A short Socratic dialogue on the definition of 'love of gain,' using the murdered Athenian ruler Hipparchus as its namesake and moral touchstone.
Hipparchus is a brief, often-overlooked dialogue in which Socrates interrogates an unnamed companion about what it means to be a 'philokerdes' -- a lover of gain or profit. The companion first tries to define the gain-lover as someone who profits shamelessly from worthless things, but Socrates walks him, step by step, through examples of farmers, horsemen, helmsmen, and generals to show that no one knowingly profits from something worthless -- so that definition collapses. The companion retreats to a second definition: gain-lovers are people who crave profit from very small or worthless things out of insatiable greed. Socrates keeps pressing until the argument forces a strange conclusion: since gain is simply the opposite of loss, and loss is bad, gain must always be good -- so 'lover of gain' cannot be a term of reproach at all, since everyone, good and bad alike, wants good things.
In the middle of the argument Socrates pauses to tell the companion about the dialogue's namesake: Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus, tyrant of Athens alongside his brother Hippias. Socrates praises Hipparchus as a genuine educator of the Athenian people -- the man who brought Homer's poems to Athens and had the Panathenaic rhapsodes recite them in relay, who imported the poets Anacreon and Simonides, and who set up inscribed herms along the roads bearing his own wisdom sayings so that country folk would be drawn into the city for further education. Socrates then recounts the more sophisticated version of Hipparchus's assassination: not the popular story about an insulted sister, but a tale of jealousy between Aristogeiton and Hipparchus over the young Harmodius.
The dialogue matters less for the historical anecdote (which most scholars treat as loosely reliable at best) than for its philosophical maneuver: Socrates uses elenctic questioning to strip away easy moral condemnations of 'greed,' showing that ordinary language about profit and loss is far less coherent than people assume. Its authenticity as a genuine work of Plato has long been disputed by scholars, and it is usually classed among the dialogues of doubtful authorship, but it circulates in the traditional Platonic corpus and is included here alongside the certainly genuine works.
“A true gain-lover, Socrates, thinks he ought to profit from absolutely anything.”
— Hipparchus · read this chapter →
“This is the monument of Hipparchus: walk on, thinking just thoughts.”
— Hipparchus · read this chapter →
“he was the first to bring Homer's poems into this land of ours, compelling the rhapsodes at the Panathenaea to recite them in relay, one picking up where the last left off”
— Hipparchus · read this chapter →
“So what has value is profitable, whether it's small or large, and what lacks value brings no profit.”
— Hipparchus · read this chapter →
“Then it isn't right for anyone to reproach another by calling him a lover of profit”
— Hipparchus · read this chapter →
It is a short Socratic dialogue in which Socrates and an unnamed companion try to define what it means to be a 'lover of gain' or 'lover of profit.' Through a series of refutations, Socrates forces the companion to admit that gain, being the opposite of loss, must always be good, so the term cannot serve as a moral insult.
Hipparchus was the son of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus and, according to the dialogue, the eldest and wisest of his sons. Socrates says he brought Homer's poetry to Athens, imported the poets Anacreon and Simonides, and set up inscribed herms along the roads with wisdom sayings meant to educate the citizens.
Its authorship has long been disputed among scholars, and it is commonly grouped with the dialogues of doubtful or spurious attribution rather than the certainly genuine Platonic works. It has nonetheless been transmitted as part of the traditional Platonic corpus since antiquity.
Socrates recounts that Hipparchus was assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and gives the 'more refined' explanation for this: that Aristogeiton, who had educated Harmodius and taken pride in it, grew jealous when a young man both men loved came to admire Hipparchus more, and the two killed Hipparchus out of resentment.
Socrates leads the companion through a chain of agreed premises -- that loss is bad, gain is the opposite of loss, and therefore gain is good -- to conclude that all profit, large or small, is good, and that 'lover of profit' cannot rightly be used as a term of reproach, since it turns out to describe everyone, good and bad alike.
He uses farmers, horsemen, helmsmen, generals, and craftsmen who would never knowingly use worthless materials, and later a concrete example of trading half a pound of gold for double that weight in silver, to distinguish mere quantity of gain from genuine value.
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