them to practise virtue--with the savages, for example,
whom the poet Pherecrates exhibited on the stage at the last year's
Lenaean festival. If you were living among men such as the man-haters
in his Chorus, you would be only too glad to meet with Eurybates and
Phrynondas, and you would sorrowfully long to revisit the rascality
of this part of the world. You, Socrates, are discontented, and why?
Because all men are teachers of virtue, each one according to his
ability; and you say Where are the teachers? You might as well ask, Who
teaches Greek? For of that too there will not be any teachers found. Or
you might ask, Who is to teach the sons of our artisans this same art
which they have learned of their fathers? He and his fellow-workmen
have taught them to the best of their ability,--but who will carry
them further in their arts? And you would certainly have a difficulty,
Socrates, in finding a teacher of them; but there would be no difficulty
in finding a teacher of those who are wholly ignorant. And this is true
of virtue or of anything else; if a man is better able than we are to
promote virtue ever so little, we must be content with the result. A
teacher of this sort I believe myself to be, and above all other men
to have the knowledge which makes a man noble and good; and I give my
pupils their money's-worth, and even more, as they themselves confess.
And therefore I have introduced the following mode of payment:--When
a man has been my pupil, if he likes he pays my price, but there is no
compulsion; and if he does not like, he has only to go into a temple and
take an oath of the value of the instructions, and he pays no more than
he declares to be their value.

Such is my Apologue, Socrates, and such is the argument by which I
endeavour to show that virtue may be taught, and that this is the
opinion of the Athenians. And I have also attempted to show that you are
not to wonder at good fathers having bad sons, or at good sons having
bad fathers, of which the sons of Polycleitus afford an example, who
are the companions of our friends here, Paralus and Xanthippus, but are
nothing in comparison with their father; and this is true of the sons
of many other artists. As yet I ought not to say the same of Paralus
and Xanthippus themselves, for they are young and there is still hope of
them.

Protagoras ended, and in my ear

'So charming left his voice, that I the while Thought him still
speaking; still stood fixed t