Protagoras portrays political virtue as a gift from gods to men, which is shared out equally to all—that is, everyone can partake of virtue, unlike more specialized skills, like flute-playing. It’s for this reason, says Protagoras, that we punish people when they fall short of what virtue would demand. On the other hand, not everyone is equally virtuous, and this is where Protagoras comes in—he, after all, is able to teach people how to be more virtuous than they are by nature.
