Mnemosyne (2018) 1-10

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Protagoras’ Homo-Mensura Doctrine and Literary

Interpretation in Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi

Peter Osorio
Cornell University, Dept. of Classics
[email protected]

Received March 2017 | Accepted December 2017

Abstract

Taking a cue from the interpretive difficulties faced by Socrates and his interlocutors
in Plato’s Theaetetus as they struggle to determine the meaning of Protagoras’ homo-
mensura doctrine (HM), I argue that Protagoras, or early Protagoreans, used HM to
speak on the relativity of literary criticism. For evidence I adduce an overlooked pas-
sage of the anonymous Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, which contains an ethical formu-
lation of HM. This formulation of HM, compatible with the portrait of Protagoras from
Theaetetus, explains the concern for literary interpretation latent in two sections of
the Certamen. From the evidence in the Certamen, we may infer that HM was directly
related to Protagorean education in civic virtue, part of which included a study of how
to read and listen to texts.

Keywords

Protagoras – Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi – literary interpretation

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It is curious that in their attempts1 to interpret Protagoras’ homo-mensura

doctrine (HM),2 Socrates and his two interlocutors in Theaetetus never apply
HM to itself. That is, they do not consider that HM holds that one’s interpreta-
tion of HM is true relative to oneself.3 C. Joachim Classen brushed aside this
curiosity by holding that “Protagoras’ principle does not apply to anything that
cannot be regarded as chrēma, and as such a maxim as that of Protagoras can-
not be said to be a chrēma, it does not apply to this maxim itself”.4 Such a
narrow understanding of the word ignores the fact that some maxims were
called χρήματα—namely, oracles, whose meanings were famously ambiguous
and the proper interpretation of which depended on the interpreter’s wis-
dom.5 Indeed, HM is so difficult to interpret that Socrates suggests that it con-
tains an esoteric doctrine (Tht. 152c) that he likens to a cult mystery (Tht. 156a;
cf. 162a).6 Pace Classen, there is no immediate reason to think that HM could
not have been intended by Protagoras to apply to the interpretation of litera-
ture, such as the written words of Protagoras himself; and a fortiori there is no
reason that HM could not have been understood as such in the early reception
of Protagoras’ thought.

1  Pl. Tht. 152a-c (where [1] ἄνθρωπος is interpreted as referring to individuals, [2] χρήματα is
interpreted as referring to impressions and perceptions, and [3] where HM as a whole is
interpreted as a riddle for the many whose meaning is revealed only to Protagoras’ students),
157b (where εἶναι is interpreted as γίγνεσθαι), 160c (where μέτρον is interpreted as κριτής),
161c (where Socrates suggests that ἄνθρωπος could have been replaced by ὗς or κυνοκέφαλος),
178b (where πάντων μέτρον ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν is interpreted as having a criterion in oneself), 179b
(where ἄνθρωπος is interpreted as the wise man). Modern interpreters have fared no better
than Socrates at determining meanings of each word in HM: cf. Guthrie 1969, III, 188-192;
Huss 1996.
2  Pl. Tht. 152a2-4 (= B1 in Diels and Kranz 1952): πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπον εἶναι, τῶν μὲν
ὄντων ὡς ἔστι, τῶν δὲ μὴ ὄντων ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν. (‘Of all things man is the measure—of things that
are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not.’); cf. Pl. Cra. 385e6-386a1 (A13);
S.E. M. 7.60 (B1); S.E. P. 1.216 (A14). For a recent treatment of the intellectual history behind
HM, see van Berkel 2013. All translations throughout are the author’s.
3  Socrates instead does something of the opposite, trying to show that, by the relativism af-
forded by HM, the doctrine is self-refuting, since the majority of people think that HM is
false; cf. Pl. Tht. 171a6-9; Burnyeat 1976.
4  Classen 1989, 27.
5  For example, in the cases of Croesus (Hdt. 1.53, 1.55, 1.86, 1.91), Cambyses (Hdt. 3.65),
Themistocles (Hdt. 7.142), Lysander (Plu. Ages. 3), and Socrates (Pl. Ap. 21a-23c); cf. D.Chr.
10.17-32. Oracles abound in the prologue and the biographies of Certamen, which may not be
unrelated to the passages I discuss here.
6  See Ford 1994, 207-208.

