knew what a fortune I have made. I got a hundred and fifty minæ in Sicily alone, though Protagoras was there at the same time."
"And where did you make most?" asks Socrates. "I suppose at Sparta, for you have been there oftenest."
"No," says Hippias; "not a penny could I get from the Spartans, though they have plenty of money. Indeed they care little for Astronomy or Music, or any new sciences; and as for Mathematics, they can hardly count. The only thing they cared about was Archæology—the genealogies of their gods and heroes, and so forth; and they were also greatly pleased with a lecture I gave in the form of advice from Nestor to Neoptolemus on the choice of a profession."
"By the way," says Socrates, suddenly, "there is one question which I want answered, and I have been waiting till I could find one of you wise men to tell me—What is the Beautiful?"
Hippias at first answers that a fair maiden is a beautiful thing; but Socrates shows that this is merely a relative term, and that compared with a goddess she would be ugly, just as the wisest man is an ape compared with a god. There must be some form or Essence which makes a maiden or a lyre beautiful. It is not "gold" (as Hippias foolishly suggests), for then Phidias would have made Athenè's face of gold instead of ivory: nor is it "the suitable," for that only causes things in their right place to appear beautiful, and does not really make them so. Nor, again, does the glowing description of a prosperous life according
