From Socrates’s encounter with the most famous sophist of the day, we naturally turn to Socrates’s conversation with the most famous rhetorician, Gorgias. Although that conversation is only the first and shortest of what prove to be three conversations recorded in the Gorgias, it is in some ways the most fundamental. We will begin by looking at Socrates’s initial conversation with Gorgias, where they arrive at a definition of “rhetoric,” according to which it is the art of persuading an audience of something without, however, teaching them the truth about it. We will consider next Gorgias’s long speech, which is intended to be a sort of advertisement for his art and a demonstration of it. Finally, we will examine Socrates’s response to that advertisement, and bring out where Gorgias too proves not to be all that he claims.