Andrew Ford (Princeton/NJ)

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME (432 BC):

Text, interpretation and memory in Plato’s Protagoras

Plato’s Protagoras is a unique text in the history of criticism, the only extended
example of practical poetic criticism that we have from classical Greece. This
long passage (338e-347c) shows a group of fifth-century intellectual luminaries
debating the meaning of a dense lyric poem by Simonides: the text is quoted at
length and its language examined closely and methodically – and wildly. My
paper first attempts to pinpoint how this passage – often written off as a parody
or a joke or misunderstood as a simplistic polemic against ‘sophistry’ – fits into
the work. I argue that Plato is more serious here than is usually supposed, and
that the passage gives his best account of the uses and limits of literary criticism.
In a coda, I consider an analysis of the passage by Glenn Most and suggest that
the role of memory in interpretation is overlooked in academic criticism.

The question raised in this paper is one that evidently needs to be periodically
re-asked even without the expectation of arriving at a final, definitive answer.
The formulation in my title is taken from an influential essay by Matthew
Arnold in which the “present time” was 1865; Arnold’s theme was revisited by
T. S. Eliot in 1923 and again by Northrop Frye in 1949.1 One indication that
the present is another such time is the 2004 issue of Critical Inquiry, a leading
journal of literary theory over recent decades: its symposium on “The Future of
Criticism” shows critical theory pausing to take stock after a generation of
energetic production and considering where one might go next. About this
second point there appears to be some uncertainty, to judge from the title of a
2000 volume of Essays from the English Institute, What’s Left of Theory?, or
Terry Eagleton’s After Theory of 2003.2 Both titles mitigate confessions of

1
Arnold first published “The Functions [sic] of Criticism at the Present Time” in The
National Review in November 1864 and then “The Function …” in id., Essays in Criticism,
London/ Cambridge: McMillan and Co., 1865. T. S. Eliot’s “The Function of Criticism”
appeared in The Criterion of 1923 and was republished in his Selected Essays of 1933.
(Eliot also took up Arnold’s theme in The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism [1933]).
Northop Frye, “The Function of Criticism at the Present time”, in: University of Toronto
Quarterly 19/1949, pp. 1-16, was reprinted in Malcolm Ross (ed.), Our Sense of Identity,
Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1954, and then revised as the “Polemical Introduction” to Northop
Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957; on this important
essay, see Angus Fletcher, “Northrop Frye: The Critical Passion”, in: Critical Inquiry
1/1975, pp. 741-756.
2
Judith Butler/ John Guillory/ Kendall Thomas (eds.), What’s Left of Theory? New Work on
the Politics of Literary Theory (Essays from the English Institute), New York: Routledge,
2000. Terry Eagleton, After Theory, London: Allen Lane, 2003. Eagleton had remarked on
the decline of “pure” or “high” theory in the preface to the second edition of his Literary
2 Andrew Ford

defeat with paronomasia – but the amphiboly suggests uncertainty: What’s Left
of Theory asks if there’s any theory left to do besides repeating ‘leftist’
perspectives; After Theory may seem to promise a kind of theory different from
what we have known so far, but the fact that After Theory had already been
used as a title less than a decade earlier, and indeed twice by the same author,
may be another sign that a period of extraordinary critical innovation came to
an end with the millennium.3
In such a time it is especially interesting to re-read Plato’s Protagoras, for it
too seems to have been written to take stock at the end of a great generation of
critics. Probably written in the 380’s, the Protagoras offered its first readers a
richly imagined picture of poetic interpretation as practiced by the greatest
minds in Periclean Athens nearly half a century before. The work begins with
Socrates recounting how Hippocrates, a young man of good family, woke him
that morning in hopes of gaining entrée into one of the greatest gatherings of
sages Athens had ever seen. Hippocrates is mainly interested in Protagoras
from Abdera, but Prodicus from Ceos and Hippias from Elis are also in town to
give lectures and recruit students. Ultimately, these savants will fail to satisfy
Socrates on the main philosophic questions he raises – whether human
excellence (aretê) is teachable and whether it is a form of knowledge – but in
the course of the discussion, near the middle of the Protagoras, we are given
an extended scene showing how poetry was interpreted and analyzed by the
most sophisticated critics of the age. No other Platonic work goes so deeply
into literary criticism as a methodical attempt to interpret and evaluate poetry:
the Ion tests the knowledge of the poet-performer and finds it wanting, but on
the simplistic level of pointing out that Homer and his performers have no
expert knowledge of what they talk about; the judging of poetry in the Republic
and Laws is not literary in orientation but political, performed by state officials
for political ends. By contrast, the Protagoras shows us Greece’s leading
experts on language and eloquence bringing to bear their technical knowledge,
along with some new technical terms, to analyze a poem in close detail, from
matters of dialect (346d-e) and word-order (hyperbaton, 343e, 345e, 346e)
down to punctuation (dialabein 346e) and the function of the particle men
(343d). If Plato were writing the Protagoras for our time, he might set it in the

Theory: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, pp. viii-ix. Going a critical generation
back, one finds the same stock-taking in Randall Jarrell’s “The Age of Criticism”, in: id.,
Poetry and the Age, New York: Knopf, 1953, focusing on such figures as John Crowe
Ransom, F.R. Leavis, Frye, Yvor Winters, and Lionel Trilling.
3
Thomas Docherty, After Theory: Postmodernism/Postmarxism, London: Routledge, 1990,
and After Theory, Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1996.
The Function of Criticism at Present Time (432 BC) 3

1970’s, with young Hippocrates thinking about graduate study at the School of
Criticism & Theory at Irvine, where Derrida, de Man and Jameson all
happened to be passing through.
The precious evidence in the Protagoras, really the only thing of its kind in
ancient literature, has been much studied, but it has proved very hard to judge
what point Plato is making or even whether he has a serious point at all.4 On
the one hand, it seems serious: one can recognize in the exegeses many of the
assumptions and methods that still guide contemporary academic
interpretation, as an analysis by Glenn Most will show; on the other, there are
some wild, explicitly unserious claims blended in and it is not clear if we are to
regard even Socrates’ contribution as any better than the rest. The episode
seems to end by declaring itself a waste of time: Socrates brings the poetry
discussion to a close by declaring that “it is not possible to interrogate the poets
about what they mean; when people bring them up, some say that the poet
means this and others that, and the point in dispute can never be decided”
(347e-348a).5 He compares talking about poetry to pretentious dinner parties
in which people “borrow the voices of poets because they are too ill-educated
to converse properly with one another” (347c); he prefers a kind of discussion
or “conversation” (347e: διαλεγόµενοι) that is more like dialectic, “dropping
the extraneous voices of poets and putting one another and the truth itself to the
test by exchanging logoi among ourselves” (347e-348a).
The naiveté of Socrates’ assumption that only a poem’s author knows its
meaning6 and the fruitlessness of the discussion as a whole are among the
reasons why the passage has been written off as a sort of joke or under-

