Spengel says truly--in his [Greek: Sunagôgê\ Technô=n] p. 40--"Quod si sermo et locus hic esset de Sophistarum doctrinâ et philosophiâ, odium quod nunc vulgo in eos vertunt, majore ex parte sine causâ et ratione esse conceptum, eosque laude magis quam vituperatione dignos esse censendos--haud multâ cum operâ exponi posset. Sic, quo proscinduntur convicio, juvenes non nisi magno pretio eruditos esse, levissimum est: immo hoc sophistas suæ ipsorum scientiæ satis confisos esse neque eam despexisse, docet: et vitium, si modo vitium dicendum, commune est vel potius ortum optimis lyricæ poeseos asseclis, Simonide, Pindaro, aliis."] [Footnote 93: Plato, Theætet. p. 175 C.] [Footnote 94: It is to be remembered, however, that Plato, though doubtless exacting no fee, received presents from rich admirers like Dion and Dionysius: and there were various teachers who found presents more lucrative than fees. "M. Antonius Guipho, fuisse dicitur ingenii magni, memoriæ singularis, nec minus Graicé, quam Latino, doctus: præterea comi fucilique naturâ, _nec unquam de mercedibus pactus--eoque plura ex liberalitate discentium consecutus._" (Sueton. De Illustr. Grammat. 7.)] [Side-note: The art which Plato calls "the thoroughbred and noble Sophistical Art" belongs to Sokrates and to no one else. The Elenchus was peculiar to him. Protagoras and Prodikus were not Sophists in this sense.] We have seen also that Plato assigns to what he terms "the thoroughbred and noble Sophistic Art" ([Greek: ê( ge/nei gennai/a sophistikê\]), the employment of the Elenchus, for the purpose of destroying, in the minds of others, that false persuasion of existing knowledge which was the radical impediment to their imbibing acquisitions of real knowledge from the teacher.[95] Here Plato draws a portrait not only strikingly resembling Sokrates, but resembling no one else. As far as we can make out, Sokrates stood alone in this original conception of the purpose of the Elenchus, and in his no less original manner of working it out. To prove to others that they knew nothing, is what he himself represents to be his mission from the Delphian oracle. Sokrates is a Sophist of the most genuine and noble stamp: others are Sophists, but of a more degenerate variety. Plato admits the analogy with reluctance, and seeks to attenuate it.[96] We may remark, however, that according to the characteristic of the true Sophist here given by Plato, Protagoras and Prodikus were less of Sophists than Sokrates. For though we know little of the two former, yet there is good reason to believe, That the method which they generally employed was, that of continuous and eloquent discourse, lecture, exhortation: that disputation by short question and answer was less usual with them, and was not their strong point: and that the Elenchus, in the Sokratic meaning, can hardly be said to have been used by them at all. Now Plato, in this dialogue, tells us that the true and genuine Sophist