To judge by its bitter tone, Plato's Gorgias was written shortly after the death of Socrates.

Though Gorgias was a Sicilian teacher of oratory, the dialogue is more concerned with ethics than with the art of public speaking. The ability, professed particularly by the Sophists, to make the worse cause appear the better, struck Plato as the source of all corruption. The dialogue's chief interest lies, not in Gorgias' courteous outline of his art, but in the clash between Socrates, the true philosopher, and Callicles, a young Athenian of the stamp of Alcibiades, who brashly maintains that might is right.