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[269d] you are right. But how and from whom is the truly rhetorical and persuasive art to be acquired?

Socrates
Whether one can acquire it, so as to become a perfect orator, Phaedrus, is probably, and perhaps must be, dependent on conditions, like everything else. If you are naturally rhetorical, you will become a notable orator, when to your natural endowments you have added knowledge and practice; at whatever point you are deficient in these, you will be incomplete. But so far as the art is concerned, I do not think the quest of it lies along the path of Lysias and Thrasymachus.


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  • Commentary references to this page (3):
    • R. G. Bury, The Symposium of Plato, 200A
    • R. G. Bury, The Symposium of Plato, 223A
    • J. Adam, A. M. Adam, Commentary on Plato, Protagoras, CHAPTER XXV
  • Cross-references to this page (3):
    • Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 3.5.2
    • Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 3.5.3
    • William Watson Goodwin, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb, Chapter IV
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (4):
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