you.’ For this reason, therefore, I shall praise no one, but it is enough for me if a man be moderate, and does no evil, for I ‘love and praise all.’ Here too he uses the language of the Mitylenæans, as speaking to Pittacus, ‘I praise and love all willingly,’ (here it is necessary after ‘willingly’ to distinguish in the pronunciation,) ‘who do nothing base,’ but there are some whom I praise and love unwillingly. Thee therefore, Pittacus, if thou hadst spoken with moderate reason and truth, I should never have blamed, but now, since you lie excessively and in matters of the greatest moment, while you think you are speaking the truth, for this reason I blame you. 90. Such appears to me, Prodicus and Protagoras,” said I, “to have been the design of Simonides in the composition of this ode.” Upon this Hippias said, “You seem to me, Socrates, to have given a good explanation of this ode, and I too,” he added, “have some pretty good remarks to make on it, which I will communicate to you, if you please.” “Do so, Hippias,” said Alcibiades, “but at another time; but now it is right to carry out the agreement which Protagoras and Socrates made with each other, and, if Protagoras wishes to ask any more questions, for Socrates to answer, but if he wishes to answer Socrates, then for the latter to ask questions.” 91. Then I said, “I leave it to Protagoras to choose whichever is more agreeable to him; but if he is willing, let us have done with odes and poems, but I would gladly, Protagoras, examine with you and come to a conclusion on the subject about which I first questioned you. For a discussion about poetry appears to me very like the festivities of mean and uneducated men; for they, through not being able to converse with one another over their cups, with their own voices and their own words, in consequence of deficiency of education, enhance the pay of female flute-players, and hiring at a great price the foreign voices of flutes, converse with each other through their voices. But when worthy, good, and well-educated men meet together at a banquet you will see neither flute-playing women, nor dancing-girls, nor harpists, but you will find that they are able to converse with themselves, without these trifles and pastimes, by means of their own voices, both speaking and listening to each other in turn, in good order, even though they have drunk a great deal of wine. 92. In like manner, such meetings as the present, when they are composed of such men as most of us profess ourselves to be, have no need of foreign voices, or of poets, of whom it is not possible to ask the meaning of what they say, and most of those who introduce them in their arguments say that the poet means some one thing and some another, disputing about a matter which they can never determine. But they dismiss such topics of conversation as these, and converse with each other through their own resources, and in their discussions receive and give proof of each other’s capacity.