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overtaken. For in good fortune every man is noble, and in bad fortune base, and for the most part they are the noblest whom the gods love. |
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Therefore shall I never, in a search for what cannot exist, waste my span of life in an empty, impracticable hope the all-blameless man, among all of us who win the fruit of the broad-based earth. If I find him, I shall tell you the news. But I praise and love all, whosoever does nothing base of his own free will; but against necessity not even the gods fight. |
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I am no lover of carping. Sufficient for me is the man who is not base, nor too violent, if he has in his heart the justice which helps the city, a sound man; nor shall I blame him, for the generation of fools is past counting. All things are fair in which base things are not mingled. (trans. C.M. Bowra. slightly modified) |
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On the other hand, in two fundamental regards it has proved far harder to detach the interpretation of the poem from the context of Protagoras' introduction of it within the dialogue. The first, Protagoras' challenge to Socrates that in the two passages Protagoras quotes Simonides seems to contradict himself has long dominated scholarly discussion. This is odd, for the challenge, though seemingly adroit, in fact admits of a fairly straightforward solution. |
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The obvious strategy for dealing with Protagoras' problem, and the one adopted at least since the time of Plato, is to try to establish that the two propositions involved are actually not identical and hence cannot contradict one another after all. Let us reduce the two phrases to their semantic core and align them: |
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Within which pair of seemingly like terms should the interpreter proclaim the existence of a conceptual difference stark enough to prevent the two propositions from collapsing into tautology? Both of the apparent candidates have been canvassed: neither has yielded satisfactory results. Socrates' own solution, to distinguish between  (1) as becoming and  (13) as being (Prot. 343Ef.), has been followed by many scholars21 and (despite Wilamowitz' vehement protest22) is not excluded in principle. Yet in the present case such a distinction necessarily fails, since it could only be maintained if it were terminologically consistent at least throughout the immediate internal context constituted by the rest of the poem. But Simonides goes on a few lines later to use (15) to mean not "be" but rather "become"23 and (21) to mean not so much "become" |
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21 E.g., Aars (1888) 12; Blass (1872) 331; Campbell (1967) 3867; des Places (1969) 239; Donlan (1969) 75; Gerber (1970) 321; Gundert (1952) 76, 834; Jurenka (1906) 8679; Kegel (1962) 910; Woodbury (1953) 1557. |
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22 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff(1913) 165. |
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23 Cf. Fränkel (1968) 73 n. 7. |
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