The topic of this paper is Socrates. To pander" means to give in or to serve the cheaper or lower desires and tastes of others and to use their weaknesses for the benefit of the "pander." A "pander" is a middleman between a person who wants to buy cheap pleasure and the person who wants to sell it. The pander is a pimp. Socrates considered the oratory as cheap as this because the listeners of an orator simply listened to his ideas and did not send back their opinion and reactions to the orator to accept or reject it. He viewed orators (or the Sophists of his time) as speaking without interest to the truthfulness of what they said before others, but only to influence them to accept their thinking. This spread of wrong thinking or false information was, to Socrates, the greatest evil. He added that, even if the orators (or Sophists) were able to influence their listeners, it did not work for them, because they spoke and did the false things that were not for their good.
