 Hippias is a sophist from Elis, in the northwest corner of the Peloponnesus; he takes pride in being a polymath, an expert on many subjects including rhetoric, history, and mathematics. The question of defining to kalon arises because Hippias boasts about the high quality of a speech he will soon make, and he invites Socrates to attend, along with others capable of judging a speech. Socrates by implication invokes the  priority of definition:  How can anyone judge what is fine or foul in a speech, without knowing what it is to be fine (286c)? “Fine” translates the Greek kalon, a general term of commendation that is often rendered as “beautiful,” “amiable,” or “noble,” but often simply means “good.” Its opposite, aischron means “ugly,” “disgusting,” “shameful,” or “foul.”