[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.
[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.
[833]. Another example may be found in Athen. iii. 54.
[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.
[835]. Plat. Opp. iii. 444, seq.
[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.
[837]. Cf. Dem. Lacrit. § 10. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 113.
[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.
[839]. Plat. Rep. i. § 11. t. i. p. 41. Stallb.
[840]. Ἔρανος. Cf. Sympos. t. iv. p. 379. Bekk.