for it is on a country's laws that its whole welfare depends.

All men take as much pleasure in listening to this kind of prose as in listening to poetry, and many desire to take lessons in it, believing that those who excel in this field are wiser and better and of more use to the world than men who speak well in court.

How then is it necessary to regard as just the blame of Helen, who either passionately in love or persuaded by discourse or abducted by force or constrained by divine constraints did the things she did, escaping responsibility every way?

And many fall into useless troubles and terrible diseases and incurable dementias; thus sight engraves in the mind images of things seen. And the frightening ones, many of them, remain; and those that remain are just like things said.

For just as different drugs draw off different humors from the body, and some put an end to disease and others to life, so too of discourses: some give pain, others delight, others terrify, others rouse the hearers to courage, and yet others by a certain vile persuasion drug and trick the soul.

He who persuaded (as constrainer) did wrong; while she who was persuaded (as one constrained by means of the discourse) is wrongly blamed.

For if all people possessed memory concerning all things past, and awareness of all things present, and foreknowledge of all things to come, discourse would not be similarly similar;

By means of words, inspired incantations serve as bringers-on of pleasure and takers-off of pain. For the incantation's power, communicating with the soul's opinion, enchants and persuades and changes it, by trickery. Two distinct methods of trickery and magic are to be found: errors of soul, and deceptions of opinion.

Accordingly, if one must attribute responsibility to Fortune and the god, one must acquit Helen of infamy.

For the will of a god cannot be hindered by human forethought.

her father was in fact the god, but said to be mortal, Tyndareus and Zeus--of whom the one, by being, seemed, while the other, by speech, was disproved--and the one was the mightiest of men while the other was tyrant over all

It is not unclear, not even to a few, that the woman who is the subject of this discourse was the foremost of the foremost men and women, by nature and by birth

practice whatever' you hear.

if you focus your attention, your mind, making progress by this means, will perceive more.

Therefore it must be that he knows everything.

Because it is necessary for the man who intends to speak correctly to speak about the things which he knows. It follows that he will know everything

And, first of all, how will it not be possible for a man who knows about the nature of all things to act rightly in every case and (teach the city) to do so too?

And they say that this procedure is also not only good but exceptionally democratic, whereas I think that democratic is the last thing it is.

We learn our words in this fashion and we don't know who our teachers are.

With respect to the fourth point, that some do not become wise in spite of .associating with the sophists, many people also do not succeed in learning their letters in spite of studying them.

that there are in fact no acknowledged teachers,

it is that wisdom and virtue can neither be taught nor learned.

("Glaucus") and ("white"), or ("Xanthus") and ("blonde"), or ("Xuthus ") and ("nimble").

And we ought to bring up the question whether it is the sane or the demented who speak at the right moment. For whenever anyone asks this question they answer that the two groups say the same things, but that the wise speak at the right moment and the demented at the wrong one.

Because if you ask them this sort of question, whether madness differs from sense, or wisdom from folly, they say " yes ".

" The demented and the sane and the wise and the foolish both say and do the same things.

(just the way a man is the same person when he is a child and a young man and an adult and an old man.)

My opponents would declare that it is right and just to do these things to one's enemies but disgraceful and wicked to do so to one's friends

In Lacedaemon it is seemly for girls to do athletics; in Lacedaemon it is disgraceful for girls to do athletics, and so forth.

And if you investigate in this way, you will see another law for mortals: nothing is always seemly or always disgraceful, but the right occasion takes the same things and makes them disgraceful and then alters them and makes them seemly.

Egyptians do not think the same things seemly as other people do:

To murder one's friends and fellow-citizens is wicked but to slaughter the enemy is admirable. And examples like this can be given on all topics.

There is nothing to prevent the Great King from being in the same state as a beggar.