"Let us hold our discussion together in our own persons, making trial of the truth and of ourselves"

Protagoras summons interlocutors into a compact of shared accountability. “Hold our discussion together” rejects monologue and spectacle; conversation is a cooperative craft where each participant bears weight for its direction and integrity. Dialogue is not merely a contest of cleverness but a joint venture that binds speakers to one another through the standards they invoke and the methods they practice.

“In our own persons” calls for embodied presence. Arguments should not be outsourced to authority or tradition; they must be owned, inhabited, and risked. Ethos and logos entwine: the character of the speaker becomes part of the argument, and the argument tests the character. To speak is to stake oneself, one’s experiences, commitments, and vulnerabilities, rather than hiding behind impersonal formulas.

“Making trial of the truth and of ourselves” sets a double examination. Ideas must be tested for coherence, evidence, and consequence; simultaneously, the inquirers test their dispositions, humility, courage, patience, fairness. Debate becomes a proving ground where errors are welcomed as opportunities for refinement. The courtroom resonance of “trial” evokes rules, procedures, and impartial standards, yet it also emphasizes that judgment falls on persons as much as propositions. To be refuted is not to be diminished but to be improved.

The phrase sketches a civic ethic. In a democratic culture, truth is not delivered from on high; it emerges through disciplined exchange among citizens willing to be accountable to reasons accessible to all. Protagoras’s human-centered outlook implies that truth is discovered within the horizons of human experience and language, and thus demands participation rather than passive reception. The measure is not raw subjectivity but the rigor of a shared process: attentive listening, charitable interpretation, readiness to revise.

Carried into the present, the invitation challenges polemical habits. Speak as someone answerable. Test claims and test the self who makes them. Build a common world by carrying the dialogue together, not to win, but to become truer and more worthy of the truths you seek.