Lesser Hippias

Which is the better man, Achilles or Odysseus? Socrates puts the question to Hippias—and soon the difference between an honest mistake and a knowing lie begins to blur.

In this sharp-edged dialogue from ancient Greece, Plato brings Socrates face to face with Hippias, a celebrated sophist confident in his reading of Homer. Their debate over the heroes’ truthfulness turns into a larger puzzle: if a person can deceive deliberately, does that make him worse—or more capable—than someone who tells the truth only by accident? With each clever turn, familiar ideas of virtue and wrongdoing grow less secure, and Socrates seems as ready to unsettle his own arguments as his opponent’s. Where does the argument lead when the better liar may also be the better man?

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