βάθρων: both words are suggestive of a boys' school. θρόνος, the high armchair, was, at least in later times, the accustomed seat of the rhetorician or sophist. Cf. Plut. περὶ τοῦ ἀκούειν, c. 12 ἀναστάντες γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ θρόνου καὶ ἀποθέμενοι τὰ βιβλία . . . μικροὶ φαίνονται (sc. οἱ σοφισταί). βάθρα are the school benches, cf. 325 e.—Eryximachus, an intelligent physician of reputation, appears also in Phaedr. 268 a and Symp. 176 b ff.; with regard to Phaedrus, see the dialogue which bears his name; these two are everywhere represented as inti mate friends. Andron is mentioned also in Gorg. 487 c as eagerly occupied with philosophy; he was afterwards perhaps one of the Four Hundred; probably the orator Androtion, against whom Demosthenes spoke, was his son.
Cf. 318 e; Hipp. Ma. 285 b ἃ σὺ (Hippias) κάλλιστα ἐπίστασαι, τὰ περὶ τὰ ἄστρα τε καὶ τὰ οὐράνια πάθη. Astronomy was devoted to the investigation of the motions, nature, and origin of the heavenly bodies, and the general constitution of the universe,—ἡ φύσις.
διέκρινε: Hippias pronounced his verdicts, like the judge or the schoolmaster, from his high seat. Cf. Rep. i. 348 b καὶ ἤδη δικαστῶν τινῶν τῶν διακρινούντων δεησόμεθα.
