"O Socrates, you are the most unbridled and insatiable of all the sophists," said Protagoras, laughing. "You have laid a trap for me."
"Why do you accuse me of laying a trap for you? We are not arguing with the sole desire of scoring a point against each other. I do not lay traps for you, as if I were a hunter of men; but I lay traps for truth, being a hunter of truth, and having no other reason for existence but to chase and follow after it wherever it may be hidden."
"We have no more time, Socrates," said Protagoras. "Tell me your own opinion of the gods and of the aim of life."
"What can I say to you," said Socrates, "beyond what a prophetess taught me? For she said that in our voyage through the world we are being reminded constantly of a previous existence, and that when we are brought face to face with beauty or with virtue or with truth, in short wherever we are moved to admiration as in contemplating a work of art like the chryselephantine Zeus at Olympia, it is the memory stirring in us of the place from which we came; and, further, she asked me if I had never felt an inexplicable sadness mingling with all beauty, as if beauty itself were inseparable from sorrow. 'Yes, Diotima,' I answered, 'in the presence of beauty we are all sufferers.' 'Then Socrates,' she said, 'let me tell you that this feeling of sadness in the presence of beauty is in reality a sense of exile; for however deeply we may drink of Lethe, the soul will retain some broken memories of the garden of the gods. When we meet with beauty in the world it is but a mutilated fragment of the divine beauty, but however small or slight it may be in itself, it is sufficient to call up into memory the divine beauty; and it is then that the sense of exile rushes in upon us like a wave and we weep and suffer anguish, and can neither tear ourselves away from the beautiful thing, nor be content with it; but all our being thirsts after the more perfect beauty. But let me warn you, Socrates, that however much you may be tortured in the presence of the beauty that lies scattered through the world, it is your business to collect each tiny fragment; and if it be a few bars of music you must build it into a song; if it be a mere tangle of coloured skeins you must weave it into a garment; if it be fragments of gold and ivory you must make them into a statue; if it be beautiful colours you must make them into a picture, or beautiful words then into a poem; and all this time you will suffer and be tortured with desire for the more perfect beauty. But, until you have gathered together the broken fragments which are in the world you will not return into the garden of the gods.' 'Then the gods exist?' I enquired. 'Certainly the gods exist,' answered Diotima; 'but they exist in a manner peculiar to themselves.' She would say nothing more, but when I questioned her smiled wisely and was silent."
Hermogenes met Lysis by the porch of the King Archon near the house of Callias.
"Have you heard the news, Hermogenes," said Lysis, "I have just been with Euripides. Protagoras is drowned. Within sight of Sicily a storm came up and drove the boat on the rocks. The sailors saved themselves by swimming; but Protagoras, who could not swim, sat on the prow of the boat. They saw him from the beach sitting calmly until the boat split in two. The waves reached out for him, and in a little time his bruised and battered body was cast up at their feet. As they reached for it it was snatched away by another wave. And so the sea played with him like a cat playing with a mouse. Then he was flung ashore. His face was bloody but smiling."
"It was a judgment of the gods," said Hermogenes.
"So everybody says."