4
Richard B. Rutherford, The Art of Plato: Ten Essays in Platonic Interpretation, London:
Duckworth, 1995, p. 122. For reviews of earlier studies see Fabio M. Giuiliano, “Esegesi
letteraria in Platone: La discussione sul carme Simonideo nel Protagora”, in: Studi Classici
e Orientali 41/1991, pp. 105-190; Marian Demos, Lyric Quotation in Plato, Lanham et al:
Roman & Littlefeld, 1999, pp. 1-18 (see the review by Velvet Yates in: Bryn Mawr
Classical Review, retrievable at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2000/2000-06-16.html) and
Grace M. Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato: Interpretation and Authority in Early Greek
Theories of Poetry, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2003, pp. 99-117. Philosophers have
tended to ignore the literary excursus until recently: see Jonathan Lavery, “Plato’s
Protagoras and the Frontier of Genre Research: A Reconnaissance Report from the Field”,
in: Poetics Today 28/2007, pp. 191-246, esp. p. 223.
5
All translations from the Greek are by the author.
6
Michael S. Silk, Interaction in Poetic Imagery: With Special Reference to Early Greek
Poetry, Cambridge et al: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006, p. 234, sees intentionalism at the
heart of Plato’s approach to poetry, a “one in a million” attitude he ascribes to the
philosopher’s rationalist hostility to poetry and suspicion of poetic form. During a recent
conference on “Plato as Literary Critic” at the Ludwigs Maximilians Universität, Stephen
Halliwell pointed out (in a paper entitled “Author, Text, and Meaning: Some Critical
Problems in Plato”) that this is too flat as an account of Plato’s views, instancing, inter alia,
Apol. 22, where poets are unable to say what their poems mean.
4 Andrew Ford

interpreted as a polemic against a broad-brush caricature of ‘sophistry’.7 But

this is unsatisfactory, for it leaves us without any sense of why Plato should
have prolonged this episode to fill nearly a fifth of the work (338e-347c).8
Because Plato’s point and purpose are obscure, the Protagoras has often been
neglected or given tangential mention in histories of Greek criticism.9 A main
reason for this, in my view, is a larger problem with the scholarship on Plato’s
views of poetry, which is that it has been lopsidedly obsessed with
metaphysics, putting too much stress on the arguments about mimesis in
Republic 10 to the exclusion of Plato’s manifold other observations – some
admiring, some neutral – about poetry and its uses.10 The Protagoras, however,
is focused not on mimesis but on exegesis and on the broader question of
whether citing the poets and trying to understand them can help us in ethical
exploration. In this dialogue at least, Socrates’ attitude to poetic authority is not
anxious mistrust: he has quotations from Homer handy for any occasion (309b,
315b, c, 340a) and is able to quote from memory much of a complex ode by a
poet no longer in fashion (344a-b); this Socrates responds to a poem by
examining it to see if it is useful and likely to be true; if so, he is perfectly
willing to cite the poem as a piece of wisdom.11 The ‘Plato on poetry’ that can
be discerned behind the Protagoras is not the relentless prosecutor of poets but
more like a sociologist or cultural anthropologist, a detached and keen-eyed
observer of how his elite fellow citizens make use of poetry and how they

7
Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato (see note 4), p. 100, n. 2 gives a long list of scholars. The
few arguments for Plato’s earnestness have not been plausible (cf. p. 101, n. 4 and n. 11
below); I differ with Ledbetter’s attempt, the strongest, when she argues for a contrast
between Socratic and “sophistic methodology” and sees the Protagoras as parodying “the
relativist assumptions that typically inform sophistic interpretations of poetry” (p. 6); to my
mind, this monolithic notion of sophistic criticism is a straw-man that, among other defects,
neglects the individuation of the sages in the dialogue; for all Socrates’ humor, I see his
interpretative sallies not as parody but as doing as well as he can with such an intractable
thing as a poem who’s reputable author is not present to clarify uncertainties about his
meaning.
8
Among those to address this question is Hans Baltussen, “Plato Protagoras 340-348:
commentary in the making?”, in: BICS 47/2004, pp. 21–35, arguing that the passage,
despite falling short of “sensible philology”, represents Plato’s thought on how to “[deal]
with poetry as a carrier of moral thought” (p. 21).
9
So Ruth Scodel, “Literary Interpretation in Plato's Protagoras”, in: Ancient Philosophy
6/1986, pp. 25-37, p. 25. To her examples in n. 2 add the too brief remarks in Andrew Ford,
The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Classical Greece,
Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2002, p. 154 and p. 202.
10
Among those who appreciate that Plato’s views on poetry are far richer than he is usually
given credit for is Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern
Problems, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2002, Ch. 2.
11
See Scodel, “Literary Interpretation” (see note 9), pp. 34-35. For a rich inventory of
examples in which “Plato cites poets as authorities on ethical matters” see Theodora
Hadjimichal, Bacchylides and the Emergence of the Lyric Canon, PhD Diss., ULC, 2011, p.
137, n. 18, citing, e. g., Rep. 331a3, 331d5, 334a-b; Men. 95c-96a; Phaedo 94d7-95a2,
111e6-112a5.
The Function of Criticism at Present Time (432 BC) 5

support the claims they make for it. For this reason, the usefulness of the
Protagoras for critics of the present time extends beyond the provocation
afforded by Socrates’ dismissive attitude to talk about poetry; Plato’s extended
representation of high literary discourse also allows us to reflect on the
function of criticism by comparing our practices with those in its formative
stage 2,400 years ago.
I propose, therefore, first to bring out Plato’s implicit attitude toward poetic
interpretation in the Protagoras, arguing that the work dramatizes not only the
limits of criticism but also its inescapability. My discussion will begin with the
first half of the dialogue (309a-338e) that sets the stage for the literary
conversation and, with typical Platonic irony, makes Socrates’ wrangle with
Protagoras address the present of Plato’s readers. Attending to context prepares
us to see that expert criticism, what Protagoras calls “being formidable on the
subject of verse” (δειν ς περ π ν), was a rule-bound game, one among
various genres of discourse on display, and in a second section I argue that
Socrates’ performance as literary critic is not wholly parodic: its first part
(339b-341e) is less than earnest and toys with the rules of the game; but when
Socrates rises to Protagoras’ challenge and promises to show “my own position
as far as your ‘verses’ go” (342a), we get a good-humored but serious
demonstration of how Plato thinks we have to grapple with poetic and other
provocative texts from the past in our ethical reflections.12 Though his portrait
has satiric touches, it tries to show critics doing about as well as they can with
a difficult old poem. Finally, to support this reading, I will turn to Most’s
analysis, which shows not only that serious and defensible principles underlie
Socrates’ argument but that, on a number of basic points, Socrates’
interpretative premises are the same as ours. Most’s study will also allow me to
compare, in a final section, the picture of criticism in 432 BC with our own
practices. Taking his conclusions a step further suggests that one function that
methodical criticism has served and continues to serve, though it is rarely
acknowledged, is to aid us in remembering and preserving poems;

12
Dorothea Frede, “The Impossibility of Perfection: Socrates’ Criticism of Simonides’ Poem
in the Protagoras”, in: The Review of Metaphysics 39.4/1986, pp. 729-753, characterizes
this section as “Socrates’ serious interpretation” not because it is a good-faith effort to
extract Simonides’ meaning but because Socrates “imposes, consciously and forcefully, his
own tenets on the poem” (p. 740). She is followed by Marina Berzins McCoy, “Socrates on
Simonides: The Use of Poetry in Socratic and Platonic Rhetoric”, in: Philosophy and
Rhetoric 32.4/1999, pp. 349-367, who argues for a rhetorical, manipulative Socrates who
“at the expense of honest hermeneutics” (p. 355) foists his own views on Simonides
because “his hermeneutical aim is not poetic interpretation, but dialogue with the poet” (p.
359). Neither rather cynical reading imputed to Socrates seems worthy of the name
dialogue.
6 Andrew Ford

conscientiously practiced criticism, despite its limitations and theoretical

quandaries, serves as a mode of poetic re-performance and so ensures the
preservation and transmission of the text, even when a full and final account of
its meaning may continue to elude us.

