Chapter VII

SCHOOLS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS AND SOPHISTS.

Having thus drawn as complete a picture as the plan of our work would permit, of the physical training of the Greeks in all its branches, comprehending Gymnastics properly so called, together with those other exercises which under the name of field-sports were enjoyed rather than studied under the lead of no master but experience, we now return to that mental discipline, which for the most part exerted its influence in the developement of the intellectual faculties at the same time that the foregoing bodily discipline brought forth all the energies of the frame. We shall thus have traversed the whole circle of Hellenic education, when we shall have exhibited the youth passing through the schools of the philosophers and sophists into the world.[794]

Footnote 794:

Cf. M. Ant. Muret. Orat. vii. p. 70. sqq.

Their mode of teaching differed very materially from ours. It scarcely seemed an object with them to devour large quantities of learning, but going leisurely again and again over the same ground they appeared to give the lessons they received time to sink like gentle rain into their minds. Some advantage, too, arose from their method of teaching, as far as possible, orally. The master was to them instead of a library. A book has but one set of phrases for all. But the living teacher, if he found his pupils could not rise to his language, could lower it to meet them half-way, could be brief or expansive, or general or minute, as the necessities of the moment required. There was a familiarity, too, in the relation, scarcely compatible with our manners. The youth forgot he was learning, and rather supposed himself to be searching in the company of a friend for truths equally unknown to both. This appears to have been more particularly the case in their moral studies,[795] at least in the Socratic schools, where all the pomp of wisdom was laid aside that it might be the more popular.

Footnote 795:

Vid. Ant. Muret. Orat. iv. 43. sqq.

It has been already remarked that the first lessons in morals were learned from the poets, whom, in my opinion, Plato wrongs most egregiously when he arraigns their fables as so many sources of immorality.[796] He appears, in fact, wilfully to confound them with those impostors, the purificators and diviners, who furnished the Popes with the original hint of penitences and indulgencies, and expiating crimes by proxy. But this is unjust. It is visiting the sins of low and sensual versifiers upon the divine heads of bards whom heaven itself had inspired. However this may be, upon the Greeks young and old no teachers exercised so powerful an influence as the poets, who, from Homer down to Callistratos,[797] whether in epic or after-dinner song, wielded the empire of their feelings despotically, prompting them to actions pregnant with renown. And the avidity with which their lessons were imbibed, is compared to that of a swarm of bees alighting (ἐπιπτομένοι)[798] on a bed of spring flowers. In fact, what Jason of Pheræ said of himself,—that he was devoured by the love of empire[799]—appears to have been true of the Athenian youth, in their irrepressible thirst after knowledge. Such of them, at least, as were εὐφυεῖς καὶ ἱκανοὶ, are said to have hungered fiercely after philosophy, and that not for any particular part but for the whole. And Socrates declares that he who while young is fastidious in his studies, rejecting this, disliking that, before mature reason has taught him which is useful and which is not, may consider himself what he pleases, but can never be great in learning or philosophy. To excel in these it is necessary insatiably to covet every kind of instruction, and joyfully to enter on the acquisition of it. He says, indeed, that they resemble sight-seers, greedy of every spectacle; or musical people, who are led by the ear wherever fiddling and singing are going forward; except that, with the latter pleasure is the sole motive, with the former an exalted passion for truth.[800] But what truths are the object of philosophy? Those which have regard to the nature and attributes of goodness, from which, as from a fountain, flow all the usefulness and advantages of virtue. Philosophy in Greece comprehended religion, and to be religious was to act justly, benevolently, mercifully towards men, humbly and piously towards God. To live thus, that is, to be virtuous, they considered it necessary to possess a knowledge of the whole theory of ethics, since virtue, in their opinion, is incompatible with ignorance. But man, besides being a moral being, accountable to God, is a political being, accountable to the laws of his country. He has duties also to perform towards that country. To perform these properly he must comprehend the nature of a state, and the relations subsisting between the state and the individuals who compose it; that is, he must be acquainted with the science of politics. Again in all free states, reasoning and persuasion, not blind will and brute force, are the instruments of government. The citizen must, therefore, be versed in logic and eloquence,[801] that he may think correctly and explain clearly and forcibly to others the convictions which determine his own judgment. We have thus a cycle of Greek studies with the reasons on which they were founded.

Footnote 796:

Plat. de Rep. ii. t. i. p. 112. sqq. Stallb. Cf. Hardion, Dissert.
sur l’Eloquence, iii. Biblioth. Academ. t. iii. p. 194. p. 210. sqq.

Footnote 797:

See Schoel. Hist. de la Lit. Grecq. i. 288. Lowth. Poes. Sacr. Hebr.
p. 12. Leipz.

Footnote 798:

Plat. de Rep. ii. t. i. p. 115. Stallb. On the ardent and noble
temperament of Athenian youth, see the note of Valckennaer, ad
Xenoph. Mem. iii. 3. 13. p. 286. Schneid. Cf. Plat. de Rep. v. t. i.
p. 345.

Footnote 799:

Aristot. Polit. iii. 4.

Footnote 800:

Plat. de Rep. v. t. i. p. 393. seq. Stallb.

Footnote 801:

Plat. Gorg. t. iii. p. 27. De Rep. t. vi. p. 358. sqq. Bekk.

With regard to their religious education, which commenced in the nursery and was interwoven with every other study, it may be observed that without it no person at Athens could rise to any eminence, or command, even in private life, the respect of his fellow-citizens. To be in favour with them a man must be supposed to stand well with the gods. They conceived, in fact, that while conscience remained unstifled, there would be a sense of religion, and that when this went, probity, for the most part, and honour fled along with it. For regarding the deity in the light of a parent,—"we are all his offspring,"—irreligion appeared to them something like a disposition to parricide, a compound of injustice with the basest and most atrocious ingratitude. Arrived at this pitch, a man to compass his ends would scruple at nothing. They, therefore, regarded every symptom of impiety as a blow aimed at the democracy, of which Zeus was king. He who tramples on his country’s religion, which is the basis of all its laws, will infallibly, if it be in his power, trample next on those laws themselves, and next on his fellow-citizens whom the laws protect. Hence the terror, the vengeance, and, indeed, the cruelty arising out of the mutilation of the Hermæ, and the profanation of the mysteries, and the prosecution which followed, of Alcibiades, Andocides, and the rest. An attempt had been made to break down that enclosure of reverential sanctity which surrounded the commonwealth, and commended it to the protection of heaven. They considered the act a formal renouncing of the Almighty, and feared,—so imperfect were their notions,—lest the impiety of the few should redound to the detriment of the whole.

The remark is common in the mouths[802] of men that the education of the people should be conformable to the spirit of their institutions. But this is a mere truism, and means no more than this,—that men should not be enjoined one thing by their laws and political constitution, and another by the habits and maxims taught in youth. The grand difficulty, however, always has been to make them so to harmonise in practice that they should be but two parts of the same system.

