Note 20 — Chapter XXIII · PROTAGORAS.

Plat. Prot. p. 317 D. In the Menon, the Platonic Sokrates is made to say that Protagoras died at the age of seventy; that he had practised forty years as a Sophist; and that during all that long time he had enjoyed the highest esteem and reputation, even after his death, “down to the present day” (Menon, p. 91 E).

It must be remembered that the speech, of which I have just given an abstract, is delivered not by the historical, real, Protagoras, but by the character named Protagoras, depicted by Plato in this dialogue: i.e. the speech is composed by Plato himself. I read, therefore, with much surprise, a note of Heindorf (ad p. 316 D), wherein he says about Protagoras: “Callidé in postremis reticet, quod addere poterat, χρήματα διδόντας.” “Protagoras cunningly keeps back, what he might have here added, that people gave him money for his teaching.” Heindorf must surely have supposed that he was commenting upon a real speech, delivered by the historical person called Protagoras. Otherwise what can be meant by this charge of “cunning reticence or keeping back?” Protagoras here speaks what Plato puts into his mouth; neither more nor less. What makes the remark of Heindorf the more preposterous is, that in page 328 B the very fact, which Protagoras is here said “cunningly to keep back,” appears mentioned by Protagoras; and mentioned in the same spirit of honourable frankness and fair-dealing as that which pervades the discourse which I have just (freely) translated. Indeed nothing can be more marked than the way in which Plato makes Protagoras dwell with emphasis on the frankness and openness of his dealing: nothing can be more at variance with the character which critics give us of the Sophists, as “cheats, who defrauded pupils of their money while teaching them nothing at all, or what they themselves knew to be false”.