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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: 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
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