Footnote 802:

See on this part of the subject Destutt de Tracy. Com. sur l’Esprit
des Loix, p. 25. sqq.

In monarchies[803] a spirit of exclusion, something like that on which the system of castes is built, must pervade the whole business of education. The nobility must have schools to themselves, or, if wealthy plebeians be suffered to mingle with them, superior honour and consideration must be yielded to the former. The masters must look up to them and to their families, not to the people for preferment and advancement; and the plebeians, though superior in number, must be weak in influence, and be taught to borrow their tone from the privileged students.

Footnote 803:

In an ill-constituted state, observes Muretus, a good man cannot be
a good citizen, for he will desire to alter the government, which
being bad he cannot respect.—In Aristot. Eth. p. 398.

In an oligarchy, properly so called, there should be no mingling of the classes at all. Schools must be established expressly for the governors, and others for the governed. The basis of education should be the notion that some men were born for rule and others for subjection; that the happiness of individuals depends on uninquiring submission to authority; that their rulers are wise and they unwise; that all they have to do with the laws is to obey them; and all teachers must be made to feel that their admission among the great depends on the faithful advocacy of such notions.

In free states, again, the contrary course will best promote the ends of government; the schools must be strictly public, and not merely theoretically but practically open to all. There should be no compulsion to attend them, but ignorance of the things there taught should involve a forfeiture of civil rights as much as being of unsound mind; for in truth, an ignorant man is not of sound mind, any more than one unable to use all his limbs is of sound body. Here the discipline must be very severe. A spirit rigidly puritanical must pervade the studies and preside over the amusements. Every tendency irreligious, immoral, ungentlemanly, as unworthy the dignity of freedom, should be nipped in the bud. The students must be taught to despise all other distinctions but those of virtue and genius, in other words the power to serve the community. They should be taught to contemplate humanity as in other respects wholly on the same level, with nothing above it but the laws. The teachers must be dependent on the people alone, and owe their success to their own abilities and popular manners. And this last in a great measure was the spirit of Athenian education.[804]

Footnote 804:

The advantages of which were so much coveted by foreigners, that
they sent their children in crowds to be educated at Athens.—Æsch.
Epist. Orat. Att. xii. 214.

The best proof[805] that could be furnished of the excellence of a system of education would be its rendering a people almost independent of government, that is swayed more by their habits than by the laws. This was preëminently the case with the Athenians. They required to be very little meddled with by their rulers. Instructed in their duties and the reason which rendered them duties, accustomed from childhood to perform them, they lived as moral and educated men live still, independent of the laws.

Footnote 805:

A commonwealth, says Plato, once well constituted will proceed like
an ever rolling circle. For by persevering in good training and
instruction, the minds and disposition of the people will be
rendered good, and these again in their turn will improve the system
of training and instruction, and even the race of man itself, as the
breed of other animals, is rendered more excellent by care.—De Rep.
t. vi. p. 173. Cf. Isocrates, Areop. § 14. seq.

This was the effect. The causes must be sought in their discipline and studies. I have observed that among them a principal subject of investigation was the science of politics, that is the science according to the principles of which states are framed and preserved. Nor did they, as some do, conduct their studies in that cold manner in which men investigate matters of mere curiosity, or things they are never to do more than converse or write about. They studied it as a profession, as a means of rising to power, and through power to fame, that is with all the ardour and earnestness of which enthusiastic youth is capable. Education by this means exerted an influence unknown under other forms of government. A consciousness that they were engaged in a sort of sacred contest, of which all Greece was spectator, pervaded the youth of every rank, and impelled them irresistibly into that course of studies which promised the greatest probability of success. Hence, no doubt much of the enthusiasm with which philosophy was cultivated. It was often not so much the abstract love of wisdom as a conviction of the political value of that wisdom which filled the schools of the great men who taught at Athens, whether they were physiologists, mathematicians, masters of music, of strategy, or of eloquence. The example of Pericles applying himself to natural philosophy under Anaxagoras, and deriving thence those streams of pure and masculine eloquence which overflowed the Pnyx, operated forcibly on public opinion. By the same arts and studies men hoped to mount to equal elevation, forgetting that Anaxagoras only watered the plant spontaneously produced by nature.

However, the hopes and aspirations I have described filled the schools first of the philosophers, then of the sophists. And this is the natural course of things. Few pursue wisdom for its own sake, in order that it may purify and render holy their own minds. And by this dispensation of Providence society is a gainer; for, as man is constituted, no sooner does he possess any mental excellence, any knowledge or art or experience, which can be rendered available, than he comes eagerly forward with it to extort praise or reward from the community by conferring benefits upon it. The examples of reserve in this matter are few, nor, in fact, are they to be commended who in this or in any thing else hide their light under a bushel; and therefore Plato is wrong when he teaches that wise men will as a rule abstain from intermeddling with state affairs, unless constrained thereto by fines and menaces. He confesses, indeed, that the worst of all punishments is to be governed by evil men, and that to avoid this even philosophers will consent to hold the reins of government.[806] But where they do not, they are always in free states the masters of those who do. Their schools were the colleges and universities of the ancient world, and so long as freedom endured the great object of their philosophy was to create able citizens and a happy state. On this account their remains are still instinct with life. Their object was gradually to ripen human nature into perfection by perfecting its education and its institutions. They knew how completely a people is in the power of its teachers for good or for evil, and accordingly, with some few exceptions, applied themselves to elevate the conceptions, the moral tone, the feelings of their countrymen, seldom descending to trifling disquisitions excepting for relaxation in the intervals of more important inquiries.

Footnote 806:

Repub. i. t. vi. p. 42. seq. Bekk.

The physical sciences,[807] save in the case of their earliest cultivators, were regarded as simple handmaids to ethics and politics. Nevertheless, in the study of them much earnestness was exhibited. For, where knowledge is at all held in honour, men will always be found sufficiently prone to the palpable and visible. But even these pursuits assumed a peculiar form in Greece. The genius of the nation, essentially creative, developed its force and its peculiar energy in framing systems of physics, explaining the origin of the world, the birth of the human race, its early fortunes and fabulous history. Every great philosopher became, like an intellectual sun, the centre of a system of physics, and his disciples like satellites revolved around him, receiving and reflecting his light. This, despite of some inconveniences, was highly favourable to science. It compelled men to the study of the philosophical art of attack and defence. Each school became the reviewers and critics of its rivals, sought out their weak points, studied them profoundly, called up all its acuteness, all its subtlety, both to assault others and defend itself; and thus, whatever became of the system, the professors of it carried, as far as might be towards perfection, their intellectual powers, invested their reasonings with every grace of which they were susceptible, culled from the most recondite arts and hidden resources of style and eloquence.

Footnote 807:

Vid. Athen. ii. 18.—That geography entered but very little into
their studies may be inferred from Thucydides, vii. 1.

