The Cambridge Companion to the Sophists 1108494684, 9781108494687

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the cambridge companion to

THE SOPHISTS The Classical Greek Sophists – Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, and Antiphon, among others – are some of the most important figures in the flourishing of linguistic, historical, and philosophical reflection at the time of Socrates. They are also some of the most controversial; what makes the Sophists distinctive, and what they contributed to fifth-century intellectual culture, have been hotly debated since the time of Plato. They have often been derided as reactionaries, relativists, cynically superficial thinkers, or even mere opportunists, making money from wealthy democrats eager for public repute. This volume takes a fresh perspective on the Sophists – who really counted as one; how distinctive they were; and what kind of sense later thinkers made of them. In three parts, contributors address the Sophists’ predecessors and historical and professional context; their major intellectual themes, including language, ethics, society, and religion; and their reception from the fourth century BCE to modernity. joshua billings is Professor of Classics at Princeton University and the author of Genealogy of the Tragic: Greek Tragedy and German Philosophy (2014) and The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens (2021). He has published widely on Greek tragedy and intellectual history and their modern reception. christopher moore is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Socrates and Self-Knowledge (2015), Calling Philosophers Names (2020), and The Virtue of Agency (2023), and has published widely on fifth- and fourthcentury-BCE philosophy and intellectual history, including their reception.

other volumes in the s eries of cambridge companions

ABELARD Edited by jeffrey e. brower and kevin guilfoy ADORNO Edited by thomas huhn ANCIENT ETHICS Edited by christopher bobonich ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN SCIENCE Edited by liba taub ANCIENT LOGIC Edited by luca castagnoli and paolo fait ANCIENT SCEPTICISM Edited by richard bett ANSELM Edited by brian davies and brian leftow AQUINAS Edited by norman kretzmann and eleonore stump THE NEW CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO AQUINAS Edited by eleonore stump and thomas joseph white ARABIC PHILOSOPHY Edited by peter adamson and richard c. taylor HANNAH ARENDT Edited by dana villa ARISTOTLE Edited by jonathan barnes ARISTOTLE’S “POLITICS” Edited by marguerite deslauriers and paul destre´e ATHEISM Edited by michael martin AUGUSTINE 2nd edition Edited by david meconi and eleonore stump BACON Edited by markku peltonen BERKELEY Edited by kenneth p. winkler BOETHIUS Edited by john marenbon BRENTANO Edited by dale jacquette CARNAP Edited by michael friedman and richard creath CICERO’S PHILOSOPHY Edited by jed w. atkins and thomas be´natouı¨l CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE Edited by william e. scheuerman COMMON-SENSE PHILOSOPHY Edited by rik peels and rene´ van woudenberg THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO Edited by terrell carver and james farr CONSTANT Edited by helena rosenblatt CRITICAL THEORY Edited by fred rush DARWIN 2nd edition Edited by jonathan hodge and gregory radick SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR Edited by claudia card DELEUZE Edited by daniel w. smith and henry somers-hall DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA Edited by richard boyd Continued at the back of the book

The Cambridge Companion to the

SOPHISTS Edited by Joshua Billings Princeton University

Christopher Moore Pennsylvania State University

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108494687 DOI: 10.1017/9781108859639 © Cambridge University Press & Assessment 2023 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2023 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-108-49468-7 Hardback ISBN 978-1-108-79685-9 Paperback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Contributors

page vii

Note on the Text

x

Introduction: The Problem of the Sophists j o s h u a b i l l i n g s a n d c h r i s to p h e r m o o r e

1

PART I CONTEXTS

1 Sophia before the Sophists k a th r y n a. m o rg a n

33

2 The Sophists between Aristocracy and Democracy mark munn

69

3 The Professional Lives of the Sophists h a˚ ka n t el l

98

4 The Sophists in the Fifth-Century Enlightenment joshua billings

124

PART II THOUGHT

5 Nature and Norms r i c h ar d b e t t

157

6 The Turn to Language m a u r o b o n a z zi

179

7 Problems of Being e v a n r o d r i gu e z

200

v

vi contents

8 Politics in Theory and Practice

225

c h loe b al la 9 Interrogating the Gods

251

m i rj am e . k o t w i c k 10 Skills of Argument

277

m i - k yo u n g l e e 11 Civic and Anti-Civic Ethics

306

d a vi d co n a n w o l f s d or f PART III RECEPTIONS

12 The Fourth-Century Creative Reception of the Sophists

337

c h ri s t o p he r m o o r e 13 Writing the First Sophistic

370

susan prince 14 The Sophists in the History of Philosophy

403

c h ri s t o p he r c. r a y m o n d Appendix: The People of the Sophistic Period

438

christopher moore Select Bibliography

462

Index

498

Contributors

Chloe Balla is Associate Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Crete. Her research focuses on the texts of the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle, and on the Greek medical writers. She is co-editor of Plato’s Academy: Its Workings and Its History (2020) and is currently writing a monograph on Plato’s Phaedo. Richard Bett is Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Johns Hopkins University. He has translated most of the works of Sextus Empiricus

with

notes

or

commentary.

He

has

also

published Pyrrho, his Antecedents, and his Legacy (2000) as well as essays on the Greek skeptical traditions, some of which were republished in the collection How to be a Pyrrhonist (2019). He has also published articles on the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, the Stoics, and Nietzsche. Joshua Billings is Professor of Classics at Princeton University and author of Genealogy of the Tragic: Greek Tragedy and German Philosophy (2014) and The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens (2021). Mauro Bonazzi is Full Professor of the History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at Utrecht University. He is the author of The Sophists (2021) and Platonism: A Concise History from the Early Academy to Late Antiquity (2023). He is currently completing a monograph on the uses and abuses of Greek thought in modern philosophy. Mirjam E. Kotwick is Assistant Professor of Classics at Princeton University. She is the author of Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Text of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (2016), Der Papyrus von Derveni: vii

viii list of contributors Griechisch-deutsch (2017), and articles on ancient Greek philosophy, intellectual history, and their textual traditions. She is currently working on ancient hermeneutics and dream interpretation. MI-Kyoung Lee is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of Epistemology after Protagoras: Responses to Relativism in Plato, Aristotle, and Democritus (2005) and is currently working on a book on justice in Aristotle’s ethics and political philosophy. Christopher Moore is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Pennsylvania State University and has written three books, Socrates and Self-Knowledge (2015), Calling Philosophers Names (2020), and The Virtue of Agency (2023), and has published widely on fifth- and fourth-century-BCE philosophy and intellectual history, including their reception. Kathryn A. Morgan is Joan Palevsky Professor of Classics at the University of California–Los Angeles. She is the author of Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato (2000), Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan Monarchy in the Fifth Century BC (2015), and numerous articles on Plato and Classical Greek culture. Mark Munn is Professor of Ancient Greek History and Archaeology in the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of The School of History: Athens in the Age of Socrates (2000) and The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia: A Study of Sovereignty in Ancient Religion (2006). Susan Prince is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Antisthenes of Athens: Texts, Translations and Commentary (2015) and articles on the ancient Cynics, the reception of Socrates, ancient medicine, and Greek intellectual history.

list of contributors ix Christopher C. Raymond is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College. He is the coauthor of Plato: Charmides (2019) and is currently collaborating on an edition of and commentary on the fragments of Critias of Athens. Evan Rodriguez is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Idaho State University. He is the author of articles on philosophical method among Plato, Aristotle, and the Sophists. He is currently writing a book about Plato’s adaptation of sophistic methods and is also a founding member of the Open Plato Project. Håkan Tell is Associate Professor of Classics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Plato’s Counterfeit Sophists (2011) and of articles on the Greek wisdom tradition. David Conan Wolfsdorf is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. He is the author of On Goodness (2019), Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy (2013), and Trials of Reason (2008). He is the editor of Early Greek Ethics (2020) and has written numerous articles and chapters on ancient philosophy.

Note on the Text

Citations of early Greek philosophical texts take the form P/D/R #; A/B/ C # (e.g., P1/A1). The first citation refers to the numeration in Early Greek Philosophy, ed. A. Laks and G. Most, 9 vols., Cambridge, MA, 2016 [LM]; the second citation refers to the numeration in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. H. Diels and W. Kranz, 3 vols., Zürich, 1951 [DK]. Citations of other classical texts follow standard numeration procedures and, where possible, are based on the current Oxford Classical Text. Further Editions Cited by Abbreviation BNJ:

Brill’s New Jacoby, ed. I. Worthington, Leiden, 2006–.

CEG:

Carmina Epigraphica Graeca. Saeculi IV a Chr. (CEG 2), ed. P. A. Hansen, Berlin, 1989.

KA:

Poetae Comici Graecae, eds. R. Kassel and C. Austin, Berlin, 1983–.

EGM:

Early Greek Mythography, ed. R. L. Fowler, 2 vols., Oxford, 2000–13.

3

IG I :

Inscriptiones Graecae I: Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno anteriores, 3rd edn. Berlin, 1981, 1994. Fasc. 2, eds. D. Lewis and L. Jeffery, Dedicationes. Catalogi. Termini. Tituli sepulcrales. Varia. Tituli Attici extra Atticam reperti. Addenda.

SEG:

Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, eds. A. Chaniotis, T. Corsten, N. Papazarkadas, and E. Stavrianopoulou. Leiden, 1923.

SSR:

Socratis et Socratorum Reliquiae, ed. G. Giannantoni, 4 vols., Naples, 1990.

TrGF:

Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, eds. B. Snell, R. Kannicht, and Stefan Radt, 5 vols., Göttingen, 1971–2004.

x

Introduction The Problem of the Sophists Joshua Billings and Christopher Moore τὸ δὲ φῦλον ὃ νῦν ἐπινοοῦμεν ζητεῖν οὐ πάντων ῥᾷστον συλλαβεῖν τί ποτ᾽ ἔστιν, ὁ σοφιστής The tribe we’re now intending to investigate, it’s not at all easy to sum up what it is, the Sophist. (Plato Sophist 218c)

defining the sophist “What is it, the Sophist?” The question is no more easily answered today than it was for Plato’s characters. Since Plato’s Theaetetus and Eleatic Stranger sought to define the category over the course of the eponymous dialogue, “the Sophist” has come in and out of focus in the history of philosophy, with little agreement on what the name means and why (if at all) the Sophists matter. There is, nevertheless, broad agreement on who (at least some of) the original Sophists are; by traditional understanding the canon includes Protagoras of Abdera, Gorgias of Leontini, Prodicus of Ceos, Hippias of Elis, and Antiphon of Athens. These five were active in Greece in the latter part of the fifth century BCE and all are recorded as spending significant periods in Athens, where they evidently made major impressions on their contemporaries. Other apparently more marginal figures are often counted Sophists as well: Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, Critias of Athens, the Chian brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, and the authors of the two anonymous treatises called Dissoi Logoi and Anonymus Iamblichi, though the reasons for including these figures among the Sophists differ, in some cases quite substantially. There is an important case, too, for understanding Socrates as a Sophist. The divergent groupings imply differing ideas of the Sophist and indeed of

1

2 joshua billings and christopher moore the contours of early Greek philosophy and intellectual history broadly. The problem of the Sophists – what a Sophist is and who the Sophists are – is central to understanding Classical Greek intellectual culture and the early development of what we know as “philosophy.” The Sophists offer a window into Greek thought at a moment of substantial transformation, when an understanding of philosophy as a discipline, and the questions and methods proper to it, emerged from a period of vibrant contestation and debate. The Sophists, individually and collectively, were some of the major figures of this moment of transformation, yet their contributions have consistently been denigrated and marginalized since the time of Plato. The lack of attention to the Sophists over millennia has created significant gaps in our understanding of this crucial phase of intellectual history, and the Sophists have received far less scholarly attention than their predecessors, the so-called Presocratics.1 As the essays in this Companion demonstrate, however, taking full account of their intellectual and cultural significance leads to a novel picture of Classical Greek culture and the development of Greek thought. The Sophists, themselves fascinating and multiform figures, can serve as keys to unlocking this fascinating and multiform moment in intellectual history. If we return, in modified form, to Plato’s question and ask “what are the Sophists?” we can delineate two conventional ways of answering. The more widespread sees the Sophists as professional teachers who offered their wisdom (sophia) and their training in virtue (aretê) to students for pay. This is a primary sense of the term in Plato and Xenophon and has conditioned understandings of the Sophists since. The profession of a paid teacher of wisdom has most often been denigrated, particularly in contrast to its apparently more noble counterpart, the practice of philosophy, which is thought to be 1

The Sophists have a liminal role in Presocratic studies generally; in Diels’s standard edition, evidence for Sophists is edited alongside that for the Presocratics, but in a separate section, “The Older Sophistic.” Most of the Sophists, of course, are contemporaries of Socrates.

introduction: the problem of the sophists 3 pursued without financial interests. But Sophists, on this understanding, can also be praised for opening the gates of learning to a range of people beyond the aristocratic elite. More neutrally, Sophists can be seen as an emergent socioeconomic category on a par with the professors or private tutors of today. This sociological view sees the Sophists’ primary significance in activities that brought certain pursuits and forms of learning to a ready public, making a profound impact on Greek intellectual culture of the late fifth and early fourth century.2 An independent but complementary way of understanding the Sophists is philosophical, and sees the Sophists as defined by similar views – usually relativism or skepticism, the doubt that we could ever get or share objective knowledge, especially in normative domains but also about the basic nature of reality. Though relying on evidence from Plato and Aristotle, this way of understanding the Sophists is primarily modern, importantly canonized in Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Though Hegel’s understanding of the Sophists as “subjectivists” has largely been abandoned, his lectures were a milestone for recognizing the philosophical significance of the Sophists. They stand at the origin of a number of modern rediscoveries of the Sophists as thinkers important for their naturalistic thought, sensitivity to historical contingency and human diversity, and application of theory to practice.3 The philosophical understanding of the Sophists as a group, moreover, persists, with recent scholars arguing that the center of the category is a concentration on language or a defined set of views on human knowledge, reason, and ethics.4 Where the Sophists are not understood primarily as a professional class, they are seen to constitute the core of a “sophistic movement” defined by shared beliefs or philosophical tendencies. 2

3 4

Guthrie 1971 and Kerferd 1981, the two most important references for Anglophone readers, both take essentially this view in defining the Sophists (though it does not preclude them also from analyzing philosophical commonalities). De Romilly 1992 likewise offers a version of this view that is even more socially inflected. See Chapter 15. A recent exponent is Bonazzi 2020a; for another attempt at defining intellectual continuities, see Mayhew 2012: xxiii–xxvi.

4 joshua billings and christopher moore There is much to both these ways of understanding the Sophists (which are often combined in practice), but both meet with substantial difficulties when attempting to elaborate a definition of the Sophists. The sociological view of the Sophists as a professional class founders when confronted with the ancient evidence for the activities of the canonical Sophists. While some are said to provide private instruction (Protagoras, Gorgias, and Antiphon), this is less emphasized for others (Prodicus and Hippias), and all engage in a much wider range of professional activities, including giving public display speeches (epideixeis), writing for publication, speechwriting, and giving advice, often at the political or geopolitical level. Indeed, for most, their fame or significance seems grounded in one of these latter activities. These tend to be continuous with the activities of figures not known as “Sophists,” such as musicians who took paying pupils, making the boundaries of the sociological category highly porous, potentially to the point of incoherence. Moreover, as we discuss below, fifth- and fourth-century uses of the word “Sophist” show clearly that the term did not refer specifically to teachers, even if its referents were often teachers to one degree or another. All the canonical Sophists were certainly intellectual professionals of a kind, but their activities are better understood in relation to their sphere of activity than to the pedagogical activities they engaged in. When Sophists are denigrated as “hunters of rich young men” (Plato Sophist 223b4), only one of several aspects of their practical lives is described, and not necessarily the most distinctive or culturally significant one. As for the philosophical understanding of the Sophists, this too recognizes genuine commonalities among the major figures; there is evidence for a widespread interest in human culture (as opposed to the natural philosophy of most Presocratics), for language, for unconventional ideas about divinity, and for reasoning about ethics and responsibility. But none of these is an adequate starting place for a definition of the Sophists that applies to all and only the canonical Sophists. The core sophistic tenets that have been proposed rely heavily on one or two

introduction: the problem of the sophists 5 thinkers and then seek to read these concerns into the rest.5 And here commonalities with other contemporary thinkers – for example, Democritus or the Socratics, to whom the Sophists are often opposed – are in some respects just as notable as commonalities among the Sophists.6 If the Sophists are to be understood as a philosophical movement, this must be an exceptionally wide and diffuse one, for the most part indistinguishable from late-fifth-century intellectual culture as a whole. If we cannot locate the Sophist by either of the two conventional routes, what is left to us and to this volume? We accept the canonical five Sophists – Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, and Antiphon – along with the familiar, though more marginal, figures mentioned above as core to the category. This grouping has been fruitful to others, and its members in fact now constitute a historiographical category, the emergence and transformations of which are traced in the later chapters. But rather than seeking to identify some essence to be found within this grouping, we seek to understand the Sophists as a product or phenomenon of their time and its extraordinary intellectual ferment, distinct in some respects from their contemporaries and continuous in others, and revisited time and again throughout the later history of thought. We pay close attention, on one hand, to the place of the Sophists within fifth-century intellectual culture and, on the other, to the emergence and transformations of the category “Sophist” from the fifth century to the present. In doing so, we seek to obviate the problem of definition, adopting a flexible understanding of the boundaries of the group (which our contributors understand differently in different contexts) and approaching the Sophists as a category that was and remains in process of definition – in other words, as a problem. This Introduction lays some foundations for exploring the problem of the Sophists over the course of the rest of the volume. We begin by 5

6

Bett 2013. This overgeneralization characterizes otherwise highly sophisticated works such as Untersteiner 1954 [1949] . For Democritus, see esp. Cole 1967; Johnson 2020.

