Note 27 — Chapter XXI · EUTHYDEMUS.

The language of Schleiermacher is more moderate than that of Stallbaum, Steinhart, and others. He thinks moreover, that the polemical purpose of this dialogue is directed not against Protagoras or Gorgias, but against the Megarics and against Antisthenes, who (so Schleiermacher supposes) had brought the attack upon themselves by attacking Plato first (Einleitung zum Euthyd. p. 404 seq.). Schleiermacher cannot make out who the two Sophists were personally, but he conceives them as obscure persons, deserving no notice.

This is a conjecture which admits of no proof; but if any real victim is here intended by Plato, we may just as reasonably suppose Antisthenes as Protagoras.