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[2] Why have I appeared today in this unaccustomed garb? Well, you shall hear the reason if you have no objection to lending me your ears - no, not the ones you use for preachers of sermons, but the ears you usually prick up for mountebanks, clowns and fools, the sort of ears that once upon a time our friend Midas listened with to Pan.3 I've a fancy to play the Sophist before you, and I don't mean by that one of the tribe today who cram tiresome trivialities into the heads of schoolboys and teach them a more than feminine obstinacy in disputation - no, I shall follow the ancients who chose the name Sophist in preference to the damaging title of philosopher or lover of wisdom.4 Their concern was to provide eulogies in praise of gods and heroes, so it's a eulogy you are going to hear now, though not one of Hercules or Solon. It's in praise of myself, namely, FOLLY.
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