ἐπιβουλεύων: with the inf. means endeavor stealthily, plan to do a thing unobserved. Cf. Symp. 203 b ἡ Πενία ἐπιβουλεύουσα παιδίον ποιήσασθαι, Rep. viii. 566 b βιαίῳ δὴ θανάτῳ ἐπιβουλεύουσιν ἀποκτιννύναι λάθρᾳ (τὸν τύραννον).
κολοῦσαι: often has something exalted as its obj., cf. Hdt. vii. 10. 5 φιλέει γὰρ ὁ θεὸς τὰ ὑπερέχοντα κολούειν.—Protagoras, professing to adhere to the ethical question raised by Socrates, while merely changing its mode of treatment, has raised a wholly different one (cf. 339
α β). What Socrates thinks of the value of a discussion of the poets, he indicates below (cf. 347 e). Now, therefore, meeting Protagoras on his own ground, and assuming that in the examination of Simonides's poem a discussion of virtue is the real end, he purposes to find the true doctrine in the poem; and, as the first step, discovers in it a polemic aim. If this is contrary to the view of Protagoras, the latter has full opportunity to refute it (see on 347 a).
