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İngilizce Yunanca

147 Soc. It is very much to the point: but he, good sir, like almost every other poet, speaks in riddles. For poetry as a whole is by nature inclined to riddling, and it is not every man who can apprehend it. And furthermore, besides having this natural tendency, when it gets hold of a grudging person who wishes not to show forth to us his own wisdom but to conceal it as much as possible, we find it an extraordinarily difficult matter to make out whatever this or that one of them may mean. For surely you do not suppose that Homer, divinest and wisest of poets, did not know it was impossible to know ill; for it is he who says of Margites that he knew many things, but knew them all ill: but it is a riddle, I think, in which he has made ill stand for evil, and knew for to know. So if we put it together, letting the meter go, indeed, but grasping his meaning, we get this: Full many crafts he knew, but it was evil for him to know them all. This trick of twisting the words of a quotation into an unnatural meaning is quite characteristic of Socrates. Cf. Plat. Prot. 343-7. Then clearly, if it was evil for him to know many things, he was in fact a paltry fellow, assuming we are to believe what we have previously argued.

147 Alc. But I think we may, Socrates: at least, if I cannot believe those arguments of ours, I shall find it hard to trust any others.

147 Soc. And you are right in so thinking.

147 Alc. I repeat that I think so.