irtue and knowledge as for a precious treasure; willing to rest this
even on a calculation of pleasure, and irresistible here, as everywhere
in Plato, in his intellectual superiority.

The aim of Socrates, and of the Dialogue, is to show the unity of
virtue. In the determination of this question the identity of virtue and
knowledge is found to be involved. But if virtue and knowledge are
one, then virtue can be taught; the end of the Dialogue returns to the
beginning. Had Protagoras been allowed by Plato to make the Aristotelian
distinction, and say that virtue is not knowledge, but is accompanied
with knowledge; or to point out with Aristotle that the same quality may
have more than one opposite; or with Plato himself in the Phaedo to deny
that good is a mere exchange of a greater pleasure for a less--the unity
of virtue and the identity of virtue and knowledge would have required
to be proved by other arguments.

The victory of Socrates over Protagoras is in every way complete when
their minds are fairly brought together. Protagoras falls before him
after two or three blows. Socrates partially gains his object in the
first part of the Dialogue, and completely in the second. Nor does
he appear at any disadvantage when subjected to 'the question' by
Protagoras. He succeeds in making his two 'friends,' Prodicus and
Hippias, ludicrous by the way; he also makes a long speech in defence
of the poem of Simonides, after the manner of the Sophists, showing, as
Alcibiades says, that he is only pretending to have a bad memory, and
that he and not Protagoras is really a master in the two styles of
speaking; and that he can undertake, not one side of the argument only,
but both, when Protagoras begins to break down. Against the authority of
the poets with whom Protagoras has ingeniously identified himself at
the commencement of the Dialogue, Socrates sets up the proverbial
philosophers and those masters of brevity the Lacedaemonians. The poets,
the Laconizers, and Protagoras are satirized at the same time.

Not having the whole of this poem before us, it is impossible for us
to answer certainly the question of Protagoras, how the two passages of
Simonides are to be reconciled. We can only follow the indications given
by Plato himself. But it seems likely that the reconcilement offered
by Socrates is a caricature of the methods of interpretation which
were practised by the Sophists--for the following reasons: (1) The
transparent