6 joshua billings and christopher moore reviewing the evidence for the word sophistês in Classical Greece. This leads us to argue that the conventional understanding of the Sophists as specifically those individuals offering “selective secondary education” was not current in the fifth century and is rather a retrospective creation (which is not to deny that the canonical Sophists did in fact teach).7 There is no contemporary evidence for the familiar grouping of the Sophists, and we should understand the category (though not always the term itself) as a polemical one and a significant problem in itself. We then turn from the question of what generically identifies a “Sophist” to the question of who in Classical Greece should be included among the Sophists. Here we turn from lexical considerations to the constitution of the sophistic corpus – those texts attributable to the familiar Sophists and the testimonia about the lives of the named ones – with a fresh eye to the wide range of materials relevant to an understanding of the Sophists and their moment. This leads us to propose an understanding of the Sophists not as a stable category or discrete grouping, but as a phenomenon that touches on every aspect of the intellectual culture of the late fifth century. This understanding guides the design of the volume, which we explain in the final section of this Introduction.

what is a sophist? We may begin to approach the category “Sophist” by looking at the application of the term in the fifth and fourth centuries. It is sometimes thought that Protagoras and his ilk would have been identifiable as “Sophists” to their contemporaries by virtue of their professional activities (usually taken to be teaching for pay), and that this identification grounds the uses of the term in fourthcentury authors. When one approaches the ancient evidence, however, no such clearly defined contemporary meaning emerges. What one finds, instead, is a word group with a range of usages, surprisingly few of which are compatible with our understanding of the category “Sophist.” The familiar meaning of “Sophist,” we find, is largely 7

The quoted formulation is taken from Kerferd 1981: 17.

introduction: the problem of the sophists 7 derived from Plato, and though we cannot rule out its having a fifthcentury precedent, this would likely not have been the dominant meaning. We have to recognize in the category “Sophist” a site of definitional contestation (one parallel to the struggle over the meaning of “philosophy”) and take account of the derogatory or polemical valences found in many of its usages, ancient as well as modern.8 The earliest surviving uses of the term sophistês seem straightforwardly positive and unproblematic. The word appears twice in early-fifth-century literature, neither use implying an extraordinary status or fraught title. Around 478 BCE, Pindar refers to those being honored by Zeus as “providing a subject (meletê) for sophistai.”9 The suggestion that sophistai have a range of meletai, “subjects, themes,” picks them out as a class dedicated to some craft – in this case, the class of poets that includes Pindar and his competitors. The -tês suffix, indicating specialization, suggests they were professionals, and while the term includes poets for hire, it need hardly be limited to them.10 The poets of Pindar’s ilk conveyed sophia through mythtelling and gnomic expression, among other routes;11 sophistês would then seem to denote the professionalization of such proffered insight, and its unmarked application to encomiastic poets would acknowledge that epinician performance is a familiar site of such advice. Contemporaneously, Aeschylus speaks of a “sophistês misplaying a lyre.”12 From this fragment, shorn of its context, we can merely guess that Aeschylus refers here to a musician, a guess supported by Sophocles’ later use of sophistês for a cithara player and the tragedian Iophon’s apparent use of it for an aulos player.13 But presumably he 8 9 10

11

12 13

On such contestation, see, e.g., Nightingale 1995; Tell 2011; Moore 2020a. Pindar Isthmian 5.28–9: μελέταν δὲ σοφισταῖς . . . πρόσβαλον. Τhe nominative ending -istês appears to be built on the verbal -izô; compare, for example, agônistês/agônizomai (competitor/to compete) or akontistês/akontizô (javelin thrower/to throw a javelin). On Pindar on sophoi, see Moore 2020a: 98–101; on the significance of his giving advice, see Morgan 2015; cf. Kurke 1991. Aeschylus fr. 314: εἴτ᾽ οὖν σοφιστὴς †καλὰ† παραπαίων χέλυν. The evidence is provided by Eustathius’ Commentary on Homer’s Iliad 15.412. Iophon, in his Auloidoi Satyroi, speaks of the “outfitted crowd of numerous sophistai coming in” (fr. 1), probably referring to the chorus.

8 joshua billings and christopher moore refers in fact to an expert musician, given the noteworthiness of the false notes struck. The choice of sophistês rather than some specifically musical term again links the role of the player to sophia, which brings to mind the self-accompanying singer of moralizing tales or social commentary, for instance, in a sympotic setting. At any event, in neither Pindar nor Aeschylus does sophistês simply mean “poet” or “musician”; poets and musicians are prominent within a broader class of people taken to have authoritative knowledge and wisdom.14 The later fifth century begins to show a wider range of uses. Either because of our broader evidence base or because of shifting cultural valences of sophia, we can see the term sophistês being used in increasingly negative fashion. We still find relatively authoritative musical or poetic sophistai, for example, as rhapsodes (in Eupolis).15 But we now see a “swarm” of sophistai (in Cratinus) and choruses of them in both Iophon and the Plato who was a comic playwright (a generation older than the Academic Plato).16 The clumping together of sophistai in these comic contexts might suggest that the poets dramatized an amusing variety of persons, with diverse professional focuses but bound by a concern for sophia (after all, these playwrights are not animating a swarm or chorus of “ode singers” or “citharists”). We do not know what that variety in putative intellectual authority amounted to, but the humor points to a nascent skepticism concerning sophistai. We can say little about the specific reference of the term sophistês, but it is clear that Attic comedy frequently lampooned the growing class of individuals engaged in intellectual pursuits. Aristophanes’ Clouds, written in 423 and revised in the ensuing years, makes multiple references to so-called sophistai, none of them flattering. Though Clouds does not use the term in a sharply delineated way, its portrait of Socrates and his school receiving money for 14

15 16

Kerferd 1950: 8 describes them as “those who in one way or another function as the Sages, the exponents of knowledge in early communities.” Eustathius’ Commentary on Homer’s Iliad 15.412 (again). Cratinus Archilochoi fr. 2 (from 430; “swarm” is σμῆνος); Plato Comicus Sophistai (at fr. 134, someone is said to be δωδεκαμήχανος, “dozen-skilled”).

introduction: the problem of the sophists 9 an education in pedantry and immorality evidently contributed to the popular image of Sophists as paid teachers whose education corrupted the youth.17 Strepsiades, a debt-wracked Athenian, sends his son, Pheidippides, to acquire a learning he has heard about, whereby one may argue one’s way out of any obligation and without concern for the usual pieties. He knows of a little house that serves as a “thinkery” (φροντιστήριον) for “wise spirits” (ψυχαὶ σοφαί), men who discuss the heavens and proclaim its nature and who, if you pay them money, will teach you how to talk yourself into victory, whatever it takes.18 Neither father nor son in this early exchange calls these thinkers, who sell their lessons in just and unjust speech, sophistai; indeed, the issue of quite what to call them comes up explicitly and is answered inconclusively.19 But soon Strepsiades meets Socrates, whom Aristophanes characterizes as a multidisciplinary scientific researcher, contemplator, and freethinker. He introduces Strepsiades to the Clouds and in so doing first mentions the term;20 the Clouds, he says, “nourish many sophistai, Thurian seers, medical experts, longhaired idlers with onyx signet rings, and song-twisters of cyclical choruses, men practicing astronomical quackery (μετεωφοφενάκεις), whom, though doing nothing, they [sc. The Clouds] feed because they compose music about them.”21 In this syntactically ambiguous list, sophistai names either the general category of nourishees or just one kind of them; “Sophists” are thus treated as having a scope of interest including or at least parallel to that of soothsaying, cityfounding, health-provision, cosmology, and praise poetry. Later in 17

18 20

21

Plato Apology 18c–19c; Xenophon Household Management 11.3. The music teacher Lamprus, considered to have undermined traditional genres by his musical innovations, is called a “hyper-sophist” by the Old Comic playwright Phrynichus (fr. 74). 19 Clouds 94–9, developed at 112–18 and 126–30. Clouds 99–100. Strepsiades had already called a device for “measuring the earth” a sophisma, “a clever thing” (203–5). Clouds 331–4: πλείστους αὗται βόσκουσι σοφιστάς / Θουριομάντεις, ἰατροτέχνας, σφραγιδονυχαργοκομήτας, / κυκλίων τε χορῶν ᾀσματοκάμπτας, ἄνδρας μετεωροφένακας, / οὐδὲν δρῶντας βόσκουσ’ ἀργούς, ὅτι ταύτας μουσοποιοῦσιν. That Socrates sees himself as a nourishee of the Clouds is clear from 317 to 318, where Socrates says that they provide “us” with “judgment and exchange, marvels and circumlocution, verbal offense and defense.”

10 joshua billings and christopher moore the play, it is suggested that Pheidippides will return a “handy Sophist” when he has gained training in legal disputation, to be deployed for good or ill.22 Sophistês in Clouds, then, clearly names – and tends to derogate – those associated with novel intellectualism, but does not clearly denote a professional class or category. Outside of comedy in the late fifth century, the term sophistês could likewise be applied to individuals whose intellect is undeniably formidable but who deploy it in underhanded fashion. Prometheus in the Prometheus Bound is twice called sophistês, once when told that, despite his self-confidence, he will come to see that he is slowerwitted than Zeus, and once when his fire-theft is recollected; both times are scornful.23 These usages obviously refer to his characterdefining cleverness; they may also point to his culture heroism, provisioning humans with fire and much else that they need. Rather more positively, Herodotus calls the Seven Sages (among whom Solon is included) sophistai,24 as well as the culture innovators Melampus and Pythagoras, suggesting the survival of an earlier, positive sense of the term alongside more derogatory ones. In any case, there is no clear consensus among these usages about what a sophistês is, beyond someone notable for their intellectual efforts. We do find in a few fifth-century texts an understanding of sophistês as a professional designation – but not for the professionals conventionally understood as Sophists today. The Hippocratic On Ancient Medicine mentions that “some doctors and sophistai” think that medicine requires knowledge of the nature and origins of man. The author disagrees with this position, calling it more suited for graphikê (“illustration”?) than actual cure.25 Sophistai thus are those who develop complex theoretical positions and take public written and spoken stances, intending to 22 23

24

25

Clouds 1111, cf. 1309. Prometheus Bound 61 and 944; the play’s Aeschylean authorship is doubted, so it may have been written in the last third of the fifth century. Herodotus 1.29, 2.49, 4.95. The final version of the Histories, written in Ionic but probably performed or presented in Athens, may be dated to 425–415. On Ancient Medicine 20; see Schiefsky 2006: 306–10; Moore 2020a: 137.

introduction: the problem of the sophists 11 influence the way people think of health and medicine. The term does not seem to imply error or grandstanding (its partner, “doctor,” is neutral), and there is no straightforward pedagogical implication. Nevertheless, the associations with intellectual abstraction and with writing are notable. Thucydides’ Cleon is more dismissive, haranguing the Athenians for being “overcome by the pleasure of listening” and acting “like those seated as spectators of sophistai rather than those deliberating about the city.”26 Sophistai here appear to be those who give public display speeches – a usage that, almost uniquely, could describe the canonical Sophists, though without implying that they are teachers.27 We have just reviewed the uses of the term sophistai during the flourishing of the canonical Sophists, and we can make some final observations about its use in the fifth century. Only once in extant literature is a canonical Sophist referred to as sophistês, namely Prodicus in Aristophanes (a usage that connects him closely to Socrates); he is there treated as an example of a particularly reliable Sophist.28 Sophistai are not defined by any particular professional activities or said to have any particular beliefs. Their professional or nonprofessional activities range broadly from performing music to directing a research school, from helping people in shrewd ways to public performance of debate. The textbook view of “the Sophists” as a professional category of itinerant paid teachers of virtue is seen only incidentally if at all, as a merely possible form of sophistry. It is in the fourth century, and primarily among the Socratics, that we see the idea of the Sophists as paid teachers developing, nearly 26

27

28

Thucydides 3.38.7. Thucydides could be writing as late as the mid-390s, though one might expect he was formulating his ideas during the previous three decades. Contrast the Dissoi Logoi, probably a text of the fourth century, which treats sophistai, including the followers of Anaxagoras and Pythagoras, as effective teachers of sophia and aretê (6). On the dating, see most recently Molinelli 2018 (mid-fourth century) against Maso 2018 (mid-fifth century), with further discussion in Narcy 2020. Clouds 360. The Clouds here emphasize the “sophia and judgment” of Prodicus and the manifoldly odd appearance of Socrates.

12 joshua billings and christopher moore always accompanied by insinuations about money. The canonical Sophists appear to have become fabulously wealthy by their activities, and greed is a common complaint concerning Sophists.29 Paid private instruction seems to be a particular fixation of both Plato and Xenophon, and is the basis of the generalizing condemnations of the profession in the Sophist and On Hunting 13 (Cynegeticus).30 The correspondence between Xenophon and Plato, which extends to the description of Sophists as hunters, suggests that the vitriol directed against sophistic teaching for pay is especially marked in the Socratic circle.31 This emphasis would have constituted a way of distinguishing Socrates’ own undoubtedly pedagogical practice from that of others. Yet there is little evidence that, outside of the Socratic circle, teaching for pay was thought to be constitutive of the activities of a Sophist. Looking beyond Plato and Xenophon, the currency of this particular professional sense of sophistês is limited; Lysias, at the beginning of the century, once refers disdainfully to the Socratic Aeschines’ occupation, and once, again disdainfully, to “useless” sophistai, who try to make a living debating technicalities.32 His contemporary Alcidamas says that “some so-called sophistai” merely write speeches; others give help with speeches; yet others, who “lay claim to philosophy,” teach. He also refers historically to an earlier generation of sophistai; choice passages from their written works, he says, are reused or cited in contemporary speeches.33 This last reference reveals a common usage of the term sophistês in the fourth century, a version of which we may have seen in On Ancient 29 30

31 33

Blank 1985; Tell 2011: chap. 2. Sophist 231d; Cynegeticus 13.9. The authenticity of Cynegeticus 13 has often been doubted, since its attitudes and vitriol about intellectual practitioners are unparalleled elsewhere in the Xenophontic corpus (see Lee 2022); if it is judged spurious, then the above point still holds for Xenophon’s conversation of Socrates and Antiphon in Memorabilia 1.6, which revolves primarily around Antiphon’s wealth and Socrates’ poverty (see 2018: 158–60 for the debate). 32 See Williams 2021. Lysias Against Aeschines 5; Olympiacus 3. Alcidamas On the Sophists 1–2 (interpreted in light of sections 15 and 11), 4. For Alcidamas in sophistic context, see O’Sullivan 1992: 23–105; Mariss 2002; Bassino 2019; Porter 2021.

introduction: the problem of the sophists 13 Medicine: sophistai as prose authors who present themselves or are taken as authoritative on matters relevant to understanding the world and human advancement.34 Isocrates uses the term in a range of senses, including but not limited to teachers.35 He distinguishes between the activities of the older Sophists (including the canonical figures, as well as others not frequently today considered Sophists), which are not exclusively pedagogical, and those of his own time, which apparently are and which he denigrates.36 This bifurcated notion of the Sophists is significant for understanding the term’s range of applications. Sometimes sophistês refers, in laudation, to the previous era’s great authoritative intellectuals, usually writers or speakers in prose; and yet sometimes sophistês refers, dismissively, to one’s contemporaries, who are merely putative or aspiring intellectuals, who ghostwrite for political figures, who take students or at least have young people influenced by them, and who fail or seem to fail to vindicate their claims to authoritative knowledge. The latter usage gives us the familiar sense of sophistês as a distinct, marginal group in the history of philosophy, but it is important to recognize that this meaning is always polemically inflected, and that its application is not isomorphic with today’s notions of the Sophists. Our evidence, then, suggests that the conventional understanding of the Sophist as a paid teacher was only one possible (and probably less common) meaning of the term in contemporary usage, making it impossible to define the category by reference to historical semantics. Even more significant than this negative result, though, is the positive one that has emerged – sophistês is overwhelmingly a polemical category, used to define certain figures as lacking the intellect, seriousness, or moral purpose that would make their sophia constructive. This polemical strand is not univocal even in the fourth century, but 34

35

This is the idea of Damastes of Sigeum’s Peri poiêtôn kai sophistôn (On Poets and Sophists), if the title reflects categories he himself describes (for date and title, see BNJ 5 comm. T1). More precise comparisons are in Isocrates To Demonicus 51; To Nicocles 13; Panegyricus 82; Philip 29; Plato Symposium 177b2; Xenophon Memorabilia 4.2.1. 36 Cf. Antidosis 203; Busiris 11. Against the Sophists 19.

14 joshua billings and christopher moore it is increasingly dominant and forms the basis for the generalizing condemnations found in Plato and less frequently in Xenophon, which attach the negative sense of the term to a distinct professional class and to particular individuals. Historically, then, “Sophist” was not a stable, natural, or transparent category in the Classical period but was continually in the process of being defined, largely through contrast and opposition. Approaches to the Sophists in scholarship – which by and large assume one particular sense of the term as their basis – must take account of this historical dynamic of definition and consider how it has inflected ideas of the canonical Sophists from antiquity to the present. We end this section by making an observation about one familiar contrast, the one between sophistês and philosophos. The terms happen to have come into recorded use at roughly the same time.37 Both may have been coined in the same era and for similar reasons: to describe a growing range of wisdom professionals, distinct in their methods and practices from those of earlier generations. Yet there is no evidence that these terms were coined or initially used in deliberate opposition, and there is considerable variation and overlap within and between the senses of both words.38 Indeed, in the Classical period, sophistai are repeatedly said to philosophein, without any indication of paradox or irony.39 To be sure, late in his career Plato writes a dialogue, the Sophist, which sharply contrasts sophistai and philosophoi, a distinction taking shape in earlier dialogues as well. But this process occurs more than a century after the pair of coinages, a period during which both terms underwent prodigious reflection, change, and disciplinary definition. Returning the sophistês and the philosophos to the same intellectual and professional sphere is thus an important step to understanding the Sophists in their own time. 37

38 39

A linguistic parallel is the term phrontistês, which was applied to Socrates during his life (Edmunds 2006). On the early uses of the term philosophos, see Moore 2020a. For example, at Herodotus 1.30; Alcidamas On the Sophists 2; Isocrates Against the Sophists 14; Antidosis 215; implicitly at Plato Protagoras 335d.

introduction: the problem of the sophists 15

who are the sophists? We have argued that the familiar definition of a Sophist as a paid teacher gained currency only retrospectively and polemically, and that this understanding is particularly marked among – and treated in a particularly derogatory way by – the Socratics of the fourth century. A wider survey of the uses of the term and its contemporary referents does not allow us to arrive at a unified meaning. But though we can say little about “Sophist” as a meaningful contemporary designation, we can say quite a bit about the canonical Sophists, both individually and collectively. Below, we survey the evidence for the canonical Sophists (Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Antiphon, as well as Thrasymachus) and investigate their connections to other contemporary intellectuals. We propose to understand the boundaries of the category as open, and we describe similarities and differences with other figures who could have been considered Sophists in their time – and who help us to understand the activities and thought of the canonical figures. Our sources for the Sophists are probably more heterogeneous than for any other figures of early Greek thought. The corpus of writings we have from the direct tradition (manuscripts and papyri) is small but highly significant, providing some of our earliest extant Greek prose texts. We have substantial works of Gorgias (the Encomium of Helen and the Defense of Palamedes) and Antiphon (the Tetralogies and three further speeches through the manuscript tradition, and parts of On Truth from papyrus finds), as well as two anonymous texts often connected to the sophistic movement, the Dissoi Logoi (appended to some manuscripts of Sextus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism) and Anonymus Iamblichi (excerpted in chapter 20 of Iamblichus’ Protreptic to Philosophy, from the late third century CE).40 In addition, a pair of mythological epideictic speeches of 40

Though usually edited as a continuous text in its own right, Anonymous of Iamblichus is, strictly speaking, transmitted indirectly, since it is quoted in the text of Iamblichus – and because Iamblichus does not use quotation marks, the boundaries of that text are sometimes obscure. For reconstruction, see Ciriaci 2011; Horky 2020; Hutchinson and Johnson forthcoming; Sørensen forthcoming.

