riches; and leaving my father's house, came to Athens in search of
wisdom, dissipating my patrimony upon one sophist after another,
listening greedily to Hippias, and Polus, and Gorgias, and
Protagoras, and last of all to you, hard-hearted man that you are?
For from my youth I loved and longed after nothing so much as Truth,
whatsoever it may be; thinking nothing so noble as to know that
which is Right, and knowing it, to do it. And that longing, or love
of mine, which is what I suppose Protagoras meant by the spirit of
truth, I cherished as the fairest and most divine possession, and
that for which alone it was worth while to live. For it seemed to
me, that even if in my search I never attained to truth, still it
were better to die seeking, than not to seek; and that even if
acting by what I considered to be the spirit of truth, and doing
honestly in every case that which seemed right, I should often,
acting on a false conviction, offend in ignorance against the
absolute righteousness of the gods, yet that such an offence was
deserving, if not of praise for its sincerity, yet at least of pity
and forgiveness; but by no means to be classed, as you class it,
with the appetites of brutes; much less to be threatened, as you
threaten it, with infinite and eternal misery by I know not what
necessary laws of Zeus, and to be put off at last with some myth or
other about Prometheus. Surely your mother bare you a scoffer and
pitiless, Socrates, and not, as you boast, a man-midwife fit for
fair youths."

Then, smiling sweetly, "Dear boy," said he, "were I such as you
fancy, how should I be here now, discoursing with you concerning
truth, instead of conning my speech for the Pnyx, like Alcibiades,
that I may become a demagogue, deceiving the mob with flattery, and
win for myself houses, and lands, and gold, and slave-girls, and