CHAPTER V
SECONDARY EDUCATION: I. THE SOPHISTS
At fourteen or soon after, it was usual for the ordinary course of letters and lyre-playing to terminate: the gymnastic lessons might be carried on till old age interrupted them. During the first three-quarters of the fifth century, the lad, on leaving school, was left to live more or less as he pleased, if he was rich enough not to have to work for his living: the sons of poorer citizens at this age, if not before, settled down to learn a trade or engaged in merchandise. Rich boys, no doubt, spent most of their time in athletic pursuits; riding and chariot-driving were favourite amusements. But with the Periclean age arose a violent desire for a further course of intellectual study, and a system of secondary education arose, to occupy the four years which elapsed between the time when the lad finished his primary education and the time when the State summoned him to undergo his two years of military training.
Many of the primary schools of the better sort started courses of study for lads, providing, no doubt, separate class-rooms, or else the younger boys attended at different hours from those at which the elder pupils assembled. Probably some such provision had been made much earlier for those who wished to obtain a more advanced knowledge of literature and music than was offered by the primary schools. But in the time of Sokrates many masters seemed to have held classes for lads as well as for boys. On entering the schools of Dionusios,[495] the master of letters, Sokrates finds a class of lads assembled here.[496] They all belong to noble families: the poor were no doubt unable to afford education of this sort. Two of the lads were busy discussing a point of astronomy, and were quoting the authority of Oinopides[497] and Anaxagoras, for Sokrates catches these two names as he enters the room. They were drawing circles on the ground and imitating the inclination of some orbit or other with their hands. This scene shows a much more advanced sort of study than was usual at the primary school of letters. The Sophists seem to have often lectured in class-rooms.
More often secondary education was imparted, not in the regular schools by regular, established masters, but by the wandering savants, who taught every conceivable subject, and were all grouped together under the general name of Sophists.[498] From this category the mathematicians and astronomers, who in all respects occupied the same position, are often excluded. This is due to the authority of Plato, who, while detesting the other subjects taught as secondary education, had a great affection for mathematics and astronomy, the only subjects which he prescribes for lads in the Republic and Laws. But Aristophanes, taking a more logical position, includes geometry and astronomy among the subjects taught by the burlesque Sophists of the Clouds. In point of fact, secondary education included any subject that the lad or his parents desired; and the wandering professors who imparted it, and even established teachers like Isokrates, who kept permanent secondary schools at Athens, were all alike, in the popular view, Sophists.
But the more important subjects do naturally fall into two great groups, Mathematics and Rhetoric. Mathematics, as may be seen from the Republic, meant, as a part of secondary education, the Science of Numbers, Geometry, and Astronomy, with a certain amount of the theory of Music, which, owing partly to Pythagorean traditions, was classed with mathematics. We have already seen a class learning Astronomy. Plato, in the Theaitetos,[499] supplies a sketch of a lesson in more advanced arithmetic, which, by Hellenic custom, was usually expressed in geometrical terms in order to obtain the assistance of a diagram. The lad Theaitetos says to Sokrates that Theodorus of Kurene, the great contemporary mathematician, had been teaching him. “He was giving us a lesson in Roots, with diagrams, showing us that the root of 3 and the root of 5 did not admit of linear measurement by the foot (that is, were not rational). He took each root separately up to 17. There, as it happened, he stopped. So the other pupil and I determined, since the roots were apparently infinite in number, to try to find a single name which would embrace all these roots.
“We divided all number into two parts. The number which has a square root we likened to the geometrical square, and called ‘square and equilateral’ (e.g. 4, 9, 16). The intermediate numbers, such as 3 and 5 and the rest which have no square root, but are made up of unequal factors, we likened to the rectangle with unequal sides, and called rectangular numbers.” And so on. As the pupils apply the same principle to cubes and cube roots, Theodorus must have initiated them into the mysteries of solid geometry also.