16 joshua billings and christopher moore Antisthenes survive, which are formally much closer to works of Gorgias and Antiphon than they are to anything surviving from the Socratics, among whom Antisthenes is usually classed. Such wideranging direct transmission is unique among our sources for early Greek philosophy; no complete text of the canonical Presocratics survives in the manuscript tradition, and the only directly transmitted texts we have are some scattered papyri, which include the highly significant Derveni Papyrus.41 Though the selection bias of this category of evidence for the Sophists is plain – rhetorical texts were preserved, presumably as educational models – it nevertheless provides crucial insight into sophistic writings and late-fifth-century intellectual culture in general.42 The indirect tradition (quotations and references in other authors) provides rather more evidence, including everything we know of Protagoras, Prodicus, and Hippias. Drawing from a broad range of material, it gives us verbatim and paraphrased texts (including two extended accounts of Gorgias’ On Non-Being and Xenophon’s paraphrase of Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles), short quotations and titles, as well as evidence concerning the Sophists’ lives and writings and their opinions on matters of philosophical interest. This category, though comparable in kind to much of what we have concerning the canonical Presocratics, is sparser for the Sophists. The later views-classifying doxographical tradition seems to have followed Plato and Aristotle in finding less philosophical 41

42

The Derveni Papyrus contains the writing of an unknown, likely fifth-century figure who interprets an Orphic cosmogonic poem with the conceptual and methodological tools of natural philosophy and etymological investigation. This figure is sometimes conjectured to be a Presocratic or even a Sophist (see recently Lebedev 2019 for Prodicus; generally, see Kotwick 2017; Most 2022). The so-called Strasbourg Papyrus records a large portion of Empedocles’ verse, and suggests a unity of putatively spiritual-therapeutic and cosmological interests (see Janko 2004). For Presocratic material in papyri generally, see Vassallo 2019 and 2021. The Cripps (Burney 95) and the Palatine (Heidelberg 88) manuscripts containing Gorgias’ speeches, Antisthenes’ Ajax and Odysseus, as well as Alcidamas’ On Sophists and the probably Pseudo-Alcidaman Odysseus (similar to Antisthenes’ work), also contain speeches of Antiphon, Andocides, Isaeus, Lycurgus, and Deinarchus, some of the major Attic orators.

introduction: the problem of the sophists 17 doctrine in the canonical Sophists than in other early Greek thinkers.43 What doxographical sources do transmit, though in some cases immensely suggestive (for example, Protagoras’ “Measure” doctrine, Prodicus’ account of the origins of belief in the gods), is frustratingly scant and difficult to evaluate.44 Reconstructions of these views today inevitably rely on conjecture. To judge from Plato’s Theaetetus, which includes an extensive discussion of Protagoras’ “Measure” doctrine, ancient interpreters seeking coherent philosophical positions may have been in a similar position.45 The final category, the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon, has probably been the most formative for modern understandings of the Sophists. Though this is technically a subset of the indirect tradition, these literary reimaginings of an earlier generation’s intellectual encounters differ from doxography in foregrounding less the theoretical positions taken by the Sophists than their personalities and activities, and have left indelible portraits of some of the key figures. The signal instances, Plato’s Protagoras and Gorgias, include extensive discussion of the activities of their title characters (and, in the Protagoras, briefer sketches of Prodicus and Hippias), as well as interrogations of those characters’ understanding of a range of matters. This category of evidence is probably the hardest to evaluate, since it requires us to triangulate between what we find in the dialogues, what we know independently about the Sophists, and what we take the authors’ attitudes and aims to be. We confront, in effect, the same methodological issues that surround the dialogues’ portrayal of Socrates and the 43

44

45

In Aëtius’ Placita, the most important ancient doxographical compendium, for instance, there is only one citation for Protagoras (4.9.1, falseness of sensations), one for Critias (4.3.13, soul as blood), and one for Ion of Chios (2.25.12, moon’s substance). See later in this section for the relevance of these latter two figures. For Protagoras: Sextus Empiricus Against the Mathematicians 7.60 (D9/B1) and Plato Theaetetus 151e–2a (R4). For Prodicus: Sextus Empiricus Against the Mathematicians 9.18, 9.52 (D16/B5); Themistius Should One Engage in Farming (Oration 30) 349a–b (D17/B5); Minucius Felix Octavius 21.2 (D18/B5); as well as the fragmentary Herculaneum Papyrus 1428, col. 3.2–13, of Philodemus’ On Piety (D15/B5). Plato Theaetetus 151e–78c; cf. Cratylus 385e–6a.

18 joshua billings and christopher moore Socratics – referred to as the “Socrates problem” – and have to evaluate this evidence with similar care.46 Taken together, the sources for the Sophists allow a more multidimensional, if not necessarily richer, understanding of them and their views than is possible for any of their philosophical predecessors or for Socrates. Though the volume of surviving writings of the Sophists pales in comparison to that of contemporary dramatists and historians, the Sophists fared far better than other fifth-century prose authors, such as Theagenes of Rhegium or Stesimbrotus of Thasos.47 We can say a good deal not just about the Sophists’ lives, which offer insights into the circulation of intellectuals in the ancient Mediterranean, and their professional practices, which inform us of pedagogical and research trends, but about the way they wrote, spoke, and – by inference – thought. And we can place this understanding in a much wider context than we can the ideas and activity of earlier philosophers. This entails bringing to bear a fourth type of evidence. This fourth type of evidence is contemporary texts, which often show significant affinities to the thought of the Sophists. Traditionally, these affinities have been understood as evidence for the influence of the Sophists on other discourses – and this is surely operative in some cases – but there is enough “sophistic” material that does not come from the canonical Sophists to raise the question of the boundaries of the category and to point to some important limit cases. It is cases like these that motivated Kerferd’s treatment of the Sophists as a movement, rather than a discrete group of thinkers – and this was an important step – but his treatment remained rather limited in the breadth of its sources and narrowly philosophical in its definition.48 In what follows, we consider how contemporary evidence might expand 46

47

48

For the problem, see recently Wolfsdorf 2017 and 2020b; Johnson 2021: chap. 1; see also Vlastos 1991: chaps. 2–3; Danzig 2010; Dorion 2011. Contrast Kerferd 1981: 1, 35, 173, who claims that “no writings survive from any of the sophists.” Similarly, Untersteiner 1954 [1949] recognized the importance of the cultural material but explicitly excluded it from his study of the Sophists, pleading limitations of space and cogency of narrative (pp. vii–viii).

introduction: the problem of the sophists 19 our understanding of the Sophists not just as philosophers but as intellectuals with a diverse range of activities and interests. The most important intellectual of the late fifth century, in Athens at least, was surely Socrates. Although he has conventionally been opposed to the Sophists (most formatively in the works of Plato), he has been considered at times a Sophist himself.49 The newest collection of the fragments and testimony of Early Greek Philosophy, edited by André Laks and Glenn W. Most (2016), notably includes Socrates in its two volumes dedicated to “The Sophists.” The editors write that while Socrates differs from others included in those volumes – he did not travel, charge tuition, or take part in politics as they did – his “interests and teaching, like those of the other members of this loose group of intellectuals, revolve around the question of moral and political excellence and the use of language and argument in order to obtain the agreement of listeners or interlocutors.”50 These similarities, perhaps, do not make Socrates a Sophist (and, indeed, we have argued that no single quality or activity would make someone a Sophist), but they demonstrate important continuities with the Sophists. The dissimilarities noted above, though they have been decisive for later historiography, seem to have been lost on many of his contemporaries. Indeed, the effort of the first-generation Socratics to distinguish Socrates (and by extension themselves) so sharply from the Sophists is perhaps our best evidence that this distinction was not widely apparent. This volume does not adopt a dogma concerning Socrates’ status as a Sophist; some contributors discuss his views as they are relevant to understanding those of the canonical Sophists, while others leave him aside. Whether or not one counts Socrates as a Sophist, viewing him within sophistic culture is instructive. While Socrates seems distinct from the Sophists as an intellectual professional – he seems not to have made his living from teaching or performing (and so therefore would 49

50

Kerferd 1981: 55 deals with “Socrates as a member of the sophistic movement” equivocally; he does not call Socrates a Sophist but asserts that he “should be treated as having a part to play within the sophistic movement” (p. 57). Laks and Most 2016: 8.293.

20 joshua billings and christopher moore have had no call to travel in the way the Sophists did) or to have formulated his inquiries in writing – many of his central preoccupations seem to be shared with the Sophists. Most significantly, both gave sustained attention to the investigation of virtue, aretê. They could both be seen as contributing to the pursuit of virtue, though whether they claimed as much themselves is debatable. The Sophists are thought to have done this by direct instruction, Socrates by shared inquiry, though both may in fact have used mixes of the two pedagogical modes. Related to this is an ethical perspective that views common cultural notions of morality and the good as insufficient for living as well as possible, and that consequently seeks to articulate rational principles and guidance for deciding hard practical problems. In both respects, Socrates’ methods may have been more demanding than those of the Sophists, his conclusions less conventional, but the gravity of these differences, like the differences in professional activity, is debatable. A number of figures not historically described as Sophists provide important evidence for the activities of prominent intellectuals in the late fifth century. Strictly speaking, this group should include Thrasymachus, who is not described as a Sophist in Classical sources but whose activities and ideas show similarities to those of the canonical Sophists.51 Another boundary case from the Platonic corpus is Critias, the cousin of Plato’s mother, who appears prominently in a number of dialogues. Though evidently not a Sophist in any professional-pedagogical sense – he was an aristocrat with literary and philosophical interests and emergent political involvement – his writings on constitutions and psychological issues, and his likely authorship of the atheistic Sisyphus text, all place his thought in close proximity to that of Protagoras and Prodicus.52 Critias’ literary and philosophical activities may be usefully understood alongside those of Ion of Chios, a similarly 51

52

His writings and testimonia are included in DK’s and LM’s collections of Sophists; for analysis, see Macé 2009; Betti 2011; Anderson 2016. The author of the Platonic Clitophon imagines him as a competitor of Socrates for students and instruction in the nature of justice. Moore and Raymond 2019 contains biography, analysis, and a complete annotated bibliography.

introduction: the problem of the sophists 21 wide-ranging author. Ion was primarily known as a tragedian, but also wrote lyric poetry, chronicled contemporary high society, and may have experimented with philosophical prose.53 Likewise, a work of the rhapsode Stesimbrotus of Thasos (who was probably a generation younger than Ion) entitled On Themistocles, Thucydides, and Pericles seems to have included a wide-ranging (and potentially partisan) discussion of contemporary politics in the early years of the Peloponnesian War. Like Ion and Critias, Stesimbrotus was probably better known for his activities related to poetry; he was considered among the most important allegorists of Homer.54 Another figure of an earlier generation who combined musical and philosophical interests was Damon of Oa, whom Plato connects to the Sophist Prodicus.55 Damon seems to have written important works on musical and cultural matters and was such a close associate of Pericles that many of the important Periclean projects could be thought to come from Damon’s initiative – an association that led to his ostracism. In Damon’s Periclean circle we also find Anaxagoras, who obviously did contribute to philosophical inquiry, while apparently also teaching or inspiring rhetorical competence and advancing Homeric interpretation. He had a public persona, and was notorious for his novel views, as we can infer from the tales of legal actions against him, from the later doxographical reports that he inaugurated philosophy in Athens, and from the fact that both Plato and Xenophon take particular efforts to distinguish his notorious views from Socrates’. He published works that came to be widely available, and he may have had medical interests.56 53

54

55

56

See generally Jennings and Katsaros 2007, with Jacoby 1947; Huxley 1965; West 1985; Dover 1986. BNP s.v. Stesimbrotus; Burkert 1986 (proposing authorship of Derveni Papyrus); Coletti 1974–5. For discussion of Damon, see Anderson 1955; Morrison 1958: 204–6; Guthrie 1971: 35n1; Stadter 1991: 115–18; Podlecki 1998: 17–23; Barker 2005; Brancacci 2008a and 2008b; Lynch 2013; Wallace 2015; Brancacci 2019. The connection to Prodicus is at Laches 197d. For Anaxagoras in the sophistic context, see Gemin 2017; Moore 2020a: 158–64, 167–71; Janko 2020.

22 joshua billings and christopher moore Even more significant for understanding sophistic thought as a whole may be developments in different genres and forms of writing. Early medicine is an important parallel, both for the practices of its adherents and the forms of its thinking and writing. A number of the fifth-century treatises in the Hippocratic corpus engage directly with trends in contemporary thought and address topics that were of interest simultaneously to the Sophists (human development in On Ancient Medicine; natural versus divine causality in On the Sacred Disease). Moreover, the form of these texts – prose treatises on (relatively well) delineated topics – offers probably our closest analogies for some of the writings of the Sophists, which would surely have taken a similar argumentative form (with On Breaths being the most “sophistic” medical text or the most “medical” sophistic text). As cosmopolitan figures engaged in theory and experimentation while also offering individual instruction and public displays, doctors in the Classical period may have lived professional lives appreciably similar to those of the canonical Sophists.57 Classical historiography, too, demonstrates important points of contact with sophistic thought and practice. One obvious link is provided by the fact that some of the Sophists’ activities, to judge from Hippias’ oeuvre, which includes a Names of Peoples and Catalogue of Olympic Victors, must have been historical themselves, involving extensive reconstruction of past events. Hellanicus’ mythographical and ethnographic writings would have been important parallels and precedents for Hippias’ collections, as would Damastes’.58 There are thematic and argumentative parallels, too, with the works of Herodotus and Thucydides (discussed in Chapter 4). Perhaps inevitably, the interest in human history and current events led to an interest in different customs and practices and to generalization about human culture as a whole, much as we find in some sophistic texts (especially in the genre of politeiai,

57 58

Mann 2012a. For Hellanicus, see Joyce 1999; Franklin 2010: 25–31; 2012. For Damastes, see BNJ 5.

introduction: the problem of the sophists 23 “constitutions”).59 Historians and Sophists alike were wide-ranging inquirers into cultural practices and variation. Though it is prose authors who offer the best context for understanding the activities and writings of the Sophists, arguably our best source for late-fifth-century intellectual history is Attic drama – a fact recognized by the inclusion of the “Dramatic Appendix” in the ninth volume of the Laks-Most Loeb edition.60 Though relatively little of the total production of tragedy and comedy survives, the plays of Aristophanes and Euripides testify to drama’s close engagement with philosophical figures and questions in the late fifth century. Euripides was frequently associated with Socrates (including, prominently, by Aristophanes) and his plays were recognized in antiquity as being deeply engaged with avant-garde intellectual developments.61 Likewise, especially in Clouds but throughout Aristophanes’ works, one can find insight into pressing topics of philosophical discussion and, even more, a strong viewpoint on the social role of philosophy and philosophers in Athens.62 Understanding the activity and thought of the Sophists requires a synthesis of many different strands of evidence, which reaches well beyond the typical methods of research into ancient philosophy. This is due, we suggest, to the heterogeneity of sophistic practice, much of which does not fit into philosophy’s traditional discursive modes or forms of writing. Though certainly important intellectuals, the Sophists (and Socrates) were not necessarily philosophers in the familiar, Aristotelian sense of developing and defending a consistent and systematic viewpoint. Rather, the discourse of the canonical Sophists characteristically 59

60 61 62

involves

investigation

of

multiple,

often

While not often connected to the Sophists, the pseudo-Xenophontic Constitution of the Athenians (“Old Oligarch”) must have a significant relation to contemporary (including sophistic) politeiai. The scholarship on this work is huge, but relevant here is Frisch 1942; Forrest 1970; Leduc 1976; Rossetti 1997; Hornblower 2010; Coskun 2012. The relation of drama and philosophy is the topic of Billings 2021. On Euripides and the Sophists, see Conacher 1998; Allan 1999; Egli 2003. Philosophical themes in Aristophanes are treated in Dover 1968; Carey 2000; Clements 2014; Moore 2015.

24 joshua billings and christopher moore contradictory viewpoints and refutation of accepted views without necessarily positing an alternative.63 Antilogical texts are attested for Protagoras, Antiphon, and Thrasymachus, while Gorgias and Thrasymachus seem to have gained their greatest fame from speeches and rhetorical treatises. Prodicus was well-known for his work on verbal distinctions, and Hippias’ most influential work, a major reference for the century following, seems to have been the Synagôgê, conjectured to be a collection of opinions and apothegms that became essential for later doxography.64 Many of the texts of the Sophists seem to be written about or in the voice of mythological personae (Gorgias’ Palamedes and Helen, Hippias’ Trojan Dialogue, Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles; compare Antisthenes’ Ajax and Odysseus), and there are, further, works of literary criticism, anthropology, and grammar to reckon with. Understanding this diverse corpus and the figures behind it thus requires much more than reconstructing philosophical doctrines and setting these into dialogue with earlier and later views. It demands a view of the Sophists as distinctive intellectual professionals, profoundly shaped by and integrated into a culture that becomes itself a primary object of investigation, but also original in their own right.

approaching the sophists This Companion seeks to offer a new, synthetic view of the Sophists as a phenomenon of late-fifth-century intellectual culture. Two facets of this perspective are particularly notable. First, we view the Sophists as significantly embedded in a wider intellectual culture, both synchronically and diachronically (where many earlier studies tend to isolate them from their contemporaries). Second, we emphasize themes and methods rather than doctrines (in contrast to the tendency of more recent scholars to attempt doxography of individual viewpoints). These approaches are evident in the design of the volume, which devotes roughly half of the chapters to contextualizing the Sophists, first 63 64

For the similarity between the Sophists and Plato’s aporetic Socrates, see Barney 2016. Snell 1976 [1944]; Mansfeld 1983; Patzer 1986; cf. BNJ 6.

introduction: the problem of the sophists 25 within their own time (Part I: Contexts) and then within the history of philosophy (Part III: Receptions); and approaches the Sophists’ substantive views by theme rather than thinker (Part II: Thought), reserving discussion of individual views to an Appendix, “The People of the Sophistic Period.” This three-part structure seeks to describe the conditions that made the Sophists possible, the content of their inquiries, and their contested impact on later thinkers. Part I, “Contexts,” describes the conditions for the emergence of the Sophists as a new kind of intellectual, focusing on Athens, where these conditions are best attested and may have been furthest advanced. The first chapter, “Sophia before the Sophists,” points to the range of wisdom practices in previous eras and demonstrates in particular the close links between ideas of wisdom, contestation, and patronage. Sophia constitutes one of the important forms of distinction in Archaic and early Classical culture, “a form of intellectual branding” in which poets and thinkers compete across the Greek world.

