The Gorgias by Plato. - HTML preview

66

Platos Gorgias

GORGIAS: True.

GORGIAS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: But if there had been no one but Zeuxis who SOCRATES: And if any one asks us what sort of persua-painted them, then you would have answered very well?

sion, and about what, we shall answer, persuasion which teaches the quantity of odd and even; and we shall be able GORGIAS: Quite so.

to show that all the other arts of which we were just now speaking are artificers of persuasion, and of what sort, and SOCRATES: Now I want to know about rhetoric in the same about what.

way;is rhetoric the only art which brings persuasion, or do other arts have the same effect? I mean to sayDoes he who teaches GORGIAS: Very true.

anything persuade men of that which he teaches or not?

SOCRATES: Then rhetoric is not the only artificer of per-GORGIAS: He persuades, Socrates,there can be no mis-suasion?

take about that.

GORGIAS: True.

SOCRATES: Again, if we take the arts of which we were just now speaking:do not arithmetic and the arithmeticians SOCRATES: Seeing, then, that not only rhetoric works by teach us the properties of number?

persuasion, but that other arts do the same, as in the case of the painter, a question has arisen which is a very fair one: GORGIAS: Certainly.

Of what persuasion is rhetoric the artificer, and about what?is not that a fair way of putting the question?

SOCRATES: And therefore persuade us of them?

GORGIAS: I think so.

GORGIAS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then, if you approve the question, Gorgias, SOCRATES: Then arithmetic as well as rhetoric is an arti-what is the answer?

ficer of persuasion?