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In Theaetetus, Socrates challenges Protagoras’ acceptance of HM given his

claim to teach virtue.7 Protagoras must admit that, once HM is interpreted as a
form of epistemological relativism, his own opinions regarding virtue are nei-
ther truer nor more authoritative than those of the very students he aims to in-
struct. Without going so far as to deny that HM maintains a kind of relativism,
a Protagorean may adopt the out Socrates offers in his prosopopoeia of the
sophist (Tht. 166c-168c): that HM, although indeed meaning that each person’s
impressions are true relative to oneself, still allows for things like wisdom and
moral improvement. HM, on this reading, simply means that persons judge
what is true by their own lights, whether to their benefit or detriment. The
wise man’s task, then, is to cause changes for the better in the soul of the stu-
dent such that bad impressions become good (Tht. 167a). In Socrates’ defense
speech for Protagoras, HM and ethical teaching are not merely compatible,
but intimately related: it is because beliefs are true dependently on its thinker
that there arises a need for ethical instruction to eliminate pernicious truths
(Tht. 167a-b). Apart from Socrates’ defense speech in the persona of the soph-
ist, there is no evidence that HM bore any role in Protagoras’ ethical mission.
We thus need to be wary of inferring that the HM contained ethical implica-
tions on the basis of Plato alone. It is, however, unproblematic to claim that
literary criticism, and particularly literary interpretation, played a large role in
Protagoras’ ethical instruction.8

7  Pl. Tht. 161d2-e1: ἢ πῶς λέγωμεν, ὦ Θεόδωρε; εἰ γὰρ δὴ ἑκάστῳ ἀληθὲς ἔσται ὃ ἂν δι’ αἰσθήσεως
δοξάζῃ, καὶ μήτε τὸ ἄλλου πάθος ἄλλος βέλτιον διακρινεῖ, μήτε τὴν δόξαν κυριώτερος ἔσται ἐπισκέ-
ψασθαι ἕτερος τὴν ἑτέρου ὀρθὴ ἢ ψευδής, ἀλλ’ ὃ πολλάκις εἴρηται, αὐτὸς τὰ αὑτοῦ ἕκαστος μόνος δο-
ξάσει, ταῦτα δὲ πάντα ὀρθὰ καὶ ἀληθῆ, τί δή ποτε, ὦ ἑταῖρε, Πρωταγόρας μὲν σοφός, ὥστε καὶ ἄλλων
διδάσκαλος ἀξιοῦσθαι δικαίως μετὰ μεγάλων μισθῶν …; (‘Or how shall we speak, Theodorus? For
if whatever each believes through perception is true for that person, and no other person
judges the affection of another better, and no one else is more of an authority at investigating
the belief of another as to whether it is right or false, but if, as has been said many times, each
person alone forms his opinions about what concerns him, and these opinions are all right
and true, then why ever will Protagoras be wise enough so as to rightly think himself worthy
of being a teacher of others and of great fees …?’).
8  Pl. Prt. 338e6-339a3: Ἡγοῦμαι, ἔφη, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἐγὼ ἀνδρὶ παιδείας μέγιστον μέρος εἶναι περὶ
ἐπῶν δεινὸν εἶναι· ἔστιν δὲ τοῦτο τὰ ὑπὸ τῶν ποιητῶν λεγόμενα οἷόν τ’ εἶναι συνιέναι ἅ τε ὀρθῶς
πεποίηται καὶ ἃ μή, καὶ ἐπίστασθαι διελεῖν τε καὶ ἐρωτώμενον λόγον δοῦναι. (‘I think that the
greatest part of a man’s education is to be clever at verses; that is, to be able to understand,
among the writings of the poets, what has been composed rightly and what hasn’t, and to
know how to discuss them and to render an account of them when questioned about them.’)
While the primary evidence, again, is from Plato, the view is supported by Protagoras’ criti-
cism of Homer’s use of an imperative to address the Muse (Arist. Po. 145b15-18 [A29]); for how
his other literary studies, including notes on grammatical gender (Arist. Rh. 1407b6-9 [A27]),