Chapter

2,

“The

Sophists

between

Aristocracy

and

Democracy,” focuses on Athens and describes the way that a new kind of intellectual, the Sophist, emerged to address the needs of the traditional elite within the developing democratic institutions of the polis. What distinguishes the Sophists from previous wisdom practitioners, it turns out, is not the claim to wisdom, but the avowed ability to make others wise or adept, particularly in matters of politics and the practice of public speech and deliberation – an ability that became uniquely valuable in the competitive sphere of democratic politics. Chapter 3, “The Professional Lives of the Sophists,” goes on to describe, in more concrete terms, the activities of the canonical Sophists and the reasons for their repute, both positive and negative. Taking a critical view on some aspects of the Platonic picture of the Sophists, the chapter demonstrates that many aspects of the professional lives of the Sophists were substantially continuous with those of earlier and contemporary intellectuals and suggests some of the reasons for the opprobrium that they suffered at the hands of contemporary and later authors. Finally, Part I concludes with Chapter 4 on

26 joshua billings and christopher moore “The Sophists in the Fifth-Century Enlightenment,” which uses the evidence of Aristophanes’ Clouds to discuss the wide-ranging impact of ideas associated with the Sophists on other spheres of Greek intellectual life. The chapter argues programmatically for the value of the term “Enlightenment” both as a characterization of the selfconsciousness of late-fifth-century intellectuals and as a way of viewing the interrelation of different spheres of culture. Having established a synthetic cultural view in Part I, the Companion then turns to Part II, “Thought,” to the characteristic topics of sophistic philosophical activity. It does not seek to offer doxographies of the individual Sophists, however, given that the exiguous evidence for them would make any such statements either impoverished or highly speculative. The chapters focus instead on areas that seem to have engaged multiple Sophists as well as, in many cases, their contemporaries. By viewing this evidence together, we are able to gain a richer picture of sophistic thought and its resonances in the wider culture. Chapter 5, “Nature and Norms,” considers one of the most important conceptual distinctions in late-fifth-century thought, the antithesis of nomos (custom, law, or norm) and physis (nature). Tracing the emergence and salience of this distinction through a range of authors, the chapter shows how profoundly moral and ethical reflection is reshaped by the Sophists’ attention to nature and culture. “The Turn to Language” is the subject of Chapter 6, which discusses the importance of rhetoric to the rise of the Sophists and the way that an attention to language as such conduces to a novel and controversial understanding of reality. Language, for the Sophists, is more than a medium for conveying meaning; it is itself creative of meaning, making the education that they offer uniquely powerful. Ontological questions remain central to Chapter 7, “Problems of Being,” which discusses the Sophists’ contribution to thinking about being and existence in the wake of Parmenidean philosophy, with a particular focus on Gorgias’ On Not-Being, one of the best-attested sophistic writings and an impactful work in its own time. Though the Sophists’ contributions to ontological theorizing have often been denigrated or marginalized,

introduction: the problem of the sophists 27 the chapter shows that the Sophists were in this respect important and original thinkers in the Presocratic tradition. More practical concerns dominate the second half of Part II: politics, religion, rhetoric, and ethics. Chapter 8, “Politics in Theory and Practice,” looks at the contributions of the Sophists to thinking about constitutions and laws in the context of wider cultural dialogues on history and politics. The chapter shows how late-fifth-century thinkers sought to glean general principles from investigation of the practical realities of existing constitutions and the differences between them, creating some of our earliest documents of political theory. Chapter 9, “Interrogating the Gods,” surveys the range of novel and controversial ideas about divinity that emerged in the late fifth century. The Sophists are shown to be at the forefront of new theological trends, posing distinctive questions and articulating radical answers concerning the gods and their role in human existence. As controversial as some of their conclusions evidently were, the Sophists were perhaps even more notorious for their methods of inquiry, the focus of Chapter 10, “Skills of Argument,” which describes the widespread importance of antilogy (arguing both sides of an issues) as a rhetorical and logical practice. The concern that the Sophists could “make the worse argument better” speaks to an uneasiness about the development of a general practice of rhetoric, by which an adept speaker could argue any side of a question on any topic. Finally, Chapter 11, “Civic and Anti-Civic Ethics,” considers the claim to teach aretê that is often attributed to the Sophists and shows that this is best understood as a form of success in civic matters. Attributing this “civic ethics” to certain of the Sophists, the chapter then goes on to discuss challenges to such an ethics and argues that such challenges were in fact far less widespread than has often been thought (particularly in light of the Platonic Thrasymachus and Callicles), and that, on the whole, the Sophists’ views of ethics were notably pro-social. Many of the chapters in Part II point to a gap between our best reconstructions of sophistic thought and its reception both among contemporaries and in the generations following. As discussed earlier

28 joshua billings and christopher moore in this Introduction, these receptions have been exceptionally formative for understandings of the Sophists – indeed, they may have created the category “Sophist” in its familiar form – and they therefore constitute the heart of Part III, “Receptions.” Chapter 12, “The FourthCentury Creative Reception of the Sophists,” traces the way that the idea of the Sophist was widely debated in the immediately succeeding decades, and ultimately came to be defined, in more or less recognizable form, in the works of Plato and Aristotle. Pointing to a divergence between portrayals of individual Sophists and sophistic ideas, on one hand, and characterizations of the “the Sophists” or “sophistry,” on the other, the chapter argues that the negative legacy of fourth-century ideas of the Sophists is most importantly a reflection of ongoing debates about the proper sphere and goals of intellectual activity. The influence of Plato is strongly felt in Chapter 13, “Writing the First Sophistic,” which explores understandings of the fifth-century Sophists in the work of the third-century-CE author Philostratus and his predecessors and contemporaries. Philostratus turns out to be the pivotal figure for an understanding of the “First Sophistic” as an age and of the Sophists as a broad-based intellectual movement, with important resonances in Philostratus’ own imperial context. Chapter 14, “The Sophists in the History of Philosophy,” traces modern rediscoveries of the Sophists from the eighteenth century onward. The Sophists, it is shown, have always been difficult to place within narratives of philosophical development – a difficulty that leads to their segregation from other early Greek thinkers in Hermann Diels’s and Walther Kranz’s foundational

edition

Fragmente

der

Vorsokratiker.

Balancing

a recognition of the Sophists’ distinctiveness within the history of philosophy with an acknowledgment of the way they draw on and contribute to philosophical thought remains a challenge today. While this Companion cannot in any sense set to rest the problem of the Sophists, we hope it will reframe the problem in a new and more productive way, one which does not get bogged down in definitions or categorical boundaries but instead presents the sophistic era as a uniquely impactful moment in the history of

introduction: the problem of the sophists 29 philosophy, one which has been continually reframed and redefined in subsequent ages. The individual chapters in this Companion represent so many openings to revisit this moment and offer a basis for future research, discussion, and debate. There are signs that a reevaluation of late-fifth-century philosophy and intellectual history is already well underway, without which this Companion would have been impossible. Joining a growing body of recent research, it offers a new foundation for research into late-fifth-century thought broadly, posing anew the problem of the Sophists and their era.

part i

Contexts

1

Sophia before the Sophists Kathryn A. Morgan

introduction: creating systems The Greek teachers and intellectuals of the late fifth and fourth centuries BCE whom we call the Sophists were part of a long tradition of Greek wisdom. The earliest practices of Greek elite and popular wisdom are lost to us, although we can see their reflections in poets such as Homer and Hesiod and in surviving proverbs and anecdotes. They were expressed in the poetry of the symposium and the choral dancing floor, were circulated orally, were distilled into aphorisms, and made their way into educational and quasi-educational inscriptions. Subsequently, they were recorded or composed in new prose genres that included technical manuals and what we would now call history and philosophy. It is worth insisting on the multiplicity and complexity of Greek sophia (“wisdom”) before the Sophists. Various thinkers in Archaic and Classical Greece, including but not limited to the “Presocratic” philosophers, attempted to bring their technical, intellectual, and organizational skills to bear on a complex world in order to make this complexity comprehensible and usable. Success in such an enterprise could lead to a reputation for cleverness or wisdom, but as we shall see, the scope of sophia was not well defined. There was no single rubric, no dominant tradition, under which one could unify its manifestations. This multiplicity will be reflected in this chapter when I speak of “versions,” “models,” or even “brands” of sophia in order to signify the flexibility of sophia as a concept. The richness of Greek wisdom traditions created in turn a need for systematization and interpretation as intellectual specialization increased during the fifth century and thinkers, including the Sophists, needed to locate 33

34 kathryn a. morgan themselves within these traditions and classify the contributions of their predecessors. This process has, of course, continued in recent times. Scholars both ancient and modern have fashioned developmental accounts tracing the emergence of sophia as a specialized intellectual competence and have been reinforced in this impulse by the formidable philosophical rhetoric of fourth-century thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle. Such accounts, however, often form parts of tendentious efforts to redefine and appropriate the variable manifestations of sophia in line with particular projects. In the case of Archaic and Classical Greece, the situation is complicated by a tendency to conceive of intellectualized forms of expertise in terms of more technical ones. When Pindar speaks of poets as sophoi carpenters or Heraclitus of “what is sophon” as the force that “steers” the world like a helmsman, they appropriate the language of skilled craft for their own projects, but this need not indicate an evolution of the concept of sophia from technical roots to intellectual proficiency. Contestation and complexity are the essential background against which to measure the efforts of individuals to formulate a distinctive sophia. The culture of Archaic and Classical Greece was agonistic and, as Hesiod observed, this could be a good thing because it incited people to work; potter is angry with potter and singer with singer (Works and Days 11–26).1 Hesiod is speaking of internal rivalry among practitioners of specific skill sets, but the point applied also to differing spheres of competence. The urge to define one’s achievement entailed marking out its contours against past and present rivals. Like their predecessors, the Sophists engaged competitively in measuring themselves against contemporary thinkers and assessing those who came before them: poets, athletes and trainers, natural scientists, religious experts, the politically active, and others. Their contemporaries and successors were also keen to assess how the Sophists fitted into traditions of intellectual culture. When Plato in

1

Griffith 1990; Graziosi 2001.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 35 the fourth century looked back to the activities of the Sophists who visited Athens, he represented Protagoras in the house of Callias contextualizing his intellectual practice. Plato had the Sophist place himself in an ongoing series of poets, musicians, religious experts, and athletic trainers, as well as set himself apart from the other Sophists present (Protagoras 316d2–317b6; 318d7–e5).2 It is no accident that Plato compares him to Orpheus (Protagoras 315a5–b1). Gorgias’ great-nephew dedicated a statue of Gorgias at Olympia among statues of athletic victors, and added an epigram declaring that no one was better at training the soul for the contests of virtue.3 This monument at the most prestigious venue of ancient athletics juxtaposed didactic achievement in the realm of ethics with its counterpart in the realm of athletics. Not only did it claim preeminence for Gorgias, but it was an intervention in the long-standing rivalry between physical and intellectual skill addressed in one of the elegies of Xenophanes. Sophia, then, took many shapes, and the Sophists participate in its ongoing contestation. The productions of the Sophists, as well as narratives about them, are part of the larger story of the reception and renewal of earlier wisdom traditions and the social contextualization of intellectual and ethical skills. Such contestation and contextualization emerge into clarity at different points in a variety of different genres, and it is the task of this chapter to present some significant instances of these phenomena in the centuries leading up to the emergence of the Sophists. Several themes will recur. The conception of poetic or intellectual skill as a kind of master skill becomes significant, a tradition that starts with Hesiod, works its way through figures as diverse as Pindar and Heraclitus, and then finds expression in the claims, for instance, of Gorgias and Protagoras.4 Related is the fraught issue of polymathy (knowing many things), accusations of which can be used as a club to beat rivals by insinuating that their 2

3 4

Cf. Hippias Major 281b5–282a8, where Plato invidiously represents Hippias as assessing his intellectual expertise to be greatly superior to that of his predecessors, while confessing that he publicly praises them so as not to annoy. CEG 830 = P34/A8; Morgan 1994: 378–9. Cf. Wolfsdorf 2019: 18–19 on sophia as a master skill in Heraclitus and Empedocles.

36 kathryn a. morgan knowledge is not understanding, but merely collected items of information (a technique used by both Pindar and Heraclitus). Gathering knowledge via maxim collections or didactic poetry was widespread and, as we shall see, such collections could be stamped with individual names, a practice that reaches back to the Hesiodic Precepts of Chiron and down to Hippias’ encyclopedic Collection (Sunagogê) and beyond. Because of a tendency to privilege one’s own version of sophia and disparage other versions, ideas of deceptive or merely apparent expertise emerge, an aspect that will become even more prominent in the reception of the Sophists. Competition with and criticism of rivals generated attempts to mark or “brand” one’s own version of sophia and, crucially, publicize and communicate it. Such attempts raise the question of how the sophia of the individual connects to the realm of the divine. Poets like Hesiod and Pindar see their production as authorized and enabled by divinities such as the Muses, even as they mark the gulf that separates human and divine knowledge. Heraclitus’ investigations of what is sophon bring sophia into close association with the divine by connecting it with Zeus. In Herodotus, too, performers of sophia can be religious specialists. A connection with the divine is a connection to a world of beings that know all (or at least most) things. Might there be a sophia that ignores the divine or subsumes it into the human world? Archaic and early Classical thinkers may sometimes claim that their rivals misapprehend the divine, and Pindar contemplates mortals who try to “go it alone,” but the systematic marginalization of human wisdom from its divine counterpart (and the disapproval that followed) awaits those such as Prodicus and Protagoras.

Technical Knowledge and Expertise How do we tell the history of sophia before the Sophists? As many have noted, it can sometimes be problematic to translate sophos vocabulary in early authors in terms of “wisdom.” In its earliest

‘sophia’ before the sophists 37 appearances in Homer, Alcman, and Archilochus, sophia denotes “skilled knowledge” exercised in areas such as carpentry, navigation, and chariot racing. Aristotle’s later account, as we can reconstruct it from the Nicomachean Ethics, the Metaphysics, and fragmentary sources, saw human understanding as developing from craft knowledge through practical to theoretical wisdom.5 Modern treatments may also map out a progression from craft expertise to poetic skill and generalized intellectual competence.6 Craft specialization, to be sure, presented useful opportunities for claims of particular expertise, yet the role of technê (skill or craft) could be positively valorized or negatively implicated.7 The role of technê in the construction of sophia was never a simple matter. In the sixth-century Hymn to Hermes (482–5), Hermes asserts that when a knowledgeable performer “asks a question” of the lyre with sophia and technê, the lyre “teaches all sorts of things” (παντοῖα . . . διδάσκει) to him in response. As Jean Bollack has observed, sophia and technê are both opposed and correlated in this passage; the two terms are difficult to disentangle.8 Skilled craftsmanship is a powerful paradigm but could be problematic for those who saw themselves as part of an elite. By the end of the fifth century, because of the activity of the Sophists and others, an intellectualized conception of sophia as “wisdom” had developed. At this point the relationship between sophia and technê had become fraught and technical skills could be opposed to intellectual ones.9 We can catch echoes of polemic on this front in dialogues of Plato, which look back to the intellectual context of the late fifth century. Socrates is famous for using a “craft analogy” that investigates intellectual 5

6

7

8

9

Aristotle Metaphysics 1.1–2 980a–983a; Nicomachean Ethics 6.7.1141a–b; frr. 8, 9; cf. Kerferd 1976: 19–20; Moore 2020a: 271–82. See the overview of Gladigow 1965 and the thoughtful reconstruction of Wolfsdorf 2019. Cf. Johansen 2021: 2: “The extension of ‘technê’ is blurry around the edges, ranging from highly theoretical forms of expertise, like mathematics, to border-line menial competencies.” Bollack 1968: 551. It is suggestive that the process of playing the lyre is intellectualized as questioning, response, and learning. Wolfsdorf 2019: 19. See also Moore 2020a: 93–4 on the emergence of the notion of sophia as excellence at living and advising in the sixth and fifth centuries.

