1. The word translated ‘complex’ (polutwpos) is used by Homer to describe Odysseus at the very beginning of the Odyssey, as well as elsewhere, though in Homer it may mean no more than ‘versatile’ or even simply ‘much-travelled¹.

2. In Plato’s time the Homeric poems had not yet been divided up into books, which was done by Alexandrian scholars in the second century B.C. Instead, sections of the poems were referred to by content. The Prayers refers primarily to Iliad IX, 502 ff., where they are personified, but by extension also to the surrounding material: here Hippias quotes Iliad IX, 308–13 (without line 311).

3. Compare Protagoras 347b ff., in a similar situation, when Socrates has been burlesquing the sophists’ literary studies. Generally, Socrates always requires his interlocutors to state and test their own firm beliefs, not to hide behind any aliases (cf. p. 31).