_Gorg._ I say it is the power of persuading by words judges in a court of justice, senators in the senate-house, and the hearers in a public assembly, and in every other convention of a political nature. Moreover, by this power you will make the physician your slave, and the master of gymnastics your slave, and the money-getter will be found to have gained money, not for himself, but for another, for you who are able to speak, and persuade the multitude. _Socr._ At length you appear to me, Gorgias, to have shewn as nearly as possible what kind of art you consider rhetoric to be; and if I understand you rightly, you say that rhetoric is the artificer of persuasion, and that its whole employment and the sum of it terminates in this. Can you say that rhetoric has any further power than that of producing persuasion in the minds of the hearers? _Gorg._ By no means, Socrates; but you appear to me to have defined it sufficiently. For that is the sum of it. 18. _Socr._ Listen then, Gorgias. Be assured that I, as I persuade myself, if there is any one, who in conversing with another, wishes to know the very thing about which the conversation is, be assured, I say, that I am such a person; and I think that you are too. _Gorg._ What then, Socrates? _Socr._ I will now tell you. The persuasion which you speak of as resulting from rhetoric, what it is, and with what particulars it is conversant, be assured I do not clearly understand, not but that I have a suspicion of what I suppose you mean, and about what it is employed: yet I will not the less ask you what persuasion you mean results from rhetoric, and with what particulars it is conversant. Why then do I who have a suspicion ask you, and not rather myself speak? Not on your account, but on account of the discussion, that it may proceed in such a manner as to make the subject of the discussion most clear to us. 19. For consider whether I seem to you right in putting the question to you: just as if I should ask you what kind of a painter is Zeuxis? if you were to tell me that he paints animals, might I not justly enquire of you, what kind of animals he paints? is it not so[61]? _Gorg._ Certainly. _Socr._ And would it not be for this reason, because there are also other painters who paint many other animals? _Gorg._ Yes. _Socr._ But if no one else but Zeuxis painted them, you would have answered properly. _Gorg._ Assuredly. _Socr._ Come then, with respect to rhetoric, tell me, whether it appears to you that rhetoric alone produces persuasion, or do other arts produce it likewise? My meaning is this: Does he who teaches any thing persuade what he teaches, or not? _Gorg._ He does certainly persuade, Socrates. _Socr._ Again, if we speak of the same arts of which we just now made mention, does not arithmetic teach us such things as relate to number? and does not an arithmetician the same? _Gorg._ Certainly. 20. _Socr._ Does it not also persuade? _Gorg._ Yes.