On the web you'll find that everyone from wikipedia to librivox questions whether this dialogue was written by Plato or an admirer. Unconcerned with authenticity myself, I wish only to note that the dialogue contains as succinct a definition of ethos as possible. Clearer than Aristotle's.
"For just as in the law courts, if two witnesses testify to the same fact, one of whom seems to be an honest fellow and the other a rogue, the testimony of the rogue often has the contrary effect on the judges' minds to what he intended, while the same evidence if given by the honest man at once strikes them as perfectly true. And probably the audience have something of the same feeling about yourself and Prodicus; they think him a Sophist and a braggart, and regard you as a gentleman of courtesy and worth. For they do not pay attention to the argument so much as to the character of the speaker."
A final note: the more I read the debate about the authenticity of certain dialogues, the more I notice that those dialogues are usually in question because the scholars disagree with them. It seems to be a simple methodology: The dialogues I agree with are authentic; those I disagree with are not.
I wonder if most of the "knowledge" on the internet comes from an article written in 1935, avaliable as everything today seems to be, on JSTOR.
"The Pseudo-Platonic Dialogue Eryxias."
D. E. Eichholz
The Classical Quarterly
Vol. 29, No. 3/4 (Jul. - Oct., 1935), pp. 129-149
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/636604
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