Here we find a professor lecturing to a select class, in this case of only two lads, and his pupils, as in the class-room of Dionusios, discussing and elaborating among themselves afterwards the subject-matter of the lecture. Theodoros is mentioned as teaching Geometry, Astronomy, and the theory of Music, as well as the Science of Numbers. Geometry by this time included a good number of the easier propositions which were afterwards incorporated in the works of Euclid; the school of Pythagoras, and, later, that of Plato, did much to develop it. The problem of squaring the circle was already occupying attention.[500] Compasses and the rule were the ordinary geometrical implements: diagrams were drawn on the ground, on dust or sand. In Arithmetic surds[501] were a popular subject: but arithmetical problems, being usually expressed in terms of geometry plane or solid, become as a rule a part of the latter science.
To Plato these mathematical studies are alone suitable for secondary education: the philosopher Teles,[502] carrying on the same tradition, makes arithmetic and geometry the special plagues of the lad.[503] But then the philosophers despised Rhetoric.
Rhetoric, from the time of Gorgias onwards, formed a very large part of secondary education Isokrates was its greatest professor. He provided in his school a course of three or four years for lads, to occupy their time till they were epheboi. But the methods, the aims, and the personality of this interesting professor will be discussed later.
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Besides mathematics and rhetoric, there were literary studies. The Axiochos gives κριτικοί among the teachers of a lad. These are the lecturers on literary subjects, who concerned themselves with interpretations, often far-fetched, of the poets; a summary of the literary discussion in the Protagoras may give some idea of such a lesson.
“Protagoras. I consider that it is a most important part of a man’s education to be skilled in poetry; to understand, that is, what is rightly said, and what is not, by the poets. Simonides says to Skopas, son of Kreon the Thessalian, ‘To become indeed a good man is hard, a man foursquare, wrought without blame in hands and feet and mind.’ You know the poem? Do you know then that farther on in the same poem he says, ‘But the saying of Pittakos, wise though he was, seems to me not said aright: he said, “’Tis hard to be noble.”’ Don’t you see that the poet has contradicted himself?”
Sokrates replies by distinguishing “being” from “becoming,” and suggests that χαλεπός (hard) may mean not “difficult” but “bad.” He then gives a lecture in his turn. He picks out a μέν in the first line and puts it into a most unwarrantable position in his translation, and makes “indeed” go with “hard.” To become good is difficult but possible, to be and remain good quite impossible. Hence Simonides goes on to say that he is quite satisfied with those who do no positive harm. Sokrates also notes a philological point, that ἐπαίνημι in the poem is a Lesbian Aeolic form, justified because the poem is addressed to a citizen of Mitulene. It may be remarked that Hippias also possessed a lecture on the subject. A lecture on Homer by a Sophist is mentioned by Isokrates: such lectures were frequently given by the rhapsodes.
Grammar was also taught, and the right use of words. Less usual subjects were geography,[504] art, and metre. Logic was in its infancy, but the growing lad could practise himself in argument by listening to the disputes of the dialecticians. Current conversation was full of ethical and political discussions: in the fourth century there were the philosophical schools of Plato and, later, of Aristotle, and the lectures of Antisthenes the cynic in Kunosarges; and Isokrates taught political science. Lads seem to have been expected to learn something, at any rate, of the laws of their country: no doubt they were taken up to the Akropolis to read Solon’s code: occasionally they may have been present as spectators in the law-courts, in order that they might gain an idea of legal procedure. Those who intended to become speech-writers for the courts would doubtless learn more: they would also attend some well-known writer like Lusias or Isaios, and learn the art of forensic rhetoric.
