gorgias   

you who should raise us up; and I for my part engage to retract any

error into which you may think that I have fallen-upon one condition:

Pol. What condition?

Soc. That you contract, Polus, the prolixity of speech in which

you indulged at first.

Pol. What! do you mean that I may not use as many words as I please?

Soc. Only to think, my friend, that having come on a visit to

Athens, which is the most free-spoken state in Hellas, you when you

got there, and you alone, should be deprived of the power of

speech-that would be hard indeed. But then consider my case:-shall not

I be very hardly used, if, when you are making a long oration, and

refusing to answer what you are asked, I am compelled to stay and

listen to you, and may not go away? I say rather, if you have a real

interest in the argument, or, to repeat my former expression, have any

desire to set it on its legs, take back any statement which you

please; and in your turn ask and answer, like myself and

Gorgias-refute and be refuted: for I suppose that you would claim to

know what Gorgias knows-would you not?

Pol. Yes.

Soc. And you, like him, invite any one to ask you about anything

which he pleases, and you will know how to answer him?

Pol. To be sure.

Soc. And now, which will you do, ask or answer?

Pol. I will ask; and do you answer me, Socrates, the same question

which Gorgias, as you suppose, is unable to answer: What is rhetoric?

Soc. Do you mean what sort of an art?

Pol. Yes.

Soc. To say the truth, Polus, it is not an art at all, in my

opinion.

Pol. Then what, in your opinion, is rhetoric?

Soc. A thing which, as I was lately reading in a book of yours,

you say that you have made an art.