with both his hands. Again we knocked, and he answered without opening:
Did you not hear me say that he is not at home, fellows? But, my friend, I
said, you need not be alarmed; for we are not Sophists, and we are not come
to see Callias, but we want to see Protagoras; and I must request you to
announce us. At last, after a good deal of difficulty, the man was
persuaded to open the door.

When we entered, we found Protagoras taking a walk in the cloister; and
next to him, on one side, were walking Callias, the son of Hipponicus, and
Paralus, the son of Pericles, who, by the mother's side, is his half-
brother, and Charmides, the son of Glaucon. On the other side of him were
Xanthippus, the other son of Pericles, Philippides, the son of Philomelus;
also Antimoerus of Mende, who of all the disciples of Protagoras is the
most famous, and intends to make sophistry his profession. A train of
listeners followed him; the greater part of them appeared to be foreigners,
whom Protagoras had brought with him out of the various cities visited by
him in his journeys, he, like Orpheus, attracting them his voice, and they
following (Compare Rep.). I should mention also that there were some
Athenians in the company. Nothing delighted me more than the precision of
their movements: they never got into his way at all; but when he and those
who were with him turned back, then the band of listeners parted regularly
on either side; he was always in front, and they wheeled round and took
their places behind him in perfect order.

After him, as Homer says (Od.), 'I lifted up my eyes and saw' Hippias the
Elean sitting in the opposite cloister on a chair of state, and around him
were seated on benches Eryximachus, the son of Acumenus, and Phaedrus the
Myrrhinusian, and Andron the son of Androtion, and there were strangers
whom he had brought with him from his native city of Elis, and some others:
they were putting to Hippias certain physical and astronomical questions,