It must be clearly understood that the whole of this secondary education was purely voluntary. The parent need not send his lad to hear any teaching of the sort: the poorer classes certainly would not. The richer parents could choose what subjects they or their sons preferred: rhetoric or literature, geography or mathematics—it was all one to the State. Teachers came and went: few stayed in Athens long. Their pupils had either to follow them abroad, as Isokrates went to Gorgias in Thessaly, or wait for their next visit. It was only the schools of Isokrates, of the great philosophers, and of a few speech-writers like Lusias and Isaios, that had any permanence in Athens. Isokrates himself had taught in Chios for a time: Plato was more than once in Sicily, and his school had to do without him in his absence. There is a peculiar fluidity about secondary education in Hellas: the teachers are always on the move. Endowed buildings for them there were none: they taught in their own houses and gardens, or in those of rich hosts, or in school-rooms borrowed for the occasion, or in public resorts like the gymnasia, or even in the streets. Consistent or continuous instruction was the exception: the Sophists proper gave it only to a few. The average lad at this time naturally acquired a wide and superficial knowledge of a great number of subjects, just the amount of knowledge which is such a dangerous thing. The lads became Jacks-of-all-trades: Plato, struck with the educational error of wide superficiality, wrote the Republic as a counterblast, preaching “One man, one trade.” This protest is largely directed against the specious superficiality of the Sophists’ teaching.
Consequently, secondary education fell into two halves, the fluid teaching of the wandering Sophists and the continuous teaching of the more stationary schools of Plato and Isokrates. It will be convenient to accept this division, and take the fluid half first. In subjects, the two must overlap one another: the Sophists taught logic as much as Plato, rhetoric as much as Isokrates, and universal information of very much the same range as Aristotle. But the method was different, just because as a rule the Sophist was here to-day and gone to-morrow, while the stationary teachers taught the same pupils for several years together and could study their particular idiosyncrasies, and the value of education depends very largely on the teacher’s understanding of, and sympathy with, the individual boys whom he teaches.
It is of interest to trace the development of the term Sophia and of the Sophists who professed it.
The earliest thoughts of the Hellenic peoples were enshrined in hexameter verse. Homer and Hesiod represent the science and philosophy, as well as the religion, of their age. The poetical tradition survived in philosophy as late as Parmenides and Empedokles: the last trace of it may perhaps be found in the myths of Plato. The religious and ritual thinkers and the composers of oracles also employed verse. Consequently “wisdom,” in the earliest Hellenic literature, is mainly associated with poetry and music, and the words σοφοί and σοφισταί are applied indiscriminately to poets.[505] This sense of σοφιστής survived in later times, and Protagoras could call Homer, Hesiod, Mousaios, Orpheus, and Simonides all alike by this title. Orpheus is so styled in the Rhesos. Phrunichos called Lampros the musician a “hyper-sophist,” and Athenaeus declares that Sophist was a general title for all students of music.
A second use of the word “wise man” had also existed from the earliest times, by which it had been applied to those who were skilful in some particular craft, such as carpentering,[506] medicine,[507] or chariot-driving.[508]
The “Seven Sages” also received the name of Sophist,[509] and in their age the cognate words σοφός and σοφία became connected with practical and political wisdom.[510]
Then the rise of education in Hellas, in which these old poets and thinkers were largely employed, and the analogy of the other educational titles with similar endings, γραμματιστής and κιθαριστής, gave the word σοφιστής an association with the teaching profession. Scientific knowledge was beginning to accumulate. Sufficient history was known to serve as a foundation for political theory and precept. Rhetoric was becoming an essential preliminary to political life, since, with the rise of democracy, persuasion became the dominating influence in law-courts and assemblies. The desire for knowledge was never so keen as during the latter half of the fifth century in Hellas. With the demand came the men. All over the Hellenic world arose professional teachers, who carried the knowledge, which they had learnt from one another or discovered for themselves, from city to city. Everywhere their lectures attracted large and enthusiastic crowds. Among the subjects which they studied and taught may be mentioned mathematics (including arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy), grammar, etymology, geography, natural history, the laws of metre and rhythm, history (under which head fell also mythology and genealogies), politics, ethics, the criticism of religion, mnemonics, logic, tactics and strategy, music, drawing and painting, scientific athletics, and, above all, rhetoric. To such a heterogeneous collection what name could be given but “wisdom,” σοφία? The name Sophist was applied indiscriminately to all these secondary teachers.
There are several interesting accounts of these Sophists in extant literature, but the writers are always prejudiced opponents.
