Sokratês says to Adeimantus: “An tu quoque putas esse quidem sophistas, homines privatos, qui corrumpunt juventutem in quâcunque re mentione dignâ; nec illud tamen animadvertisti et tibi persuasisti, quod multo magis debebas, ipsos Athenienses turpissimos esse aliorum corruptores?”
Yet the commentator who translates this passage, does not scruple (in his Prolegomena to the Republic, pp. xliv, xlv, as well as to the Dialogues) to heap upon the sophists aggravated charges, as the actual corruptors of Athenian morality.
[620] Plato, Repub. vi, 11, p. 497, B. μηδεμίαν ἀξίαν εἶναι τῶν νῦν κατάστασιν πόλεως φιλοσόφου φύσεως, etc.
Compare Plato, Epistol. vii, p. 325, A.
[621] Anytus was the accuser of Sokratês: his enmity to the sophists may be seen in Plato, Meno. p. 91, C.
[622] Xenoph. Anabas. ii, 6. Πρόξενος—εὐθὺς μὲν μειράκιον ὢν ἐπεθύμει γενέσθαι ἀνὴρ τὰ μεγάλα πράττειν ἱκανός· καὶ διὰ ταύτην τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἔδωκε Γοργίᾳ ἀργύριον τῷ Λεοντίνῳ.... Τοσούτων δ᾽ ἐπιθυμῶν, σφόδρα ἔνδηλον αὖ καὶ τοῦτο εἶχεν, ὅτι τούτων οὐδὲν ἂν θέλοι κτᾶσθαι μετὰ ἀδικίας, ἀλλὰ σὺν τῷ δικαίῳ καὶ καλῷ ᾤετο δεῖν τούτων τυγχάνειν, ἄνευ δὲ τούτων μή.
Proxenus, as described by his friend Xenophon, was certainly a man who did no dishonor to the moral teaching of Gorgias.
The connection between thought, speech, and action, is seen even in the jests of Aristophanês upon the purposes of Sokratês and the sophists:—
Νικᾷν πράττων καὶ βουλεύων καὶ τῇ γλώττῃ πολεμίζων (Nubes, 418).
[623] Plato, Apol. Sokr. c. 10, p. 23, C; Protagoras, p. 328, C.