Then I remarked: Upon my word, how opportunely it has happened that Prodicus is here to join in our discussion! For it is very likely, Protagoras, that Prodicus’ wisdom is a gift of long ago from heaven, beginning either in the time of Simonides or even earlier. But you, so skilled in many other things, appear to be unskilled in this, and lack the skill that I can boast because I am a disciple of the great Prodicus; and so now I find you do not understand that perhaps Simonides did not conceive hard
in the way that you conceive it—just as, in the case of awful,
Prodicus here corrects me each time I use the word in praising you or someone else; when I say, for instance, that Protagoras is an awfully wise man, he asks if I am not ashamed to call good things awful. For awful, he says, is bad; thus no one on this or that occasion speaks of awful wealth
or awful peace
or awful health,
but we say awful disease,
awful war
or awful poverty,
taking awful
to be bad.
So perhaps hard
also was intended by the Ceans and Simonides as either bad
or something else that you do not understand: let us therefore ask Prodicus, for it is fair to question him on the dialect of Simonides. What did Simonides mean, Prodicus, by hard
?
Bad,
he replied.
Then it is on this account, Prodicus, I said, that he blames Pittacus for saying it is hard to be good, just as though he heard him say it is bad to be good.
Well, Socrates, he said, what else do you think Simonides meant? Was he not reproaching Pittacus for not knowing how to distinguish words correctly, Lesbian as he was, and nurtured in a foreign tongue?
You hear, Protagoras, I said, what Prodicus here suggests: have you anything to say upon it?
The case, said Protagoras, is far otherwise, Prodicus: I am quite sure that Simonides meant by hard
the same as we generally do—not bad,
but whatever is not easy and involves a great amount of trouble.
Ah, I agree with you, Protagoras, I said, that this is Simonides’ meaning, and that our friend Prodicus knows it, but is joking and chooses to experiment on you to see if you will be able to support your own statement. For that Simonides does not mean that hard
is bad
we have clear proof forthwith in the next phrase, where he says— God alone can have this privilege.
Simonides Fr. 37.1.14 Surely he cannot mean that it is bad to be good, if he proceeds here to say that God alone can have this thing, and attributes this privilege to God only; otherwise Prodicus would call Simonides a rake, and no true Cean.