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Pulling these different strands together, consider the following two, distinct
claims, both of which involve what have been considered two, distinct top-
ics in Protagorean thought, HM and the interpretation of literature (Int). The
first claim is that, if we believe that Socrates’ defense speech is historically
germane,9 HM and Int might be indirectly related insofar as they formed parts
of Protagoras’ ethical project. The second, stronger claim, is that HM and Int
were directly related to each other. This stronger claim seems far more tenuous:
HM and Int flirt near each other in Theaetetus, but they never meet. Classen’s
hesitation to apply HM to itself—to suggest that, for Protagoras, any interpre-
tation of HM (and texts in general) is true relative to the interpreter—is de-
fensible so long as the picture of Protagorean philosophy we have painted so
far is a fair likeness of the available evidence. Such a picture, however, is not
complete. Rather, there is overlooked evidence that supports both claims of
indirect and direct relations between HM and Int.
In the fifth stage (149-179) of the poetic contest in the anonymous Certamen
Homeri et Hesiodi, likely a reworking of a section of Mouseion by the fourth-
century sophist Alcidamas,10 Hesiod asks Homer a series of eight questions on
ethical topics, the first of which runs as follows (149-160):11

πάντα δὴ τοῦ Ὁμήρου ὑπερτεροῦντος φθονῶν ὁ Ἡσίοδος ἄρχεται πάλιν·

υἱὲ Μέλητος Ὅμηρ’ εἴ περ τιμῶσί σε Μοῦσαι,
ὡς λόγος, ὑψίστοιο Διὸς μεγάλοιο θύγατρες,
λέξον μέτρῳ ἐναρμόζων ὅ τι δὴ θνητοῖσι
κάλλιστόν <τε> καὶ ἔχθιστον· <πο>θέω γὰρ ἀκοῦσαι.
ὁ δέ φησι·
Ἡσίοδ’ ἔκγονε Δίου ἑκόντα με ταῦτα κελεύεις
εἰπεῖν· αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ μάλα τοι πρόφρων ἀγορεύσω.

his other critiques and analyses of Homer (Arist. SE. 173b17-22 [A28]; Scholium ad Il. 21.240,
POxy 221.xii.20-29 [A30]), and his championing of correct diction (ὀρθοέπεια) (Pl. Phdr.
267c6 [A27]) contributed to Protagoras’ broader educative aims, see Rademaker 2013.
9  For a defense of which, see Burnyeat 1990, 26-27.
10  For a summary of the evidence, see Koning 2010, 248; Uden 2010, 121-122. For a defense
of—and references for—the view that the origin of the Certamen is older than the fifth
century, see Koning 2010, 245-247. However, since I argue that certain features of the con-
test are best explained by Protagorean thought, one can adduce from my argument that
some of the contest derives, at the latest, from Protagoras and the fifth century. Dating the
source of the Certamen is, of course, speculative, but I operate on the above assumption
that allows for Protagorean influence, in favor of entertaining the view that it was the
contest itself that influenced Protagoras and his HM.
11  For the text I follow Bassino 2013.

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κάλλιστον μὲν τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἔσται μέτρον εἶναι

αὐτὸν ἑαυτῷ, τῶν δὲ κακῶν ἔχθιστον ἁπάντων.
ἄλλο δὲ πᾶν ὅ τι σῷ θυμῷ φίλον ἐστὶν ἐρώτα.

With Homer then excelling on all points, Hesiod grudgingly begins again,
‘Homer, son of Meles, if indeed the Muses, the daughters of highest, great
Zeus, honor you, as the story goes, say, by fitting in meter, what is the fin-
est and worst thing for mortals, for I long to hear it.’ And Homer responds,
‘Hesiod, offspring of Dius, you bid me willingly to say these things, and I
will answer you very eagerly. That each is a measure for oneself of good
things will be the finest thing, but [that each is a measure for oneself ] of bad
things is the worst thing of all.12 Ask whatever else is dear to your heart.’