In the Clouds of Aristophanes, the Sophists and their pupils are represented as living in an underground Thinking-Shop. They are pale and squalid, engaged in all sorts of researches. Natural history is represented by the important question, “How many times the length of its own foot does a flea jump?” a problem which is solved by actual experiment. Later in the play they inquire why the sea does not overflow, since the rivers are always running into it. Scientific instead of mythological explanations of thunder and lightning are given. There is religious criticism too, such as Xenophanes had uttered long before: “If Zeus imprisoned his own father, why has he not been punished?” There is astronomy, “the paths and orbit of the sun,” and a hanging basket is introduced as an observatory. Geometry and compasses are mentioned. The visitor is shown a map of the world, containing Euboia, Lakedaimon, and Attica on a large enough scale, it would seem, to mark the deme Kikunna; perhaps, as Strepsiades expects to find dikastai on it at Athens, it had pictures of elephants and monsters in unknown districts. The students are interested in metres and rhythms. The poet laughs at grammar, forming “cockess” as the logical feminine of cock, and making the chief Sophist object to feminine nouns with masculine terminations. It is suggested that the pupils at the Thinking-Shop are dirty, half-starved vegetarians, too economical to go to the hair-cutter or the baths, abstaining from wine and the gymnasia. But the main point attacked by Aristophanes is the teaching of Argument. The whole object of learning under the Sophists is, according to him, to be able to cajole the dikastai and so win impunity to cheat, and to have an argument to justify anything. The successful scholars beat their fathers and mothers, giving logical reasons for their behaviour; they refuse to go to school, and are too clever to believe or accept anything. But their intellectual exhilaration is spasmodic; they have been taught, if they reach a difficult problem, to jump on to something else.
A vivid sketch of Sophist-life is given in Plato’s Protagoras. Young Hippokrates, on returning to Athens in the evening after pursuing a runaway slave to the frontier, hears that Protagoras the great Sophist has arrived in the city. Only the lateness of the hour deters him from rushing off to find Sokrates, who will give him an introduction to the teacher. Next morning he comes round to Sokrates’ house long before it is light, bangs and shouts at the door in his excitement, and announces that he is ready to spend all the money which he and all his friends possess, in fees.
They go off to the house of Kallias, where Protagoras and other Sophists are staying. The porter is so worn out by the number of visitors that he is distinctly rude. They find Protagoras walking up and down in the cloisters of the house, with three or four listeners on either side, one of whom is learning to be a Sophist himself. Behind follows a crowd, mostly composed of the foreigners whom he draws from city to city, like Orpheus, with his magic voice. Another Sophist, Hippias, is sitting on a sort of throne in the opposite part of the cloisters; around him on benches are a number of inquirers, who were asking him questions about natural science and astronomy. A third Sophist, Prodikos, is in a side-building, still in bed, covered up in blankets.[511] His audience sat on neighbouring beds. The whole assemblage finally collect couches and benches together in a great circle to hear a discussion between Sokrates and Protagoras. Kallias, the host on this occasion, often entertained Sophists: at another time he had Gorgias and Polos in the house. His cloisters must have provided a favourite lecture-room. The Sophists also haunted the gymnasia. The discussion in the Euthudemos takes place in the undressing-room of the Lukeion: the two Sophists have been walking in the cloister. Hippias on one occasion lectures in a school-room, on another in a public place at Olympia.
