Protagoras

Gratton is right that Plato always begins dialogues brilliantly. What do we have here? Socrates saying that he isn’t in love with Alcibiades anymore, because he’s just met someone better. And what follows could fit just as easily in a Giordano Bruno dialogue or a Shakespeare comedy:

FRIEND: Really? An Athenian or a foreigner?

SOCRATES: A foreigner.

FRIEND: Where from?

SOCRATES: Abdera.

FRIEND: And this stranger struck you as such a handsome person that you put him above the son of Clinias in that respect?

SOCRATES: Yes. Must not perfect wisdom take the palm for handsomeness?

FRIEND: You mean you have been meeting some wise man?

SOCRATES: Say rather the wisest man now living, if you agree that the description fits Protagoras.

FRIEND: What? Protagoras is in Athens?

SOCRATES: And has been for two days.

I’d say that both “Abdera” & “And has been for two days” are candidates for the best deadpan Socrates lines ever.

I also love that “Friend” is how the other character is identified. It reminds me of someone I once met who said that “in King Lear, there is a man called Fool.”