But, while this golden currency was circulating through Greece, enriching its mind and augmenting its chances of independence and happiness, a race of men sprang up, who brought into use a number of ingenious and beautiful counters,—I mean the sophists.[808] The influence of these men in the education of the Greeks has seldom been correctly appreciated. It has been more common to vituperate than to study them. They corrupted, we are told, the mind and manners of youth. But how? No one, as far as I know, has observed that to them is to be traced the extinction of the republican spirit and the opening of a way for despotism.[809] That they created the yearning after innovation I will not affirm; but their epoch constituted a period of transition from republican to monarchical institutions, and the only way in which they can be said to have corrupted the youth was by undermining that love of liberty and of country, the feeling of disinterestedness on which chiefly a commonwealth must be founded, and inculcating in lieu thereof a system of ethics more in conformity with the modifications of civil polity prevalent in modern times. In this way only did they corrupt and undermine the morals of their country. But in so far they effected it, and that the more easily, in that circumstances conspired, about the time they arose, to fling the whole business of teaching into their hands, insomuch that to be a sophist, and to teach youth, grew to be synonymous terms.[810]

Footnote 808:

Vid. Herod. i. 29. And Cf. Schœll. Hist. de la Lit. Grecq. ii. 134.
Isoc. de Perm. § 26. Muret. in Arist. Ethic. p. 477. Menag. ad Diog.
Laert. p. 5. a. b. &c.

Footnote 809:

Hobbes, the great representative of this class of men in modern
times, living under the despotism of the Stuarts, sought to turn the
tables upon the philosophers, and accused them of corrupting the
minds of youth. “As to rebellion, in particular against monarchy,
one of the most frequent causes of it is the reading of the books of
policy and histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans; from which
young men, and all others that are unprovided of the antidote of
solid reason, receiving a strong and delightful impression of the
great exploits of war, achieved by the conductors of their armies,
receive withal a pleasing idea of all they have done besides; and
imagine their great prosperity not to have proceeded from the
emulation of particular men, but from the virtue of their popular
form of government.”—Leviathan, pt. ii. c. 29. vol. iii. p.
315.—Edition of Sir William Molesworth.

Footnote 810:

Poll. iv. 17.

They were themselves, however, but a corruption of what in its origin was good, and always continued in the opinion of the undiscerning to be confounded with the men they aped.[811] Whether we have sophists among us at the present day, I will not determine; but this is the way they arose in Greece. It was soon discovered by shrewd and calculating men, that since philosophy excited much admiration and rendered its teachers objects of mark and reverence, it might by a little ingenuity be converted into a source of profit.[812] But by what means?—The philosophers at the outset were in possession of the popular ear, more through the sanctity of their lives, of which all could judge, than through their doctrines, necessarily comprehended in their fullest extent by few. They despaired, therefore, of the people. There existed, however, in Greece, and will ever exist in free states, young men of immeasurable ambition, who, impatient of the restraint of laws, would gladly cast them off, seize the reins of government, and become the tyrants of their country. The mere conception of such a design implies the possession of wealth and powerful friends. Eager for any help they enthusiastically welcomed all who seemed capable of promoting their views, and when the sophists appeared, enriched with a variety of knowledge, specious, eloquent, unscrupulous, they eagerly threw themselves into their arms, became their pupils, and in conjunction with them framed the subjugation of Greece.

Footnote 811:

Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 286. seq. Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 331.

Footnote 812:

That money was the sole object of the sophists is observed by
Isocrates, Hel. Encom. § 4. Elsewhere, with a stroke of sly humour
not usual with him, he says, they would sell anything short of
immortality for three or four minæ.—Cont. Sophist. § 3, p. 576. See
on the whole subject of the Sophists, Hard. Dissert. v. Bibl. Acad.
t. iii. p. 240. sqq. Muret. in Arist. Ethic. p. 533. Cressol. Theat.
Rhet. v. iii. p. 447.

In tracing this class of men to their origin, we must look back a great way, and endeavour to detect them, under a variety of forms, different from that in which they ultimately settled. They arose with the first philosophers, or the first poet who made self the centre of his researches, and sought to render the investigation of science a means of personal aggrandisement. Protagoras describes in Plato the rise of his own art; where, though a side blow be wrongfully aimed at poetry itself, the truth of the accusation against a number of poets cannot be denied. He makes good at the very outset what I have asserted above. They travelled, he says, over all Greece, alluring the noblest youths to abandon the company of their friends and fellow-citizens, to become their pupils, and be guided wholly by their maxims, the nature of which I shall presently unfold. The feelings they thus excited, he denominates envy and malevolence, though in truth it was nothing more than that patriotic and parental jealousy and hatred experienced by the good when they behold those they love led astray. The better to escape this hostility, the ancient sophists adopted various disguises, sometimes enveloping their art in the folds of poetry as Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides, on other occasions affecting to be the interpreters of foreign rites and oracles, as Orpheus and Musæus; while a third class concealed the features of their art under the less suspected mask of gymnastics, such as Iccos of Tarentum, and that Herodicos of Silymbria a man of Megarean origin who in the art of sophistry was second to none of his age. Occasionally they made their entrance into cities as professors of music. In this capacity Damon conversed with Pericles, and Agathocles, an Athenian by birth, diffused through the state the seeds of sophistry; Pythocleides, too, the Coan, pursued the same course; and thus a youth, while ostensibly engaged in gaining a proficiency on the lyre or cithara, was initiated in the mysteries of tyranny, irreligion and injustice.[813]

Footnote 813:

Plat. Protag. t. i. p. 163. seq. Bekk.

By degrees, however, it was discovered that all disguise might be very safely laid aside.[814] In fact the object at first aimed at,—to escape the notice of men in power,—was found impracticable; and as to the people, against whom all these shafts were directed, it was easy to delude them, since what their leaders recommended they praised. Protagoras, accordingly, boldly professed himself a sophist, trusting for safety to his eloquence, and that growing laxity of manners which was rapidly undermining the old republican constitution and preparing the way for a new order of things. His candour was praiseworthy, but lamentable were the circumstances which rendered it safe.

Footnote 814:

At a late period, by a decree of Sophocles, the sophists were driven
out of Attica.—Athen. xiii. 92. Cf. Cressol. Theat. Rhet. i. 12. p.
87.

I would not, however, be understood to share the opinions of those, who can discern nothing but evil in the doctrines of the sophists. On many points their notions harmonised altogether with those of the wisest philosophers. Accordingly it was not precisely what they inculcated, but the principles which regulated their teaching, that rendered them sophists. They taught with a view to enrich themselves, which is wholly incompatible with a strict allegiance to truth; since, with such views, men will always be found to prophesy agreeably in order that they may effect their purpose.

