“Not with my outward eyes.”
“Does she then exist outside you, or inside you?”
“If no one were listening to us, I would answer ‘She is not outside of me, therefore she is not anywhere at all.’”
Pericles interrupted him: “You are talking of the gods of the State: friends, take care!”
“Help, Protagoras! Socrates is throttling me!” cried Phidias.
“In my opinion it is not Zeus but Prometheus who has created men,” answered the Sophist. “But Zeus gave unfinished man two imperishable gifts—the sense of shame and conscience.”
“Then Protagoras was not made by Zeus, for he lacks both.” This thrust came from Alcibiades. But now the taciturn tragedian Euripides began to speak: “Allow me to say something both about Zeus and about Prometheus; and don’t think me discourteous if I cite my great teacher Aeschylus when I speak about the gods.”
But Pericles broke in: “Unless my eyes deceive me, I saw just now a pair of ears projecting from behind the pillar of Hermes, and these ass’s ears can only belong to the notorious tanner.”
“Cleon!” exclaimed Alcibiades.
But Euripides continued: “What do I care about the tanner, since I do not fear the gods of the State? These gods, whose decline Aeschylus foretold long ago! Does not his Prometheus say that the Olympian Zeus will be overthrown by his own descendant—the son that will be born of a virgin? Is it not so, Socrates?”