38 kathryn a. morgan knowledge by comparing it to a craft skill. Thus, Callicles in the Gorgias complains that Socrates never stops talking about “cobblers and fullers and cooks and doctors, as if our discussion was about these” (491a1–3). The discussion, which is broadly about the nature and power of rhetoric, has turned to what is due to the superior and discerning (φρόνιμος) person and Callicles wants to police the boundaries of the conversation so that lower-class technical skills cannot be used as comparanda. The technê of rhetoric in this dialogue is described by Polus as the fairest of technai (448c9).10 When Socrates defines it as the “craftsman of persuasion” (πειθοῦς δημιουργός), we might compare this with Gorgias’ own formulation in the Encomium of Helen of logos as a “great potentate” (δυνάστης μέγας, 8). There is some sensitivity here regarding Gorgias’ role as a technical specialist and the way to parse his specialism socially: Is rhetoric a handyman or an autocrat? Even more tellingly, Protagoras in the Protagoras defines his own teaching against that of other Sophists in terms of the rejection of technical skills: “If Hippocrates comes to me he will not experience what he would with another Sophist. The others mistreat the young, for when these have escaped the technai they bring them back against their will and cast them back again into the technai, teaching them calculations and astronomy and geometry and music” (Protagoras 318d8–e3). Protagoras, on the other hand, will teach only good counsel in public and private affairs. Socrates narrates that during this polemic Protagoras looked at Hippias. Although the skills mentioned in this passage do not include, say, carpentry, Protagoras’ oppositional strategy of setting his own learning and teaching against the teaching of “skills” deprecates certain types of technical expertise in the face of his own sophia. He denigrates the practice of an important rival by casting him as retrograde and will later reinforce the point in his mythical account of the origins of political excellence, when he distinguishes technical wisdom (ἔντεχνον σοφίαν, τὴν . . . περὶ τὸν βίον σοφίαν) from its 10

Note the priamel structure here; there are many arts practiced by different people in different ways. The best people practice the best arts, and Gorgias is one of these, practicing the fairest art.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 39 political counterpart (321c7–d5).11 Issues of specialization, general competence, and the possibility of teaching one or the other haunt this dialogue, emerging as central to Athenian democracy and to the Sophist’s conception of his expertise. Protagoras’ sophia, at least as portrayed in Plato, has a very different intermixture of technê, and of types of technai, than Hippias’. Hippias (according to Plato) boasted he was the wisest of all men in the greatest number of technai (πάντως δὲ πλείστας τέχνας πάντων σοφώτατος . . . ἀνθρώπων), and that he went to Olympia dressed entirely in what he had made himself: his engraved ring, his shoes, his Persian-style belt, and his clothes. He came, moreover, with varied poetic and prose texts, not to mention an understanding of rhythm, harmony, and linguistic correctness (Hippias Minor 368b2–e1). We might see Hippias as a maximization of the possibilities inherent in archaic sophia. He seems to have displayed a programmatic resistance to the impulse to specialize, an issue that will play an important part in Plato’s political philosophy.12 We must, then, take care not to over-schematize a smooth development of sophia from craft expertise to philosophical knowledge. Even in his recreations of fifth-century intellectual life, Plato represents the diversity of sophiai as a live issue. In the Symposium, Diotima distinguishes between a “daimonic” and “banausic” individual; the former is sophos when it comes to communicating with the divine realm, while the latter is sophos in some other area, either in the arts or in handicrafts (σοφὸς ὢν ἢ περὶ τέχνας ἢ χειρουργίας τινὰς, Symposium 203a4–6). In the Theaetetus, it is the knowledge of justice that defines sophia; other sophiai (note the plural) are “vulgar” (φορτικαί) when it comes to the political arena and “banausic” in the realm of crafts (ἐν δὲ τέχναις βάναυσοι) (176c4–d1). Plato’s Socrates, as Andrea Nightingale has noted, works to establish a realm of philosophic practice untainted by manual labor or working for money,13 but this effort would be unnecessary if craft expertise were not a contender for the accurate application of the language of sophia. 11 13

12 Kerferd 1976: 21. See Donovan 2003. Nightingale 2004: 118–26 on Plato’s construction of banausia.

40 kathryn a. morgan Work on the figure of the archaic “wise” man by G. B. Kerferd (1976), Richard Martin (1993), and Leslie Kurke (2011) has pushed against the Aristotelian model and helped to present a more multifaceted picture. The investigations of Marcel Detienne (1996) sought to identify a type of efficacious speech invested with magico-religious power in Archaic Greece. Such speech was associated with the figures of poet, seer, and king, and was characterized by a complex interplay of “truth” (conceived as a power of memory), justice, persuasion, and deception. The rise of the hoplite class and the democratic polis led, however, to a process of secularization, new conceptions of rhetoric, and the rise of the Sophists. More recent investigation of the figure of the early sophos has stressed related themes. Martin concludes that the archaic sage, and, in particular, the grouping of the “Seven Sages,” is characterized by poetic verbal skill, political and religious activity, and performance (defined as “a public enactment, about important matters in word or gesture, employing conventions and open to scrutiny and criticism”).14 These activities took place in an inherently competitive context, both within the polis and at an inter-polis level.15 The rich discussion of Kurke built upon this work and underlined the importance of travel to the picture of early sophia, reconstructing “a unified tradition, spanning poetry and prose, characterized by verbal skill (poetic and rhetorical) aimed at practical political effects, combined with religious expertise and (very often) an element of competition.”16 It is plausible that poets, seers, and political operators shared characteristics that caused them to be seen as sophoi. It is less clear, however, that there was a unified tradition, and we should be cautious before reifying a primal politico-religious discourse that then splintered with the rise of secular traditions. In what follows my emphasis is on exploring the heterogeneity and diversity of Archaic and early Classical sophia and sophoi. As we resist teleological accounts of sophia derived from Aristotle, we must respect the flexibility and “contestedness” of notions of expertise and “wisdom.” These were always 14 16

Martin 1993: 113, 121; quote at 115–16. Kurke 2011: 107.

15

Martin 1993: 120–3.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 41 multiple, always kaleidoscopic, as individuals strove to organize and theorize the complexities of the world around them. In an agonistic culture in which sophia had, for the most part, positive valence, rival practitioners staked their claims to various kinds of expertise. The role of teaching, of learning, and of technê could be positively or negatively evaluated according to the particular constellation of expertise claimed, and the relationship of that expertise to ethical codes and the realm of the divine. Did expertise consist in the control of multiplicity, the perception of unity, or in some combination of both? How was this expertise stamped (or, as Theognis might say, “sealed”) with the identity of its possessor? These questions have no simple answers. In the pages that follow I shall focus first on Hesiod and the importance of wisdom and maxim collections, together with Hesiod’s construction of poetic knowledge as a kind of master skill appropriating technical expertise. Next comes consideration of the emergence of “sage” figures and the role of Herodotus in constructing the figure of the sophos. A section on the inquiry into nature and the attempt to control and systematize the diversity of the world on the part of figures such as Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Parmenides will focus our attention on questions of multiplicity and polymathy and on the competitive stance taken towards rivals by those who strove to craft a distinctive cosmic vision embodying their own sophia. The end of the chapter examines the way some composers of sympotic poetry attempt to mark their own visions of sophia – attending to the collection of elite traditions (Theognis) and insisting on the superiority of intellectual performance (Xenophanes) – and reflects on the role of the poetry of Bacchylides and Pindar in clarifying the network of tensions surrounding physical and intellectual skills, learning, and teaching.

hesiod and wisdom literature Precepts and advice, often in the form of maxims or gnômai, are one of the oldest methods of transmitting knowledge. This form of popular wisdom made its way into Greek poetry, and poets in turn generated pithy gnomic formulations distilling their insights that could

42 kathryn a. morgan themselves become proverbial. Gnomic knowledge played an important role in Archaic Greece, just as it did in many related and source traditions. Our earliest example is Hesiod’s didactic poem Works and Days, which has well-recognized affinities to the wisdom literature of Egypt and the Near East.17 Works and Days was not the only example of gnomic and paraenetic literature; other examples included the corpus of Theognis and the lost Precepts of Chiron (attributed to Hesiod by some). The genre of hypothêkai (precepts) seems to have consisted of “a collection of injunctions and traditional wisdom, loosely strung together with gnomic material.”18 Works and Days features the poetic speaker as the source of authoritative knowledge and includes a brief meditation on expertise and advice. The narrator exhorts his brother to work and justice, and presents his “fine thoughts” (286). He praises as best of all “the man who thinks everything for himself, considering the future and what will be better in the end.” “That man is good also,” Hesiod continues, “who is persuaded by someone who speaks well.” The person who does neither of these is useless (293–7). The emphasis on listening to and transmitting good advice, instantiated in the poem itself, could be regarded as ground zero for Greek wisdom traditions. Two centuries later, a passage at the end of Xenophon’s treatise on hunting reworks this Hesiodic advice, enriching it with a complex tension between nature and expertise. The author contrasts himself as a representative of wholesome values against the Sophists. He privileges the educational value of maxims, complaining that the Sophists write many works on vain subjects, which nowhere contain “the correct precepts that lead the young to virtue.” “The best thing,” he continues, “is to learn what is good from one’s own nature (παρὰ αὐτῆς τῆς φύσεως), but secondly, from those who truly know something good rather than from those whose skill (τέχνην) is 17 18

West 1997: 306–7. On the Precepts of Chiron and their influence on Pindar’s Pythian 6, see Kurke 1990 (quote on p. 90) together with the scholia to Pindar Pythian 6 (Drachmann II.196–7) and Friedlander 1913.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 43 deception” (On Hunting 13.3–5). The Precepts of Chiron, in addition to the Works and Days, is surely in the background here, and in Xenophon’s vision the gnomic heritage is opposed to vain sophistic innovation. Opposing a Hesiodic maxim tradition to sophistic practice was not, however, the only option. Hesiod was widely available as a resource for laypersons and experts, including the Sophists. Plato’s Protagoras included Hesiod (along with Homer) in his list of protoSophists (Protagoras 316d7), and Hesiod would have been quoted in conversations, recited in symposia (and perhaps at festivals), and taught in some schools. Heraclitus calls him “the teacher of most” (D25a/B57a ).19 The transmission of improving guidance (especially to young men) on a variety of topics stands behind later sophistic displays such as Hippias’ Trojan Dialogue or Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles (which invokes the roads to excellence and vice of Works and Days 286–92). Hesiod presents himself as a purveyor of knowledge about the gods and advantageous human conduct, although he does not foreground the vocabulary of sophia.20 An exception comes in Works and Days, where he supplements his treatment of seafaring by telling how he once made the trip to Chalcis and won a tripod with his song at the funeral games of Amphidamas. He says he will tell Perses “the measures of the loud-roaring sea” despite his inexperience: “although I am not at all expert (σεσοφισμένος) in seafaring or in ships.” He is able to give this instruction because the Muses have taught him (Works and Days 648–62). As Ralph Rosen has observed, Hesiod is playing here with concepts of sophia, compelling us to focus on poetic authority rather than nautical expertise.21 Rosen concludes that because sophia in archaic poetry commonly refers to poetic skill, Hesiod is partly claiming a poetic inability to sing of sailing. This may be true, yet the passage also juxtaposes two competing areas of expertise, seafaring 19 20

21

Koning 2010: 49–50. Hesiod fr. 306 (Merkelbach-West) characterizes a cithara player as knowing “all sorts of sophiê.” Rosen 1990: 101–2.

44 kathryn a. morgan and poetry, the latter of which claims supremacy over the former because it can include it (thanks to the Muses).22 It is not so much that in archaic poetry sophia has developed to mean poetic expertise, but that Hesiod is challenging the claims of technical knowledge (at the level of carpentry or helmsmanship) and privileging a different kind of skill that comes from a divine source and is only loosely “taught.” This is the first occurrence of the verb sophizomai in Greek literature and the only time it appears in Hesiod. It is a polemical moment.

the sophos (and herodotus) The scope of archaic sophia ranged from craft skill to poetic knowledge and beyond. We see some of that scope reflected in poetry, but other experts, whose traces are more scantily preserved, were also busy. Among them were the figures who could be called “sages,” as well those who would later be labeled “philosophers.” These two categories could overlap. There were, of course, no agreed definitions for such figures; the vocabulary of “philosophy” did not begin to be deployed until (at the earliest) the late sixth century.23 As the previous section might lead us to expect, the “sages” (sophoi) were associated with collections of wise maxims, and the anecdotes told about them featured travel and a carefully calibrated competitive dynamic, as well as acts of intellectual prowess.24 By the fourth century (Plato Protagoras 343a; Timaeus 20d–e) we have explicit evidence for a collection of individuals from the late seventh or early sixth century identified as the “Seven Sages” (the number is probably traditional).25 22

23

24

25

This sort of claim that poetry (or rhetoric) was a master skill was particularly annoying for Plato. See the discussion at Ion 541b3–5, where the rhapsode asserts that he is the best general in Greece and owes it to his study of Homer, and Gorgias 456a7–b5, where Gorgias narrates how he can sometimes persuade the clients of his brother the doctor to submit to treatment when the doctor himself cannot. See Moore 2020a: 37–65 for the attribution to Heraclitus of the use of the term philosophos. Diogenes Laertius (1.40–1) cites various sources that have sages meet at the court of Cypselus or Croesus, or at the Panionian festival or Delphi. Martin 1993: 120–1.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 45 The makeup of the group varied over time; many cities would want to mythologize an illustrious leading citizen in this way.26 By the late fourth century, various lists of sayings of the Seven Sages existed, although it seems likely that these relatives of earlier maxim collections would have been circulating during the fifth century. Demetrius of Phaleron published his own edition as Sayings of the Seven Sages (Stobaeus 3.1.172). Another list (not, however, organized by sage) was copied from the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi by a Clearchus (who may be identical with the early Peripatetic Clearchus of Soli) and traveled as far afield as the Hellenistic city of Ai Khanoum in modern Afghanistan.27 Such sayings were proverbial in nature and included the famous “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess,” among others. Many anecdotes, together with folk and proverbial wisdom, clustered around the figures of the sages, a process that probably began in the archaic period, was reflected (as we shall see) in Herodotus, and continued in the following centuries. One aspect of these anecdotes that deserves notice here is the agonistic nature of the sages’ interaction. In the Hellenistic period, many versions of a contest of the sages existed, although it is difficult to date the origins of the tradition.28 In this competition, an object is set up as a prize for the wisest person. That object is offered to each of the sages in turn, but each rejects it on the grounds that he is not the wisest, until (most often) it reaches the first again. It is then dedicated to a god. It would be interesting to know whether the epistemic modesty displayed by the sages in these stories is an early part of the tradition. If so, it would provide a counterpoint to the many assertions of intellectual primacy we meet in early material. The contest motif, on the other hand, fits well into the agonistic climate of the sixth and 26

27

28

Busine 2002: 37–8. Note the way the figure of Chilon is introduced by Demaratus in Herodotus (7.235.2): “Chilon, a man of the greatest wisdom among us” (ἀνὴρ παρ᾽ ἡμῖν σοφώτατος γενόμενος). Robert 1968: 442–54; Verhasselt 2022. The list at Ai Khanoum is most similar to that of Sosiades, preserved in Stobaeus (3.1.173). For a chart representing the versions, see Busine 2002: 57. See Moore 2020a: 95–104 for further discussion of the sages in the sixth century.

46 kathryn a. morgan fifth centuries, and, as I have argued elsewhere, the meeting and competitive interaction of sophoi may lie behind Plato’s portrayals of Socrates’ meetings with the Sophists, and in particular the gathering of the major Sophists represented in his Protagoras.29 The Histories of Herodotus can provide further insight into the way the category of sophos was deployed in the fifth century. Herodotus records acts characterized by sophia and individuals who are sophoi. He also labels a small number of persons sophistai. Even though his concern with sophia reflects the interests of his own age (one in which the Sophists were active), we can use him cautiously to reconstruct the outline of the intellectual world of previous generations. This is a world in which the exercise of cleverness and expertise is a matter of note. Herodotus will not infrequently introduce a character by saying that he is, or is reputed to be, sophos. These individuals include the groom of Darius who devised the stratagem that secured the kingship for his master (3.85.1); the Lydian who advised Croesus not to attack the Persians (1.71.2); the Mede Deioces who acquired kingship by developing a reputation for justice (1.96.1–2); and a Greek from Siris, Amyris, called “the wise” (Ἀμύριος τοῦ σοφοῦ λεγομένου) in the early sixth century for reasons we never learn (6.127.1). The famous Athenian trickster general Themistocles is repeatedly characterized as being sophos, and is even awarded a prize by the Spartans for his sophia after the Battle of Salamis (8.110.1–3, 8.124.1–2). Herodotus also likes to record practices of cleverness and technical expertise. Thus he characterizes Phoenician intelligence (in general) and skill at digging a canal across the Mount Athos peninsula (in particular) as sophia (7.23.3) and describes the Arabian technique of collecting cinnamon with the verb sophizesthai (3.111). Spartan military expertise is also called sophia (9.62.3). Examples could be multiplied, but it will be most useful to focus briefly on three places where Herodotus uses the word sophistês. The first is his mention of Pythagoras, who features briefly in his narrative 29

Morgan 2009.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 47 of the Thracian Salmoxis (4.95–6). Herodotus focalizes part of his story through Greeks who live by the Hellespont and the Black Sea. They say that Salmoxis (now a Thracian deity) was once a slave of Pythagoras who returned to Thrace and taught a doctrine of immortality, having become cultured because of his time in Ionia and his association with “Pythagoras, not the weakest sophistês” (οὐ τῷ ἀσθενεστάτῳ σοφιστῇ Πυθαγόρῃ). In a second passage, Herodotus discusses how the hero Melampus, whom he characterizes as sophos (ἄνδρα σοφὸν, 2.49.2), taught the Greeks some of the rites of Dionysus after he learnt them in Egypt. We also learn, however, that he did not reveal the whole subject in detail, but that later sophistai did do so (2.49.1). As in the Salmoxis passage, we are dealing with the transmission of religious expertise, but it is unclear why Melampus is classified as a sophos while his unnamed successors are labeled sophistai. We might speculate that Melampus is an opportunist who did not make a systematic study of Egyptian Dionysiac rites, although his successors did. The possibility emerges that, for Herodotus at least, a Sophist is a person with a coherent expertise that can be communicated, more than just an intelligent person who can invent a stratagem. The third occurrence of sophistês in Herodotus comes in the famous episode of Solon and the Lydian king Croesus. When Sardis was at the height of its prosperity, “all the other sophistai from Greece who were living at that time arrived there individually, and also Solon the Athenian” (1.29).30 Croesus remarks to him that his reputation for sophia and travel has preceded him, namely that he has traveled in order to see many lands and because he aspires to sophia (παρ᾽ ἡμέας γὰρ περὶ σέο λόγος ἀπῖκται πολλὸς καὶ σοφίης εἵνεκεν τῆς σῆς καὶ πλάνης, ὡς φιλοσοφέων γῆν πολλὴν θεωρίης εἵνεκεν ἐπελήλυθας, 1.29.2). There follows the notorious exchange concerning the most prosperous person Solon has seen, at the end of which he is dismissed as ignorant because he 30

Reading οἵ τε ἄλλοι πάντες ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος σοφισταί. The manuscripts read ἄλλοι τε οἱ πάντες, which is taken by How and Wells (1967: 66) to show that Herodotus did not consider Solon a sophistês. See Wilson 2015: 4 for the transposition here (although Wilson deletes οἱ πάντες).

48 kathryn a. morgan refuses to acknowledge the king’s seeming prosperity. This is the first preserved passage in Greek literature featuring the verb philosopheô, and its valence here is uncertain. Does Croesus think that Solon is traveling in search of intellectual cultivation or because he aspires to the reputation of being a sage?31 What is striking is the way Herodotus foregrounds issues of travel and intellectual expertise, and his use of what was probably innovative terminology to describe Solon’s activities. Solon’s trip is contextualized among the visits of multiple sophistai and thus within a tradition of lively intellectual exchange. It is notable that Herodotus’ uses of the term “Sophist” (of Pythagoras, the successors of Melampus, and those who visit Croesus) occur in a context of cultural interchange, and, moreover, that religious or quasi-religious knowledge may be at stake in each encounter (Solon starts his speech to Croesus by stating that he knows the divine realm is jealous and full of confusion, 1.32.1). Herodotus looks back to a world of sophia that he saw as varied and complex. His narrative reflects both the scope of archaic sophoi and the developing intellectual specialization of the fifth century. Against a background of thoughtful and clever people and practices, certain figures emerge as experts who can transmit their knowledge. Yet it is significant that he is content to present us with anonymous groups of specialists (the successors of Melampus, those who visit Croesus). He is not thinking of well-defined groups of sophoi. What then of the “sages”? Stories concerning individuals later counted among the sages – Solon, Thales, Bias, Pittacus, Periander, Chilon, and Anacharsis – occur in Herodotus. Some of them are associated with sophia vocabulary (Solon, Chilon, Anacharsis), but others are not, even though they are shown to perform acts of expertise and give good advice (Thales, Pittacus, Bias).32 This discourse surrounding sophia is still in flux.

inquiring into “all things” The appearance of Thales in Herodotus, where he figures as an astronomer, engineer, and provider of good advice, as well as in lists of the Seven Sages found in later authors, raises the issue of Ionian natural 31

Nightingale 2004: 64; Moore 2020a: 128–32.

