Ippia: la calunnia e la città

Abstract

In a fragment cited by Stobaeus, Hippias blames strongly the slander as a dangerous and extreme violence. In this paper I attempt to reconstruct the ideological context of this blame by the fragments of Hippias and other historical and philosophical sources. The survey reveals that slander endangers not only private relations but overall the political ones. Perhaps on the background of a "rethoric of suspicions", Hippias considers the slander like a danger for homònoia and philìa, on which the unity of political and human community is based. Finally, the slander breaks the norms of the correct political agòn