[592] Thucyd. ii, 64. γνῶτε δ᾽ ὄνομα μέγιστον αὐτὴν (τὴν πόλιν) ἔχουσαν ἐν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, διὰ τὸ ταῖς ξυμφοραῖς μὴ εἴκειν.
[593] Thucydidês (iii, 82) specifies very distinctly the cause to which he ascribes the bad consequences which he depicts. He makes no allusion to sophists or sophistical teaching; though Brandis (Gesch. der Gr. Röm. Philos. i, p. 518, not. f.) drags in “the sophistical spirit of the statesmen of that time,” as if it were the cause of the mischief, and as if it were to be found in the speeches of Thucydidês, i, 76, v, 105.
There cannot be a more unwarranted assertion; nor can a learned man like Brandis be ignorant, that such words as “the sophistical spirit,” (Der sophistische Geist,) are understood by a modern reader in a sense totally different from its true Athenian sense.
[594] Xenoph. Memor. ii, 1, 21-34. Καὶ Πρόδικος δὲ ὁ σοφὸς ἐν τῷ συγγράμματι τῷ περὶ Ἡρακλέους, ὅπερ δὴ καὶ πλείστοις ἐπιδείκνυται, ὡσαύτως περὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀποφαίνεται, etc.
Xenophon here introduces Sokratês himself as bestowing much praise on the moral teaching of Prodikus.
[595] See Fragment iii, of the Ταγηνισταὶ of Aristophanês, Meineke, Fragment. Aristoph. p. 1140.
[596] Xenophon gives only the substance of Prodikus’s lecture, not his exact words. But he gives what may be called the whole substance, so that we can appreciate the scope as well as the handling of the author. We cannot say the same of an extract given (in the Pseudo-Platonic Dialogue Axiochus, c. 7, 8) from a lecture said to have been delivered by Prodikus, respecting the miseries of human life, pervading all the various professions and occupations. It is impossible to make out distinctly, either how much really belongs to Prodikus, or what was his scope and purpose, if any such lecture was really delivered.
[597] Plato, Protagoras, p. 320, D. c. 11, et seq., especially p. 322, D, where Protagoras lays it down that no man is fit to be a member of a social community, who has not in his bosom both δίκη and αἰδὼς,—that is, a sense of reciprocal obligation and right between himself and others,—and a sensibility to esteem or reproach from others. He lays these fundamental attributes down as what a good ethical theory must assume or exact in every man.
[598] Of the unjust asperity and contempt with which the Platonic commentators treat the sophists, see a specimen in Ast, Ueber Platons Leben und Schriften, pp. 70, 71, where he comments on Protagoras and this fable.
[599] Protagoras says: Τὸ δὲ μάθημά ἐστιν, εὐβουλία περὶ τε τῶν οἰκείων ὅπως ἂν ἄριστα τὴν αὑτοῦ οἰκίαν διοικοῖ, καὶ περὶ τῶν τῆς πόλεως, ὅπως τὰ τῆς πόλεως δυνατώτατος εἴη καὶ πράττειν καὶ λέγειν. (Plato, Protagoras, c. 9, p. 318, E.)