This circumstance has not been sufficiently considered by the writers who undertake their apology. They compare them with the literary men of modern times, and imagine this comparison a defence. But does it not rather substantiate the accusation? It is true that, like modern literary men, they haunted the houses of the great, whom they regarded as their patrons; that to them, rather than to the people, they looked for support; that, like them, they worshipped wealth and abhorred poverty; that their studies, their discourses, their writings, diffused far and wide through society a taste for arts and elegance; that they furnished the public in their declamations, satires, novels, of which they were the inventors, with inexhaustible sources of amusement:—but what virtue did they inculcate? On whom did they urge the necessity of sacrificing private to public good? On what occasion did they dare to stem the torrent of immorality, of impiety, of unpatriotic maxims, which the base and the selfish were pouring forth against the old bulwarks of freedom? That among them there were men of a very high order of genius, it is impossible to deny. Gorgias of Leontium, from whose name we have borrowed an epithet to express whatever is most glorious in nature or dazzling and elaborate in art, Protagoras, Prodicos, Hippias of Elis, Polos of Agrigentum, Thrasymachos of Chalcedon, have left behind them an imperishable memory;[815] but so have Busiris and Phalaris and Catiline. They are remembered for the good they might have done, and the evil they did.

Footnote 815:

Muretus considers the word sophist to be synonymous with a teacher
of eloquence: “Sophista, id est, dicendi magister;” and, speaking of
this same Thrasymachos, cites a passage from Cicero which attributes
to him the invention of the rhetorical style. Orat. § 12. Suidas
regards Thrasymachos as the first who made use of the period and the
colon; and supposes him to have been pupil to Plato and Isocrates,
whereas he preceded both.—Muret. Comm. p. 631. seq.

Since, however, the sophists acted so important a part in the education of the Greeks, the space I devote to them is clearly their due: it is necessary to the thorough comprehension of the subject. Almost from the moment they arose they aimed at a monopoly of the art of teaching, and the father of the art, properly so called, was Gorgias. Few names of antiquity, as Geel[816] has well observed, are better known or more celebrated than that of this distinguished sophist, among the causes of whose amazing popularity must be reckoned the number of great men whom he instructed in eloquence, and the splendid vices of style which his example and precept brought into vogue. The exact date of his birth is not known:[817] he is, however, supposed to have been born at Leontium in Sicily, about the seventy-third Olympiad. His father’s name was Charmantes.[818] Nearly all the particulars of his early life are unknown, the ancients having been as much too negligent as we are too lavish of biographical details. Under whom he studied, with whom he conversed, how much he owed to others, and how much to his own genius and industry, are points not easy to be determined, though we cannot adopt the opinion of Ælian,[819] who sends him to school to Philolaos; or of Diogenes Laertius, who will have Empedocles to have been his teacher, since the latter was very little older than himself, and the former much younger. Empedocles is indeed said to have invented the art of rhetoric, in which case we might suppose Gorgias to have been his scholar. But how invented? He may have been the first who sought to reduce it into an art, or who so called it; but as Aristotle observes, every man who reasons persuasively is a rhetorician, whether his eloquence be based on the formal study of the art or not. In philosophy, indeed, he would seem[820] to have been the disciple of Empedocles; but in rhetoric they both very probably derived instruction from Corax and Tisias, who flourished and taught rhetoric in Sicily about the period of their youth.[821]

Footnote 816:

Hist. Sophist. p. 13.

Footnote 817:

Clinton, Fast. Hellen. ii. 28. 65. 67. Geel (Hist. Sophist. p. 14)
assumes the seventieth Olympiad as the date of his birth; but as it
seems to result from the text of Pausanias that he was still living
in 380. B.C. this would extend the duration of his life beyond that
assigned to it by any ancient writer.

Footnote 818:

Of whom, as Muretus (Comm. p. 631. seq.) observes, no mention occurs
save in Plato de Repub. i. § 2. t. i. p. 8. Stallb.

Footnote 819:

Var. Hist. i. 23. Diog. Laert. viii. 58.—Mr. Clinton, however,
adopts the opinion of Diogenes (Fast. Hell. ii. 365); and, to render
it probable, supposes Empedocles to have been a few years older than
his pupil.

Footnote 820:

Plat. Men. p. 14. g.

Footnote 821:

Cic. Brut. § 12. Geel, Hist. Sophist. p. 15. seq. Sext. Empir. p.
306. seq.

These, however, are mere conjectures. He would probably have died in obscurity, and been forgotten with the kings who reigned _ante Agamemnona_, had not the misfortunes of his country brought him, in old age, to the great workshop of Fame. The immediate occasion was this; the people of Leontium having engaged and been worsted in war by the Syracusans, sent ambassadors to demand succour of the Athenian people, and among these the principal speaker was Gorgias. Practised in a style of oratory new at Athens, indulging in a profusion of metaphors and other figures bordering on the licences of poetry, he immediately hurried away captive his hearers, fulfilled the desires of his fellow citizens, and established for himself a reputation[822] where all men most desired to possess one. To augment his glory it has not been unusual to enumerate Pericles and Thucydides among those who became his scholars. But this embassy took place in the fifth year of the Peloponnesian war when Pericles had been dead two years. That Thucydides heard him, however, is not at all improbable, since his exile did not take place[823] till the eighth year of the war. Among his admirers are mentioned two other men, whose principles and history afford the best illustration of what fruit the teaching of the sophists was likely to produce,—Critias and Alcibiades, whose ability, courage, and profligacy rendered them the scourges of their country. It has been with great probability supposed that, having on his return to Leontium rendered an account of his mission, he quitted Sicily for ever, for the purpose of becoming a professor of eloquence in Greece. This is Diodorus’s account, but the Scholiast on Hermogenes supposes him to have remained at Athens. Whether this was the case or not, he soon considered one city, however great or celebrated, too confined a theatre for the display of his merit. He, therefore, adopted the profession of an itinerant lecturer, with the double view of gratifying his vanity and filling his purse. And he thoroughly understood the art of dazzling mankind, for, not supposing it enough to unfold before his auditors his magazines of tropes and figures, stored up, like theatrical thunder and lightning, to be introduced at the proper moment, he had recourse to other dramatic arts for producing effect, appearing in magnificent attire, flowing purple robes, embroidered sandals, his fingers sparkling with gold and gems. But though the oldest of the sophists, he was not the first who adopted this course. Protagoras, and perhaps others, had previously commenced their peregrinations, and begun to practise on the credulity and weakness of the multitude. Among the Athenians they were paid chiefly with praise; “the solid pudding” was to be sought elsewhere. And accordingly we find, as Plato sarcastically expresses it, that upon the advent of the sophists, the Thessalians, usually celebrated for their full purses and fine horses,[824] grew all at once remarkable for their love of wisdom, that is, paid the sophists handsomely, in the hope of thus enticing knowledge to remain among them. In fact they supposed that wisdom is like a candle and lantern, by which you may have light,—or a saint’s shirt, by wearing which you infallibly become holy,—or the lamp of Epictetus, which a rich man bought at three thousand drachmas, in the hope that it would light him into the very adyta of philosophy. However this may be, it is very certain that the Thessalians became the patrons of the sophists, who disposed in that country of more wisdom and eloquence than in any other part of Greece, and the principal purchasers of it were of the rich family of the Aleuadæ, the earliest Mæcenases, I believe, on record.

