on 29-Nov-2017 (Wed)

Discussing poetry strikes me as no different from the second-rate drinking parties of the agora crowd. These people, largely uneducated and unable to entertain themselves over their wine by using their own voices to generate conversation, pay premium prices for d flute-girls and rely on the extraneous voice of the reed flute as background music for their parties. But when well-educated gentlemen drink together, you will not see girls playing the flute or the lyre or dancing, but a group that knows how to get together without these childish frivolities, convers- ing civilly no matter how heavily they are drinking.

When a poet is brought up in a discussion, almost everyone has a different opinion about what he means, and they wind up arguing about something they can never finally decide. The best people avoid such discussions and rely on their own powers of speech to entertain 348 themselves and test each other. These people should be our models. We should put the poets aside and converse directly with each other, testing the truth and our own ideas.

“Well, then, my good people: Since it has turned out that our salvation in life depends on the right choice of pleasures and pains, be they more b or fewer, greater or lesser, farther or nearer, doesn’t our salvation seem, first of all, to be measurement, which is the study of relative excess and deficiency and equality?”

Protágoras foi um sofista da Grécia Antiga, célebre por cunhar a frase:

"O homem é a medida de todas as coisas, das coisas que são, enquanto são, das coisas que não são, enquanto não são."

Protagoras is a dialogue by Plato. The main argument is between the elderly Protagoras, a celebrated Sophist, and Socrates. The discussion takes place at the home of Callias, who is host to Protagoras while he is in town, and concerns the nature of Sophists, the unity and the teachability of virtue.

While Socrates seems to have won the argument, he points to the fact that if all virtue is knowledge, it can in fact be taught. He draws the conclusion that to an observer he and Protagoras would seem as crazy, having argued at great lengths only to mutually exchanged positions with Socrates now believing that virtue can be taught and Protagoras that all virtues are one instead of his initial position (361a). Protagoras acknowledges Socrates a notable opponent in dispute while being much younger than he and predicts that he could become one of the wisest men alive.

* and, which is regularly used to connect a string of sentences where in English we would avoid any connecting word at all. In English it would be considered very bad style to begin sentence after sentence with and, but in Greek it is totally natural and acceptable, δέ* is also translatable as but, but when so used it denotes only a slight contrast: ό

Άχιλλεύο ην έν τη οκηντγ ό δέ Πάτροκλοο έφερεν οννον Achilles was in the tent but (or and) Patroclus was bringing wine. A

βραδέακ; αλλά ταχέωο oi βαρβαροι ήμάο έδίωκον the barbarians were chasing us not slowly but quickly. Not

γάρ* for, as, which introduces the reason for what goes before,

ού μένομεν oi γάρ βάρβαροι rpac διώκουοιν we are not staying as the barbarians are chasing

ούν* therefore, so, introduces the result of what goes before, ο

οί βάρβαροι ήμάο διώκουαν ταχέακ: ούν τρέχομεν the barbarians are chasing us; therefore we are running quickly.

ήμεΐο καί ϋμεΐο you and we

to the 1st person, English is more polite). καί ... καί is used to express both ... and και ή 'Αφροδίτη και ό Aiovtfcoc both Aphrodite and Dionysos, and