previous next

[127a]

Socrates
And do you now, when you are behaving in just the same way to your father, feel surprised and blame him for being at a loss what to do with you and where to send you? Why, we are ready to place you with any well-bred Athenian statesman you may choose, who will train you free of charge1; and so not only will you be at no expense of money, but will gain far greater commendation amongst the mass of men than if you studied with anyone else.

Theages
But then, Socrates, are not you too one of our well-bred gentlemen? Indeed, if you will agree to instruct me, I am content and seek no other.


1 Cf. the passage in the Protagoras(320 A, B)which shows that young men of good family were often placed with older friends of standing and experience in order to prepare for public life. Cf. also Meno 94 D.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 8 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1955.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1903)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: