SOCRATES: After the manner of disputers (Lys.; Phaedo; Republic), we were
satisfied with mere verbal consistency, and were well pleased if in this
way we could gain an advantage. Although professing not to be mere
Eristics, but philosophers, I suspect that we have unconsciously fallen
into the error of that ingenious class of persons.

THEAETETUS: I do not as yet understand you.

SOCRATES: Then I will try to explain myself: just now we asked the
question, whether a man who had learned and remembered could fail to know,
and we showed that a person who had seen might remember when he had his
eyes shut and could not see, and then he would at the same time remember
and not know. But this was an impossibility. And so the Protagorean fable
came to nought, and yours also, who maintained that knowledge is the same
as perception.

THEAETETUS: True.

SOCRATES: And yet, my friend, I rather suspect that the result would have
been different if Protagoras, who was the father of the first of the two
brats, had been alive; he would have had a great deal to say on their
behalf. But he is dead, and we insult over his orphan child; and even the
guardians whom he left, and of whom our friend Theodorus is one, are
unwilling to give any help, and therefore I suppose that I must take up his
cause myself, and see justice done?

THEODORUS: Not I, Socrates, but rather Callias, the son of Hipponicus, is
guardian of his orphans. I was too soon diverted from the abstractions of
dialectic to geometry. Nevertheless, I shall be grateful to you if you
assist him.