Staging criticism

Although the Protagoras is set in a golden past, two ironic moments framing
its prologue destabilize and undercut this temporal distancing and put the work
into dialogue with audiences of later times. The first moment is found in the
work’s opening business: an unnamed speaker catches sight of Socrates and
surmises that he has been on the hunt for Alcibiades “the fair” (309a); when he
adds that he has noticed the youth’s beard is coming in, there is a hint which –
together with a few other indications and an anachronism –suggests a dramatic
date around 432, when the historical Alcibiades would have been in his late
teens and Socrates approaching 40.13 Now, 432 is five years before Plato was
born, and pegging the text to the time when Alcibiades’ youthful bloom had
peaked stresses the past-ness of the story, setting it at an evanescent moment
that can never be recaptured. At the same time, this vivid image invests the
work with relevance for readers of later times, for the themes of the Protagoras
crucially concern any young citizen on the verge of adulthood and
independence. Such is Hippocrates, who presumably mirrored many of Plato’s
readers in his education and his openness to higher inquiry. Most importantly,
Hippocrates shares with these readers a mediated relation to the ‘real’
Protagoras: he mentions that he knows of the sophist through his tremendous
reputation for wisdom and eloquence, but he has never had the chance to hear
him speak or see him in person, having been too young when Protagoras was
last in Athens (310e). Readers of the text in the 380’s, when Protagoras had
been dead for more than three decades, were in the same position and, it hardly

13
See Debra Nails’ discussion in The People of Plato: a prosopography of Plato and other
Socratics, Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002, pp. 309-310. We know it must be before 429
because Pericles’ sons are present, though they died in the plague of that year. This makes
anachronistic the reference at 327d to “last year’s” production of “The Wild Men” (Agrioi)
by Pherecrates, as Athenaeus noticed (218d = Pherecrates Test. i PCG), that would place it
in 420. See further Nikos Charalabopoulos, “The metatheatrical reader of Plato’s
Protagoras”, in: Felix Budelmann/ Pantelis Michelakis (eds.), Homer, Tragedy and
Beyond. Essays in Honour of P. E. Easterling, London: Soc. for the Promotion of Hellenic
Studies 2001, pp. 149-178.
The Function of Criticism at Present Time (432 BC) 7

needs to be added, so are readers of the work today; the Protagoras is a sort of
novella set in the past, but is addressed to all young people on the verge of
maturity and to those who care for them.
In reply to the unnamed speaker, Socrates says that he happened to have laid
eyes on Alcibiades “this very day” and to have been supported by him in an
argument. With this marker placed in the text (309b: we want to hear just what
Alcibiades did to help Socrates, and we will at 336b), Socrates is induced to sit
down and tell the whole story. The basic philosophic issues of the Protagoras
come up as he recounts his conversation with Hippocrates while waiting for a
decent hour to call: Socrates asks whether a sophistic education is vocational
training or a liberal art, like the study of music or literature (grammatikê,
312b). Protagoras would seem to offer professional training, which is one
implication of the controversial title “sophist” (311e) that he willingly accepts;
the well born Athenian Hippocrates, however, blushes at the suggestion that he
aspires to become a sophist himself (312a) and ventures that Protagoras’
expertise is in knowing how to make someone a “formidable” or “awe-
inspiring” speaker (312d: πιστάτην το ποι σαι δειν ν λέγειν). Socrates
accepts this as at least part of the truth, possibly because he knows that deinos
can mean “awful” as well as “awe-inspiring”.14
A series of scenes much loved by literary commentators (314c-316a) gets
them inside Callicles’ grand house where the sages are staying, and Plato
marks the formal beginning of the encounter by having Socrates refer back to
the frame of his narrative and “Alcibiades the fair” (316a). From this point
until the criticism scene begins at 338e, it is helpful to bracket the specific
arguments raised and notice the variety of discursive modes the company
adopts. Such a focus reveals that this part of Protagoras is a sustained
experiment in the best way to conduct a discussion or conversation:15 the
participants try out a number of modes of debate, explicitly deliberating about
“in what fashion are we to talk together” (336b: τίς τρόπος σται τ ν
διαλόγων;). The discussion shifts and halts and almost breaks down as
16

ground-rules have to be set and then re-negotiated, with straw ballots taken and
umpires selected. The philosophical argument does not advance very far in this

14
We find out later (341a-b) that whenever Socrates was inclined to praise a sophist as
σοφ ς κα δεινός Prodicus corrected him, pointing out that deinos should properly mean
“bad, terrible”. (Prodicus is being finicky; for deinos in a positive sense, cf. Ion 531a where
it describes Ion’ professional skill as performer and explainer of Homeric poetry.)
15
On Plato’s use of dialegesthai for “conversation”, which does not necessarily entail formal
dialectic, see Andrew Ford, “The Origins of Dialogue”, in: Simon Goldhill (ed.), The End
of Dialogue, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008, pp. 34-39.
16
Cf. 329ab, 331c, 333c, 334d, 336a-d, 347c-348a, 360e-361e.
8 Andrew Ford

section, but its focus on formats for exchanging views prepares us to see the
literary discussion as yet another genre of discourse, a language game in need
of rules.
The importance of choosing the right mode of speech comes out as soon as
the pilgrims meet Protagoras: his first question when they are introduced is
whether they wish to converse with him alone or in company (316b). Socrates
leaves the choice up to him, and Protagoras thanks him for his consideration: a
foreign professor recruiting the sons of Athenian citizens is in a delicate
position and has to be sure not to be thought to be seducing young men. He
then launches into a speech (316c-317c) justifying his profession with the
provocative argument that “sophists” are nothing more than experts in
improving men and have been around for a very long time; this is a paradox
since “sophist” seems to have been a fifth-century neologism coined to name
the purveyors of new and unsettling forms of higher education in the post-
Persian War cultural boom.17 Protagoras contends that earlier wise men were
actually sophists but pretended to exercise other arts because, then as now, the
title was regarded with suspicion in some quarters: Homer, Hesiod and
Simonides pretended to be poets; Orpheus and Musaeus to communicate
religious lore; even acknowledged teachers of the present day, like Herodicus
the expert in gymnastics or Agathocles the musician, are closet sophists since
they make men better. Protagoras only differs from them in admitting he is a
sophist, a professional educator, for he considers it pointless to try to deceive
the truly wise by hiding his teaching under another name. By this brilliant,
ironic and charming discourse, Protagoras paradoxically depicts his modern
teaching as the continuation of venerable tradition and insinuates to potential
pupils that the ability to see the value in sophistry is a mark of discernment.
Being the open sort that he is, Protagoras proposes to hold their discussion
before “any and everybody who is in the house” ( πάντων ναντίον τ ν
νδον ντων, 317c). Socrates opines, in a comic aside, that what Protagoras
really wanted was to show off before his rivals Prodicus and Hippias, but this
humorous moment opens up a second ironic appeal to the reader: Protagoras’
invitation to “those within” to listen in on the proceedings is, pragmatically,
also an invitation to “those without”, i. e., the readers of Protagoras, to follow
the discussion as well. Plato’s beguiling fantasy of the good old days offers
readers of any time the alluring prospect of overhearing great talk.

