Protagoras in a different order, asking (1) What virtue is, and (2) Whether
virtue can be taught. Protagoras declines this offer, but commends
Socrates' earnestness and his style of discussion.

The Protagoras is often supposed to be full of difficulties. These are
partly imaginary and partly real. The imaginary ones are (1)
Chronological,--which were pointed out in ancient times by Athenaeus, and
are noticed by Schleiermacher and others, and relate to the impossibility
of all the persons in the Dialogue meeting at any one time, whether in the
year 425 B.C., or in any other. But Plato, like all writers of fiction,
aims only at the probable, and shows in many Dialogues (e.g. the Symposium
and Republic, and already in the Laches) an extreme disregard of the
historical accuracy which is sometimes demanded of him. (2) The exact
place of the Protagoras among the Dialogues, and the date of composition,
have also been much disputed. But there are no criteria which afford any
real grounds for determining the date of composition; and the affinities of
the Dialogues, when they are not indicated by Plato himself, must always to
a great extent remain uncertain. (3) There is another class of
difficulties, which may be ascribed to preconceived notions of
commentators, who imagine that Protagoras the Sophist ought always to be in
the wrong, and his adversary Socrates in the right; or that in this or that
passage--e.g. in the explanation of good as pleasure--Plato is inconsistent
with himself; or that the Dialogue fails in unity, and has not a proper
beginning, middle, and ending. They seem to forget that Plato is a
dramatic writer who throws his thoughts into both sides of the argument,
and certainly does not aim at any unity which is inconsistent with freedom,
and with a natural or even wild manner of treating his subject; also that
his mode of revealing the truth is by lights and shadows, and far-off and
opposing points of view, and not by dogmatic statements or definite
results.