Footnote 822:

Diod. Sicul. xii. 53.

Footnote 823:

I cannot, therefore, see the reason of Geel’s doubt.—Hist. Sophist.
p. 18. Cf. Clint. Fast. Hellen. ii. p. 68.

Footnote 824:

Plat. Hip. Maj. t. v. p. 416.

But the sophists, to their credit be it acknowledged, were no misers. What they easily gained they spent freely; and not merely so, but in many instances converted the effects of their personal vanity into public ornaments of the whole country. Thus Gorgias, enriched by the spoils of Thessaly, erected at Delphi a golden statue[825] of himself, which argued a more generous spirit than he would have shown by setting it afloat in the channels of trade or husbandry or usury, in the hope of rendering himself a great capitalist.

Footnote 825:

Cressol. Theat. Rhet. i. 8.

Gorgias was long absent from Athens, and visited during his travels the most considerable cities of Greece. Among other places he came to Delphi, where from the steps of the altar, probably during the games, he delivered that oration called the Pythian, in celebration of which he erected the above-mentioned statue.[826] From thence perhaps,—for the chronology of his journey is not exactly known,—he proceeded to Olympia, where he also assisted at the games for the purpose of exhibiting his oratorical talents in the presence of all Greece, and reaping as it were in an hour a harvest of glory. This declamation, delivered during the Peloponnesian war, had at least the recommendation of being patriotic. Standing in front of the temple of Zeus, the god of concord and of peace, he earnestly recommended union and harmony.[827] If war they must have, there were the barbarians,—let their arms be turned against them. With what success he spoke, history has informed us; but the satirists of antiquity, ever naturally addicted to scandal, are careful to remark that this great advocate of concord and unanimity kept up a civil war in his own house, where the charms of some beautiful-cheeked θεραπαινίδιον[828] excited the jealousy of Madame. At the same time the old gentleman, to adopt the most moderate computation, must have been hard upon three-score and ten, though some would make him eighty.

Footnote 826:

Geel, Hist. Sophist. p. 23.

Footnote 827:

They sometimes selected more humble subjects for their panegyric,
for example, the bumble-bee, or salt.—Isocrat. Hel. Encom. § 4. p.
461. Plutarch, too, speaks of a learned work on salt, which he
considered very edifying.—Sympos. § 5. A French author of the same
class devoted twenty years of his life to a treatise on the
nightingale. Another member of this confraternity is celebrated by
Rousseau:—“On dit qu’un allemand a fait un livre sur un zeste de
citron; j’en aurais fait un sur chaque gramen des prés, sur chaque
mousse des bois, sur chaque lichen qui tapisse les rochers; enfin,
je ne voulais pas laisser un poil d’herbe, pas un atome végétal qui
ne fût amplement décrit.”—Réveries, t. iii. p. 106. On the verbal
trifling of the sophists see Muret. in Aristot. Ethic. p. 79. By Le
Conte, in his Commentary on the Anabasis, Gorgias is transformed
into “a prudent and experienced officer,” because Proxenos is said
to have studied under him.—t. i. p. 246.

Footnote 828:

Plut. Conj. Præcept. § 43. whom Geel follows.—Hist. Sophist. p. 25.
But Isocrates, who had been himself a hearer of Gorgias in Thessaly
(Cic. Orat. § 22), relates that he was never married, and had no
children.—De Permut. § 26. 10. Another tradition however speaks of
his son Philip as having been condemned by the Heliasts.—Schol.
Aristoph. Av. 1700.

Over the latter days of Gorgias[829] hovers the same darkness which conceals from view the commencement. It is known with no degree of certainty where he spent the close of his long life or where he died, though as no account exists of his return to Sicily, it probably was in Greece.

Footnote 829:

See Athen. xii. 71.

Next to Gorgias in reputation was Protagoras, whose history is still less known. In the opinion of some writers he was the oldest of the sophists. Though the date of his birth be later than that of Gorgias, he preceded him in the profession of the art. He was certainly, I think, born much earlier than is supposed either by Clinton or by Geel, who take him to have been almost exactly of Socrates’ age, that is to have come into the world about 479 B. C. But in this opinion I cannot concur. It is in direct contradiction with a passage in Plato[830] who, however careless in matters of chronology, would, I am persuaded, never push his negligence so far as to make one man say to another, born in the same year with himself, that he was old enough to be his father. To me, therefore it appears necessary that we throw back ten or twelve years the date of his birth. He was ten years, it is admitted, older than Democritos. The latter, who had made considerable progress in philosophy when he saw Protagoras in the capacity of a wood-carrier and undertook to initiate him in his system, could hardly have been less than seven or eight and twenty, so that the former was little short of forty. He exercised the profession of sophist during forty years, and died about 406 B. C. He must therefore have been born about 484–485 B. C.[831]

Footnote 830:

Addressing Socrates, among many others, he says in one place, ἀλλὰ
πότερον ὑμῖν, ὡς πρεσβύτερος νεωτέροις, μῦθον λέγων ἐπιδείξω. κ. τ.
λ.—Protag. i. 170. But this is nothing to what he elsewhere says:
οὐδενὸς ὅτου οὐ πάντων ἂν ὑμῶν καθ᾽ ἡλικίαν πατὴρ εἴην.—Id. p.
165.—which without extreme absurdity a man could not say to a person
exactly of his own age. Meiners. (Hist. des Arts et des Sciences,
iii. 258), evidently refers to this passage; as does also Hardion.
Dissert. vii. Bib. Acad. iii. 295. Yet it must have wholly escaped
Geel, who (Hist. Sophist. p. 71) says: “Deinde _nescimus_ quomodo
efficiatur e Platonis Protagorâ, sophistam ejusdem nominis _multo_
majorem fuisse Socrate.”

Footnote 831:

Diog. Laert. ix. 55. observes that, according to some writers, he
died, at the age of 90, during a journey.—Geel, p. 81. It is
sufficiently remarkable that most of the Sophists attained to a very
great old age, and the same thing may be said generally of the
philosophers of antiquity. Lord Bacon undertakes to account for the
fact. Having given the palm of long life to hermits and anchorites,
he says: “Next unto this is a life led in good letters, such as was
that of Philosophers, Rhetoricians, Grammarians. This life is also
led in leisure, and in those thoughts which, seeing they are severed
from the affairs of the world, bite not, but rather delight through
their vanity and impertinency: they live also at their pleasure,
spending their time in such things as like them best, and for the
most part in the company of young men, which is ever the most
cheerful.”—History of Life and Death, p. 24.