32

Cf. Busine 2002: 17.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 49 science and what we now call Presocratic philosophy. As stated above, the terminology of “philosophy” was not widely (if at all) used in the sixth century and the definition of philosophy as a discipline had to wait for the fourth century. The earliest fragments of the “Presocratics” are concerned not with demarcating intellectual boundaries but with identifying large-scale patterning and phenomena in the natural world. A. A. Long notes that Aristotle called this the “inquiry into nature,” but aptly remarks that we might better call it “giving an account of all things.”33 It is a type of inquiry characterized, as Long remarks, by “fluidity and diversity,” and is one in which the later Sophists energetically participated (when Protagoras posits that “man is the measure of all things” (πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος, D9/B1), he makes his own contribution to the investigation of “all things” and simultaneously establishes a criterion by which to make sense of this multiplicity34). Thales is famous nowadays as the first of the Milesian cosmologists, a theorist who came to be understood as having posited water as the origin of all things; his successors assigned fundamental roles to the boundless (Anaximander) and to air (Anaximenes). Hippias would later include Thales as part of his Collection. This doxographical encyclopedia grouped him with authors such as Homer and Hesiod.35 We must, then, envisage the work of Ionian thinkers as an integral part of the cultural ferment of the sixth and fifth centuries and of evolving Greek wisdom traditions. Other Presocratics energetically engaged in competitive definition of their own enterprises and polemic against intellectual rivals. The search for origins and for coherence in a complex cosmos was a fundamental aspect of wisdom traditions in poetry, natural science, and elsewhere. Those who found such coherence were often keen to advertise their achievement and asserted the uniqueness of their sophia, marking it off against the claims of competitors. The late 33 35

34 Long 1999: 10. Cf. D7/B2. For Hippias’ encyclopedia (fragment of an introduction at D22/B6), see Snell 1976 [1944]; Morgan 2000: 95–6; and Wę cowski 2009. On the role of Hippias and the Sophists in pre-Platonic doxography, see Mansfeld 1990 [1986] : 27–49.

50 kathryn a. morgan sixth and early fifth centuries thus saw a widespread competition between differing expressions of sophia that opposed a potentially vexatious plurality to a focused vision that could control it. The command of multiplicity had been a mark of superiority ever since Homer’s Odysseus, who “saw the cities of many men and knew their mind” (Odyssey 1.3). This mastery was now supplemented by the impulse, in some cases, to organize the world and possible forms of expertise and to put them into a hierarchy. So it is that among the verses later attributed to Thales are the following. Many words do not reveal sensible thinking (φρονίμην . . . δόξαν). Seek one thing, what is wise (ἕν τι μάτευε σοφόν). Choose one thing, what is good, for you will the stop the endless tongues of chatterers. (P16/A1 = Diogenes Laertius 1.35)

Whatever the precise semantics of sophon here, it is clear that a preferred and singular version is being set against (verbal) multiplicity. In the fragments of Heraclitus this tension between the one and the many and the different types of human (mis)understanding plays out repeatedly in terms of sophos vocabulary. For Heraclitus the world was organized according to a unity of opposites. One notes the prominence of the idea of the sophon; all things are one, and, crucially, what is sophon is one. The wise is one, to know the thought that steers all things through all things (ἓν τὸ σοφόν, ἐπίστασθαι γνώμην, ὁτέη ἐκυβέρνησε πάντα διὰ πάντων). (D44/B41) The wise is one; it is willing and not willing to be called only by the name of Zeus (ἓν τὸ σοφόν, μοῦνον λέγεσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει Ζηνὸς ὄνομα). (D45/B32)

Behind the multiplicity of the world is an organizing principle that partially overlaps with human notions of divinity.36 It is a superior

36

Cf. Gladigow 1965: 89.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 51 instantiation of expertise that draws upon the long-standing paradigm of the expert helmsman.37 Human wisdom consists in recognizing and understanding this principle. Only Heraclitus, however, has achieved this. However many accounts I have heard, no one arrives at this: recognizing that the wise is separated from everything (ὅτι σοφόν ἐστι πάντων κεχωρισμένον). (D43/B108)

His isolation from the common run of humanity is parallel to the separation of “what is wise” from everything else. His is a singular expertise, and he sets it polemically against the learning of other teachers. Hesiod is “the teacher of most” (διδάσκαλος . . . πλείστων), who think that he knows “the most” (πλεῖστα εἰδέναι), although he does not understand the unity of night and day (D25/B57). The plurality of Hesiod’s audience is matched by the multiplicity of his presumed knowledge, and opposed to the conceptual unity of day and night. Homer, who was wiser (σοφώτερος) than all the Greeks, could not solve a children’s riddle (D22/B56). As many interpreters have observed, Heraclitus is dismissive of polymathiê. Much learning (πολυμαθίη) does not teach sense (νόον), for then it would have taught Hesiod, and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus. (D20/B40)

Those he criticizes include an influential epic poet; a sage with religious expertise; a rhapsode with innovative ideas about cosmology, the divine, and the proper operation of human society; and a Milesian geographer and mythographer. As Long comments, he “seeks to distance himself both from ancient authorities (Hesiod) and from a group of near contemporary figures.”38 The many are set off against the one, and they are characterized by the multiplicity of their intellectual range. In the case of Pythagoras, Heraclitus supplies an additional indication of his intellectual transgressions. 37

See Wolfsdorf 2019: 18.

38

Long 1999: 9–10; cf. Sassi 2018: 100–1.

52 kathryn a. morgan Pythagoras the son of Mnesarchus engaged in inquiry (ἱστορίην ἤσκησεν) more than all other men, and having made his selection from these writings (ἐκλεξάμενος ταύτας τὰς συγγραφáς) he crafted his own wisdom (σοφίην): much learning (πολυμαθίην), an evil craft (κακοτεχνίην). (D26/B129)

It seems that Pythagoras has been taking advantage of early prose culture to expand the scope of his research and to craft an individual vision.39 In this instance, skill (technê) and expertise or wisdom are closely associated, but negatively. The magnitude of his learning is delusory, since it is a collection of items of knowledge rather than an integrated whole. Polymathy does not teach sense. The breadth of learning associated with Heraclitus’ rivals should be contrasted with the “deep” account he attributes to the soul.40 Two visions of sophia are tendentiously opposed, one that focuses on the collection of information and one that focuses on deep insight. Pythagoras would, of course, have resisted such a characterization energetically. Amassing items of knowledge as part of his account of all things would not have excluded but constituted insight. He was renowned in antiquity for the quantity of his learning. Empedocles may have been referring to him when he spoke of a man who had won “a wealth of wits” (πραπίδων ἐκτήσατο πλοῦτον), governed all sorts of wise deeds, and could see “each of all the things that are” in ten or twenty lifetimes of men (D38/31B129). In the mid-fifth century, Ion of Chios, in the course of commenting on the early prose author and cosmologist Pherecydes, implies that Pythagoras was “wise concerning all things” (σοφὸς περὶ πάντων), and had seen and 39

40

For the interpretation adopted here, see Mansfeld 1989. Huffman: 2008: 21–34 is correct to insist that Pythagoras’ historiê here cannot be confined to what we would call Ionian natural science. The construction of ἐκλεξάμενος and the nature of the “writings” referred to are fraught (see Huffman 2008: 34–43; Zhmud 2017: 181–4; Thom 2013: 88–93). Cf. Moore 2020a: 111: “Heraclitus . . . criticizes Pythagoras’s selfpresentation as a person with epistemic authority, and consequent intellectual, religious, and civic authority.” Gladigow 1965: 22–23; Snell 1953: 17–19.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 53 learned the minds of men (ἀνθρώπων γνώμας εἶδε καὶ ἐξέμαθεν, P29/36B4 = Diogenes Laertius 1.120; note the echo of Homer’s Odysseus here).41 He fits well the model of the traveling sophos, having (at a minimum) moved from Samos to southern Italy; the anecdotal tradition reports travels to Egypt, Babylon, Olympia, and elsewhere.42 He was also known as the founder of a way of life. Herodotus speaks of the “Pythagoreans” when discussing certain religious practices (2.81.2), and Plato too has Socrates speak of the Pythagorean way of life (Republic 10.600b1–4). Later sources speak of his educational influence and his popular speeches to mass audiences (P25, P26), a precedent for the impact of later sophistic displays. As would be the case with the Sophists, this popularity could be viewed with suspicion. Another fragment of Heraclitus may see Pythagoras labeled as “the chief of glib speakers” (tr. LM; κοπίδων ἀρχηγός, D27/B81), although we cannot be sure at whom (or what) this insult was directed.43 Honors for Pythagoras were, however, ongoing in the classical period. When Aristotle (Rhetoric 2.23 1398b9–16) quotes Alcidamas’ comment that “everyone honors the wise,” Pythagoras is listed as being honored by the Italians,44 and his house in Metapontum was made a sanctuary of Demeter (P46a = Diogenes Laertius 8.15). It is notoriously difficult to reconstruct Pythagoras’ teaching, but it seems clear that there was a substantial religious component (including the doctrine of transmigration of souls – something that, in Pythagoras’ case, would significantly increase his stock of learning, since he could remember his past lives), as well as political and ethical instruction. The famous Pythagorean akousmata or symbola 41

42 43

44

Zhmud 2017: 176 cites Antisthenes fr. 187 SSR, where Antisthenes, commenting on the eloquence of Odysseus and his polytropia, compares “Pythagoras’ ability to speak differently with different social and age groups, such as women and children, for example, seeing in it proof of his wisdom.” Cf. Thom 2013: 90. See Zhmud 2017: 175–6 for discussion. He accepts that Pythagoras is the object here, but prefers the translation “originator of swindles.” Others in the list included Archilochus, Homer, Sappho, Chilon, Anaxagoras, Solon, and Lycurgus. This diverse list of poets, lawgivers, and a Presocratic show how variable notions of sophia were in the early fourth century.

54 kathryn a. morgan were a heterogeneous collection of sayings covering subjects such as ritual, diet, myth, morality, and cosmology. It is uncertain when these sayings were first collected and what the original scope of any collection was, but they were probably in circulation during the fifth century and are obviously connected to the collections of gnomic material mentioned earlier and to the maxims of the Seven Sages.45 Pythagoras was one of the first “superstars” of wisdom, and is thus an interesting precedent for the popularity of the later Sophists. His maximal vision of sophia revels in plurality and diverse forms of knowledge and was so successful that it created a group of followers labeled with the name of the master (which in turn seems to have diversified into differing approaches to his legacy). We might think of this as a form of intellectual branding. The tension between plurality and unity is also at work in Parmenides’ epic presentation of the world. The opening of his poem sees a youth traveling in his visionary chariot along a road that carries the knowing man through all the towns (D4.3/B1.3),46 a vision of intellectual scope and possibly of celebrity. The goddess he meets promises him he will learn both the unshaken heart of truth and unreliable mortal opinions, which correspond to the two parts of the poem named Alêtheia and the Doxa, the former transmitting a monistic vision of the world and the latter a multipart cosmology. Whatever the strictly philosophical relationship between the two parts of the poem, they express the tension between knowledge of the one and the many. At the transition from the one to the other, the goddess comments that she is communicating the latter “so that no mortal thought can outstrip you” (D8.66/B8.60–1). The competitive tone of this remark is noteworthy; it is as if the youth is in a chariot or 45

46

Or perhaps earlier. So Huffman: 2008: 41–3 and Thom 2013: 93–8, who suggest identifying the “writings” referred to in Heraclitus B129 with these akousmata and think that written collections of these sayings may have been circulating in Heraclitus’ time. The reading “towns” (ἄστη) here is, however, conjectural and is not preserved in the manuscript tradition.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 55 running race and must keep ahead of rivals. His achievement is to present a twofold vision that insists on an extreme monistic unity (Alêtheia) but also claims a superior doctrine of a complex and seemingly plural world (Doxa), a novel approach to the problem of controlling multiplicity and creating a unified framework for understanding it. Sophia terminology does not appear in the fragments of Parmenides, but he has crafted a singular poetic exposition of his own expertise and wisdom, presented as the results of an inquiry from an authoritative source. The setting of the one against the many and the gesture of hostility toward plurality seems to have been a popular reflex. In the seventh century Archilochus had juxtaposed fairly neutrally the fox and the hedgehog, the former of whom knows many things (πόλλ’) but the latter one big thing (ἓν μέγα, fr. 201 West). By the fifth century the tone is more polemic. A fragment of Aeschylus declares that the wise man (sophos) is someone who knows not many things but useful ones (ὁ χρήσιμ’ εἰδώς, οὐχ ὁ πόλλ’ εἰδὼς σοφός, fr. 390). The geographer and chronicler Hecataeus opens his Genealogies by declaring that he will write what seems to him to be the truth, “since the tales of the Greeks are, I think, many and laughable” (οἱ γὰρ ῾Ελλήνων λόγοι πολλοί τε καὶ γελοῖοι, ὡς ἐμοὶ φαίνονται, εἰσίν, 1 BNJ F 1a). The existence of multiple logoi is not thematized here as a problem in itself, yet there seems to be a feeling that a proliferation of accounts generates an intellectual problem that must be dealt with; it is this same struggle for mastery over variegated traditions that makes Herodotus the heroic historical inquirer portrayed by Carolyn Dewald, an investigator who recounts “his exploits in capturing the logoi and his struggles to pin them down and make them speak to him the truths that they contain.”47 Given that Hecataeus mocks the multiplicity of Greek narratives, it is paradoxical that he appears in Heraclitus (D20/B40) as one of the polymathic villains whose wealth of learning did not endow them with sense. 47

Dewald 1987: 147 and passim.

56 kathryn a. morgan

expertise, teaching, and learning in the symposium and chorus Sympotic Poetry The concern to put a stamp on one’s vision of sophia was not confined to the Presocratics. The elite symposium was a prime location for the exercise of cultural expertise and wisdom, as a glance at the sympotic poetry of the Theognidean corpus shows.48 The treatment of sophia is not uniform across the elegies of Theognis; at one moment it is poetic expertise, at another a more generalized cleverness and capacity for skillful action. No one, says the poet, is skillful (sophos) at everything (900–1). The sympotic world of the Theognidea is one in which cultural expertise is transmitted from speaker to recipient, often conceived to be a younger male. Lines 563–6 present the transmission of wisdom in didactic terms, as the young aristocrat collects items of knowledge from a wise elder at a feast. κεκλῆσθαι δ᾿ ἐς δαῖτα, παρέζεσθαι δὲ παρ᾿ ἐσθλὸν ἄνδρα χρεὼν σοφίην πᾶσαν ἐπιστάμενον. Τοῦ συνιεῖν, ὁπόταν τι λέγῃ σοφόν, ὄφρα διδαχθῇς, καὶ τοῦτ᾿ εἰς οἶκον κέρδος ἔχων ἀπίῃς. You should get invited to a banquet and sit beside a good man who knows all sophia. You should take note of it when he says something expert (sophos), so that you can be taught it and go home with it as gain.

Sophia is sometimes associated with excellence (aretê) as a term of broad approval. At lines 1003–6, the speaker defines excellence as standing one’s ground in the front ranks of battle. This is good both for the city and for its people, and is “the most noble prize for a wise man (ἀνδρὶ σοφῷ) to win.” This thought has probably made its way to the Megarian symposium from Tyrtaeus, whose fragments preserve these couplets in an almost identical form (12.13–16 West). Yet there is one difference. In Tyrtaeus, steadfastness in battle is the 48

Ford 2002: 25–43, especially 41–2.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 57 most noble prize for a young man (ἀνδρὶ νεῷ) to win. As Antonio Aloni observes, the change from “young” to “wise” makes the couplets “assume a general gnomic value, valid for all those who share in the wisdom of the symposion.”49 The scope of the adjective sophos in Theognis is wide indeed, and this breadth is the more notable for being applied to the world of hoplite warfare. Yet sophia can also be in tension with aretê. Lines 1073–4 advise the auditor to vary his disposition according to the company he keeps, because sophia (cleverness or wisdom) is better even than great excellence (aretê). A similar couplet occurs at lines 217–8. Here again we find the advice to embrace craft and adaptability – like an octopus – but this time the moral is that cleverness/wisdom is better than inflexibility (κρέσσων τοι σοφίη γίνεται ἀτροπίης). The half-line “cleverness/wisdom is better than” lent itself to completion in a number of different ways, but in any event sophia is conceived as a prime good, to be opposed to whatever concept was being dispraised by the speaker. It was thus well suited to sympotic “capping” games where each speaker would strive to outdo the previous one in verbal dexterity and intellectual prowess. Poetic competence, in its political, moral, and intellectual aspects, is an important aspect of Theognidean sophia. The speaker envisages a situation where he and a rival contend in sophia (901) by singing a beautiful song with a boy as a prize, where sophia clearly applies to poetic composition and performance. Most famously, in the “seal of Theognis,” the poet attempts to mark this poetic material as his own in a world where others may be eager to appropriate it. Κύρνε, σοφιζομένῳ μὲν ἐμοὶ σφρηγὶς ἐπικείσθω τοῖσδ᾽ ἔπεσιν, λήσει δ᾽ οὔποτε κλεπτόμενα, ... σοὶ δ᾽ ἐγὼ εὖ φρονέων ὑποθήσομαι, οἷά περ αὐτός, Κύρν᾽, ἀπὸ τῶν ἀγαθῶν παῖς ἔτ᾽ ἐὼν ἔμαθον. Cyrnus, let a seal lie upon these words as I exercise my skill, and they will never be stolen without people noticing 49

Aloni 2009: 184.

