1. To throw one’s opponent three times in wrestling constituted victory. Plato next mixes in a metaphor from swimming.

2. See Linfortb on this passage and these rites. The Corybantes were followers of the Mother goddess Cybele, whose ecstatic and cathartic cult had entered Greece from Asia Minor. See also p. 55 n. 1 and I on 536c.

3. See p. 110. 3.

4. In saying that the sophists are concerned to ‘point out’ ambiguities, Socrates is, of course, being heavily ironic; so when he says that this part of the sophists’ course is trivial, be does not necessarily mean that it is trivial to point out ambiguities, but only to exploit them. This bears on the question of Plato’s awareness of fallacy: see pp. 301–2.