1. Chios is an island about 120 miles ENE of Athens, but all the Greek-speaking east Mediterranean was considered familiar, because it had ‘always’ been Greek. Thurii was a colony in south Italy – more recent Greek territory – founded in 443 near the site of Sybaris. Thurii was the brainchild of the great Athenian statesman Pericles: a panhdlenic colony initiated by Athens.

2. Exile was not uncommon; it was a punishment and a hardship, but no great stigma was necessarily attached. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus may simply have been on the losing side in some political upheaval.

3. Pancration was a brutal combination of wrestling and boxing (see also p. 184 n. 1); the word means, literally, ‘all-powerful’. On omniscience, see Section K.

4. Reading παμμάχω, ού καθ’ δ τώ ‘Aκαρνάνε with Gifford. Nothing is known of these Acarnanian brothers. Acarnania was a district in western Greece.

5. Retaining μάχη, ή πάντων έστι κρατεîν with the manuscripts.

6. Laches 178a refers to a display by a professional teacher of fighting in armour, probably to attract students.

7. A common sophistic enterprise (see Guthrie, III, Chapter 8).

8. This was a common charge against the sophists (see pp. 215–16) and one which, therefore, is made against Socrates himself by the comic poet Aristophanes (Clouds 98–9). But see 287e for Socrates’ belief that the truth is irrefutable.

9. On eristic, see pp. 299–300.