Protagoras was the first of these teachers to take pay. His system was very fair. On the close of their course of instruction his pupils, if they chose, paid the fee for which he asked; otherwise, they went into a temple, and, after taking an oath, paid as much as they said his instruction was worth.[512] Hippias made about £600 in a very short time in Sicily, receiving some £80 from the tiny town of Inukos, although Protagoras was also lecturing in the island at the time. Prodikos charged £2 for a particular lecture on correct speech,[513] but there was also a less complete form of it which cost only 10d.; he seems to have been noted for the gradations in his charges, for there were also lectures at 5d., 1s. 8d., and 3s. 4d.[514] The sum which Euenos of Paros asked for teaching the whole duties of a man and a citizen was £20.[515] Probably, however, the charges of these Sophists, and the money which they made, were much exaggerated by their contemporaries. Isokrates, the pupil of Gorgias, gives a much lower estimate. “None of the so-called Sophists,” he says, “will be found to have collected much money. On the contrary, some passed their lives in poverty and the rest in quite ordinary circumstances. The richest Sophist within my memory was Gorgias. He spent most of his time in Thessaly, the most prosperous part of Hellas. He lived to a great age and followed his profession for a great many years. He did not take upon himself any public burdens by settling in any one city. He did not marry or have children to bring up. Yet with all these opportunities of growing wealthy, he only left about £800 at his death.”[516] It must be remembered that the Sophists received money only from those who definitely enrolled themselves as pupils or came to a few advertised lectures. Hippias lectured at Sparta frequently, and never received a penny. Any one might go and ask a Sophist a question, and would almost always receive a voluminous answer. The eloquence and practical skill of these men were also always at the disposal of their own city. Like the greater Renaissance scholars, Hippias, Gorgias, and Prodikos were much occupied in going on embassies. For the larger part of their life-work they received no payment whatever; what they actually received was possibly less than what their philosophic opponents obtained in donations from friendly tyrants.
At any rate, their fees were not heavy enough to damp the ardour of their pupils. Young men left their relations and friends to follow Sophists from city to city. These enthusiastic disciples were almost ready to carry their teachers about on their shoulders, so great was their affection for them. Why this enthusiasm? Partly because the Sophists were men of great personal charm. Partly because in that age the thirst for knowledge was unbounded. Partly from a desire to learn the way of virtue, which the Sophists claimed to teach. But the most potent reason was ambition. The young wished to shine in conversation, the great occupation of the age, and to be able to discuss every conceivable topic with intelligence. But education was also the road to political success. The Sophists taught systematic rhetoric, and logic of a sort. They also supplied the subject-matter for orations, in their practical handling of political science, of history, of ethical commonplaces; for a public oration was expected to be a storehouse of erudition. Rhetoric was needful not only for power, but also for security; for in the courts it had more influence than mere argument and facts.
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About the individual Sophists little is known. They appear for us only in the pages of those who traduced them. Plato is mainly occupied with various conclusions which he draws from their philosophic theories, which were not a part of their teaching. Protagoras, the eldest of them, a most dignified personage, set himself to train good citizens: he claimed that he enabled his pupils to manage their households and govern their states. He imparted to them all the worldly wisdom which he had gained by long years of personal experience. He made a special study of political science, no doubt for this purpose, and left a treatise upon the subject, which was sufficiently excellent for a certain Aristoxenos to be able to say that Plato had plagiarised most of the Republic from it.[517] Being businesslike, he favoured clearness of thought, and studied grammar: he was the first to separate nouns into the three genders.[518]
Prodikos belonged to the same practical school. He began by teaching his pupils the right use of words.[519] Thus he told Sokrates not to use δεινός when he meant “clever”; for its proper meaning was “terrible,” applicable to war, disease, or the like.[520] There is an amusing skit on his pet subject in Plato.[521] “The audience in a philosophical debate should give an impartial but not an equal attention to both speakers; for it is not the same thing. For it is right to give an impartial hearing, but you ought to incline, not equally towards both, but rather towards the wiser speaker. I also ask you to agree, and to discuss, not to dispute. For friends discuss with friends for friendship’s sake, but enemies dispute. In this way our meeting will be best conducted. For you, the speakers, would thus win from the audience most repute, not praise (for repute is without deception in the minds of the hearers, but praise is an outward expression of what is often not felt); and we, the audience, would thus receive most happiness, not pleasure; for happiness is produced by the mental reception of knowledge and wisdom, pleasure by eating or by some other pleasant physical state.” It was easy to laugh, but, as Plato himself shows, these distinctions of meaning were extremely useful in meeting logical quibbles, and were much needed in contemporary logic. Besides this, Prodikos was a moral teacher, and composed the famous Choice of Herakles, in which he inculcated the duty of hard work as opposed to a life of laziness and pleasure. He was an invalid, but worked on in spite of ill-health; the result was, perhaps, a certain amount of pessimism.