The reference to HM is obvious,13 although Paola Bassino is cautious, only

going so far as to say that “the word μέτρον may be a reference to the Protagorean
doctrine”.14 She adds, “Homer claims that being a standard for oneself is also
the worst of things for mortals, thus firmly taking distance from such Sophistic
doctrines.”15 Against Bassino, there is no apparent reason why a Protagorean
committed to HM, under any plausible construal, would find that Homer’s
response, which partly claims that being a measure is a bad thing, is contrary
to the sense of HM. On a Theaetetan, relativist reading of Homer’s response,16
what is good or bad is what appears as such to each person. And since this state
of affairs is responsible for the existence of goods and bads, it follows that HM
is both the best and the worst thing: it is the best insofar as it is the reason why

12  My translation and corresponding interpretation is only one of several we might give to
Homer’s response, and this ambiguity is, I take it, informed by the infamous interpretive
difficulty of HM itself. The most persuasive alternative is “That each is a measure for one-
self will be the finest of good things, but [to be a measure for oneself] is the worst thing of
all bad things”. Since my argument does not depend on discerning which interpretation is
more grammatical, I omit discussion of this and other alternatives.
13  Cf. O’Sullivan 1992, 87.
14  Bassino 2013, 183. Italics are my own for emphasis.
15  Ibid., 184.
16  To the view that Plato’s Protagoras (as an epistemological relativist) is likely unhistori-
cal, I note, first, that the evidence is not univocal (cf. Simp. in Ph. 1108.18-28; Sedley 2004,
50-52), and, second, that it is reasonable that the reception of Protagoras by the third
century (from when the earliest papyrus fragment of Certamen dates) would have been
influenced by Plato’s Theaetetus. Indeed, that Homer’s HM-like response concerns the
individual (αὐτὸν ἑαυτῷ) rather than mankind in general bears resemblance to Plato’s in-
dividualist interpretation of HM, where ἄνθρωπον is ambiguous.

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some things are good, and the worst insofar as it is the reason why others are
bad. Homer’s line of reasoning is similarly consistent with more conservative,
non-Platonic readings of HM.17 In sum, Homer’s response states that HM plays
a large, but ambivalent, role in our ethical lives, and his reasoning seems to be
that moral facts derive from no other source than ourselves as subjects who
make moral judgments.
Homer’s response is consistent with Socrates’ prosopopoiea,18 and so we
have confirmation of my first claim that HM is indirectly related to Protagoras’
interpretation of texts via ethics. Next, we find that Homer’s response and its
formulation of HM is also relevant to literary interpretation in both preceding
and subsequent stages of the poetic contest. In the preceding third stage (103-
137), Hesiod provides a series of incomplete, ambiguous thoughts (ἀμφιβόλους
γνώμας) to which Homer must provide an appropriate cap.19 Standing on their
own, all of Hesiod’s lines have false, implausible, impossible, improper, im-
pious, or otherwise immoral content,20 and Homer’s enjambed lines salvage
them from negative readings. Homer knows how to complete lines that seem
bad and make them good, whereas an unwise poet would have been stuck filling
out the line in such a way that the dubious content remained unambiguously

