SPEUSIPPUS.
Nay: talk rationally.

CALLIDEMUS.
Rationally! You audacious young sophist! I will talk
rationally. Do you know that I am your father? What quibble can
you make upon that?

SPEUSIPPUS.
Do I know that you are my father? Let us take the question to
pieces, as Melesigenes would say. First, then, we must inquire
what is knowledge? Secondly, what is a father? Now, knowledge,
as Socrates said the other day to Theaetetus (See Plato's
Theaetetus.)--

CALLIDEMUS.
Socrates! what! the ragged flat-nosed old dotard, who walks about
all day barefoot, and filches cloaks, and dissects gnats, and
shoes (See Aristophanes; Nubes, 150.) fleas with wax?

SPEUSIPPUS.
All fiction! All trumped up by Aristophanes!

CALLIDEMUS.
By Pallas, if he is in the habit of putting shoes on his fleas,
he is kinder to them than to himself. But listen to me, boy; if
you go on in this way, you will be ruined. There is an argument
for you. Go to your Socrates and your Melesigenes, and tell them
to refute that. Ruined! Do you hear?