (a) in predication, where it has nothing to do with existence, and (b) by itself, as stating existence.) How do you mean, Ctesippus? said Dionysodorus. Are there persons who tell things as they are? Why surely, he replied, there are gentlemen—people who speak the truth? Well, he went on, good things are in good case, bad in bad, are they not? He assented. And you admit that gentlemen tell things as they are. I do. Then, Ctesippus, good people speak evil of evil things, if they speak of them as they are. Yes, I can tell you, very much so, when for instance they speak of evil men; among whom, if you take my advice, you will beware of being included, that the good may not speak ill of you. For, I assure you, the good speak ill[*](Euthydemus seizes on the ambiguous use of κακῶς which may mean either badly or injuriously.) of the evil. And they speak greatly of the great, asked Euthydemus, and hotly of the hot? Certainly, I presume, said Ctesippus: I know they speak frigidly of the frigid, and call their way of arguing frigid. You are turning abusive, Ctesippus, said Dionysodorus, quite abusive!

Soc.

Not I, on my soul, Dionysodorus, for I like you: I am only giving you a friendly hint, and endeavoring to persuade you never to say anything so tactless in my presence as that I wish these my most highly valued friends to be dead and gone.So then I, observing that they were getting rather savage with each other, began to poke fun. at Ctesippus, saying: Ctesippus, my feeling is that we ought to accept from our visitors what they tell us, if they are so good as to give it, and should not quarrel over a word. For if they understand how to do away with people in such sort as to change them from wicked and witless to honest and intelligent, and that too whether they have discovered for themselves or learnt from somebody else this peculiar kind of destruction or undoing, which enables them to destroy a man in his wickedness and set him up again in honesty; if they understand this—and obviously they do; you know they said that their newly discovered art was to turn wicked men into good—let us then accord them this power; let them destroy the lad for us, and make him sensible, and all the rest of us likewise. If you young fellows are afraid, let the experiment be made on me as a corpus vile[*](Lit. a Carian slave.); for I, being an elderly person, am ready to take the risk and put myself in the hands of Dionysodorus here, as if he were the famous Medea of Colchis. Let him destroy me, and if he likes let him boil me down, or do to me whatever he pleases: only he must make me good. Then Ctesippus said: I too, Socrates, am ready to offer myself to be skinned by the strangers even more, if they choose, than they are doing now, if my hide is not to end by being made into a wine-skin, like that of Marsyas,[*](This satyr was fabled to have challenged Apollo to a musical contest, and on his fluting being judged inferior to Apollo’s harping he was flayed alive by the god for his presumption, and his skin was hung up like a bag or bottle in a cave; cf. Herod. vii. 26.) but into the shape of virtue. And yet Dionysodorus here believes I am vexed with him. I am not vexed at all; I only contradict the remarks which I think he has improperly aimed at me. Come now, my generous Dionysodorus, do not call contradiction abuse: abuse is quite another thing. On this Dionysodorus said: As though there were such a thing as contradiction! Is that the way you argue, Ctesippus? Yes, to be sure, he replied, indeed I do; and do you, Dionysodorus, hold that there is not? Well, you at any rate, he said, could not prove that you had ever heard a single person contradicting another. Is that so? he replied: well, let us hear now whether I can prove a case of it—Ctesippus contradicting Dionysodorus. Now, will you make that good? Certainly, he said.