NOTES ON THE PROTAGORAS.
Note 1, p. 3.
Every Athenian youth at the age of eighteen was enrolled upon the list of citizens, and admitted to the rights and duties of manhood.
Note 2, p. 3.
This passage occurs in the description of Hermes, when he meets Odysseus and gives him the charmed herb “moly” as a protection from the wiles of Circe: —
"But while through the glorious woodland I wended my way,
Ere I reached the wide dwelling of Circe, in simples well versed,
As I took my way thither, a wand in his hand, made of gold,
There encountered me Hermes: a stripling with beard of first growth
Even such did he seem, for a youth with most charm then is graced.”
By this allusion to the youth of Alcibiades, Plato seems to suggest that the dialogue took place in the year 433 B.C., when Alcibiades was eighteen years old. But no date can be assigned which does not involve grave chronological inaccuracies, since it is impossible that all the characters should have appeared together at the respective ages here ascribed to them.
Note 3, p. 4.
Abdera was a Greek colony in Thrace, which, although the birthplace of the philosophers Protagoras, Democritus, and Leucippus, of the historian Hecataeus, and of other noted men, was proverbial for the dulness of its inhabitants. Thus
