Platos Gorgias
GORGIAS: True.
GORGIAS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: But if there had been no one but Zeuxis who SOCRATES: And if any one asks us what sort of persua-painted them, then you would have answered very well?
sion, and about what, we shall answer, persuasion which teaches the quantity of odd and even; and we shall be able GORGIAS: Quite so.
to show that all the other arts of which we were just now speaking are artificers of persuasion, and of what sort, and SOCRATES: Now I want to know about rhetoric in the same about what.
way;is rhetoric the only art which brings persuasion, or do other arts have the same effect? I mean to sayDoes he who teaches GORGIAS: Very true.
anything persuade men of that which he teaches or not?
SOCRATES: Then rhetoric is not the only artificer of per-GORGIAS: He persuades, Socrates,there can be no mis-suasion?
take about that.
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Again, if we take the arts of which we were just now speaking:do not arithmetic and the arithmeticians SOCRATES: Seeing, then, that not only rhetoric works by teach us the properties of number?
persuasion, but that other arts do the same, as in the case of the painter, a question has arisen which is a very fair one: GORGIAS: Certainly.
Of what persuasion is rhetoric the artificer, and about what?is not that a fair way of putting the question?
SOCRATES: And therefore persuade us of them?
GORGIAS: I think so.
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then, if you approve the question, Gorgias, SOCRATES: Then arithmetic as well as rhetoric is an arti-what is the answer?
ficer of persuasion?