[Side-note: Remarks on the Theagês--analogy with the Lachês.]
The Theagês figured in the list of Thrasyllus as first in the fifth Tetralogy: the other three members of the same Tetralogy being Charmidês, Lachês, Lysis. Some persons considered it suitable to read as first dialogue of all.[22] There are several points of analogy between the Theagês and the Lachês, though with a different turn given to them. Aristeides and Thucydides are mentioned in both of them: Sokrates also is solicited to undertake the duty of teacher. The ardour of the young Theagês to acquire wisdom reminds us of Hippokrates at the beginning of the Protagoras. The string of questions put by Sokrates to Theagês, requiring that what is called wisdom shall be clearly defined and specialised, has its parallel in many of the Platonic dialogues. Moreover the declaration of Sokrates, that he knows nothing except about matters of love, but that in them he is a consummate master--is the same as what he explicitly declares both in the Symposion and other dialogues.[23]
[Footnote 23: Symposion, 177 E. [Greek: ou)/te ga\r a)/n pou e)gô\ a)pophê/saimi, o(\s ou)de/n phêmi a)/llo e)pi/stasthai ê)\ ta\ e)rôtika/.] Compare the same dialogue, p. 212 B, 216 C. Phædrus, 227 E, 257 A; Lysis, 204 B. Compare also Xenoph. Memor. ii. 6, 28; Xenoph. Sympos. iv. 27.
It is not reasonable to treat this declaration of Sokrates, in the Theagês, as an evidence that the dialogue is the work of a _falsarius_, when a declaration quite similar is ascribed to Sokrates in other Platonic dialogues.]
[Side-note: Chief peculiarity of the Theagês--stress laid upon the divine sign or Dæmon.]
But the chief peculiarity of the Theagês consists in the stress which is laid upon the Dæmon, the divine voice, the inspiration of Sokrates. This divine auxiliary is here described, not only as giving a timely check or warning to Sokrates, when either he or his friends contemplated any inauspicious project--but also as intervening, in the case of those youthful companions with whom he conversed, to promote the improvement of one, to obstruct that of others; so that whether Sokrates will produce any effect or not in improving any one, depends neither upon his own efforts nor upon those of the recipient, but upon the unpredictable concurrence of a divine agency.[24]