17
On the semantics of the word see Andrew Ford, “Sophistic”, in: Common Knowledge
1.5/1993, pp. 33-47 with reference to earlier studies.
The Function of Criticism at Present Time (432 BC) 9

Accordingly, a sort of conference is convened and all sit down to converse

“in session”.18 In this quasi-public format, Protagoras begins by taking
questions, for, like other sophists, he “delights in answering questions that are
well put” (318d).19 Socrates’ questions reveal that they disagree as to whether
aretê can be taught. Socrates holds it cannot for two reasons: the way
democratic Athens runs her deliberative assemblies implies that expertise in
politics is not the province of any particular group of people; secondly, when
noble parents have wastrel children one sees excellence cannot be taught. He
thus politely prevails on the sophist to be so kind as to “demonstrate” or
“display” his wisdom on this matter (320b: µ φθονήσ ς λλ' πίδειξον).
Now the epideixis, the elaborate, often mythical or paradoxical display speech,
was the main showpiece of many a sophist, and Protagoras is such a master of
the form that he can offer Socrates a choice of modes: “I consent, but first:
shall I give my display in the form of a story (µ θος), as an old man speaks to
younger men, or shall I go through the argument (λόγ ) in detail?” (320c). The
company leave this up to Protagoras, and he chooses to tell a myth because he
finds doing so more “agreeable” (320c: χαριέστερον). Protagoras’
capriciousness suggests that he could do either, and he ends up doing both: his
myth of how Prometheus and Epimetheus gave everyone an equal share of
political wisdom (320d-323c) explains that Athens is right to run her political
assemblies as she does and so answers Socrates’ first argument (323c-324d).
Then with further signposting he turns “from myth to logos” (324d: ο κέτι
µ θόν σοι ρ λλ λόγον) to explain why excellent people do not always
raise excellent children. This logos is an inference from observable facts, such
as the rules and punishments prescribed in schools and in the laws which imply
that children can learn to be good. Protagoras’ display comes to a close with
the declaration that he has answered both of Socrates’ doubts through both
myth and logos (328c: γ κα µ θον κα λόγον ε ρηκα).
Socrates finds the epideixis spellbinding and is persuaded, except for a little
rub (328e: πλὴν σµικρόν τί µοι ἐµποδών). To pursue this he begs Protagoras to
change his mode of discourse, leaving aside the long speeches he’s shown he
can do so well and switching to the sophistic trick of “brief-talk” or brachylogy
(329b: ἀποκρίνασθαι κατὰ βραχύ). In the short-answer mode Protagoras is
quickly led down the garden path: using gross equivocations (e. g. ‘justice must

18
317d: συνέδριον κατασκευάσωµεν, να καθεζόµενοι διαλέγησθε. The word (the source,
via Aramaic, of the Jewish Sanhedrin) is used both of formal and informal meetings in 4th-
century Greek.
19
Hippias also stood for questions from the crowd (Hippias minor 363a-c). Cf. Gorgias in
Gorg. 448a: “I haven’t had a new question put to me in many years”.
10 Andrew Ford

itself be just,’ 330c ff.), Socrates makes him contradict himself and presses his
advantage by cutting down Protagoras’ rhetorical options further when he asks
him not to take refuge in answers qualified by “if” (331c-d). Protagoras’
temper soon begin to fray (332a) and his continually increasing irritation
(333b, cf. 333d1) erupts in an applause-winning short speech to the effect that
all Socrates’ terms are relative (333e).
Things threaten to fall apart: Socrates repeats his request that Protagoras
practice brachylogy (334e), pleading that his comprehension is feeble and that
Protagoras, an avowed expert in both styles, should accommodate him (335b-
c). Protagoras, for his part, didn’t get to be Greece’s champion debater by
letting others dictate the terms and refuses to abandon long speeches (335a).
Socrates declares he has an errand to go on (335c) for he wants a dialogical
conversation and not “demagogic” long speeches (336b:  δηµηγορε ν). As he
is about to leave, the others intervene and broker an agreement to let the
conversation go on. Here we reach another section-marker in the dialogue,
beckoning once more to the opening frame: it is the intervention of Alcibiades
that helps keep things going (336b ff.; cf. 309a). The compromise that is
worked out is that Protagoras will ask first, and then take his turn answering.
Once again we will be changing discursive modes: with Protagoras now in a
position to direct the inquiry, the conversation will turn to literary criticism.
Summing up this first portion of the dialogue, we may characterize most of
the modes of speech on display as ‘sophistic’ specialties for which parallels can
be found in Plato’s Gorgias. That work also pays a great deal of attention to
how to conduct “the art of conversation”.20 Gorgias begins with the great
sophist having just finished one of his display speeches (447a-b) and having
challenged to the audience to ask him any question whatever (447c). As in
Protagoras, the sophist’s modes of display are contrasted with the
“conversation” (447a-b) that Socrates prefers to have. Gorgias’ pupil Polus is
ready to defend the art of rhetoric with a long speech on the origin and progress
of the arts (448c; cf. 449b); Socrates interrupts the tyro’s discourse, but it
easily could have gone on along the lines of Protagoras’ µ θος on Prometheus
and Epimetheus. As in Protagoras, long-form disquisitions are rejected by
Socrates, opposing them as “rhetoric” to “conversation” (448d). He entreats
Gorgias to practice brachylogy (449b) and sugarcoats the request, as in
Protagoras, by citing his expertise in speaking (457c; cf. Prot. 335a). Most
generally, one finds the same concern for civilized social intercourse as in
20
Gorg. 448d; cf. 449b-c, 453b-c, 454c, 457c-458c, 461c-462a, 465e-466a, 471e-472d, 474a-
b, 475e, 486d-487b, 505e-506a, 509a.
The Function of Criticism at Present Time (432 BC) 11

Protagoras when Socrates deplores occasions in which people conducting a

public debate feel threatened by honest requests for clarification and fall into
abusing each other with the result that the audience regrets having attended the
session (457c-d).21 Whatever advantages it may offer in prompting philosophic
dialectic, conversation (διαλέγεσθαι) is recommended in both works as the
format that best facilitates the even-tempered exchange and examination of
views.22

Socrates peri epôn deinos

So it is that when in Protagoras the reins are given to Protagoras, he shifts the
conversation about virtue yet again, “transferring it onto poetry” (339a), one of
his specialties. He begins by asserting that, “The most important part of
education is being formidable on the subject of verse” (περ π ν δειν ν
ε ναι, 338e); this means “understanding what is said by the poets, both well
and ill, being able to tell the difference and to defend one’s views if
challenged” (339a). Unlike the earlier modes of discourse paralleled in
Gorgias, this agonistic form of criticism seems to have been a Protagorean
specialty; it was very likely connected with the linguistic expertise he
advertised as “correct verbal expression” or orthoepeia (339d).23
The game of displaying sophistication about poetry usually began with
someone quoting a bit of poetry and declaring it good or bad and then
defending that judgment against all challengers.24 Protagoras shows how it is
done by quoting the opening of a song by Simonides, a poet whose last work
was in the early 460’s: “Now for a man to become good truly is hard ( νδρ'
γαθ ν µ ν λαθέως γενέσθαι χαλεπόν, 339b), four-square in hands and feet
and mind, faultlessly fashioned”. He asks if Socrates knows the song, offering

21
Eliot sympathizes in his “Function of Criticism”: “we perceive that criticism, far from
being a simple and orderly field of beneficent activity, from which impostors can be readily
ejected, is no better than a Sunday park of contending and contentious orators, who have
not even arrived at the articulation of their differences” (in: The Criterion 2.5/1923, pp. 31-
42, here p. 33).
22
Rutherford, The Art of Plato (see note 4), notices the many shifts in discussion and takes
them to be at once illustrative of speakers’ personalities and a main unifying factor in the
work “to illustrate […] right and wrong ways of approaching a discussion of ethical or any
other themes” (p. 132).
23
See Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of
the Hellenistic Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1968, pp. 37-39 and pp. 280-281.
24
See Detlev Fehling, “Zwei Untersuchungen zur griechischen Philosophie”, in: Rheinisches
Museum 108/1965, pp. 212-229.
12 Andrew Ford

