purpose of our visit.

And what is your purpose? he said.

I must explain, I said, that my friend Hippocrates is a native Athenian; he
is the son of Apollodorus, and of a great and prosperous house, and he is
himself in natural ability quite a match for anybody of his own age. I
believe that he aspires to political eminence; and this he thinks that
conversation with you is most likely to procure for him. And now you can
determine whether you would wish to speak to him of your teaching alone or
in the presence of the company.

Thank you, Socrates, for your consideration of me. For certainly a
stranger finding his way into great cities, and persuading the flower of
the youth in them to leave company of their kinsmen or any other
acquaintances, old or young, and live with him, under the idea that they
will be improved by his conversation, ought to be very cautious; great
jealousies are aroused by his proceedings, and he is the subject of many
enmities and conspiracies. Now the art of the Sophist is, as I believe, of
great antiquity; but in ancient times those who practised it, fearing this
odium, veiled and disguised themselves under various names, some under that
of poets, as Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides, some, of hierophants and
prophets, as Orpheus and Musaeus, and some, as I observe, even under the
name of gymnastic-masters, like Iccus of Tarentum, or the more recently
celebrated Herodicus, now of Selymbria and formerly of Megara, who is a
first-rate Sophist. Your own Agathocles pretended to be a musician, but
was really an eminent Sophist; also Pythocleides the Cean; and there were
many others; and all of them, as I was saying, adopted these arts as veils
or disguises because they were afraid of the odium which they would incur.
But that is not my way, for I do not believe that they effected their