.392 HISTORY OF GREECE. which he goes through, of his new state of society, nor do the; receive any other answer than what is implied in that descrip- tion. Plato indirectly confesses that he cannot answer them, assuming social institutions to continue unreformcd : and his re- form is sufficiently fundamental. 1 1 1 omitted to notice the Dialogue of Plato entitled Euthydemus, wherein Sokrates is introduced in conversation with the two persons called sophists, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who are represented as propounding a number of verbal quibbles, assertions of double sense, arising from eqnivo cal grammar or syntax, fallacies of mere diction, without the least plan sibility as to the sense, specimens of jests and hoax, p. 278, B. They are described as extravagantly conceited, while Sokrates is painted with his usual affectation of deference and modesty. He himself, during a part of the dialogue, carries on conversation in his own dialectical manner with the youthful Kleinias ; who is then handed over to be taught by Euthydemua and Dionysodorus ; so that the contrast between their style of questioning, and that of Sokrates, is forcibly brought out. To bring out this contrast, appears to me the main purpose of the dialogue, as has already been remarked by Socher and others (see Stall- baum, Prolegom. ad Euthydem. pp. 15-65) : but its construction, its man- ner, and its result, previous to the concluding conversation between Sokra- tes and Kriton separately, is so thoroughly comic, that Ast, on this and other grounds, rejects it as spurious and unworthy of Plato (see Ast, iiber Platons Leben und Schriften, pp. 414-418). Without agreeing in Ast's inference, I recognize the violence of the car icature which Plato has here presented under the characters of Euthydfr nras and Dionysodorus. And it is for this reason, among many others, tha I protest the more emphatically against the injustice of Stallbaum and tht commentators generally, who consider these two persons as disciples of Protagoras, and samples of what is called " Sophistica," the sophistical practice, the sophists generally. There is not the smallest ground for con- sidering these two men as disciples of Protagoras, who is presented to us, even by Plato himself, under an aspect as totally different from them as it is possible to imagine. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus are described, by Plato himself in this very dialogue, as old men who had been fencing-mas- ters, and who had only within the last two years applied themselves to the eristic or controversial dialogue (Euthyd. c. 1, p. 272, C. ; c. 3, p. 273, E). Schleiermacher himself accounts their personal importance so mean, that he thinks Plato could not have intended to attack them, but meant to attack Antisthenes and the Megaric school of philosophers (Prolegom. ad Enthydem. vol. iii, pp. 403, 404, of his translation of Plato). So contempt- ible does Plato esteem them, that Krito blames Sokrates for having so fai degraded himself as to be seen talking with them before riany persons (p 805, B, c. 30).