to recite it for him if not (339b: το το πίστασαι τ σµα, π ν σοι

διεξέλθω;). By chance Socrates “happens” to have made a study of the song,25
and readily agrees that it is “admirably made and correct”. He thus falls into
the trap, for Protagoras goes on to show that Simonides contradicts himself “as
the song goes along” (339c: προϊόντος το σµατος) and the poet says, “Nor
does that saying of Pittacus ring true to me, / though wise was the one who said
it: ‘to be noble is hard’”.26 Simonides cannot both lay it down as a maxim27 in
his own person that it is hard to be good (πρ τον α τ ς πέθετο χαλεπ ν
ε ναι νδρα γαθ ν γενέσθαι, 339d) and “a little while later” (339d) deny
Pittacus’ maxim that it is hard to be good (χαλεπ ν σθλ ν µµεναι).
Protagoras finishes this display of orthoepeia with a flourish that draws
applause from the crowd. But it is hard to see what point he has scored in the
debate about virtue, apart from pulling a rug from under Socrates. Perhaps he
simply wants to show that he is formidably clever, cleverer than Socrates and
even than Simonides, whom the sophist had enrolled along with Homer and
Hesiod as his predecessors as teachers of excellence (316d).
Socrates confesses that the effect of this performance on him was literally
stunning, as if he’d been hit by a boxer in front of a shouting crowd, and that
he needed to buy time to “examine closely” what the poet “said” or “meant”
(339e: να µοι χρόνος γγένηται τ σκέψει τί λέγοι ποιητής). He therefore
turns to Prodicus for his knowledge of verbal distinctions and together they
propose to distinguish between Pittacus’ use of the verb “be” and Simonides’
“become”: Simonides is right, for to “become” good is hard; so too is Pittacus,
for “being” good is not hard. In this way Socrates brings the two sentences into
harmony with each other and into conformity with traditional wisdom.28
Protagoras retorts that this position entails the unacceptable claim that virtue is
easy to possess when all agree that it is the most difficult thing (340e): “great
would be the poet’s ignorance” if this were his thought. Socrates and Prodicus
accept this and turn to a different word, Pittacus’ “hard” (χαλεπόν). They
suggest that in the Cean dialect khalepon meant “bad”, and so Cean Simonides
25
πίσταµαί τε γάρ, κα πάνυ µοι τυγχάνει µεµεληκ ς το σµατος (339b). In making
Socrates’ knowledge of the song a matter of chance Plato indicates that it was not a widely
cited “chestnut” that “everyone” could be expected to know, pace Ledbetter’s “well
known”, Poetics Before Plato (see note 4), p. 99. On Simonides’ fading reputation at this
time, see Ford, The Origins of Criticism (see note 9), p. 207 with references.  
26
542.12-13 PMG: ο δέ µοι µµελέως τ Πιττάκειον νέµεται, / καίτοι σοφο παρ
φωτ ς ε ρηµένον· χαλεπ ν φάτ σθλ ν / µµεναι.  
27
The choice of verb (339d: α τ ς πέθετο) has a generic implication, showing that
Protagoras takes Simonides to be moralizing in the vein of such works as the Kheironos
hupothêkai. Cf. 340c-d: Σιµωνίδης τ ν αυτο γνώµην πεφήνατο.
28
As, e. g., in Hesiod Erga 289 ff. On the verbal distinctions, see Ledbetter, Poetics Before
Plato (see note 4), p. 103, n. 6 and p. 104, n. 7.
The Function of Criticism at Present Time (432 BC) 13

was shocked to hear (Lesbian) Pittacus saying “it is bad to be good” (341c).
Protagoras is completely unimpressed and dismisses the attempt, noting that it
is ruled out by Simonides’ following verse which says “god alone can have the
privilege” (341e) of being good. Socrates gives up quite willingly and admits
they were only joking.
This teaming up with Prodicus illustrates the powers and limitations of
semantic analysis in interpretation – for this art is what Prodicus represents.
Socrates confesses that his calling on Prodicus was a stall, and they end up
admitting that they had not been altogether serious in some suggestions. But it
would be wrong to dismiss this passage as simply “anti sophistic” foolery,
since Prodicus is a figure Plato never mocks and Socrates, the
conversationalist, has every reason to be sincere in praising the knowledge of
verbal distinctions as an “ancient and divine” art that goes back to Simonides
or yet earlier (341a). Although the net result of their teaming up is to return to
the contradiction pointed out by Protagoras, the interlude should not be read as
pastiche but as a demonstration that even expert lexical analysis cannot solve
every interpretative problem.29 The burst trial balloon on “hard” seems to show
that linguistic science has limitations, but the distinction between being and
becoming is a positive result that Socrates retains and relies on in his
subsequent explication.
For Socrates, the important feature of the semantic interlude, mixed results
and all, was that it was within the rules of Protagoras’ game, as he points out in
saying he and Prodicus were “teasing you and testing whether you could come
to the aid of your own interpretation” (341d; cf. 339a). But things get more
serious when, in his own name and without Prodicus’ help, Socrates offers to
say “what it seems to me Simonides intended in this song, so you can test me
on, as you put it, verse”.30 This more substantial explication of the poem (342a-
348a) is premised on a fabulous hypothesis about the background of Pittacus’
saying. In a genial tour de force – explicitly matching (342b) Protagoras’
fantasy about Greece’s hallowed sages being sophists in disguise – Socrates
29
Why is Prodicus in particular brought in? It may be that his “On the correctness of words”
(περ νοµάτων ρθότητος, Euthyd. 277e = 84 A 16 DK) featured a discussion of the
distinction between ε ναι and γίγνεσθαι, which is the first notion for which Socrates
appeals to him at Prot. 340c.
30
341e-342a: λλ µοι δοκε διανοε σθαι Σιµωνίδης ν τούτ τ σµατι, θέλω σοι
ε πε ν, ε βούλει λαβε ν µου πε ραν πως χω, ὅ σὺ λέγεις τοῦτο, περὶ ἐπῶν. The
final phrase indicates that Protagoras’ use of πος in such expressions as περ π ν
δειν ν (339a; cf. 312a) and perhaps too ρθοέπεια (Phrd. 267c) was something between
an affectation and a trademark. πος was current in Ionic for “words” or “language”
generally, but in Attic had been largely ousted by logos and was confined to poetic or other
specialized expressions. It is natural that the exquisite sensitiveness to language that
Protagoras claimed should be expressed in uncommon diction.
14 Andrew Ford

maintains that Pittacus’ saying should be understood in light of an ancient but

underappreciated mode of philosophizing practiced in Sparta and Crete. The
claim is as paradoxical as Protagoras’ was, since in Plato’s day these Doric
areas had a reputation for being backward, inward-looking and deeply anti-
intellectual. On the contrary, Socrates insists, they were actually devoted to
philosophy but practiced it in secret to hide the fact that their military success
derived from their wisdom rather than their arms. In Sparta this secret
philosophical education produced laconic Laconian philosophers, simple-
appearing men and women who could yet let fall the pithiest brief utterances
(343e). Indeed, it was from the Spartans that the Seven Sages learned those
“short and memorable pronouncements” that are now repeated as proverbs
(343a: ήµατα βραχέα ξιοµνηµόνευτα). And the only reason that knowledge
of this hermetic tradition leaked out was that one time the sages decided to
make a thanksgiving offering to Apollo and inscribed a number of
“brachylogistic Laconisms” such as “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess”
on the temple of Delphi (343b). Socrates’ point in all this is that it reveals
Simonides’ intention in his ode: if he could overturn a saying by the Sage
Pittacus, “which had circulated privately among the wise with great
approbation” (343b: τ µα γκωµιαζόµενον π τ ν σοφ ν), he
himself would get a name for wisdom.
This story is ironic and implausible, but it nonetheless makes possible a
great gain in interpretative method because it posits a single aim for the poem,
the poet’s desire to convict the sage of error. It follows that every element of
Simonides’ ode (344b: δι παντ ς το σµατος) is to be read as contributing
to the denial that “to be good is hard”. This more wide-angled approach to the
poem promises a more comprehensive understanding than the picking at
individual words by Protagoras or Prodicus, and it has the potential to lead to a
unified reading grounded in the total contents and overall structure of the
poem. At the same time, it is undoubtedly true that Socrates’ subsequent
exegesis is not without dubious claims, and it is worrying when he discovers
Simonides upholding a number of tenets of Socratic philosophy.31
The point and purpose of this fantasy about Doric philosophy emerge more
clearly if we view the Laconian philosophical adage against the series of genres
or modes of discourse to which Protagoras has been calling attention: there
was group conversation, mythical and logical epideixis, brachylogy, long-form

