can make trial.

POLUS: Yes, indeed, and if you like, Chaerephon, you may make trial of
me too, for I think that Gorgias, who has been talking a long time, is
tired.

CHAEREPHON: And do you, Polus, think that you can answer better than
Gorgias?

POLUS: What does that matter if I answer well enough for you?

CHAEREPHON: Not at all:--and you shall answer if you like.

POLUS: Ask:--

CHAEREPHON: My question is this: If Gorgias had the skill of his brother
Herodicus, what ought we to call him? Ought he not to have the name
which is given to his brother?

POLUS: Certainly.

CHAEREPHON: Then we should be right in calling him a physician?

POLUS: Yes.

CHAEREPHON: And if he had the skill of Aristophon the son of Aglaophon,
or of his brother Polygnotus, what ought we to call him?

POLUS: Clearly, a painter.

CHAEREPHON: But now what shall we call him--what is the art in which he
is skilled.

POLUS: O Chaerephon, there are many arts among mankind which are
experimental, and have their origin in experience, for experience makes
the days of men to proceed according to art, and inexperience according
to chance, and different persons in different ways are proficient in
different arts, and the best persons in the best arts. And our friend
Gorgias is one of the best, and the art in which he is a proficient is
the noblest.

SOCRATES: Polus has been taught how to make a capital speech, Gorgias;
but he is not fulfilling the promise which he made to Chaerephon.

GORGIAS: What do you mean, Socrates?

SOCRATES: I mean that he has not exactly answered the question which he
was asked.

GORGIAS: Then why not ask him yourself?

SOCRATES: But I would much rather ask you, if you are disposed to
answer: for I see, from the few words which Polus has uttered, that he
has attended more to the art which is called rhetoric than to dialectic.

POLUS: What makes you say so, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Because, Polus, when Chaerephon asked you what was the art
which Gorgias knows, you praised it as if you were answering some one
who found fault with it, but you never said what the art was.

POLUS: Why, did I not say that it was the noblest of arts?

SOCRATES: Yes, indeed, but that was no answer to the question: nobody
asked what was the quality, but what was the nature, of the art, and by
what name we were to describe Gorgias. And I would still beg you briefly
and clearly, as you answered Chaerephon when he asked you at first,
to s