Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/384

354 by the porter, irritated by the crowd of visitors, and were with difficulty admitted. When they got in they found Protagoras walking round the cloistered court, with a number of the most distinguished young Athenians walking in line with him on either hand, while a crowd of other young men followed respectfully behind, whom the charm of his eloquence had drawn from the several cities he had visited to follow him. Socrates was amused to notice how neatly the crowd managed never to get in front of him. When he turned it opened to let him pass and then fell in again behind. In other parts of the same court were Hippias and Prodicus, each with his band of admirers, but Protagoras is the chief centre of attraction, and to him Socrates addresses himself with a politeness which, though tinged with irony, is yet reverential in tone and manner. The scene is dramatic, yet it doubtless represents in its main features the sort of thing which occurred when famous Sophists visited a Greek city. The welcome that philosophers found at Athens—tempered by peremptory expulsion if their tenets were regarded as dangerous—tended to make it the natural home of philosophy and gradually to become a kind of university, to which young men resorted to complete their education. There they found a variety of schools to suit their particular tastes and needs, founded and endowed with houses and other property by their original teachers or subsequent adherents. Thus Plato (B.C. 427–347) taught for many years in the gymnasium outside the walls called Academeia, whence