Hippias was a marvellously all-round genius. He once came to the Olympian festival with everything that he wore or carried made by himself, ring, oil bottle, shoes, clothes, a wonderful Persian girdle; he also brought epic poems, tragedies, dithyrambs, and all sorts of prose-works.[522] He knew astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, grammar. At Sparta he taught history and archæology. He had a wonderful system of mnemonics, by which, if he once heard a string of fifty names, he could remember them all.[523] He lectured on Homer and other poets. He also composed a moral discourse, which won great applause at Sparta, where quibbles or bad morality would have been sternly repressed; it was afterwards delivered in an Athenian school-room. Hippias was always ready to answer any question which was put to him, and was rarely at a loss.
A less prominent Sophist was Antiphon, who must be carefully distinguished from his namesake the Attic orator. He published works on physics, on concord (ὁμόνοια), and on political science. The fragments are interesting, and show some popular handling of ethical teaching. The following extracts[524] will give some idea of the man:—
“First among things human I reckon education. For if you begin anything whatever in the right way, the end will probably be right also. The nature of the harvest depends upon the seed you sow. If you plant good education in a young body, it bears leaves and fruit the whole life long, and no rain or drought can destroy it.”
“Life is like a day’s sentry-duty, and the length of life is comparable to a single day. While our day lasts, we look up to the sunlight, then we pass on our duty to our successors.”
“A miser stored up money in a hiding-place, and did not lend or use it. Then it was stolen. A man to whom he had refused to lend it told him to put a stone in the hiding-place instead, and imagine that it was money; it would be just as useful.”
Among the Sophists were some apparently who were merely jesters, and used their brains solely in arousing laughter. It may well be doubted whether the account which Plato gives of Euthudemos and Dionusodoros is true to life; but they probably represent a type. As teachers, no sane man could take them seriously. They had been gladiators, and had taught forensic rhetoric; afterwards they discovered a genius for quibbles. They were ready to make out any statement to be true or false. The respondent may only answer “Yes” or “No,” and no previous statement could be quoted against them, since they did not claim to teach anything consistent. A sample[525] of their arguments will make their methods clearer. “A. Your father is a dog. B. So is yours. A. If you answer my questions, you will admit it. Have you a dog? B. Yes, a very bad one. A. Has it puppies? B. Mongrels like itself. A. Then the dog is a father? B. Yes. A. Isn’t the dog yours? B. Certainly. A. Then being yours and a father, it is your father, and you are the brother of puppies.” Absurd as it is, such discussions are a good means of teaching logic, since they make the search for rules intellectually compulsory.
No doubt there were black sheep among the lesser Sophists, to whom Plato’s bitter definitions in the Sophist were quite applicable, who were “hunters after young men of wealth and position, with sham education as their bait, and a fee for their object, making money by a scientific use of quibbles in private conversation, while quite aware that what they were teaching was wrong.” But they do not appear in extant literature, which has only recorded a very few, and those the very pick, of the hundreds of Sophists that there must have been in the Socratic age.[526]
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The Sophists who have been mentioned so far have been but little concerned with Rhetoric: they form rather a school of Logic, opposed to the rhetorical school of Gorgias and his followers.
PLATE VIII.
IN THE PALAISTRA: FLUTE-PLAYERS (WITH φορβεία), JAVELIN-THROWER, DISK-THROWER, AND BOXER
Gerhard’s Auserlesene Vasenbilder, cclxxii. Fig. 1.
From a Kulix, now at Berlin, signed by Epiktetos (No. 2262).
