James Doyle has performed a considerable service by calling attention to the way innwhich the opening of Plato’s Gorgias prefigures ‘the opposition between philosophynand its deadly rival rhetoric, and the ruthless contention by which this opposition isndramatized’ throughout the dialogue:n1 The words , the first wordsnof the dialogue, anticipate the ensuing conflict between Socrates, the champion ofnphilosophy, and Gorgias, Polus and Callicles, who bear the standard of the ‘art’ ofnrhetoric; Socrates’ claim that his late arrival is to be blamed on Chaerephon, whon‘forced us to dally in the agora’, reminds the reader that it was Chaerephon’s questionnput to the Delphic oracle, as reported in the Apology, that inspired in Socrates hisnlifelong dedication to dialectic, practised largely in the agora.n2 Inevitably, Doyle hasnnot said the last word on the subject.
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