er assemblies about the just and unjust, the sort of
persuasion which gives belief without knowledge, or that which gives
knowledge?

GORGIAS: Clearly, Socrates, that which only gives belief.

SOCRATES: Then rhetoric, as would appear, is the artificer of a
persuasion which creates belief about the just and unjust, but gives no
instruction about them?

GORGIAS: True.

SOCRATES: And the rhetorician does not instruct the courts of law or
other assemblies about things just and unjust, but he creates belief
about them; for no one can be supposed to instruct such a vast multitude
about such high matters in a short time?

GORGIAS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Come, then, and let us see what we really mean about rhetoric;
for I do not know what my own meaning is as yet. When the assembly meets
to elect a physician or a shipwright or any other craftsman, will the
rhetorician be taken into counsel? Surely not. For at every election he
ought to be chosen who is most skilled; and, again, when walls have to
be built or harbours or docks to be constructed, not the rhetorician but
the master workman will advise; or when generals have to be chosen and
an order of battle arranged, or a position taken, then the military will
advise and not the rhetoricians: what do you say, Gorgias? Since you
profess to be a rhetorician and a maker of rhetoricians, I cannot do
better than learn the nature of your art from you. And here let me
assure you that I have your interest in view as well as my own. For
likely enough some one or other of the young men present might desire to
become your pupil, and in fact I see some, and a good many too, who have
this wish, but they would be too modest to question you. And therefore
when you are interrogated by me, I would have you imagine that you are
interrogated by them. 'What is the use of coming to you, Gorgias?' they
will say--'about what will you teach us to advise the state?--about the
just and unjust only, or about those other things also which Socrates
has just mentioned?' How will you answer them?

GORGIAS: I like your way of leading us on, Socrates, and I will
endeavour to reveal to you the whole nature of rhetoric. You must have
heard, I think, that the docks and the walls of the Athenians and the
plan of the harbour were devised in accordance with the counsels, partly
of Themistocles, and partly of Pericles, and not at the suggestion of
the builders.

SOCRATES: Such is the tradition, Gorgias, a