But I cannot here pursue the history of the sophists, which no further belongs to my work than as it is connected with the subject of education. On their writings, however, and manner of teaching it is necessary that I should be more explicit. Whether Gorgias first published or Protagoras is of little moment; both evidently wrote with the same aim, which was to confound truth and error, right and wrong, not perhaps through any enmity to truth or to virtue, but from the sheer vanity of being thought capable of any thing, and the desire of converting their talents to account. One distinguishing quality of the class was fertility. They piqued themselves on being able to pour forth volume after volume, treatise after treatise, speech after speech. This, indeed, it was that constituted their principal claim to superiority over the philosophers, a pains-taking race, among whom the period of intellectual gestation was longer than that of the elephant; whereas your true sophist, without meditation, study or experience, astonished his admirers by the copiousness of his invention, by imagery, gorgeous and glittering, generally stolen from the poets, and by a piquant air of profoundness and originality, which the art of seeming to doubt all that other men believe never fails to confer.

Besides, comprehending enough of human nature to know that whoever amuses is listened to, whatever atrocities he may utter, they were careful to invest their doctrine with a light and graceful exterior. No man ever excelled them at a joke. They in fact managed matters so that in their hands every thing became a joke, and to overthrow an antagonist demanded nothing more than to be able to raise a laugh at his expense; for, all the world over, in the opinion of the vulgar, whoever is ridiculous is wrong. From calculation, they eschewed the uphill task of correcting error, or advancing truth, or reforming manners. To upbraid men for their faults and counsel amendment, is to incur their enmity. Reformers, prophets, apostles of truth have always been persecuted, often put to death. The sophists felt no ambition to be martyrs. Poverty, too, and obscurity, spare diet, a coarse mantle, and the solitude in which the poor great man walks the world, they could not away with. To their happiness crowds of admirers, opulence, costly robes[832] and all the refinements of luxury formed a _sine quâ non_; and accordingly in the choice of their doctrines they were guided by one consideration only, viz. how they might amuse mankind, and reap all the advantages of popularity.

Footnote 832:

Herault de Sechelles, who, had he lived, would have excelled Boswell
in biography, describes with singular felicity the passion of that
arch-sophist, Buffon, for the splendours of dress. Even among the
peasants of Montbar, a race of primitive simplicity, the French
Hippias would never appear but in an embroidered suit, curled and
decorated as if at court. He had nicely calculated the effect of
external appearances on the mind; and we must forgive him, since he
shared the weakness with Lord Bacon and Aristotle.—See Voyage à
Montbar, p. 42, seq.

The eloquence which statesmen employed to recommend their measures, the sophists applied to fictitious uses, imagining themselves in impossible circumstances, reversing times, confounding manners, and attacking or defending men long since dead. In all such cases the interest would chiefly depend on the novelty or ingenuity of the thoughts and the subtle artifices of style. Hence the extravagance, the coldness, the perversion of imagery, the distortion and monkey tricks of language, for which their manner of compositions became remarkable. The false position they took up led, in philosophy, to results equally disastrous. To aim at truth, would have been to throw themselves into the wake of the philosophers, to share, without worldly compensation, their dangers, labours, and comparative insignificance. They struck out, therefore, a new course for themselves. Taking philosophy as it was, they undertook to dispute on all and every part of it; to show that for a skilful dialectician there was no proposition that might not with nearly equal facility be attacked or defended; that by means of syllogisms or enthymemes, artfully arranged, darkness may be proved to be light, and light darkness; that between lying and speaking the truth there is no difference; that in fact both veracity and falsehood are nonentities, all our notions being mere arbitrary fictions; and that to beat your dog and to beat your father is the same thing.

Of this novel and ingenious style of argumentation,[833] in which Hudibras was an adept, we are furnished with abundant examples by Plato, more especially in the Euthydemus, where two old fellows, with arguments longer than their beards, luxuriate in the felicitous inventions by which, like another Circe, they are enabled to transform their hearers into hogs and bulldogs. In humorous extravagance the dialogue scarcely falls short of an Aristophanic comedy or a Christmas pantomime. Socrates[834] plays the Clown, Ctesippos the Harlequin, and the blows dealt upon the magicians in the course of the piece, are such as, were they fully comprehended, would set all Drury Lane or Covent Garden in a roar. But the length of the scenes prevents their transplantation into my pages, and the abridgment of a joke is a very dull thing. Let us, however, hear by what logic they proved Socrates to have been a second “man without a navel.”

Footnote 833:

Another example may be found in Athen. iii. 54.

Footnote 834:

Socrates has been confounded with the Sophists, because he
frequented their company to refute them; but there was between them
the same difference, as between a thief-taker and a thief.

“Answer me,” cried Dionysidoros.

“Well then,” replied Socrates, “I answer that Iolaus was the nephew of Heracles, and, as far as I can see, no nephew of mine. For my brother Patrocles was not his father, but quite another guess sort of person, Iphicles the brother of Heracles.”

“And Patrocles was your brother?”

“By the mother, not by the father.”

“Then he was your brother, and not your brother?”

“By the father’s side he was not,” answered Socrates, “since he was the son of Charidemos, and I of Sophroniscos.”

“But Sophroniscos, no less than Charidemos, was a father.”

“Exactly; the former was my father, the latter Patrocles’.”

“Then was Charidemos other than a father?”

“He was other than mine.”

“Then he was a father, and not a father? But, come, are you the same thing as a stone?”

“I fear,” replied Socrates, “I shall appear to be no better in your hands, though I do not discover the identity.”

“Well, being other than a stone, you are not a stone; being other than gold, you are not gold. And must not the same thing happen to Charidemos? Being something else than a father, he is not a father.”

“So it seems,” replied the philosopher.

“And what is true of Charidemos,” replied the younger sophist, “must be true of Sophroniscos. Being other than a father, he is not a father: from which, my good friend, it follows that you never had any father at all![835]”

Footnote 835:

Plat. Opp. iii. 444, seq.

Socrates being thus placed on a level with the first man, his friend Ctesippos took up the ball, and sent it with so much force into the face of the sophists, that it somewhat startled them.

“Come, then,” said he, “is not your own father in precisely the same circumstances? Is he not different from my father?”

“Not at all,” answered Euthydemos.

“What, then, he is the same?”

“Exactly.”

“I should be sorry to think so. However, is he my father only, or is he everybody else’s father?”

“Everybody’s, of course; for can you imagine him to be a father, and not a father?”

“I should have thought so,” answered Ctesippos.

“What! that gold is not gold, and that a man is not a man?”

“Not so, friend Euthydemos; but you do not, as the saying is, mingle flax with flax; and your assertion, that your father is the father of all men, seems very extraordinary.”

“But he is, though.”

“Very good; but is he not only the father of men but of horses and every other animal?”

“Of everything!”

“And your mother, in like manner, is the mother of all things?”

“Certainly.”

“Then she is the mother of the sea-hedgehog.”

“And so is yours!”

“And you are the full brother of gudgeons, cubs, and sucking-pigs.”

“So are you!”