58 kathryn a. morgan ... I have good intentions towards you, Cyrnus, and so I will give you instruction, the sort I learned from good men when I was still a boy. (19–20, 27–8)

It is unclear precisely how this poetry will be “sealed,” but what is important is the gesture towards ownership. Although this gesture has sometimes been seen in terms of the emergence of notions of authorship, it is productive to think rather in terms of appropriation of tradition.50 Like Pythagoras (if Heraclitus is to be believed), Theognis has collected cultural material that expresses his approach to life and has given it his stamp (his brand?). I want to stress how closely the exercise of sophia (σοφιζομένῳ) is bound to the impulse to mark a particular collection of content. These words are the product of an individualized sophos, even though much of this content is conventional and marked as such as the passage continues. This is poetry that acculturates its audience to an elite and conservative social milieu, and Theognis will pass on the instruction that he received when he was young. The verb he uses to describe this activity (ὑποθήσομαι) is the same one that lies underneath the genre of hypothêkai, precepts, mentioned earlier.51 Even though, as he comments, he cannot please “all the townspeople,” he anticipates that his skilled poetic production will make him “famous among all mankind” (22–4). Lowell Edmunds rightly compares the activities of the Peisistratid Hipparchus in the late sixth century, who is reported ([Plato] Hipparchus 228c6–229b1) to have set up herms on the main roads leading from Athens to the townships.52 These herms had proverbial expressions inscribed upon them; Socrates says that Hipparchus “made a selection of what he thought wisest” (ἐκλεξάμενος ἃ ἡγεῖτο σοφώτατα) from what he knew himself and what 50 52

51 Ford 1985: 86; cf. Edmunds 1997: 41–3. Cf. Edmunds 1997: 43. Edmunds 1997: 41–2 (making connections to the collections of Phocylides, PseudoEpicharmus, and the activity of Socrates).

‘sophia’ before the sophists 59 he had discovered from others and had them inscribed as a “display of his sophia” (ἐπιδείγματα τῆς σοφίας). The context is overtly competitive; Hipparchus wants the citizens to marvel more at his wisdom than at Delphi’s. The framing here is fourth century, but an example of these herms has been discovered, so we can be relatively sure that a member of the tyrannical administration of Athens in the archaic period did indeed make a collection of traditional wisdom, mark it as his own, and put it on public display.53 Once again, the process of collection is notable. The Socratic narrator says that Hipparchus made a selection of his material (ἐκλεξάμενος), just as Heraclitus says that Pythagoras did, just as Theognis probably did, and just as the compilers of maxim collections did. Socrates himself, at least according to Xenophon, engaged in such a process of selection with his companions, looking though the books of the wise men of old and selecting ἐκλεγόμεθα what was good.54 It would be the sophistic polymath Hippias who took this kind of listing and collecting activity to new heights, in his list of Olympic victors (D7/B3), in his Trojan Dialogue (D10/A9), which listed exemplary activities for young men, and in his encyclopedic Collection (D3/B4, D22/B6), in which he “put together” the “greatest” material from Orpheus, Musaeus, Homer, Hesiod, and others to make a new discourse.55 Xenophanes, the poet, rhapsode, theologian, and natural scientist, obtrusively claimed superiority for his own intellectual brand. Like Theognis, he has an interest in sympotic ethics; in his case this concern takes the form of rejection of war and strife as topics for sympotic conversation in favor of topics that are useful (D59/B1.19–23). Like Heraclitus, he criticized famous predecessors and contemporaries: Homer

and

Hesiod

among

poets

(D8–9/B11–12),

not

to

mention Pythagoras, Thales, and Epimenides (Diogenes Laertius 9.18). 53

54 55

IG I3 1023, SEG 50–82, with Aloni 2000: 82–3. The herm found near Koropi preserves the first line of an elegiac couplet identifying the location of the monument; the lost pentameter would have identified Hipparchus and provided the maxim. Memorabilia 1.6.14. Orpheus, Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod also appear in Protagoras’ list of protoSophists at Plato Protagoras 316d3–e4.

60 kathryn a. morgan Proclus reports that because of his “mean-spiritedness” he composed Silloi (lampoons), mockeries of “all poets and philosophers” (D3/A22). Xenophanes also attempted to specify the contribution of his variety of sophia. In D61/B2 he argues that the contribution of an athlete to the well-being of the polis is less worthy than his own: “our sophia is better than the strength of men and horses . . . it is not right to prefer strength to good sophia” (11–14). Even a great athlete will not cause a city to be better governed or richer. Physical and intellectual skill are set against each other here, and the polemic tone of D61/B2 makes it clear that athletic achievement was, in the eyes of some, the preeminent contribution to the good of the city. This was a model that had to be contested, and Xenophanes locates himself in a tradition that stretches down to Gorgias, who was memorialized at Olympia as the best trainer for the contests of excellence (see above). Xenophanes, then, sets himself up as a poet who thinks his sophia is intimately connected with the good government of the polis. He performs his wisdom in public and quasi-public settings and works to undermine the reputations of competitors.56 The wording “our sophia” and “good sophia” contrast Xenophanes’ particular version of expertise with other kinds of sophia, bad or useless ones.

Praise Poetry The genre of epinician bears examination in the current context. It might be thought that songs in praise of victorious athletes would be a strange place to find meditations on conceptions of sophia in the first half of the fifth century BCE, but epinician showcases a strong poetic voice that focuses on its conceptual underpinnings (particularly in the poetry of Pindar). Even if poets like Pindar were not responding directly to Xenophanes’ assertions about the uselessness of athletic victory and superiority of his own sophia, there was ongoing discussion about the value of athletic competition (and this is, of course, an area of debate in the present day). We have seen that 56

He is thus a figure like Martin’s (1993) sage. For Xenophanes as a wandering sophos, see B8/D66 (where he is reported saying that his thought has been tossing around Greece for sixty-seven years); Ford 2002: 50–2.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 61 poets and thinkers of all sorts were keen to single out their own version of expertise as superior. Epinician allowed a poet to vindicate the importance of athletic victory and the skill and social utility of those who celebrated it. The notion of skills extending over different domains was an important aspect of the history of sophia, as we have seen. This helps to explain why realms of sophia can be prominent in the priamel structures of epinician lyric. Bacchylides’ tenth epinician tells how mortals travel different paths in their pursuit of glory. There are countless forms of human understanding (epistamai).57 The skilled man (sophos) flourishes in golden hope, whether he has been allotted honor from the Graces, or knows prophecy. Another aims his variegated bow at boys, and some please their spirit with land and herds of cattle. (10.37–45)

This passage associates poetry and prophecy, two coordinate domains, although it continues by including the man chasing boys and the landowner. It is unclear how far the scope of the adjective sophos extends here; is expertise in herds and pederastic seduction included under the umbrella of sophia? In any case, Bacchylides is presenting here a picture of expertise with a long pedigree. Elsewhere he presents a sophia that is passed on by education; in the context of poetic invention, one person becomes expert from another (ἕτερος ἐξ ἑτέρου σοφός, Paeans fr. 5). When we come to Pindar, things are more complex; he is a virtual encyclopedia of the diversity of sophia, and suggestively looks forward to the concerns that later surround the Sophists. His approved version of sophia emerges triumphant in competition with other possibilities; his is a sophia that is authentic and not only apparent, is not hateful to the gods, is not deceptive, takes due note of the need for toil, and comes from divine endowment. This is not so 57

On the use of epistamai here, see Wolfsdorf 2019: 16. For the similar catalogue of occupations, see Solon fr. 13.42–62.

62 kathryn a. morgan much a development in the progress of sophia towards its philosophical instantiation, as Gladigow would have it, but an attempt to put a personal stamp on a subset of contemporary possibilities for wisdom and expertise.58 Pindar’s sophia vocabulary comprehends the exercise of skill and wisdom both inside and outside of poetry. When he deploys the coinage sophisma (Olympian 13.17) as he lists the products of sophia in Corinth, he mentions the invention of the dithyramb, the bridle, and eagle roof ornaments for temples. More than craft skills, however, Pindar likes to talk about the intellectual and ethical competence of sophoi in politics (Pythian 2.88; 5.12) and elsewhere. As we might expect, this competence includes familiarity with proverbial or folk wisdom. The addressee of Pythian 4.263 is told to ponder the “wisdom of Oedipus,” and the wise are explicitly presumed to be familiar with maxims (fr. 35b; Isthmian 2.12). Pindar prides himself on a poetic expertise that combines artistic skill with superior ethical and social judgment. At the end of Olympian 1, he envisages himself as preeminent for sophia (116); elsewhere he indicates that poets in general are expert (sophoi).59 Given the reciprocal relationship between poet and audience, it is no surprise that discerning receivers of song are also called sophoi (Pythian 4.295–6). A linguistic milestone is reached when revered warrior-heroes furnish an object of concern to sophistais (Isthmian 5.28). This is the first preserved occurrence of the noun sophistês in Greek literature.60 The “Sophists” here must be poets. It seems unlikely (although possible) that Pindar is innovating here; the ode dates to around 478, and the years after 480 are a good time to imagine the introduction of this vocabulary, as discussion over different models of wisdom/expertise continued. Technical poetic skill is not, however, enough to make a superior bard; the poet also needs the help of the Muses. Pindar attributes sophia to the Muses and 58 59

60

Gladigow 1965: 46–54. Olympian 1.8–9, Pythian 10.22, Nemean 8.41, among many instances. Homer’s skilled carpenter makes a metaphorical reappearance as a description of poets at Pythian 3.113 (τέκτονες . . . σοφοί); cf. Nemean 3.4–5. See the Introduction to this volume, pp. 7–8.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 63 Apollo (Nemean 4.2; Pythian 1.120) because of their divine knowledge and because they are the patrons of his craft. Indeed, the Homeric contrast between divine and human knowledge is now presented through the filter of sophia. Beyond the genre of epinician, in Paean 6.50–4 (a passage with Iliadic resonances), the poet discusses how the “strife of the immortals” began, and remarks that “it is possible for the gods to entrust these things to wise men” (sophous), but impossible for mortals to discover them. The Muses, on the other hand, know all things. Here it is the poets who are wise, although it is unclear whether the Muses give knowledge to certain poets because they are wise, or whether they are wise because the Muses give them knowledge. In another fragmentary paean (7b, fr. 52h.15–20) it is explicitly possible, if illadvised, to explore the road of wisdom without divine sanction; the poet prays to the Muses since the minds of men are blind “if anyone seeks out the deep path of wisdom (βαθεῖαν . . . ἐρευνᾷ σοφίας ὁδόν)” without them.61 The contrast between mortal and divine knowledge extends beyond the realm of poetry. τί ἔλπεαι σοφίαν ἔμμεν, ἃν ὀλίγον τοι ἀνὴρ ὑπὲρ ἀνδρὸς ἴσχει; Οὐ γὰρ ἔσθ’ ὅπως τὰ θεῶν βουλεύματ’ ἐρευνάσει βροτέᾳ φρενί· What do you think wisdom is, in which one man surpasses another by a little? There is no way he will search out the gods’ plans with a mortal mind. (fr. 61)

Sophia is here firmly located on the mortal side of the equation, as it is in Pindar’s ninth Paean, where an eclipse confounds mortal strength and wisdom (fr. 52k). It is worth recalling that Thales had purportedly 61

Such passages were suggestive for Plato’s later framing of the role of divine inspiration. Cf. Phaedrus 245a5–8: “Whoever arrives as the doors of poetry without madness from the Muses, believing that he will be a competent poet because of his technical skill (ἐκ τέχνης), is himself imperfect/uninitiated and the poetry of the person in their right mind is obliterated by the poetry of the mad.”

64 kathryn a. morgan exercised his expertise by predicting an earlier eclipse, but the poet here will have no truck with any mortal mediation of divine catastrophe. Later commentators would reconstruct Pindaric hostility to “natural scientists”; Stobaeus (2.1.21) reports that Pindar said they “plucked the fruit of wisdom unripe” (ἀτελῆ σοφίας καρπὸν δρέπ(ειν), fr. 209). This is, to be sure, an anachronistic interpretation, since Pindar would not have used such terminology for investigators of natural phenomena.62 Yet this fragment does imply that certain people misuse their expertise, and it is not unlikely that included in this number might have been those who sought to demystify the divine realm. The factors contributing to sophia are an ongoing concern in Olympian 9. The ode ends with a meditation on the relationship between “natural” and taught skills, where the poet privileges what comes “by nature” (φυᾷ), although many try to win fame with excellence that is taught (διδακταῖς . . . ἀρεταῖς). Something in which god takes no part may best be left in silence (100–4). One might conclude that the audience is presented with an aristocratic elevation of nature over nurture, yet, as the subtle discussion of Thomas Hubbard has shown, this would be an overly reductive conclusion.63 The priamel that follows adds nuance. ἐντὶ γὰρ ἄλλαι ὁδῶν ὁδοὶ περαίτεραι, μία δ’ οὐχ ἅπαντας ἄμμε θρέψει μελέτα· σοφίαι μέν αἰπειναί· Some roads lead farther than others, and one pursuit (meleta) does not nourish us all. The ways of skill (sophiai) are steep. (Olympian 9.104–8)

The word meleta might also be translated “method of training”; one method is not suitable for everyone. The characterization of sophia that follows is difficult to translate into English, since in the Greek the noun is plural (sophiai). There are multiple forms of expertise and 62

Most 2011: 6.

63

Hubbard 1985: 108–10, 120–3.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 65 reaching them is difficult. This picture looks back to Hesiod’s famous steep path to excellence (Works and Days 290–2), but the repeated use of plurals by Pindar is suggestive. Some roads are preferable to others, and in Pindar’s world god will always have a hand in the preferable option. We must remember that in the opening of the poem the poet declares that men become good (agathoi) and expert (sophoi) in accordance with divine will. This is what enabled Heracles to face even the gods in battle – a thought from which he then retreats with the observation that abusing the gods is “hateful sophia” (Olympian 9.28–38). Pindar’s complicated insistence on divine dispensation as a crucial ingredient in sophia must reflect (among other things) contemporary debate on the role of training and teaching. In spite of his valorization of phya (nature), he recognizes the importance of technical skill as part of a complete package, and his subtle negotiation of this balance anticipates the comments of Protagoras on nature and training, to which I shall return below. Yet for Pindar both learned skills and natural talents must be subordinated to religious sensibility; it would never do to exercise a sophia that is hateful to the gods.64 Pindar’s poetry engages in a complex negotiation between innate and learned knowledge, and his treatment of sophia plays upon cultural expectations that associated sophia vocabulary with technical and learned skill. Part of his rhetorical posture can be to problematize these expectations. We learn in Olympian 5 that those who succeed after toil and expense seem wise even to their fellow citizens (εὖ δὲ τυχόντες σοφοὶ καὶ πολίταις ἔδοξαν ἔμμεν, Olympian 5.15– 16), yet we can pair this with the statement that “if someone gets good things without great effort, he seems to many to be a wise man among the foolish” (πολλοῖς σοφὸς δοκεῖ πεδ’ ἀφρόνων, Pythian 8.73–4). The 64

Sophia is sometimes a choice among strategic considerations. In Nemean 5 Pindar alludes to a narrative that puts certain mythological heroes in a bad light but refuses to tell it in detail, remarking that silence is often wisest (σοφώτατον, 18), and in Olympian 1 he revises the myth of Pelops on the grounds that “blame is less” when one speaks well of the gods. “Days to come,” he remarks, “are the wisest witnesses” (μάρτυρες σοφώτατοι, 33–4). The attribution of “wisdom” here to “days” is remarkable. The meaning may be that narrating disreputable stories will seem in future days to have been strategically unwise.

66 kathryn a. morgan popular perception of sophia is juxtaposed with toil and effort, and the poet casts himself as commentator on facile popular ideas. His presentation of his own achievement can be paradoxical, however. When he boasts in Olympian 2 of the many poetic shafts he has in his quiver, he declares: “The one who knows many things by nature is wise (σοφὸς ὁ πολλὰ εἰδὼς φυᾷ); those who have learned (μαθόντες) cry vainly in their wordiness like turbulent crows against the divine bird of Zeus” (Olympian 2.86–8). Significant here is the stress on the multiplicity of knowledge coupled with the insistence that this multiplicity comes from natural endowment, not from learning. As we have seen, learning was a significant aspect of certain visions of archaic sophia. Pindar magnificently undercuts this expectation, preserving the impact of knowing many things while denying a popular presupposition of this knowledge. This is a veritable dismantling of the notion of polymathia. Finally, it is worthwhile to signal an area where Pindar anticipates the concerns about sophia that loom large in the reception of the Sophists: profit, deception, and impious speech. The passage where Pindar calls reviling the gods “hateful sophia” is the most explicit formulation of the idea that human cleverness can divorce itself from the divine and, in the world of this ode, can express itself as speech that conforms to a set rhetorical purpose (here the exaltation of Heracles) but undermines the moral framework in which that speech act is set. We see a similar trajectory in Pythian 3, where Asclepius is destroyed by Zeus for bringing a man back from the dead for pay. The moral? “Even expertise (σοφία) is tied to profit” (Pythian 3.54). The notion that claims of expertise may be misused to extract profit is one that famously features in Plato’s critique of the Sophists. The condemnation of expressions of wisdom that are seen as hostile to the gods will recur in contemporary criticisms of Socrates (who was condemned for impiety) and the Sophists, and plays an important part in the later fabrications of impiety trials and book-burnings in fifth-century Athens.65 65

Cf. Empedocles D44/B3 with Wolfsdorf 2019: 18 and LM ad loc.

‘sophia’ before the sophists 67 Sophia, moreover, can be deceitful. A hard-to-interpret gnômê in Olympian 7 may assert that, for a knowledgeable person, expertise is better when it is without deceit (δαέντι δὲ καὶ σοφία μείζων ἄδολος τελέθει, 53).66 Verbal art is particularly dangerous. In Nemean 7 the majesty of Homer’s verse, the poet tells us, has enticed generations to overrate the achievement of Odysseus. The associated gnômê, “Expertise deceives, leading people astray with stories” (σοφία δὲ κλέπτει παράγοισα μύθοις, 23), applies both to the sophia of Homer and to that of Odysseus. Pindar’s task is to correct this misjudgment. His critiques of inopportune poetic interventions find a successor in Protagoras, who criticized poetry at a formal level (D24/A28, D25/A29, D32/A30) but also, if we can believe Plato, extended this critique to content, declaring that the most important aspect of culture was to understand what had been said correctly and incorrectly by the poets (Protagoras 338e–339a). The charge of deception was, of course, also leveled at the Sophists. The epinician universe, then, is one of multiple sophiai, where expertise can be inflected in many different ways. The successful poet, like the successful athlete, is given his skills by the gods, but human training plays a part that is presented in subtly different ways by Pindar and Bacchylides. Pindar compliments and acknowledges the role of trainers not infrequently, Bacchylides less so.67 Hubbard suggests that sophia in Pindar is a “mediating term between physis and technê,” and that the two are “caught up in a complementary dialectic.”68 This seems correct, although the poet is more explicit about the necessity for the former than the latter, and frequently asserts that mortals are sophoi through divine dispensation.69 Attitudes to learning, expertise, and wisdom in epinician vary as the poet adjusts his rhetorical strategy to his current purpose; my goal here has been to lay out the complex interplay of these themes. 66 67

68

69

See O’Sullivan 2005 for a convincing reading that gives adolos its full strength here. On the anxieties surrounding trainers, see Nicholson 2005: 117–66, with 121–2 on the differing practices of Pindar and Bacchylides. Hubbard 1985: 108, 110. Cf. his comment (p. 108) that “Physis/technê may be just as ambivalent for Pindar as physis/nomos and ergon/logos come to be for later rhetoric.” So Olympian 9.28–9; Olympian 11.10; Olympian 14.5–7; Pythian 1.41–2.

