Failing with honor

04/27/2023

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In the academic dishonesty pledge of a class I'm taking, the following quote was inserted:

I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating. 
— Sophocles

Of course, since I'm a classicist that doesn't want to do their CS homework, I decided to investigate the verity of this quote.

I found this, on Perseus:

βούλομαι δ᾽, ἄναξ, καλῶς
δρῶν ἐξαμαρτεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ νικᾶν κακῶς.

I would prefer, O lord, honorably
to fail in doing, rather than to win dishonorably
(english literally self translated :3)

This is from Sophocles` Philoctetes, a play, so it`s not really a quote from him. Moreso, it's a quote from the speaker Neoptolemus, who is speaking to Odysseus. I think that`s actually really cool: because Odysseus is known for his cheating and lying: it`s his defining character trait. So you really see the contrast between Neoptolemus, and his upbringing by Achilles (Odysseus` old friend) and Odysseus himself. I haven't read the whole play just yet (I should really work on my mock filesystem...) but this is just my first impression.

Supposedly this play won first prize when it was first performed.

To emphasize: I find it very interesting how the quote is literally taken out of context. Its attribution implies that the quote is from Sophecles himself, as if it were in a piece of prose or narration (à la Tacitus "where they declared peace, they made a desert"). It'd be more accurate to attribute it to the character in the play itself. But that's less punchy, huh?

Not to be pretentious, but I find that people, broadly, only care about the aesthetic of the classics: that is to say, the air of legitimacy it brings. Hence its invocation more frequently in politics and "fine arts" than in clever Catullan penis jokes. So the context of this quote doesn't really matter to most people, but rather that the quote in and of itself meaningful (in this case, invoking honesty). The classical attribution merely exists to make the quote seem more important.

- lazarusquirrel 🐿️