”Hom. Il. 21.308
In the same way I call upon you, lest Protagoras lay Simonides in ruins. For indeed to rehabilitate Simonides requires your artistry, [340b] by which you can discriminate between wishing and desiring as two distinct things in the fine and ample manner of your statement just now. So please consider if you agree with my view. For it is not clear that Simonides does contradict himself. Now you, Prodicus, shall declare your verdict first: do you consider becoming and being to be the same or different?
Different, to be sure, said Prodicus.
Now in the first passage, I said, Simonides gave it as his own opinion that it is hard for a man [340c] to become good in truth.
Quite true, said Prodicus.
And he blames Pittacus, I went on, for saying not, as Protagoras holds, the same as himself, but something different. For what Pittacus said was not, as Simonides said, that it is hard “to become” but “to be” good. Now being and becoming, Protagoras, as our friend Prodicus says, are not the same thing; and if being and becoming are not the same thing, Simonides does not contradict himself. Perhaps Prodicus [340d] and many others might say with Hesiod that to become good is hard, ““for Heaven hath set hard travail on the way to virtue; and when one reacheth the summit thereof, 'tis an easy thing to possess, though hard before.””Hes. WD 289
When Prodicus heard this he gave me his approval: but Protagoras observed: Your correction, Socrates, contains an error greater than that which you are correcting.
To which I answered: then it is a bad piece of work I have done, it would seem, Protagoras, and I am an absurd sort of physician; [340e] my treatment increases the malady.
Just so, he said.
How is that? I asked.
Great, he replied, would be the ignorance of the poet, if he calls it such a slight matter to possess virtue, which is the hardest thing in the world, as all men agree.
Then I remarked: Upon my word, how opportunely it has happened that Prodicus is here to join in our discussion! For it is very likely, Protagoras, that Prodicus' wisdom is a gift of long ago from heaven,
