But I should like to tell you what I take to be Simonides’ intention in this ode, if you care to test my powers, as you put it, Footnote 1cf. Plat. Prot. 339a above. in the matter of verses; though if you would rather, I will hear your account. When Protagoras heard me say this—As you please, Socrates, he said; then Prodicus and Hippias strongly urged me, and the rest of them also. Well then, I said, I will try to explain to you my own feeling about this poem. Now philosophy is of more ancient and abundant growth in Crete and Lacedaemon than in any other part of Greece, and sophists are more numerous in those regions: but the people there deny it and make pretence of ignorance, in order to prevent the discovery that it is by wisdom that they have ascendancy over the rest of the Greeks, like those sophists of whom Protagoras was speaking Footnote 2cf. Plat. Prot. 316d. This whole passage is a mocking answer to Protagoras’ eulogy of sophistry. ; they prefer it to be thought that they owe their superiority to fighting and valor, conceiving that the revelation of its real cause would lead everyone to practise this wisdom. So well have they kept their secret that they have deceived the followers of the Spartan cult in our cities, with the result that some get broken ears by imitating them, bind their knuckles with thongs, go in for muscular exercises, and wear dashing little cloaks, Footnote 3Short cloaks or capes worn in a fashion imitated from the Spartans. as though it were by these means that the Spartans were the masters of Greece. And when the Spartans wish to converse unrestrainedly with their sophists, and begin to chafe at the secrecy of their meetings, they pass alien acts against the laconizing set Footnote 4i.e., people who have come to acquire the Spartan way of life, in order to spread it in other cities. and any other strangers within their gates, and have meetings with the sophists unknown to the foreigners; while on their part they do not permit any of their young men to travel abroad to the other cities—in this rule they resemble the Cretans—lest they unlearn what they are taught at home. In those two states there are not only men but women also who pride themselves on their education; and you can tell that what I say is true and that the Spartans have the best education in philosophy and argument by this: if you choose to consort with the meanest of Spartans, at first you will find him making a poor show in the conversation; but soon, at some point or other in the discussion, he gets home with a notable remark, short and compressed—a deadly shot that makes his interlocutor seem like a helpless child.