protagoras   

with the view of making any of them a profession, but only as a part

of education, and because a private gentleman and freeman ought to

know them?

Just so, he said; and that, in my opinion, is a far truer account of

the teaching of Protagoras.

I said: I wonder whether you know what you are doing?

And what am I doing?

You are going to commit your soul to the care of a man whom you call

a Sophist. And yet I hardly think that you know what a Sophist is; and

if not, then you do not even know to whom you are committing your soul

and whether the thing to which you commit yourself be good or evil.

I certainly think that I do know, he replied.

Then tell me, what do you imagine that he is?

I take him to be one who knows wise things, he replied, as his

name implies.

And might you not, I said, affirm this of the painter and of the

carpenter also: Do not they, too, know wise things? But suppose a

person were to ask us: In what are the painters wise? We should

answer: In what relates to the making of likenesses, and similarly

of other things. And if he were further to ask: What is the wisdom

of the Sophist, and what is the manufacture over which he

presides?-how should we answer him?

How should we answer him, Socrates? What other answer could there be

but that he presides over the art which makes men eloquent?

Yes, I replied, that is very likely true, but not enough; for in the

answer a further question is involved: Of what does the Sophist make a

man talk eloquently? The player on the lyre may be supposed to make

a man talk eloquently about that which he makes him understand, that

is about playing the lyre. Is not that true?

Yes.

Then about what does the Sophist make him eloquent? Must not he make

him eloquent in that which he understands?