[147d]
but knew them all ill: but it is a riddle, I think, in which he has made “ill” stand for “evil,” and “knew” for “to know.” So if we put it together, letting the meter go, indeed, but grasping his meaning, we get this: “Full many crafts he knew, but it was evil for him to know them all.”1 Then clearly, if it was evil for him to know many things, he was in fact a paltry fellow, assuming we are to believe what we have previously argued.
1 This trick of twisting the words of a quotation into an unnatural meaning is quite characteristic of Socrates. Cf. Plat. Prot. 343-7.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 8 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1955.
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