[55,0] THE FIFTY-FIFTH DISCOURSE : ON HOMER AND SOCRATES.
(1) (Interlocuteur) Since you make it evident that on 
general grounds you are an admirer of Socrates and 
also that you are filled with wonder at the man as 
revealed in his words, you can tell me of which among 
the sages he was a pupil ; just as, for example, 
Pheidias the sculptor was a pupil of Hegias, and 
Polygnotus the painter and his brother were both 
pupils of their father Aglaophon, and Pherecydes is 
said to have been a teacher of Pythagoras, and Pythagoras 
in turn a teacher of Empedocles and so forth. 
And indeed we are able to name the teachers of most 
other famous men—and to tell through association 
with whom each became noteworthy—with the exception 
of Heracleitus of Ephesus and Hesiod of Ascra. 
For, to spare us the trouble of seeking for his teacher, 
Hesiod says he received his poetic gift from the 
Muses in a branch of laurel as he was tending his 
flocks on Helicon, white Heracleitus with even more 
graciousness says that he himself discovered what 
the nature of the universe really is without anybody's
teaching him, and that he became wise by his own 
efforts. As for Homer, this point, like everything 
else connected with him, is obscure to the Greeks. 
But while we have heard that Socrates as a boy 
studied the calling of his father, be so good as to 
tell us clearly who was his teacher in the wisdom 
which has proved so helpful and noble.
(3) (Dion) Why, this is plain, I imagine, to many people, 
provided they are familiar with both men, namely, 
that Socrates is in truth a pupil of Homer, and not of 
Archelaüs, as some say.
(Interlocuteur) And how can it possibly be said that the man 
who neither met Homer nor ever saw him, but lived 
so many years later, was a pupil of Homer ?
(Dion) What of it ? Supposing a man lived in 
Homer's day but had heard none of the poetry of 
Homer, or, if he had heard, had given none of it his 
attention, shah we he able to say he was a pupil of Homer ?
(Interlocuteur) By no means.
(4) (Dion) Then it is not absurd that the man who 
neither met nor saw Homer and yet understood his 
poetry and became familiar with all his thought 
should be called a pupil of Homer ; or will you go so 
far as to maintain that no one can be a zealous follower 
of anyone with whom he has never been associated ?
(Interlocuteur) Not I.
(Dion) Then, if a follower, he would also be a pupil.
For whoever really follows any one surely knows what 
that person was like, and by imitating his acts and 
words he tries as best he can to make himself like 
him. But that is precisely, it seems, what the pupil 
does—

[55,5] by imitating his teacher and paying heed to 
him he tries to acquire his art. On the other hand, 
seeing people and associating with them has nothing 
to do with the process of learning. For instance, 
many persons not only see pipers but associate with 
and hear them every day, and yet they could not 
even blow on the pipes unless they associate with 
the pipers for professional ends and pay strict heed. 
However, if you shrink from calling Socrates a pupil 
of Homer, but would prefer to call him just a follower, 
it will make no difference to me.
(6) (Interlocuteur) Why, to my way of thinking, the one seems 
no less surprising than the other. For Homer has 
proved to be a poet without a peer, whereas Socrates 
is a philosopher.
(Dion) Very well ; on that principle you would not 
call even Archilochus a follower of Homer, because 
he has not used the same metre as Homer's for all his 
poetry but has used other metres for the most part ; 
nor would you call Stesichorus his follower either, 
because, while Homer composed epic poetry, Stesichorus 
was a melic poet.
(7) (Interlocuteur) Yes I would ; all the Greeks agree on this, 
that Stesichorus was a follower of Homer, and indeed 
is very like him in his poetic art. But wherein does 
Socrates seem to you to resemble Homer ?