17  Even if we concede that the historical Protagoras did not use HM to advocate epistemo-
logical relativism as formulated by Plato, “it seems rather less controversial that HM had
some relevance for the fields of law and politics. The political implication of HM seems
to be that man has to decide issues of right and wrong by his own standards, without ap-
peal to an external, superhuman authority” (Rademaker 2013, 106). So, Homer’s response,
that the being a measure for oneself is bivalent, is also consistent with a more cautious,
minimal reading of HM.
18  Pl. Tht. 167b1-2: ἀλλ᾽ οἶμαι πονηρᾷ ψυχῆς ἕξει δοξάζοντα συγγενῆ αὐτῆς χρηστῇ ἐποίησε δοξάσαι
ἕτερα τοιαῦτα ... (‘But I think that [the wise man] causes him, who thinks from a bad condi-
tion of the soul, to think different things of this sort, akin to the good [condition] of it [viz.
his soul] ...’) ; for the notion, cf. Arist. EE 1237b27-30, which contains the phrase, αὑτῷ γὰρ
μετρεῖ τοὺς ἄλλους (‘[the base person] measures others by himself’).
19  On this stage and its sophistic influence, see Bassino 2013, 164-166.
20  E.g. eating horse-meat (107), Phrygians being the best at sea-faring (109), throwing arrows
with one’s hands (111), being born from a man who is both good and cowardly (113), (pos-
sibly) having sex with your father and mother (115), Artemis being married (117), feasting
all day without food (119), Zeus being dead (120-121), carrying a road on one’s shoulders
(124-125), having hands made of the sea (127), Argonauts stealing away Aietes (129), drink-
ing the sea (131), and Agamemnon praying for heroes to die (133) or never come back
home (135-136); cf. the criticisms of impossibilities, irrationalities, and contradictions
against Homer in Arist. Po. 25.

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bad.21 The respondent’s cap is thus judged not simply by the appropriate use of
meter and syntax but on the moral value and appropriateness of the thought
expressed by the combined lines of both the instigating poet (sc. Hesiod) and
the respondent. The capping game, understood in this light, shows how HM
can be made relevant to Int: judgments of moral value are relative, and so the
wise man knows how to create good (or bad) out of any poem, text, or law.
Had Homer failed to provide a cap that mitigated the negative content, it
seems it would have been Homer, not Hesiod, whose skill would have been
shown to be lacking. At first glance, it may seem that Homer saves Hesiod
from blame by rescuing his lines. In that case Homer’s charitable interpreta-
tions would seem to conflict with what we know about Protagoras’ destructive
critiques of poetry (viz. the opening lines of the Iliad and Simonides’ ode to
Scopas).22 But in the capping game Homer is responsible for Hesiod’s lines and
completes them for his own benefit. Consider, then, that Protagoras’ instruc-
tion in literary criticism likely served his aim as an educator of civic virtue. To
this same end Protagoras with his antilogies taught students to defend or at-
tack any position with equal force. In the same way that Protagoras taught his
students both to defend apparently bad views and to attack apparently good
ones in the public arena, they likewise must know how to defend or attack any
literary text.23 The capping game of the Certamen, then, belongs to one side of

21  This aspect of the contest has been seen as evidence of the influence of Alcidamas, who
valued extemporized speech over the prepared written word, on Certamen by O’Sullivan
1992, 85; Lefkowitz 2012, 8. However, this relation to Alcidamas does not explain the inap-
propriate nature of Hesiod’s lines in this stage of the contest, for which my reading helps
to account.
22  My reviewer rightly notes that Homer’s charitable interpretations seem more sympa-
thetic with Socrates’ treatment of orphaned statements such as HM in Pl. Tht. 164e2-6;
cf. Ford 1994, 205. My view of Protagorean criticism as either pro or contra a text resolves
this tension and is supported by the fact that not all of Protagoras’ literary criticisms
were destructive: cf. his approval of the structural placing of Achilles’ fight with Xanthus
(cf. Scholium ad Il. 21.240, POxy 221.xii.20-29 [A30]; Rademaker 2013, 100). In addition,
Socrates’ proposal to defend the orphaned HM is phrased as the alternative to their cur-
rent approach, which Socrates likens to the contra side in an eristic contest (Pl. Tht. 164c4-
d2). It seems, then, that Socrates’ charitable defense of the orphan HM is welcome to the
approach of a pro position in a literary contest.
23  Rademaker 2013, 103-104. Protagoras’ critique of Il. 1.1 shows that Homer is not merely bad-
qua-ungrammatical, but also bad-qua-impious. Likewise, Protagoras and Socrates in Pl.
Prt. take the opposing roles of prosecutor and advocate, respectively, of Simonides’ ode.
Socrates brilliantly defends Simonides by conjecturing that he wrote the ode in order to
overthrow a maxim of Pittacus and thereby that he was playing the same prosecutory role
as Protagoras is engaged in now (342a6-343c5).

