and humanities, would appear to be a just man and a master of justice if he
were to be compared with men who had no education, or courts of justice, or
laws, or any restraints upon them which compelled them to practise virtue--
with the savages, for example, whom the poet Pherecrates exhibited on the
stage at the last year's Lenaean festival. If you were living among men
such as the man-haters in his Chorus, you would be only too glad to meet
with Eurybates and Phrynondas, and you would sorrowfully long to revisit
the rascality of this part of the world. You, Socrates, are discontented,
and why? Because all men are teachers of virtue, each one according to his
ability; and you say Where are the teachers? You might as well ask, Who
teaches Greek? For of that too there will not be any teachers found. Or
you might ask, Who is to teach the sons of our artisans this same art which
they have learned of their fathers? He and his fellow-workmen have taught
them to the best of their ability,--but who will carry them further in
their arts? And you would certainly have a difficulty, Socrates, in
finding a teacher of them; but there would be no difficulty in finding a
teacher of those who are wholly ignorant. And this is true of virtue or of
anything else; if a man is better able than we are to promote virtue ever
so little, we must be content with the result. A teacher of this sort I
believe myself to be, and above all other men to have the knowledge which
makes a man noble and good; and I give my pupils their money's-worth, and
even more, as they themselves confess. And therefore I have introduced the
following mode of payment:--When a man has been my pupil, if he likes he
pays my price, but there is no compulsion; and if he does not like, he has
only to go into a temple and take an oath of the value of the instructions,
and he pays no more than he declares to be their value.

Such is my Apologue, Socrates, and such is the argument by which I
endeavour to show that virtue may be taught, and that this is the opinion
of the Athenians. And I have also attempted to show that you are not to