31
For detailed analyses, see Frede, “The Impossibility of Perfection” (see note 12), pp. 740-
746; Bernd Manuwald, Platon Protagoras, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999, pp.
153-156; and Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato (see note 4), pp. 104-108.
The Function of Criticism at Present Time (432 BC) 15

speech and the game of deinos peri epôn. Nor have genres of discourse been
exhausted: after Socrates performs, Hippias offers to give a disquisition (logos)
on Simonides (347b), and of course there is the dialectical exchange that fills
the second half of the work. Within this series, these “short and memorable
pronouncements” (343a: ήµατα βραχέα ξιοµνηµόνευτα) represent another
mode of ethical discourse, the compact, memorizable, citable text: Pittacus’
maxim and the laconic Delphic inscriptions exemplify the fact that the wisdom
of ancient sages may survive them in oral or written formulations that pose
interpretative challenges to moderns,32 and Simonides’ poem in turn is another
text that takes up respected moral sayings of old. As a practical matter, then,
moral philosophy needs some form of literary criticism, for just as Pittacus’
pronouncement provoked ambitious Simonides, the poet’s rejoinder becomes,
for Socrates and anyone who can remember the song, another problematic
speech from the past to be wrestled with. Those like Protagoras who claim to
be able to control the poetic tradition, Plato suggests, will be confronted by
memorable but not fully self-explanatory logoi of poets and sages and will
have to make the best sense of them that they can. Plato’s opening ironies
earlier discussed prompt us to realize that we are in this same situation with
regard to the Protagoras. For would-be interpreters confronted with such texts,
Plato has a form of practical criticism to recommend: we should try to find a
sense in which they can be meaningful and true; if no such sense is available,
we either confess we do not understand or conclude that their authors were not
wise. How soon we give up depends on the source’s authority: when the saying
comes from an oracle, for example, piety forecloses the option of saying the
source is mistaken and we keep trying new meanings, as in the Apology where
Socrates went to great lengths to understand the apparently absurd Delphic
utterance, “No one is wiser than Socrates”.33 A tag-line from Simonides gets
somewhat less respect in the Republic when Polemarchus cites Simonides’
“giving each man what is owed him” (331d = Sim. 642a PMG) as something
the poet said “correctly” (orthôs). In what has been called a “transparent
misinterpretation”34 of the line, Socrates is able to subvert this definition, but in
this case he drops the attempt to discover what Simonides truly meant; with
cautious or ironic reverence for Simonides, “that wise and godlike man”
(331e), he confesses “though you may know what he means I don’t”. All one

32
Cf. Andrew Ford, “‘Protagoras’ Head’: Interpreting Philosophic Fragments in Theatetus”,
in: America Journal of Philology 115/1994, pp. 199-218.
33
Cf. Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato (see note 4), pp. 114-116.
34
C. D. C. Reeve, Philosopher Kings: the argument of Plato’s Republic, Princeton: Princeton
Univ. Press, 1988, p. 8.
16 Andrew Ford

can say is that if a poetic text suggests an immoral or impossible meaning then
whoever said it is not wise (335e-336a).35
So when Socrates takes this same approach in Protagoras, we should allow
him to be quite serious. This appears even in one of his more questionable
interpretations. When he comes to Simonides’ “I praise and love all who do
nothing wrong willingly” (345d: πάντας δ παίνηµι κα φιλέω / κ ν
στις pδ / µηδ ν α σχpόν·), Socrates proposes to detach “unwillingly”
from “do” and take it in hyperbaton with the more distant verb “praise”: “All
who do no wrong I willingly praise and love”. The interpretation nicely saves
Simonides from contradicting the Socratic principle that no one does wrong
willingly, even at the cost of proffering a “forced” and even “blatant perversion
of the plain sense of the poem”.36 But bending the grammar to eliminate an
unacceptable meaning is a conscious and principled choice, as Socrates says:
οὐ γὰρ οὕτως ἀπαίδευτος ἦν Σιµωνίδης, ὥστε τούτους φάναι ἐπαινεῖν, ὃς
ἂν ἑκὼν µηδὲν κακὸν ποιῇ, ὡς ὄντων τινῶν οἳ ἑκόντες κακὰ ποιοῦσιν. ἐγὼ
γὰρ σχεδόν τι οἶµαι τοῦτο, ὅτι οὐδεὶς τῶν σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν ἡγεῖται οὐδένα
ἀνθρώπων ἑκόντα ἐξαµαρτάνειν οὐδὲ αἰσχρά τε καὶ κακὰ ἑκόντα
ἐργάζεσθαι, ἀλλ' εὖ ἴσασιν ὅτι πάντες οἱ τὰ αἰσχρὰ καὶ τὰ κακὰ ποιοῦντες
ἄκοντες ποιοῦσιν.

Simonides was not so uneducated as to say that he praised whoever never did
wrong willingly, as if there were people who did wrong willingly. I am fairly
sure of this – that none of the wise men thinks that anybody ever willingly errs or
willingly does base and evil deeds; they well know that all who do base and evil
things do them unwillingly. (345d-e)

Socrates is often content, even in the Republic, to remain undecided about what
poets mean and to turn away from literary exegesis to a dialectic examination
of his interlocutor’s views.37 But having been forced by Protagoras to consider
this poem by a reputedly ‘wise’ author, he decides to press for a sense in which
Simonides’ words can yield a meaning that is wise.38 Why? I do not think it is
merely to show off or to parody new-fangled criticism as in Socrates’ appeal to
the novel technical term huperbaton (ὐπερβατόν, first attested here).
Technical criticism of language, like Prodicean expertise in semantics, is
welcome if it can help clarify a moral claim. Socrates’ move here has been

35
Scodel, “Literary Interpretation” (see note 9), pp. 30-31 and pp. 34-36, extracts a similar
hermeneutics from the dialogue, noting that it applies to the Protagoras as well.
36
Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato (see note 4), p. 107, quoting Christopher C. W. Taylor’s
Plato: Protagoras, translation with notes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976, ad loc.
37
Socrates espouses the same view in Hippias Minor 365c-d: “let's dismiss Homer since it is
impossible to ask him what he meant when he composed these verses”. Cf. Theaetetus 152a
with Ford, “Protagoras’ Head” (see note 32), p. 206-207.
38
When Socrates says that Simonides is above making ignorant mistakes (345d) and that his
poem is “exquisitely well made” (344a-b), he says in effect he is willing to work to find a
sound meaning in the verse.
The Function of Criticism at Present Time (432 BC) 17

