Page - 159 - in The Complete Plato

and the art in which he is a proficient is the noblest. SOCRATES: Polus has been taught how to make a capital speech, Gorgias; but he is not fulfilling the promise which he made to Chaerephon. GORGIAS: What do you mean, Socrates? SOCRATES: I mean that he has not exactly answered the question which he was asked. GORGIAS: Then why not ask him yourself? SOCRATES: But I would much rather ask you, if you are disposed to answer: for I see, from the few words which Polus has uttered, that he has attended more to the art which is called rhetoric than to dialectic. POLUS: What makes you say so, Socrates? SOCRATES: Because, Polus, when Chaerephon asked you what was the art which Gorgias knows, you praised it as if you were answering some one who found fault with it, but you never said what the art was. POLUS: Why, did I not say that it was the noblest of arts? SOCRATES: Yes, indeed, but that was no answer to the question: nobody asked what was the quality, but what was the nature, of the art, and by what name we were to describe Gorgias. And I would still beg you briefly and clearly, as you answered Chaerephon when he asked you at first, to say 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 159