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Protagoras’ pedagogical strategy, the other side of which is exemplified by his

attacks of highly-regarded poems. And, of course, Protagoras adopts this peda-
gogy because there are no sources of normative value other than the human24
and so it is the task of the Protagorean to foster good out of whatever issue one
is advocating.
In the final stage of the contest (176-210), king Panedes, who was introduced
as only one of several judges (69-70), asks the two poets to recite their fin-
est verses. Hesiod’s lines (Op. 383-392) state the proper times to harvest and
plough, while Homer’s (Il. 13.126-133, 339-344) depict a scene of battle. Despite
everyone else favoring Homer, Panedes crowns Hesiod the winner, saying that
it is just that the one who advocates agriculture and peace be the victor, not
the one who relates wars and slaughters (208-210: δίκαιον εἶναι τὸν ἐπὶ γεωργίαν
καὶ εἰρήνην προκαλούμενον νικᾶν, οὐ τὸν πολέμους καὶ σφαγὰς διεξιόντα). Panedes
evaluates the poets on the basis of their social utility and fit with contemporary
values. But even if we set aside the question of whether social utility is a good
criterion of poetry, Panedes still seems to have made a bad judgment by his
own standards. Namely, it is far from clear that Homer fails to advocate peace
in the way that Hesiod advocates (προκαλούμενον) farming. As Ralph Rosen
notes,25 Homer’s final period critiques rather than praises military ethos: μάλα
κεν θρασυκάρδιος εἴη | ὃς τότε γηθήσειεν ἰδὼν πόνον οὐδ’ ἀκάχοιτο. (‘Very hard of
heart would be he who could rejoice and not grieve on seeing the suffering
then.’) If Homer is understood as critiquing war, then Homer is just as use-
ful for promoting peace as Hesiod. I agree with Rosen that Panedes is a bad
interpreter of Homer and I suggest that we can explain why this is so by HM:
that Homers appears bad to Panedes is reflective of a lack of Protagorean edu-
cation. One might object that the narrator gives no indications that Panedes’
competency as a judge should be called into question. Perhaps, one might say,
he is only looking out for the impressionable youth who may be badly influ-
enced by martial poets like Homer, but this just shifts the problem onto the
youth: Homer only influences the youth for the worse because they are bad at
listening to poetry.
While several questions remain unanswerable,26 I hope to have shown
that the Certamen in fact does support a Protagorean reading. This fact is best
explained by the proposal that the author of at least certain portions of the

24  Whether understood as the individual or as the consensus of a political community.

25  Rosen 2004, 308; of similar opinion is Vogt 1959, but cf. West 1967.
26  E.g. what is the structural relation between the Protagorean parts of the Certamen and the
rest? What is the temporal relation between the Protagorean portions of the Certamen
and Plato’s two dialogues, Protagoras and Theaetetus?

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Certamen, whether Alcidamas or not, adapts a tradition wherein HM pertains

to the study of texts. Protagoras, or his followers, likely claimed that the ago-
nistic defense and attack of poetry, as exemplified by the contest of Homer
and Hesiod, was important because it trains the student to manufacture truth
or moral value out of false or bad appearances. Part of this instruction would
include a careful examination of syntax and grammar, such that ambiguous
texts, like Homer, oracles, or HM itself, can be read and used successfully. As
a text where HM is situated in an ethical context and the interpretation of
poetry is at stake, the Certamen must be given due consideration by those in-
terested in Protagoras’ literary studies.27

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27  I owe kind thanks to Tad Brennan for encouraging me to develop this piece and help in
doing so, as well as to the anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. I am also indebted
to Charles Brittain and Hayden Pellicia for their continuous support. Errors are my own.

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