compared with the modern philosophical principle of “charity” in exposition,39

but he is ultimately being charitable to his own philosophical principles, which
he cannot imagine went unknown to earlier sages. In Protagoras, then,
interpretation may benefit from specialized linguistic knowledge but the use of
such techniques is ultimately governed by considerations of moral philosophy.
A slightly strained construal of Simonides (and of the dicta of the “other wise
men” Socrates alludes to) is preferable to assuming that truth has been so
poorly served by traditional wisdom. However, in the absence of having
Simonides at hand to submit to dialectic, Socrates can only offer his
interpretation as something of which he is “fairly sure” (345e: σχεδόν τι οἶµαι).
The ineliminable uncertainty of any attempt to interpret such pronouncements
from the past is the reason Socrates ends the discussion by urging that they
drop talking about poetry and declare their own views directly. And so the
excursus into poetic explication ends.
The discussion of Simonides in Protagoras, then, is not a pastiche meant to
ridicule attempts to find wisdom in poetry, as the ‘ancient quarrel’ perspective
would suggest. Nor is it an attack on technical or ‘sophistic’ approaches to
poetry, as if there were no utility in their techniques. If we drop the demand
that this dialogue add another brick to that imaginary edifice called ‘the
Platonic Attack on Poetry’, the passage gives us insight into how Plato thought
poetic and other texts from the past should be handled in the search for moral
knowledge. His Socrates is open to the possibility that bits of old verbal
wisdom may contain valuable insights, and he is willing to borrow from the
most up-to-date criticism in an effort to determine their meaning. But, as his
myth of the old laconic style of philosophizing is meant to show, when certain
speech acts leave their authors and circulate beyond their original, enclosed
circles of performance, they become subject to attack, misinterpretation and
misappropriation. The problem is temporal and existential rather than merely
methodological, for no amount of technique or philosophical charity can
extract certain knowledge from these orphaned words.40 If Plato does not think
39
Nickolas Pappas, “Socrates’ Charitable Treatment of Poetry”, in: Philosophy and Literature
13/1989, pp. 248-61.
40
The connection between the dismissal of ‘authorless’ poetic texts in the Protagoras and the
critique of ‘orphaned’ written texts in the Phaedrus (esp. 275d-e) emerges most clearly in
Socrates’ criticism of long speeches at Prot. 328e-329b: καὶ γὰρ εἰ µέν τις περὶ αὐτῶν
τούτων συγγένοιτο ὁτῳοῦν τῶν δηµηγόρων, τάχ' ἂν καὶ τοιούτους λόγους
ἀκούσειεν ἢ Περικλέους ἢ ἄλλου τινὸς τῶν ἱκανῶν εἰπεῖν· εἰ δὲ ἐπανέροιτό τινά τι,
ὥσπερ βιβλία οὐδὲν ἔχουσιν οὔτε ἀποκρίνασθαι οὔτε αὐτοὶ ἐρέσθαι, ἀλλ' ἐάν τις καὶ
σµικρὸν ἐπερωτήσῃ τι τῶν ῥηθέντων, ὥσπερ τὰ χαλκία πληγέντα µακρὸν ἠχεῖ καὶ
ἀποτείνει ἐὰν µὴ ἐπιλάβηταί τις. “If a man were present when any of our public orators
were speaking about these matters, he might hear a similar speech from a Pericles or
another good speaker; but if he should have a question to ask, like books they can neither
18 Andrew Ford

that the latest literary techniques produce sure gains in the quest to understand
human excellence, Protagoras goes out of its way to show that, in such a quest,
criticism not only has certain inevitable limits but also that certain texts,
nevertheless, make criticism necessary, making it necessary for us to adopt
some form of criticism to deal with them.

Socrates’ principles of criticism and ours

My claim that Socrates is doing the best he can in Protagoras, indeed that he is
doing the best that Plato thought anyone could, is supported by an analysis by
Glenn Most that stands out among discussions of this text for its sustained
attention to literary theoretical issues.41 “Simonides’ Ode to Scopas in
Contexts” argues that all the critical problems on display in Protagoras are
essentially matters of contextualization and so the excursus on Simonides
rightly problematizes the role of contexts. 42 Indeed, interpretation is, broadly
speaking, nothing more than contextualization43 and the differences between
critical schools often amount to whether one prefers internal contextualizations
(e. g. Derridean deconstruction) to external ones (e. g. Foucauldian genealogy).
On Most’s analysis, Protagoras first imputes a contradiction to Simonides by
bringing together two uncontextualized phrases, and then Socrates attempts to
heal the poem by supplying contexts that would explain each utterance, either
internal contexts (i. e. what the poet goes on to say “as the poem goes on”) or
external ones (i. e. what the words might have meant in the poet’s native
dialect; what the poet was trying to gain from making the poem, etc.). Socrates’
excursus on Doric philosophy, however ‘made up’ it may be, is an attempt to
supply at least the kind of external context that would help decide Simonides’
meaning. To be sure, Plato does not let the result stand, but Most well observes
that Plato does not object to Socrates’ interpretation because it has mistakes
(which in principle might be remediable), but simply because it is an

answer nor put a question in turn; and if any one queries the least detail of their speech, like
bronze vases when struck they ring loudly and keep on ringing, until someone puts a hand
on them”. Exegesis in: Raphael Woolf, “The Written Word in Plato’s Protagoras”, in:
Ancient Philosophy 19/1999, pp. 21-30.
41
Glenn W. Most, “Simonides’ Ode to Scopas in Contexts”, in Irene J. F. de Jong and J. P.
Sullivan (eds.), Modern Critical Theory and Classical Literature, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994,
pp. 127-152. Scodel, “Literary Interpretation” (see note 9), p. 25, also notes the substantive
methodological agreement between Protagoras and Socrates.
42
Most, “Simonides’ Ode” (see note 41), p. 134.
43
P. 132.
The Function of Criticism at Present Time (432 BC) 19

interpretation. And Plato has good reason to be suspicious of poetic

interpretation for it is “ineluctably speculative”:44 external contexts are by
definition hypothetical, and internal contexts are, as part of the poem to be
explicated, not sufficiently independent or stable to ground the meaning of
another part of the text.
In the Protagoras, then, Plato is suspicious of hermeneutics, but this does
not prevent him from equipping his brilliant speakers with a firm grasp of
reasonable principles to attempt it.45 To show how much we and Socrates agree
about how to interpret literature Most identifies five “methodological
assumptions that structure the discourse of philology”.46 (He is speaking of
classical philology in this essay, but his observations apply to interpretation in
a wide range of disciplines.) First come three principles that tend to “guide
interpretation and at least in appearance (if not in reality) limit its risks”:47
1. Economy of consumption: we prefer the interpretation that “makes
thriftier use of the material at hand”48 and leaves the smallest part
unexplained.
2. Economy of expense: we prefer a minimum of ad hoc hypotheses
(hypotheses for which the only evidence is the interpretation they are
adduced to support).
3. Economy of scope: we prefer the interpretation that explains the most,
that “can be applied to the wider range of texts or problems”.49 This is
the one that does not produce a series of anomalies in the history of
literature.
Beside these principles, there are two canons of evidence:
1. Parallelism: a hypothesis’ plausibility is increased by adducing
parallels (linguistic and other) to problematic elements in the text.
Buttressing an interpretation with parallels is especially important when
studying cultures that are dead or otherwise difficult of access.
2. Centripetality: the explanatory power of parallels increases the closer
they are to the text itself. Short of exact iteration, parallels are ranked,
with those in works by the same author and in the same genre ranked
above, e.g., parallels from a different author, a different culture or in a
different art form.

44
Ibid.
45
P. 133
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid.
48
Ibid.
49
Ibid.
20 Andrew Ford

It is worth repeating that Most tenders these merely as the disciplinary rules of
philology, not as the method to arrive at certain interpretation.50 As such, he
offers an acute analysis both of how philology interprets old texts (my own
exposition of Plato accords with these principles) and more generally of how
we discourse as professionals and evaluate the discourse of our colleagues.
For Most, the discussion of Simonides’ poetry in Protagoras confirms the
importance of contexts in interpreting texts on two levels.51 Within the text, the
whole discussion proceeds by finding more or less adequate contexts in which
to construe Simonides’ words. But in addition, the history of the poem’s
(mis)interpretations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reveals,
unexpectedly, that contextualization can proceed independently of the text:
earlier scholars came up with quite plausible interpretations of the poem even
though they had a comparatively inferior text, whereas twentieth-century
philology did a better job of extracting Simonides’ exact words from Plato, but
implausibly tried to read the song in the context of a fanciful evolution in moral
consciousness. This history of philological blindness leads Most to the
paradoxical conclusion that “Just as the right text does not entail a plausible
interpretation, so too a faulty text need not preclude one. Sometimes, the text
may be less important than the contexts against which it is set”.52
My reading of Protagoras suggests that we take Most’s observations one
step further and realize another function of criticism: contexts may be at times
more important than texts in interpretation, but as a general rule the best
context will tend to resemble the original text as closely as possible, in
accordance with the canon of centripetality (see point 2 above). If
interpretation is a search for the most plausible context in which to construe a
text, the methodical evaluation of possible contexts drives the critic ever more
closely back to the very words she had departed from when she went out in
search of help from the context. To make the point with Most’s categories:
parallels have more force the more they resemble the words they are meant to
explain, and centripetality makes us prefer parallels that recall the poet’s exact
phrasing; economy of expense requires interpretations to add the fewest extra

