tagoras, who has just come to Athens. Socrates calms his excitement, and advises him to be sure, before he pays his money to the great Sophist, that he will get his money's worth; for it is a rash thing to commit his soul to the instruction of a foreigner, before he knows his real character, or whether his doctrines are for good or for evil. "O my friend!" he says, earnestly, "pause a moment before you hazard your dearest interests on a game of chance; for you cannot buy knowledge and carry it away in an earthly vessel: in your own soul you must receive it, to be a blessing or acurse."
Talking thus gravely on the way, they arrive at the house of Callias, who had spent more money on the Sophists—so Plato tells us—than any other Athenian of his times. The doorkeeper is surly, and at first refuses to admit them, thinking that his master has had enough of the Sophists and their friends already. But at last they enter, and find a large company already assembled within. Protagoras himself is walking up and down the colonnade, declaiming to a troop of youths who had followed him from all parts of Greece, attracted by the music of his words, "as though he were a second Orpheus." Hippias, another Sophist, whom we shall meet again, is lecturing on astronomy to a select audience in the opposite portico; while the deep voice of Prodicus, a younger professor, is heard from an adjoining room, where he lies still warmly wrapped up in bed, and conversing from it to another circle of listeners.
Socrates at once steps up to Protagoras, and tells