(Dion) First and foremost, he resembles him in his 
character ; for neither of the two was boastful or
brazen, as the most ignorant of the sophists are. For 
instance, Homer did not even deign to tell whence he 
came, or who were his parents, or what he himself 
was called. On the contrary, so far as he was concerned 
we should not even know the name of the man 
who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. As for Socrates, 
while he could not make a secret of hic- fatherland 
because of its greatness and because Athens was 
exceedingly famous and dominated the Greeks at 
that period, yet he never said anything boastful about 
himself or laid claim to any wisdom, and yet Apollo 
had solemnly declared that he was wisest among all 
Greeks and barbarians. And finally, Socrates did 
not even put his words into writing and himself 
bequeath them to posterity, and in this he outdid 
Homer. For jnst as we know the name of Homer by 
hearing it from others, so too we know the words of 
Socrates because others have left them to us. Thus 
both were exceedingly self-restrained and modest.
(9) Again, both Socrates and Homer alike scorned the 
acquisition of wealth. Besides, they both were devoted 
to the same ends and spoke about the same 
things, the one through the medium of his verse, the 
other in prose—human virtue and vice, actions wrong 
and actions right, truth and deceit, and how the 
masses have only opinions, while the wise have true knowledge. 
Furthermore, they were most effective at making 
similes and comparisons.
(Interlocuteur) This is indeed surprising, if with Homer's 
comparisons of fire and winds and sea and eagles and
bulls and lions and so forth, figures with which he 
adorned his poetry, you shall see fit to compare the 
potters and cobblers of Socrates.

[55,10] (Dion) I shall, my dear fellow, since indeed we compare 
the fox of Archilochus with the lions and 
leopards of Homer and declare it to be not at all, 
or not much, inferior. However, perhaps you disapprove 
also of such Homeric similes as those in which 
he refers to starlings or daws or locusts or a firebrand 
or ashes or beans and chickpeas, or the one in which 
he has depicted men winnowing —perhaps these 
seem to you to be the most inferior portions of 
Homer's work, while you admire only his lions and 
eagles and Scyllas and Cyclopes, with which he was 
wont to beguile stupid people, just as nurses beguile 
children with tales of the Lamia. Indeed, just as 
Homer through myths and history undertook to instruct 
human beings, who are very troublesome to 
instruct, so also Socrates often used this sort of device, 
sometimes admitting that he was in earnest and 
sometimes pretending to be joking, with the aim of 
benefiting mankind though in so doing he perhaps 
came into conflict with mvthologists and historians.
(12) Again, it was not without conscious purpose that 
he represented Gorgias or Polus or Thrasymachus 
or Prodicus or Meno or Euthyphro or Anytus or 
Alcibiades or Laches as speaking, when he might 
have omitted their names ; on the contrary, he
knew that by this device most of all he would benefit 
his hearers, if perchance they grasped the point ; for 
to comprehend hurnan beings from their words, or 
their words from human beings, is not an easy task 
for any but philosophers and educated persons. On 
the other hand, most men suppose that such items 
are purposeless, and they regard them as mere vexation 
and nonsense. But Socrates held that, every 
time he introduces a boastful man, he is speaking of 
boastfulness ; every time he introduces a shameless, 
loathsome man, he is speaking of shamelessness and 
loathsomeness ; every time he introduces an unreasonable, 
irascible man, he is turning his hearers 
against unreason and anger. Moreover, in all other 
cases similarly he revealed the truc nature of the 
passions and maladies of men in the persons of the 
very ones who were afflicted by the passions or 
the maladies more distinctly than if he were using 
the words by themselves.
(14) But it appears to me that he took this too from 
Homer. For example, when Homer tells about 
Dolon, how he conceived a longing for the horses of 
Achilles, and how, when he might have fled from the 
enemy, he halted with his lance planted close beside 
him and obtained no benefit from his fleetness, and 
how his teeth chattered and struck together from 
terror, and how he talked to the enemy, not only 
when they asked him a question, but even on topics 
about which no one was inquiring — for instance, he 
gave information about the Thracian horses and 
about Rhesus, of whose arrivai no one knew —by 
telling all this so very plainly does Homer not seem 
to you to be discoursing on cowardice and love of 
notoriety ?

