[821]. Cic. Brut. § 12. Geel, Hist. Sophist. p. 15. seq. Sext. Empir. p. 306. seq.
[822]. Diod. Sicul. xii. 53.
[823]. I cannot, therefore, see the reason of Geel’s doubt.—Hist. Sophist. p. 18. Cf. Clint. Fast. Hellen. ii. p. 68.
[824]. Plat. Hip. Maj. t. v. p. 416.
[825]. Cressol. Theat. Rhet. i. 8.
[826]. Geel, Hist. Sophist. p. 23.
[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.
[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.
[829]. See Athen. xii. 71.
[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.”