50
E. g. p. 134.
51
Ibid.
52
P. 147. Against twentieth-century philosophizing readings, Most importantly points that the
poem is focused on poetic concerns, being about what is “praiseworthy” rather than
defining the nature of excellence. A notable recent reconstruction of Simonides’ poem
presents us with a dilemma similar to the one Most describes: Adam Beresford, “Nobody’s
Perfect: A new text and interpretation of Simonides PMG 542”, in: Classical Philology
108/2008, pp. 237-256 gives a new and very appealing version of the poem that is
nonetheless very hard to square with its Platonic context (as he admits on pp. 247-250).
The Function of Criticism at Present Time (432 BC) 21

words to the text that is being interpreted, and economy of consumption makes
the optimal reading of a text tend toward recalling all its words. Finally,
economy of scope situates the target text within a series of larger contexts, such
as the author’s corpus and the literary tradition, in the middle of which it sits
like a sun in a solar system: the contexts – other texts – that are adduced orbit
around the original, reflecting it ever more faintly the further away they are.
What Most’s analysis permits us to see is that the attempt to give the most
well-founded account possible of a poem’s meaning turns out to serve as a
mnemonic for it; the ideal context is a matrix that registers each detail of the
poem and puts it in relationship with every other. If the ultimate confirmation
of an interpretation is to be sought in the language of the text, technical
criticism will not only have grounds for deciding among possible meanings but
will return us at every point to the text that is its foundation. The supporting
context or story we set beside the poem to ‘justify’ our interpretations recalls
the original in toto and makes its elements memorable by inserting them in an
intelligible relation. In Plato as well, Most’s principles and canons combine to
make the ‘best’ interpretation that which most closely calls back the details of
the text, and calls back most of the details. Thus it would seem to be an
inevitable function of methodical criticism at any time to recall the poem, and
it is appropriate that Simonides is the presiding genius of this critical session
since he was known for his techniques of memory, for his ability to place
details in order and hold them in mind.53
It is only methodical interpretation that has an inbuilt tendency to recall the
poem, and this raises the question of why literary critics might adopt such
principles in the first place. Most’s use of economic metaphors suggests that
we thereby get a maximum of poetic meaning for a minimum expenditure of
effort,54 but I think it is unclear why we should be economical in this sphere.
Why not be a big spender in poetry? Why not be profligate and, as some
writers do, let interpretation spiral outside the narrow confines of centripetal
criticism? For academic criticism, a strong impetus for adopting the principle
of economy is that it is the best way to bring the interpretation of poetry closer
to the prestige enjoyed by the sciences: constantly reverting to the target poem
is like going back to the data set and seeing if it supports a finding. This would
be in line with the ambition of criticism since the later nineteenth century to put
the human sciences on a par with the natural sciences and thereby to make
criticism a discipline producing a specialized knowledge of its special objects.
53
Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966.
54
Most, “Simonides’ Ode” (see note 41), e. g. p. 134.
22 Andrew Ford

But in the fourth century BC, in the perspective of the Protagoras, criticism
appears as a social activity, an unending practice of pedagogy and shared
literary culture; while technical experts may view critical discourse as
progressing steadily toward new and better methods or sets of questions to put
to texts, its essential practice will be regulating discussions about poetry, and,
as I have argued, regulating them in such a way that will tend to reproduce the
poems even as they escape full and final comprehension.
Now I do not wish to conclude with the naïve battle cry, “Back to the
Texts!” On my view, criticism is already there though it has been hard to
accept Arnold’s definition of the task of the critic as “to see the object as it
really is” 55 ever since Wilde called on “The Critic as Artist” to “see the object
as in itself it really is not”. 56 Nor would I issue a call Against Interpretation, as
if theory and practice were neatly separable and sterile theorizing could be set
against a more intimate and rewarding experience of texts.57 My reading has
simply drawn attention to an additional function of criticism, a byproduct as it
were, that may be useful to bear in mind at the end of a great critical age: as the
disciplined study of literature goes forward it will contrive, even if not
necessarily as its main objective, a way of recalling, repeating, and preserving
the poets’ words. If interpretation in theory pursues clearer, richer or more
adequate account of poems, functionally it will serve as a metonymy for those
works, and the more methodical the interpretation, the more the target poem
will be called into view. Even without a work’s being recollected in its entirety
or finally understood, there are considerable advantages in interpretation’s
remaining only a metonymy, in not being the text itself. Methodized criticism
serves as a sort of re-performance of the work, reprising it in a condensed form
that allows it to enter contexts that would normally not have space or time for it
to be performed in full (such as a journal, a classroom, a conversation…).
Moreover, one who knows the method can reverse the process of condensation
so that even a few words can recall the whole: “To be or not to be” can
epitomize Hamlet and “fleet-footed Achilles” can set one on the path of the
Iliad.

55
Mathew Arnold, “The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time”, in: The National Review
1/1864, pp. 230-251, here p. 230.
56
Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist”, in: Vyvyan Holland (ed.), Oscar Wilde: Complete
Works, London: Heron, 1967, p. 1030.
57
An immersion, however, in literary theory with no reference to text may induce sympathy
for the declaration of Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation, New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1967, p. 14.: “Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of
art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to
cut back content so that we can see the thing at all”.
The Function of Criticism at Present Time (432 BC) 23

I therefore find an un-parodic reading of Protagoras more useful in thinking

about the function of criticism and one that gives us a better sense of Plato’s
broad engagement with poetry. The dialogue is not primarily concerned with
exposing poetic ignorance or parodying literary intellectuals; it models how
wise men might make meaning out of memorable pieces of language (whether
this be a long lyric or a laconic apothegm) that have survived through time to
confront them. The literary discussion ends in aporia, as does the dialogue as a
whole, but we may infer, though Plato does not say it, that one thing that
interpretation infallibly achieves is to hold such texts together and re-circulate
them in company. This point is demonstrated most strongly, albeit indirectly,
by the text of the Protagoras itself, for its criticism of Simonides’ Ode to
Scopas is itself the sole source that has preserved this old song for us. When
Simonides composed it in the fifth century, we may surmise that he aspired to
invest his text, like his good man, with solid endurance, like a marble statue
“fashioned four-square”;58 but it was the critical writing of Plato that made
Simonides’ poem last, delivering most of it, along with his own Protagoras, to
us. The contribution of that dialogue to literary theory, therefore, is less
epistemological than ecological; it saw no sure knowledge to be won from
reading poetry, but at the same time it provided an environment in which words
that were, for one reason or another, felt to be worth remembering (343e) could
be preserved, not lost from memory, until a later reading, a later interpretation
might take them over and hand them on.

Andrew Ford
Princeton University
Department of Classics
Princeton, New Jersey, USA
aford@princeton.edu

58
On Pythagorean overtones of divine perenniality in “fashioned four-square”, see Jesper
Svenbro, La Parole et le marbre. Aux origines de la poétique grecque, Lund:
Studentlitteratur, 1984, p. 135. On the endurance of poetry as a theme in Simonides, see
Ford, The Origins of Criticism (see note 9), pp. 93-113.
My thanks to the editors for insightful suggestions that improved this essay.
24 Andrew Ford