Characters
- Socrates, who defends a thesis he explicitly rejects in Crito. Socrates says in the Crito that a man should never intentionally commit injustice. In this dialogue, he says that a man who does wrong intentionally is better than the man who does it unwittingly.
- Hippias of Elis: a famous sophist, originally from Elis. Known throughout ancient Greece, he was reputed to have mastered mathematics, astronomy and rhetoric; he boasted that he could speak on any subject at Olympia without preparation. Plato presents him as setting himself up as an expert on Homeric criticism, and over-reaching his expertise. Hippias is exactly the sort of man Socrates complains about in the Apology, a man who develops expertise in one or more areas, and then imagines he knows everything.
- Eudicus: Hippias' host in Athens. He admires Hippias and his role in the dialogue is as a facilitator.
Read more about this topic: Hippias Minor
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has....”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)