Of the rise of Rhetoric in Hellas I need say little: the whole subject has been admirably treated elsewhere.[527] For educational purposes, Hellenic rhetoric started with several fatal drawbacks and some counterbalancing advantages. The southern nature of the Hellenes preferred sensuous charm of sound to logical accuracy of fact; their rhetoric, arising as it did out of poetry, and modelling itself upon its literary parent, pandered only too readily to their taste. With truth it had no more to do than Homer had; its object was to please the ear by curious rhythms, balanced clauses, parisosis, and all other possible devices. As long as the form was excellent, no matter how trivial the subject:[528] mice or salt
were good enough for a theme. The oration must, of course, be full of passion, but that could be simulated: rhetoric had inherited the legacy of acting from its parent, Lyric Poetry. So rhetoric became simply a question of style, not of argument; and since arguments were not required, the strength or weakness of a case did not matter: rhetoric could make any cause attractive to a sensuous Hellenic ear by its tricks of style, and thus make “the weaker cause the stronger.” The method by which its professors taught their pupils brought out this attitude clearly. They were accustomed to take an imaginary case, and then to teach their pupils how to write a speech on either side of it: the extant “Tetralogies” of Antiphon are examples of the method, which was excellent educationally; for it is good to see the arguments on both sides of a case. It was the carelessness about fact and indifference to truth, and the element of acting, that were so dangerous to the pupils. These elements certainly wrecked the justice of the Athenian courts; their effect on Hellenic character was probably equally unsatisfactory.
Rhetoric also inherited the “gnome” or commonplace, a general statement about ethics or politics or what not, which could be developed into a sententious little essay. Budding orators learned to compose a little store of these and keep them ready for use, to be inserted in a speech whenever an opportunity occurred. For writing these essays, a certain amount of independent thought about politics and ethics was necessary; and both the thought and the essay-writing were no doubt good for the lads.
The flowery and poetic style, which was the main characteristic of early Hellenic rhetoric, was the creation of Gorgias. A fragment of a funeral oration, in which no doubt he put forth all his powers, may be given as a sample of the sort of thing which his pupils learned to write:—
“As witness to their deeds these dead set up trophies over the foe, offerings to Zeus, offered by themselves. They were not unskilled in natural Ares nor lawful loves nor armèd strife nor beauty-loving Peace; revering the Gods by Justice, honouring their parents by Service, just to their countrymen by Equality, faithful to their friends by Loyalty. Therefore, when they died, love for them died not with them, but deathless in bodies no longer bodies it lives when they live no longer.” In the Encomium on Helen we have “fright exceeding fearful, and pity exceeding tearful, and yearning exceeding painful,” and “productive of pleasure, destructive of pain.” In the Palamedes Gorgias even uses puns.
His poetical compounds and those of his pupil Alkidamas were famous. In short, at this time there was no boundary whatever between poetry and prose: prose, if anything, was the more poetical of the two.
This strange hothouse Euphuistic style of Gorgias took Hellas by storm, and his influence was enormous: it even half-mastered the austere mind of Thucydides. As reformed by the greater critical faculties of his pupil Isokrates, it became the parent of Ciceronian Latin and so of the prose literature of centuries.
The other rhetorical Sophists of the time are less interesting. Likumnios and Polos, teacher and pupil, seem to have devoted themselves to questions of rhythm: they employed quaint conceits and affectations, like Gorgias. Theodoros and Euenos divided and subdivided the parts of an oration into “confirmation” and “additional confirmation,” and “by-blames” and “by-panegyrics”: in which work Polos joined them. Thrasumachos of Chalcedon, who seems to have been a bigger man altogether, began to attack the psychological side of rhetoric by studying the questions of pathos and indignation; these studies he embodied in pamphlets, and no doubt his results were imparted to his pupils.
