The Lesser Hippias opens with a detailed scholarly introduction that immediately casts doubt on the dialogue's authorship. The translator, Benjamin Jowett, notes that 'it seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of Plato from the spurious,' and he enumerates criteria for detecting forgeries—brevity, rhetorical style, and suspicious motives. This framing colors the entire reading experience, as the reader is alerted to the possibility that the dialogue may not be by Plato. The work itself then presents a conversation between Socrates and the sophist Hippias, who boasts of his many skills, including making his own clothes and composing poems. Socrates seizes on Hippias's claim to excel in multiple arts to probe the relationship between truth and falsehood.

The Sophist's Many Arts

Hippias arrives in Athens boasting an extraordinary range of accomplishments. Socrates catalogs them: Hippias has made his own ring, seal, oil flask, shoes, cloak, and tunic, and even woven a girdle 'as fine as the most costly Persian fabric.' He has also brought poems of every genre—epic, tragic, dithyrambic—and prose writings. His expertise extends to rhythm, harmony, orthography, and an art of memory that he regards as his 'special glory.' This litany of skills is not merely comic; it sets up the dialogue's central puzzle. If Hippias is so versatile, Socrates implies, then he should be able to answer a simple question about truth and falsehood. The sophist's pride in his polymathy becomes the trap that Socrates springs.

Achilles and Odysseus as Test Cases

Socrates draws Hippias into a discussion of Homer's heroes. Hippias asserts that Achilles is 'a true man' and Odysseus 'false and wily.' Socrates then argues that the same person can be both true and false: if Odysseus is deliberately false, he must know the truth, and thus can be true when he chooses. Conversely, if Achilles is true, he cannot lie even unintentionally, making him less capable than the deliberate liar. Hippias protests that Socrates 'always weaving the meshes of an argument, selecting the most difficult point, and fastening upon details.' He offers to give a full demonstration that Achilles is better, but Socrates insists on the logical paradox: the intentional liar, being knowledgeable, is superior. The excerpt ends before Hippias can mount his counter-speech, leaving the argument unresolved.

Authenticity and the Editorial Frame

The introduction to this edition is unusually prominent, occupying roughly a quarter of the text. Jowett lays out general principles for detecting spurious works: shorter pieces are more suspect, as are those with 'a taste of sophistry' or 'the slighter character of a rhetorical exercise.' He notes that 'a really great and original writer would have no object in fathering his works on Plato.' This meta-commentary invites the reader to apply these criteria to the Lesser Hippias itself. The dialogue's brevity (about 12,500 words), its focus on a narrow logical puzzle, and its somewhat mechanical structure all align with the signs of forgery Jowett describes. The reader is thus placed in the position of a critic, weighing evidence rather than simply absorbing a Platonic doctrine.

Readers should note that the Lesser Hippias is as much a document of ancient literary criticism as a philosophical dialogue. Its unresolved ending and the introduction's skepticism make it a useful case study in how scholars determine authenticity. Pay attention to how Socrates's method of questioning differs from Hippias's rhetorical displays—this contrast is the dialogue's real subject, more than the definition of truth.