Gonzalez Lodge, Commentary on Plato: Gorgias

τῇ ἄλλῃ ἀγωνίᾳ: carried away by the excitement of his own thoughts, Gorgias forgets the caution which he had hitherto exercised in his conversation with Socrates, as well as the definition of rhetoric which the two had agreed upon above, and is led to set forth his art quite in the manner of the Sophists (the Eristics), as a means of defence and offence; a weapon which, though it required the use of the mind instead of the body, the lips instead of the arms, was no less a department of the science of fighting than boxing or the other exercises of the soldier. Some Sophists —i.e. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus —were at the same time teachers of fencing. Boxing, πυκτεύειν, which, in connexion with παλαίειν, or wrestling, formed the παγκρατιάζειν, went beyond the range of ordinary gymnastics, and belonged to the peculiar art of the athletes. Fighting in full armor (ὁπλομαχία) was not followed as a profession until after the Peloponnesian War. As in all these exercises, so in rhetoric the great object was not public, but private, not advantage to the community, but advancement for the individual.

ἔμαθε: the unexpressed subject, as of χρῆσθαι, is the indefinite ‘one.’

ἀποκτεινύναι: if one gets as far as the κεντεῖν, it is but a short step to the ἀποκτεινύναι.

φοιτήσας: φοιτᾶν is the regular word for attendance at a school; hence φοιτητής, a ‘scholar.’

εὖ ἔχων τὸ σῶμα: not merely by the gift of nature, but also, as πυκτικὸς γενόμενος, by education.