[55,15] And again, when he tells about Pandarus, how he 
violated the truce in the hope of rewards from Alexander 
son of Priam, and how he not only failed to slay 
Menelaüs by his shot, although reputed to be an able 
bowman, but also by violating the truce made the 
Trojans more discouraged as to the war through their 
constant recollection of their broken oaths—as witness 
these lines
"But now we fight as traitors to our oaths ; 
On that account 'tis not so well for us" —
and how not much later his tongue was cut off and 
he died before ever Alexander could even put into 
words his gratitude to him —in recounting these 
things with such scrupulous attention to detail, does 
Homer appear to you to be talking of anything else 
than of bribe-taking and impiety and in general of 
folly ? Why, Pandarus even cursed his arrows and 
threatened to smash and burn them, as if the arrows 
were in fear of him ! 
(17) Take another example. When Homer says of 
Asius son of Hyrtacus that, after his commander  
had given orders to leave the horses outside the 
trench, he alone did not obey,
"But with them neared the speedy ships, the fool !
Nor was he fated, dodging the spirits dire, 
To come again, exulting in team and car, 
Back from the ships to wind-swept Ilium,"
(18) driving into such difficult terrain amid trench and wall 
and ships, where even the men on foot found it not 
to their advantage when caught by the foe, but most 
of them were slaughtered when a small rescue party 
issued from within the gate ; yet Asius, elated as he 
was by his horses and the beauty of his chariot, though 
thinking to drive past the Wall, was prepared to 
plunge into the sea and to fight from his chariot —
think you not that Homer then is speaking of disobedience 
and boastfulness ?
(19) On the other hand, when he contrasts with these 
Polydamas giving orders to be cautious and not to 
cross the french, pointing now to the enterprise as a 
risky venture  and now to the omen they had had —
for he felt that, while no one would listen to his words 
in any other way, perhaps by the omen he might 
persuade Hector ; or, to take another illustration, 
when, as Agamemnon and Achilles are reviling one 
another, Homer depicts Nestor as trying to make them 
cease their rage, and foretelling plainly what will 
befall them in consequence of their strife, and later 
upbraiding Agamemnon as being in the wrong and 
forcing him to entreat Achilles  ; or again, Odysseus 
setting right the blunder of Agamemnon  through 
which, while wishing to test the army to see how it 
stood the war's delay, he almost brought about its 
flight—is it not likely that by scenes like these Homer 
is trying to give advice regarding prudence and 
generalship and prophecy, and, more than this, 
regarding tact and tactlessness ?


[55,20] As for the Odyssey, while I shall omit all else, I 
shah recall just one character, Antinoüs. For Homer 
has portrayed him as the most braggart of the suitors 
and the most dissolute. For example, in the first 
place he scorned Odysseus because he was in rags,
while Antinoüs himself in costly raiment was drinking 
from golden goblets—and those not his own—and 
was dining sumptuously, not on his father's viands, 
but rather playing the parasite in a house that lacked 
a master ; moreover, while he professed to be 
enamoured of Penelope, he was seducing the maid-servants 
of Odysseus and behaving licentiously in 
general ; and he ended by attempting to draw the 
bow, though he was unacquainted with archery and 
his hands were so spoiled by dainty living as not to be 
able to grasp the bow-string unless someone smeared 
it with tallow  ; and what is more, he did this in the 
sight of Odysseus and in the presence of the object of 
his wooing, in the midst of such a crowd of men, not 
even being able to bend the bow, nor understanding 
how Telemachus was going to set up the axes. But 
for all that, Homer caused this man also  to meet his 
death by a telling blow through the throat, instead of 
in some chance spot, just as, you remember, he caused 
Pandarus to be smitten through the tongue. For indeed 
if such things do take place by some chance, 
still in many instances it is possible to say that this 
man ought to die from a blow through the belly and 
that man through the genitals and another man 
through the mouth.
(22) Well then, Homer does not seem to you to say 
anything without a purpose, does he ? No more, 
then, did Socrates employ his words or illustrations 
at random ; on the contrary, when conversing with
Anytus he would refer to tanners and cobblers ; but 
if he conversed with Lysicles, it would be lambs and 
fleeces ; if with Lycon, law-suits and blackmail ; if 
with Meno the Thessalian, lovers and boy friends.