ay what this art is, and what we ought to call Gorgias: Or rather,
Gorgias, let me turn to you, and ask the same question,--what are we to
call you, and what is the art which you profess?

GORGIAS: Rhetoric, Socrates, is my art.

SOCRATES: Then I am to call you a rhetorician?

GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates, and a good one too, if you would call me that
which, in Homeric language, 'I boast myself to be.'

SOCRATES: I should wish to do so.

GORGIAS: Then pray do.

SOCRATES: And are we to say that you are able to make other men
rhetoricians?

GORGIAS: Yes, that is exactly what I profess to make them, not only at
Athens, but in all places.

SOCRATES: And will you continue to ask and answer questions, Gorgias,
as we are at present doing, and reserve for another occasion the longer
mode of speech which Polus was attempting? Will you keep your promise,
and answer shortly the questions which are asked of you?

GORGIAS: Some answers, Socrates, are of necessity longer; but I will do
my best to make them as short as possible; for a part of my profession
is that I can be as short as any one.

SOCRATES: That is what is wanted, Gorgias; exhibit the shorter method
now, and the longer one at some other time.

GORGIAS: Well, I will; and you will certainly say, that you never heard
a man use fewer words.

SOCRATES: Very good then; as you profess to be a rhetorician, and a
maker of rhetoricians, let me ask you, with what is rhetoric concerned:
I might ask with what is weaving concerned, and you would reply (would
you not?), with the making of garments?

GORGIAS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And music is concerned with the composition of melodies?

GORGIAS: It is.

SOCRATES: By Here, Gorgias, I admire the surpassing brevity of your
answers.

GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates, I do think myself good at that.

SOCRATES: I am glad to hear it; answer me in like manner about rhetoric:
with what is rhetoric concerned?

GORGIAS: With discourse.

SOCRATES: What sort of discourse, Gorgias?--such discourse as would
teach the sick under what treatment they might get well?

GORGIAS: No.

SOCRATES: Then rhetoric does not treat of all kinds of discourse?

GORGIAS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And yet rhetoric makes men able to speak?

GORGIAS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And to understand that about which they speak?

GORGIAS: Of course.

SOCRATES: But does not the art of medicine, which we were just now
mentioning, also make men able to understand and speak ab