“And your father is a dog.”

“And yours, too!”

It was now evident they were in anger, and accordingly Dionysidoros interposed, and observed jocularly,—

“Provided you will answer me, Ctesippos, I undertake to make you confess that your father is just what my brother has said. So, tell me, have you a dog?”

“I have, and a snappish cur he is, too.”

“And has he young ones?”

“Ay, and they are more snappish than himself.”

“Well, now, is not the dog their father?”

“No doubt.”

“And the dog is yours?”

“Certainly.”

“It follows then, if he be a father and yours, that he must be your father; so that his cubs are your brothers.”

Before the young man could reply to this compliment the sophist proceeded:

“Answer me, Ctesippos, a little longer. Do you ever beat that dog?”

“That I do,” replied Ctesippos laughing; “and I wish I could administer the same discipline to you in your turn.”

“Then you beat your own father!”

“The beating,” answered the young man, “would be more justly inflicted on yours, for having knowingly let loose two such sages upon mankind!”[836]

Footnote 836:

Plat. Opp. t. iii. p. 245.—The amusing manner of teaching introduced
by these sophists was sometimes imitated by the philosophers. Thus
Theophrastus, who, before proceeding to his school, used to anoint
himself with oil and perform his exercises, had recourse to
extraordinary drollery for the purpose of charming his pupils,
adapting all his gestures and movements to his discourses; so that
when describing the manners and character of a glutton, he used,
like a comic actor, to thrust out his tongue and lick his
lips.—Athen. i. 38.

But these, after all, were but laughing sophists, who, though they had succeeded in confounding and obliterating from their own minds every trace of difference between right and wrong, fell short of that superb degree of wickedness at which Polos, Callicles, and Thrasymachos arrived, at least in speculation. The former were mere babblers, who corrupted a pupil or two whom bad luck threw in their way. Thrasymachos flew at higher game. His sophistry was political,[837] and his aim the destruction of freedom, by extinguishing that sense of justice on which it must ever be based. The genius of the man was considerable. He had deep thoughts, and investigated boldly; but his sympathies having somehow been early perverted, he grew sombre, fierce, and unsociable, and without the slightest disguise advocated, like our Hobbes,[838] tyrannical maxims and morals. Money, like the rest, he of course worshipped. Nay, in the conversation at the house of Cephalos he even ventures to sneer rudely at Socrates’ poverty; upon which Glaucon[839] observes:—"Don’t fear to go unpaid for the instruction you may give him, for we will enter into a subscription on his behalf."[840] Thrasymachos, however, was still more vain than avaricious. He thirsted to exhibit his notions in order to enjoy the satisfaction arising from shocking those who heard him. He maintained that justice is nothing more than what in any state the rulers think proper to establish; and that, consequently, the ordinances of a tyrant are as binding and as just as the laws of a free state, since by nature all actions are indifferent.

Footnote 837:

Cf. Dem. Lacrit. § 10. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 113.

Footnote 838:

The modern Thrasymachos is as frank in his hatred of philosophers as
the ancient. He compares their enthusiasm in favour of freedom to
the virus imparted by the bite of a mad dog, imagining that nothing
is so sedulously to be guarded against as liberty. He would, if
possible, have the study of ancient statesmen and historians
prohibited, or at least that care should be taken to counteract
their maxims by the teaching of discreet sophists. “I cannot
imagine,” he says, “how anything can be more prejudicial to a
monarchy than the allowing of such books to be publicly read,
without present applying such correctives of discreet masters, as
are fit to take away their venom; which venom I will not doubt to
compare to the biting of a mad dog, which is a disease the
physicians call _hydrophobia_, or _fear of water_. For, as he that
is so bitten has a continual torment of thirst, and yet abhorreth
water, and is in such an estate, as if the poison endeavoured to
convert him into a dog; so, when a monarchy is once bitten to the
quick, by those democratical writers, that continually snarl at that
estate, it wanteth nothing more than a strong monarch, which,
nevertheless, out of a certain _tyrannophobia_ or fear of being
strongly governed, when they have him, they abhor.”—Leviathan, Pt.
ii. c. 29. iii. 315. Count Capo D’Istrias, if he was ignorant of the
language of ancient Greece, appears at least to have understood
something of the spirit of ancient philosophy, for, designing to
establish a tyranny, he prohibited the reading of Plato in the
public schools. He may possibly have learned his maxims of
government from Hobbes, as well as that the master of the academy
deserved his hatred.—Thiersch. Etat. Act. de la Grèce, ii. 121.

Footnote 839:

Plat. Rep. i. § 11. t. i. p. 41. Stallb.

Footnote 840:

Ἔρανος. Cf. Sympos. t. iv. p. 379. Bekk.

It was, in fact, a part of the sophistical doctrine, to maintain in politics, what Hobbes afterwards advocated, the right of the stronger:—

—--"The good old rule, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can."

But because there is in every man’s heart a rooted prejudice in favour of justice, they were fain to argue that all governors, in as far as they deserved the name, would ordain what was best for themselves, and that, whatever it might be, was just:[841] a very satisfactory doctrine, which has never grown wholly out of fashion. They laughed to scorn, as persons who required nurses to look after them and wipe their noses,[842] whomsoever they found entertaining the notion that governments were instituted for the good of the governed.

Footnote 841:

Upon this point Father Paul observes:—"We must reduce under the
title of justice everything that may contribute to the service of
the state; for the prince has no greater justice than to preserve to
himself the quality of prince, and, in order to this, to keep his
subjects in a dutiful subjection to his authority."—Max. of the Gov.
of Venice, chap. i. § 1.

Footnote 842:

Plat. Rep. t. vi. p. 34.

Their staple comparison was always a flock or a herd. What shepherd, they inquired, ever looked after his flock for their benefit, and not for his own use? In like manner magistrates, who, as is proper, hold the chief place in cities, look on the public exactly as if they are so many sheep or oxen, and think of nothing, night or day, but how they may derive most advantage from them. Justice, therefore, is what promotes the interests of the governors, though it may be loss to the governed. The man, esteemed just and pious and holy by the philosopher, was merely, in their opinion, a fool. Whenever anything is to be gained he gets less than any man, and when anything is to be done for the community he does more. He is always ready with his purse whenever anything is to be paid; always out of the way when gain is afloat. The unjust man, on the contrary, knows what he is about. He pays and does as little as possible for the public, and takes from it all he can. The former renders himself disagreeable to his friends and domestics, by refusing to commit any unjust action on their behalf. The latter, on the other hand, unscrupulous in acquisition, is able to oblige many by his wealth if he happens to require their services. Thus even in private life and small matters injustice is to be preferred; but when it operates on a grand scale, plunders whole cities, and usurps over them supreme authority, it reaches the acme of felicity, is saluted by the name of prince, and becomes an object of envy to all mankind.