One of the beauties of old Hellenic education had been that it did not make the rich a class apart from the poor by giving a widely different form of culture. The rise of the Sophists changed all this: their fees excluded the poor. The odium of resultant class-separation fell upon the teachers. Their pupils, rich, aristocratic, and cultured, inclined towards oligarchy. Hellenic sentiment held the teacher responsible for the whole career of his pupils. So for this reason again the democracies regarded the Sophists with suspicion, as the trainers of oligarchs and tyrants. It was chiefly because he had been the teacher of Kritias and Alkibiades that Sokrates was put to death by the restored democracy. The persuasive powers which the rhetoricians gave to their pupils might be, and often were, misused; the pupils might mislead the Ekklesia into bad policy or the law-courts into injustice by their eloquence. However much the Sophists might protest that they taught only rhetoric, not ethics, they were held responsible for the dishonesty as well as for the eloquence of such pupils. Besides, rhetoric gave the rich man, who alone could buy it, a most undemocratic influence in the State. The odium against the Sophists was increased by their religious and political views. They were free thinkers in all things. Protagoras was a frank agnostic; Gorgias believed that nothing whatever existed. Their political theories were equally revolutionary, full of the idea of Social Contracts and the right of the one strong man. All this was extremely distasteful to the majority, who were democratic and orthodox. But it must be remembered that no such views appeared in lectures: they were confined to an occasional book or to private conversation. Outwardly the Sophists were law-abiding and respectable servants of the constitution, and their lectures were, if anything, rather commonplace.
Thus the prejudice against them was excited partly by their freethinking and partly by their fees. The first of these two reasons applied still more to Sokrates and the philosophic schools. But Sokrates neither asked nor received fees: Plato and Aristotle only accepted presents. Consequently when the philosophic party tried to dissociate themselves in the popular mind from the Sophists with whom they were confounded, they attempted to revive the old Hellenic prejudice against taking fees for “wisdom,” which had given trouble to the lyric poets, and to emphasise the money-making aspects of the Sophists’ profession. This rather absurd appeal to the gallery has influenced posterity; but it did not win universal acceptation in Hellas. Aischines still calls Sokrates a Sophist. Under the Roman Empire “Sophist” became a title of distinction applied to artistic stylists and teachers like Libanius.
[495] Plato’s own schoolmaster, Diog. Laertius iii. 5.
[496] [Plato] Lovers, 132.
[497] Reputed inventor of Euclid i. 12 and 23, and a great astronomer.
[498] Thus the lad Theages, who has learnt letters, lyre-playing, and wrestling, is vaguely in search of a Sophist, to make him “wise” ([Plato] Theages, 121 D, 122 E).
[499] Plato, Theait. 147 D.
[500] Aristoph. Birds, 1005.
[501] Plato, Hipp. Maj. 303 B.
[502] Stob. 98, p. 535.
[503] And learning to ride. He is thinking of the aristocratic lad, who would afterwards enter the later exclusive ephebic college.
[504] Among the common amusements of Athenian dinner-parties was a geographical game, in which A gave, say, the name of a city in Asia beginning with K, and B had to reply with one in Europe beginning with the same letter (Athen. 457).
[505] Pind. Isthm. 5 (4) 36. σοφισταί; σοφός, Pind. Ol. i. 15; Pyth. i. 42. σοφία, Hymn to Hermes, and Pind. Ol. i. 187.
[506] Hom. Il. 15. 412.
[507] Pind. Pyth. 3. 96.
[508] Ibid. 5. 154.
[509] In Isokrates, Antid. 235.
[510] As in Theog. 1074.
[511] He was an invalid.
[512] Plato, Protag. 328 C.
[513] Plato, Krat. 384 E.
[514] [Plato] Axioch. 366 C.
[515] Plato, Apol. iv. 20 B.
[516] Isok. Antid. 156.
[517] Diog. Laertius iii. 25.
[518] Aristot. Rhet. iii. 3. 5.
[519] Plato, Euthud. 277 E.
[520] Plato, Protag. 341 A.
[521] Ibid. 337 A-C.
[522] Plato, Hipp. Min. 368.
[523] Plato, Hipp. Maj. and Protag. 318.
[524] Quoted in the Teubner Antiphon from Stobaeus. Flor. 98. 533. Flor. Appendix, 16. 36. This Antiphon comes in Xen. Mem. i. 6. 1.
[525] Plato, Euthud. 298 D.
[526] It is not fair to condemn Polos and Thrasumachos on the score of the opinions which Plato puts into their mouths.
[527] Jebb, Attic Orators.
[528] Compare Renaissance poetry in Italy.