grappling with the matter in hand as a whole. Come now, and I will
demonstrate to you, if you will allow me, by many satisfactory proofs, that
Homer has made Achilles a better man than Odysseus, and a truthful man too;
and that he has made the other crafty, and a teller of many untruths, and
inferior to Achilles. And then, if you please, you shall make a speech on
the other side, in order to prove that Odysseus is the better man; and this
may be compared to mine, and then the company will know which of us is the
better speaker.

SOCRATES: O Hippias, I do not doubt that you are wiser than I am. But I
have a way, when anybody else says anything, of giving close attention to
him, especially if the speaker appears to me to be a wise man. Having a
desire to understand, I question him, and I examine and analyse and put
together what he says, in order that I may understand; but if the speaker
appears to me to be a poor hand, I do not interrogate him, or trouble
myself about him, and you may know by this who they are whom I deem to be
wise men, for you will see that when I am talking with a wise man, I am
very attentive to what he says; and I ask questions of him, in order that I
may learn, and be improved by him. And I could not help remarking while
you were speaking, that when you recited the verses in which Achilles, as
you argued, attacks Odysseus as a deceiver, that you must be strangely
mistaken, because Odysseus, the man of wiles, is never found to tell a lie;
but Achilles is found to be wily on your own showing. At any rate he
speaks falsely; for first he utters these words, which you just now
repeated,--

'He is hateful to me even as the gates of death who thinks one thing and
says another:'--

And then he says, a little while afterwards, he will not be persuaded by