And this
will require no special arbiter--all of you shall be arbiters.
This was generally approved, and Protagoras, though very much against his
will, was obliged to agree that he would ask questions; and when he had put
a sufficient number of them, that he would answer in his turn those which
he was asked in short replies. He began to put his questions as follows:--
I am of opinion, Socrates, he said, that skill in poetry is the principal
part of education; and this I conceive to be the power of knowing what
compositions of the poets are correct, and what are not, and how they are
to be distinguished, and of explaining when asked the reason of the
difference. And I propose to transfer the question which you and I have
been discussing to the domain of poetry; we will speak as before of virtue,
but in reference to a passage of a poet. Now Simonides says to Scopas the
son of Creon the Thessalian:
'Hardly on the one hand can a man become truly good, built four-square in
hands and feet and mind, a work without a flaw.'
Do you know the poem? or shall I repeat the whole?
There is no need, I said; for I am perfectly well acquainted with the ode,
--I have made a careful study of it.
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