THREE:We have said that Protagoras was a partisan of Nomos, or convention, against Nature. That was the conservative side of his character. Still, Nomos was not with him what it had been with the older Greeks, an immutable tradition indistinguishable from physical law. It was a human creation, and represented the outcome of inherited experience, admitting always of change for the better. Hence the vast importance which he attributed to education. This, no doubt, was magnifying his own office, for the training of youth was his profession. But, unquestionably, the feelings of his more liberal contemporaries went with him. A generation before, Pindar had spoken scornfully of intellectual culture as a vain attempt to make up for the absence of genius which the gods alone could give. Yet Pindar himself was always careful to dwell on the services rendered by professional trainers to the93 victorious athletes whose praises he sang, and there was really no reason why genius and culture should be permanently dissociated. A Themistocles might decide offhand on the questions brought before him; a Pericles, dealing with much more complex interests, already needed a more careful preparation.