Why did Plato write the Protagoras? If we consider the title, it is a text dedicated to the ancient sophist. The Platonic guest does not appear directly. Socrates mentions him, speaking about his meeting with the sophist to a friend. Plato becomes the bearer of memories, the third voice in line, echoing the Protagorean speech.

But what is the author's purpose? And why did he structure this work, the drama featuring the clever sophist, in this way? The characters, the plot, and the directing are not random. Neither are the ideas, of course, nor the topics of discussion. The latter, with the continuous reversals of positions and the deadlocked confrontations of arguments, seem to be undermined, diminishing the seriousness with which the discussants, the listeners, both then and now, are inclined to confront them.

But doesn’t Plato often do this? He so exhaustively hooks the speech of his protagonists to the word, to the linguistic analysis of the facets that emerge from the issue, that philosophical thought seems to gasp, appearing as a whimsical expectation or an insecure stance, constantly shifting, veering off course and retreating.

(. . .) [Excerpt from the introduction text of the edition]