Motion and relation are key themes in later Platonic philosophy. The article examines the role of these themes in Protagoras''s "secret doctrine" in Plato''s Theaetetus.
This doctrine is based on a combination of specific relationality (namely the "bipolar" subjective relationality whose model is perception) and a specific motion (namely the motion of generation and corruption) and forms an "ontological basis" for the epistemological-ethical conglomerate of Protagoras'' sophistic rhetoric. Plato in his later philosophy oppose this conglomerate with an alternative ontology founded on a different and wider conception of relation and motion and in this way incorporates some modified elements of this "secret doctrine" and rhetoric in his own philosophy.