:''In conclusion, the answer to the question «What is techne?», even limited to classical Greece, especially Athens, to a specific period and to the case of medicine, ought probably to be «It depends on whom you ask». There was more than one vantage point on the question of techne, and there was competition: within individual technai, in order to distinguish good and bad practitioners; in the epistemic arena, for what form of knowledge could subsume and dominate others. There were attempts on several sides to appropriate and control competing forms of knowledge (and what better form of appropriation than definition?). These attempts mirrored the fact that in the political arena there was competition for whose voice should be heard and what the best form of government was. Thus, in order fully to undestand understand both epistemological and political debates in classical Greece, we must recognize its interconnectedness. In the political arena, techne provided both a direc and an indirect referent. Directly, there were technicians in the assembly, there were technicians in the city, there were technicians in the army and specially the navy —technicians were present at the trials of philosophers and could help to bring them down; technicians could save your life, attempt an explanation of why their cure worked, and present themselves as models of virtue. Indirectly, the tensions inherent in the debate about techne were inscribed in myths, from the more recent parables put in Protagoras' mouth by Plato to the archetypal stories of Prometheus and Hephaestus. Like these figures, techne and technicians were symbols of change and mobility, of forces which, like the fire associated with both, were difficult to control and subordinate, but also, inescapably, necessary for the survival of human civilization.'' (Cuomo, p. 40.)