n the Protagoras, that
the ancient poets were the Sophists of their day. In some other respects
the Protagoras rather offers a contrast than a parallel. The character
of Protagoras may be compared with that of Gorgias, but the conception
of happiness is different in the two dialogues; being described in the
former, according to the old Socratic notion, as deferred or accumulated
pleasure, while in the Gorgias, and in the Phaedo, pleasure and good are
distinctly opposed.

This opposition is carried out from a speculative point of view in the
Philebus. There neither pleasure nor wisdom are allowed to be the chief
good, but pleasure and good are not so completely opposed as in the
Gorgias. For innocent pleasures, and such as have no antecedent pains,
are allowed to rank in the class of goods. The allusion to Gorgias'
definition of rhetoric (Philebus; compare Gorg.), as the art of
persuasion, of all arts the best, for to it all things submit, not
by compulsion, but of their own free will--marks a close and perhaps
designed connection between the two dialogues. In both the ideas of
measure, order, harmony, are the connecting links between the beautiful
and the good.

In general spirit and character, that is, in irony and antagonism to
public opinion, the Gorgias most nearly resembles the Apology, Crito,
and portions of the Republic, and like the Philebus, though from another
point of view, may be thought to stand in the same relation to Plato's
theory of morals which the Theaetetus bears to his theory of knowledge.

d. A few minor points still remain to be summed up: (1) The extravagant
irony in the reason which is assigned for the pilot's modest charge; and
in the proposed use of rhetoric as an instrument of self-condemnation;
and in the mighty power of geometrical equality in both worlds. (2)
The reference of the mythus to the previous discussion should not be
overlooked: the fate reserved for incurable criminals such as Archelaus;
the retaliation of the box on the ears; the nakedness of the souls and
of the judges who are stript of the clothes or disguises which rhetoric
and public opinion have hitherto provided for them (compare Swift's
notion that the universe is a suit of clothes, Tale of a Tub). The
fiction seems to have involved Plato in the necessity of supposing that
the soul retained a sort of corporeal likeness after death. (3) The
appeal of the authority of Homer, who says that Odysseus saw Minos in
his court