Euthydemus

Who was it, Socrates, that you were talking with yesterday at the Lyceum? Why, there was such a crowd standing about you that when I came up in the hope of listening I could hear nothing distinctly: still, by craning over I got a glimpse, and it appeared to me that it was a stranger with whom you were talking. Who was he?

About which are you asking, Crito? There were two of them, not one.

The man whom I mean was sitting next but one to you, on your right: between you was Axiochus’ boy; and he, Socrates, seemed to me to have grown a great deal, so as to look almost the same age as my Critobulus, who is rather puny whereas this boy has come on finely, and has a noble air about him.

Euthydemus is the person to whom you refer, Crito, and the one sitting on my left was his brother, Dionysodorus. He too takes part in our discussions.

Neither of them is known to me, Socrates. A pair of fresh additions, I suppose, to our sophists. Where do they hail from, and what science do they profess?

By birth I believe they belong to these parts, that is to say, Chios; they went out as colonists to Thurii, but have been exiled thence and have spent a good many years now in various parts of this country. As to what you ask of their profession, it is a wonderful one, Crito. These two men are absolutely omniscient: I never knew before what all-round sportsmen were. They are a pair of regular all-round fighters—not in the style of the famous all-round athletes, the two brothers of Acamania; they could fight with their bodies only. But these two, in the first place, are most formidable in body and in fight against all comers

—for they are not only well skilled themselves in fighting under arms, but are able to impart that skill, for a fee, to another; and further, they are most competent also to fight the battle of the law-courts and teach others how to speak, or to have composed for them, such speeches as may win their suits. Formerly they had merely some ability for this; but now they have put the finishing touch to their skill as all-round sportsmen. The one feat of fighting yet unperformed by them they have now accomplished, so that nobody dares stand up to them for a moment; such a faculty they have acquired for wielding words as their weapons and confuting any argument as readily if it be true as if it be false. And so I, Crito, am minded to place myself in these two gentlemen’s hands; for they say it would take them but a little while to make anyone else clever in just the same way.

What, Socrates! Are you not afraid, at your time of life, that you may be too old for that now?