Nor did they pause even here. It was not enough to show the happiness of vice as vice; they undertook to prove that vice is virtue and virtue vice, which may be considered as their magnum opus. They went to work boldly, but, like the fox of Archilochos,[843] always kept something of their figure concealed, that, if any necessity arose, they might be able to retreat by treating their whole chain of argumentation as a mere rhetorical exercise. “You appear to be in earnest,” observed Socrates on one occasion. “What does it signify to you whether I am in earnest or not,” replied the sophist, “if you cannot refute what I advance?” With this prudent reserve, they taught that injustice is a powerful and beautiful principle, reckoning it among the virtues, and attributing to it all the characteristics usually attributed to justice.[844] Pascal, in developing the morals of the Jesuits, describes their principles exactly. They patronised even cutting purses, providing the operator had the ingenuity to conceal his performance. No doubt, in thus arguing, they did violence to their secret convictions, and might, by an able dialectician, be made to feel, though never to acknowledge, the deformity of their doctrines, as Thrasymachos, driven up in a corner by the logic of Socrates, blushes and is chap-fallen;[845] but as sophistry was their occupation, the misery and degradation was, that, convinced or not convinced, they must still sing the old song. It is evident, in fact, that, like many sophists of other days, they were bold with the lips while the heart within trembled. The light of conscience could not be wholly quenched. They conceived the gods to be armed with power and disposed to exert it, not only against evil doers but against evil speakers also. Pressed upon this point, whether the bad be not obnoxious and the good agreeable to the deities, Thrasymachos would not deny it. And why? Lest he should render himself hateful to them, ἴνα μὴ τοῖς δὲ ἀπέχθωμαι. So that in the worst times of paganism, religion, how corrupt soever, failed not to preserve some influence over men’s minds, to save them from the bestial recklessness into which they seemed desirous to plunge.[846]

Footnote 843:

Plat. Rep. t. vi. p. 72. Bekk.

Footnote 844:

Id. i. t. vi. p. 44. seq.

Footnote 845:

Plat. de Rep. vi. 49. i. 76. Stallb. Cf. Vict. Var. Lect. iii. v.

Footnote 846:

Plat. Rep. t. vi. p. 52.

Nevertheless, the sophists on many points did but methodise, condense and embody in florid language the maxims and modes of thinking current in corrupt ages among the vulgar. Their doctrines were but an echo of what was heard in the ecclesiæ, in the law courts, in the theatres, and in the camps. It would have been to little purpose, therefore, to have silenced them, unless, at the same time, the above schools could have been purified, wherein young and old, men and women, imbibed the opinions, maxims, prejudices, which constituted the system of the sophists.[847] And Plato, who observes this, supplies us, in doing so, with a fresh proof that women frequented the theatre. In one of these four places, he says, they were corrupted: but they were not soldiers, and, therefore, not in the camp; they were not dicasts, and, therefore, not in the law courts; they were neither orators nor voters, and, therefore, not in the ecclesiæ. The evil doctrines they imbibed, therefore, must have been imbibed at the theatre.[848] Here, too, the youth, disciplined and principled in better things by his philosophical teachers, received a new education which overthrew the former. Deeds and words, condemned by his teachers, he often found to be greeted here with rapturous applause, re-echoed by rocks and walls; while hisses, sneers, or vociferous vituperation would, perhaps, be showered on things he had been taught most to revere. In his feelings, therefore, and internal convictions a revolution was soon effected. He grew ashamed of the notions implanted in him at school. Every lingering sentiment of honour seemed to him an unfortunate prejudice despised by men of the world, and he hastened to shift his notions as a clown does his dress to prepare for admittance into fashionable company.

Footnote 847:

Id. vi. 290.

Footnote 848:

Plat. Rep. vi. t. vi. p. 289. Cf. Athen. ii. 54.

The sophists, skilled in the study of mankind, soon discovered, that to please and ultimately to rule the ignorant, it was necessary to humour their failings, and, in appearance at least, to adopt their opinions. In a commonwealth, governed by wholesome principles, great men obtain influence, not by resembling the majority but by differing from them. They are popular by the authority of their virtues. They are reverenced with the reverence due to a father from his child, who confides in him from long experience in his love and implicit faith in his honour, and will submit to be rebuked and chastised, and determined by him in his actions from the conviction that his superior wisdom and probity and affection entitle him to rule. But the sophists, and their political disciples, despaired of thus governing the people. In their manners there was none of the dignity, in their minds none of the wisdom, in their resolutions none of that inflexible firmness arising from consciousness of right, which neither threats nor clamour can subdue. They regarded the populace as a huge beast, whose ways and temper they must study, whose passions and desires they must know how to raise and how to satisfy; by what arts they might safely enter his den, stroke his terrible paws, or mount, if they thought proper, on his back and direct his irresistible might against their enemies. And this they esteemed as wisdom, and upon those who excelled in it they bestowed the name of statesmen and philosophers.[849] Among the arts by which this influence was acquired were flattery and boasting; by the former they disposed people to listen, by the latter they sought to justify them for listening, by dwelling on the wonders they could perform. If they might be believed, they could convert fools into wise men, which philosophers regarded in the light of a miracle. This disposition τὸ θρασὺ καὶ τὸ ἰταμὸν,[850] as Basilius expresses it, is admirably painted by Plato in the character of Thrasymachos. And the contrast afforded by Socrates makes good, as Muretus observes, the wise remark of Thucydides ὅτι ἀμαθία μὲν θάρσος, φρόνησις δ᾽ ὄκνον φέρει.

Footnote 849:

Plat. de Rep. vi. 293.

Footnote 850:

Plat. de Rep. vi. 333. Cf. Muret. Adnot. in Repub. p. 667, seq. 677,
seq.

Such, however, as they were, the reputation of the sophists spread far and wide. Even among the barbarians of Asia a desire was felt to have the ear tickled by their eloquence, as we may gather from the letter of Amytocrates, an Indian king, to Antiochos, requesting him to ship off for India as soon as possible, some boiled wine, dried figs, and a sophist, observing that he would very willingly pay the price of him. But Antiochos, either loth to part with so useful a servant of the monarchy, or out of pity for the Indians, whom he suspected to be already sufficiently tormented, replied, that as for boiled wine and figs he might be supplied to his heart’s content, but that with respect to sophists the law prohibited their exportation.[851] He had all the while, however, without knowing it, abundant specimens of the race in his own realms, where the Brahmins have, time out of mind, cultivated and thriven by the same arts, and maintained the same opinions, as conferred celebrity on the followers of Gorgias and Protagoras. Their practices, indeed, as well as those of the Yoghis, are in India modified by the state of society and public opinion. The wonder which among the Greeks was excited by the advocacy of monstrous doctrines, on the banks of the Ganges, arises out of physical pranks. The Greek sophist tortured his mind, the Indian tortures his body for the edification of the public, but the result is the same; the practitioners thus contrive to subsist in idleness on the earnings of the industrious and credulous.

Footnote 851:

Athen. xiv. 67.