68 kathryn a. morgan The Sophists inherited this complex set of tensions connecting talent, training, teaching, and skill, as well as the analogy between the athletic and intellectual or moral trainer. Protagoras (D11/B3) famously declared that teaching needs both nature (physis) and training (askêsis), and emphasized the interdependence of technê and meletê (D12/B10). I have already mentioned the dedication at Olympia that boasted that no one had yet discovered a fairer technique (τέχνην) of training (ἀσκῆσαι) for the “contests of virtue” than Gorgias, a formulation that channels Xenophanes’ claims for the superiority of his sophia against its athletic counterpart while also superseding Pindar’s reformulation of the competition for aretê. The Sophists also inherited the imperative to present to a wider public individual “brands” of sophia, which competed with those of their rivals. Each adjusted the mix of expertise he passed on to his students or audience; the passage of Plato’s Protagoras quoted earlier, where Protagoras casts aspersions on Hippias’ teaching practice, is a good reflection of the need to produce a marketable curriculum and a definable expertise. Like their predecessors, they each inflected differently the relationship between the knowledge and teaching of many things (polymathia) and the creation of an organizing framework through which to understand the world. The Sophists were engaged in a “contest of wisdom” with the poets and thinkers of the past but also with their contemporaries. The diversity of their intellectual and didactic practice continues the traditions of Greek wisdom in the archaic and early classical period.

2

The Sophists between Aristocracy and Democracy Mark Munn

Classical Greek culture, broadly speaking, is distinguished for the remarkable variety of endeavors of individuals to stand out and be recognized among their peers and by posterity. This is the agonistic spirit of the Greeks, essential to contests in physical prowess, warfare, and athletics, but also essential to all manner of expressions of skill, artistry, or intellectual achievement.1 Demonstrating individual excellence or aretê was a strong impetus for literary works of all genres meant for performance or wider circulation in writing.2 The Sophists were participants of a particular sort in this culture of competitive display – the display of sophia through verbal and intellectual aretê. The Sophists, particularly the charismatic figures of the later fifth century BCE whom we have come to describe as the canonical Sophists, were performers who were able to combine the appeal of rhapsodic poets with the gravity of seers and the wisdom of political sages. They were among the foremost in giving prose discourse the persuasive appeal that had long been the purview of poetry and music, and in the process they became exemplars and teachers of the art of public speaking. Over the second half of the fifth century the popularity of sophistic displays generated a growing demand for tutelage in the 1

2

Jacob Burckhardt, in his lecture “The Agonal Age” (posthumously published, 1898– 1902), imprinted the agôn, contest, as a defining trait of Greek culture. Burckhardt’s colleague at Basel, Friedrich Nietzsche, formulated the same concept in his essay “Homer’s Contest” (1872) in terms most relevant to this chapter: “But as the youths to be educated were brought up competing with one another, their educators in their turn were in rivalry with each other” (Nietzsche 2017: 192). See also Sandywell 2000 on the agonistic ethic in Greek intellectual culture. The prominence of authorial identification in nearly all works of Greek literature is a clear sign of the personal stake of writers in their display of intellectual and artistic creativity, remarkable by contrast with its minimal presence in biblical literatures and near total absence in literary works of Egypt and the ancient Near East.

69

70 mark munn diverse arts of sophia among those with the leisure and the means to devote themselves to study. The result has been recognized as the sophistic movement, widely seen as a transformational phenomenon in the history of education, paideia, in Classical Greece.3 Closely associated with the democracy of Classical Athens, the influence of the Sophists cannot, however, be described as inherently democratic in nature. The competitive display of excellence, in whatever the field may be, is an essentially aristocratic endeavor, a way to identify oneself as one of the aristoi, the best in the challenge at hand.4 In a political sense, demonstrated aretê could be dedicated to the service of any hierarchy of authority across the spectrum of democracies through oligarchies (and, in a qualified sense, tyrannies or monarchies where

the monarch

reserved

the

right

to

claim

ultimate

5

preeminence). Of all the Greek city-states, Classical Athens offered the widest variety of competitive arenas, both formalized festival competitions in athletics, music, and drama and sociopolitical rivalries played out in striving for honors in public office holding, forensic contests, and deliberative debates.6 Behind all of these more public fora for demonstrated excellence were the social networks within which those aspiring to one or another form of eminence jockeyed for standing with those who had been recognized for their aretê and 3

4

5

6

Specifically, higher education, or what Kerferd 1981: 17 terms “a kind of selective secondary education.” See also Jaeger 1945: 288; Marrou 1956: 76–90; Guthrie 1971: 3–13; de Romilly 1992: 30–56. Aristocracy, as the term is used in this chapter, refers to those who sought to excel in contests for prestige and privileged standing, sometimes claiming excellence as a hereditary trait. There were few truly hereditary privileges and, because prestige was open to competition, there were no hereditary aristocracies in the Classical Greek world. For a discussion of the range of meanings attached to “aristocracy” in a Classical context, see van Wees and Fisher 2015. Alexander I, king of Macedon, winning an “equal first” in the prestigious stade race at Olympia is a good example (Herodotus 5.22.2). From a later age, but participating in the same agonistic traditions, the unrivaled victories of Nero provide further examples of the distorting effect of autocratic power on competition (Suetonius 6.13, 53). The unequaled number of festivals and competitions offered at Athens is remarked in Pericles’ speech in Thucydides 2.38.1; the contemporary “Old Oligarch” (PseudoXenophon) 3.1–5 remarks on the excessive amount of deliberative and forensic business transacted at Athens. See also Isocrates Panegyricus 44–6 on both athletic and intellectual competitions held at Athens.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 71 influence. The Sophists became educators for those who sought prominence in any social setting or political order, be it democratic, aristocratic, or dynastic. They found the greatest demand for their skills among those who sought entry into the competitive field of politics, and nowhere was this demand greater than at Athens at the height of its imperial democracy.7

the aristocratic background of education The refinements of higher education – lessons that went beyond the foundations of reading, gymnastic, and musical training – were long a privilege enjoyed only by the adolescents of the wealthy, principally the landowning elite who held sway over their communities in various forms of oligarchy or narrow dynastic regimes. Leading men within these communities identified themselves as the aristoi, who distinguished themselves from the poorer masses by both the trappings of wealth and the cultivation of physical and intellectual talents, often competitively displayed. The qualities that distinguished the members of this aristocratic class, like the landed wealth that sustained their privileges, were in principle heritable, justifying ancestral claims to the elite standing of leading families. But these essential qualities were always subjected to the challenges of competitive display and to the vagaries of succession, which required these distinguishing traits to be reproduced from generation to generation.8 The education of young men and their introduction to the competitive society of their elders were therefore crucial factors in sustaining the status of aristocratic privilege. 7

8

The essential connection between the sophistic movement and the imperial democracy of fifth-century Athens is widely observed. For a sampling of views, see Kerferd 1981: 15–23 (emphasizing the personal role of Pericles); de Romilly 1998: 18–26 (emphasizing wealth and intellectual freedom); Robinson 2008 (emphasizing the nature of democratic discourse); Svoboda 2017 (emphasizing the transformative economic realities of imperial and postimperial Athens). Displays of excellence, especially in the form of athletic competition, were celebrated in praise poetry such as the epinician odes of Simonides, Bacchylides, and Pindar, which frequently included the praise of a victor’s ancestors, implicitly suggesting that the qualities on display were a hereditary gift. Kurke 1991 provides an engaging analysis of these features, especially in the poetry of Pindar.

72 mark munn While elementary instruction in letters, athletics, and music could be entrusted to others, even to slaves, the refinements of higher education at the threshold of adulthood had to be instilled by esteemed members of the class that a young person aspired to join. The ethos of such educative socialization is well expressed in these verses that Theognis addresses to his young favorite. Always keep close to good men; drink and dine with them, and keep agreeable company with men of great power. For you will learn noble things from noble men. But if you keep bad company you will destroy what good judgment you have.9 (Theognis 32–5)

The setting Theognis envisages is the symposium, an intimate gathering over food and drink where skill in conversation and in song was on display. Such occasions were essential to the formation and maintenance of social relations among the elite as well as for the edification of the young.10 Men of power and influence were known for their ability, through hospitality and gift giving, to attract circles of men famed for their wisdom, skill, and aretê. Herodotus describes a

celebrated

example

of

competitive

aretê

on

display

at

a symposium in his account of the assembly of renowned men of the early sixth century who were invited by the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon to sue for the hand of his daughter, Agariste. Seeking to learn who was “the best (aristos) of the Greeks,” Cleisthenes used the occasion of his own victory in the chariot race at Olympia to announce his invitation to men from across the Greek world. As they arrived at Sicyon, 9

10

The same message is conveyed in Theognis 563–6, cited by Morgan in the previous chapter. Oswyn Murray, in his collected essays (Murray 2018, see esp. 15–23, 139–42, 288– 309), has given due attention to the significance of the symposium as a central custom for social interaction in Archaic and Classical Greece, although he has not given as much attention to the significance of symposia for the education of the young as the subject deserves. Kurke 2000: 64–8 describes the importance of symposia as performance spaces for poetry. See further Hobden 2013; Wę cowski 2014. On the typical size of the dining rooms, or andrônes, where symposia took place, see note 54 in this chapter.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 73 Cleisthenes began by asking each in turn to name his country and parentage; he kept them in his house for a year, to get to know them well, entering into conversation with them sometimes singly, sometimes all together, and testing each of them for his manly qualities (andragathia) and temper (orgê), education (paideusis) and manners (tropos). Those who were young he would take to the gymnasia – but the most important test of all was their behavior at his dinner table. (Herodotus 6.128.1, tr. De Sélincourt)

This last, most important test, Herodotus notes, involved “competition in music and in conversing in company.”11 Beginning, in other words, with the examination of their lineages, the year-long contest hosted by Cleisthenes tested all of the qualities of sophia and aretê that a man of good breeding would be expected to display. At the final banquet, where the front-runner, Hippocleides, famously disqualified himself under the influence of wine and music, the winner was Megacles the Alcmaeonid, who thereby became progenitor to some of the most distinguished Athenians of the following century. As Herodotus’ audience of the late fifth century would recognize, the key to success in such circles was to display talent and wit in conversation and song while maintaining composure as the cups were being filled and drained.12 The qualities displayed by the suitors of Agariste were the qualifications of the ruling class. They were mutually recognized and celebrated in gatherings, in private symposia like that of Cleisthenes, and in public athletic and musical contests, civic and panhellenic, that proliferated across the Greek world in the sixth century. Athens under the Peisistratids was becoming a center of such gatherings, where the family of the tyrants was host to a number of distinguished sophoi. Herodotus locates the poet Lasus of Hermione and the oracle-collector Onomacritus in a circle of

11 12

Herodotus 6.129.2: ἔριν εἶχον ἀμφί τε μουσικῇ καὶ τῷ λεγομένῳ ἐς τὸ μέσον. The educative qualities of participating in symposia are discussed at length a century later in Plato Laws 1.638d–2.652a.

74 mark munn Peisistratid associates, a circle that also included the poets Anacreon and Simonides.13 Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus and brother of the reigning tyrant Hippias, was especially remembered for the rhapsodic competitions that he sponsored in the last decades of the sixth century.14 “This he did,” says Socrates in the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Hipparchus, “from a wish to educate the citizens, so that he might have the very best of subjects, thinking it unfit to deny wisdom (sophia) to anyone, since he was so good and noble (kalos te kai agathos).”15 The democratizing sentiment attributed here to Hipparchus may be an exaggeration, but it was certainly true that the Peisistratid regime was cultivating a taste for the refinements of the elite among a wider public.

the aristocracy of athenian democracy In Hipparchus’ day, and in the years immediately following the fall of the Peisistratid tyranny, demonstrations of wisdom in the form of persuasive speech and winning grace were increasingly important in circles wider than the social networks of aristocratic friendship. By the end of the sixth century such skills were becoming the currency of competition for leadership in the growing arena of democratic politics at Athens. The drive to secure a reputation for sophia in the public eye was a feature of the rising career of Themistocles, to judge by the testimony of Plutarch, who remarks at several points on Themistocles’ ambition to overcome the obscurity of his family background and to become first in the state.16 Eligible for the highest offices of Athens by virtue of his family’s wealth but unskilled, 13

14

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16

Herodotus 7.6.3; [Aristotle] Constitution of the Athenians 18.1; [Plato] Hipparchus 228c. See Wallace 2015: 3–8 on Lasus and Simonides as teachers of musical theory. See Flower 2008: 62–3 on Onomacritus; testimonia to his writings on heroes and gods is given by Pausanias 1.22.7, 8.31.3, 8.37.5; Aristotle Politics 1274a25–8 reports that Onomacritus is described by some as a lawgiver. On Hipparchus, early rhapsodic competitions at Athens, and their representations in the vase painting of Archaic Athens, see Shapiro 1993. [Plato] Hipparchus 228c; the educative effects of Peisistratid public policies are praised also by Thucydides 6.54.5. Plutarch Themistocles 2.4, 3.1–4, 5.2–3 17.2, 18.3, 22.1; cf. Herodotus 8.110.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 75 according to Plutarch’s research, in the musical graces that befitted his social ambitions, Themistocles invited a celebrated citharist, Epicles of Hermione, to frequent his house with his music, and so drew others to join his company and widen his circle of associates.17 More significantly, Themistocles is reputed to have had assistance in enhancing his own ability to project intellectual skill. Plutarch records (and Herodotus indirectly confirms) that Themistocles was tutored in rhetoric “or what was then called sophia, but was actually cleverness (deinotês) in politics and practical sagacity (synesis)” by Mnesiphilus of the deme Phrearrioi.18 Mnesiphilus was a fellow demesman of Themistocles, a family friend if not a kinsman, and an elder statesman whose populist interests aligned with Themistocles’ ambitions. Mnesiphilus and his political inclinations were sufficiently well known that he, like Themistocles himself, became a candidate for ostracism.19 From the perspective of posterity it appears that Mnesiphilus was a political enabler for Themistocles; could he be considered a Sophist? Later tradition certainly asked this question, as Plutarch reflects when he notes that Mnesiphilus was part of a tradition of training (epitêdeuma) in political sagacity going back to Solon, and that this practice was refined by his successors who added “the art of forensic eloquence (dikanikai technai), and, transferring their training from action to speech, were called Sophists.”20 With Themistocles and his relationship to Mnesiphilus we see the habits of aristocratic sociability shading into what would become the practice of inviting and hiring Sophists. The generation of Mnesiphilus and Themistocles was transformational for Athens and for the wider Greek world. The defeat of Xerxes’ invasion brought about social and political conditions that 17 18

19

20

Plutarch Themistocles 2.3, 5.2. Plutarch Themistocles 2.4; Herodotus 8.57 reports that Mnesiphilus gave Themistocles the strategic advice that he then used to counsel his fellow commanders before the battle of Salamis. The name of Mnesiphilus is found on ostraca dated to 487/6, when Themistocles was also a candidate: Frost 1971; Williams 1978; Brenne 2002. Plutarch Themistocles 2.4, translation by Guthrie 1971. See Wallace 2015: 14–15 on Mnesiphilus and his influence on Themistocles.

76 mark munn created a widening demand for the arts of sophia, both within circles of aristocratic rivalry and in the growing arenas of democratic politics. These changes were most dramatically felt at Athens, arising as the center of naval power and commercial wealth in the Aegean and the wider Mediterranean. But they were no less significant in many other parts of the Greek world, when the defeat of Achaemenid forces spelled crisis for many aristocratic regimes that had sided with the Persians, notably in Thessaly and Thebes.21 Leadership at Athens remained for decades in the hands of members of the political and social elite, men from families who had been prominent for generations. Cimon, son of Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, was most influential for a decade and a half. Plutarch relates stories recorded by Ion of Chios, a young contemporary of Cimon, about Cimon’s graces in the symposium, both as a singer and as the subject of praise for his cleverness and skill in military affairs. Benefiting from the company kept in such circles, Ion was perfecting his entry into society according to the long-established standards of aristocratic behavior, and Cimon was fulfilling the role of agathos anêr (to hearken back to the Theognid precepts) as educator by virtue of his many accomplishments and through his largess based on his personal wealth.22 Cimon’s younger rival, Pericles, also a member of the aristocracy with a distinguished family lineage, followed a model close to that of Themistocles, and earlier that of Hipparchus, by associating himself with a circle of some of the most accomplished intellectuals of the day. Pericles is remembered for keeping company with foreign sophoi, such as Zeno of Elea, Protagoras of Abdera, and especially Anaxagoras of Clazomenae.23 His engagement with such philosophers and cosmologists is credited by Plato with adding an elevated refinement to his natural speaking abilities.24 Like Themistocles, 21

22

23 24

For the overall picture of democracies in the Classical era outside of Athens, see Robinson 2011. On Cimon’s social graces and his public largesse, see Plutarch Cimon 9–10 and [Aristotle] Constitution of the Athenians 27.3. Plutarch Pericles 4.3–4, 6.1–3, 8.1, 16.5–7, 36.3; cf. Isocrates Antidosis 15.235. Plato Phaedrus 269e–70a, quoted by Plutarch Pericles 8.1.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 77 Pericles also kept company with Athenians well versed in politics and the arts, such as Ephialtes, who was the mentor of his early political career, Damon, who taught music and theorized about its influence on social and political behavior, Lampon, who was a seer and public advisor on sacred matters, and Phidias the master sculptor.25 Pericles’ second wife, Aspasia, was a notable presence in such circles, and as a woman of intellectual esteem she attracted much attention – not always favorable – in her day and in posterity.26 This varied and distinguished group attracted to the circle of Pericles exemplifies the creative and intellectual vitality to be found, like the rare commodities imported from all around the Mediterranean, at Athens of the mid-fifth century.27 Young men of means seeking to establish their standing in influential social circles would want to be conversant with the latest ideas circulating in such company. Such was the group gathered to hear Zeno and Parmenides of Elea in Athens on the occasion of the Great Panathenaea in the year 450, as recounted in Plato’s Parmenides. As with other panhellenic games, the convocation of talent at the Great Panathenaea would have been encouraged by messengers sent to all corners of the Hellenic world. This particular Panathenaea was likely the occasion when Pericles invited all Greek states to convene at Athens and to deliberate about the temples and sanctuaries that had been burned by the Persians, about fulfilling the vows made to the gods during the war with the Persians, and about 25

26

27

On Ephialtes, see [Aristotle] Constitution of the Athenians 25; Plutarch Cimon 15; Pericles 7.6, 9.4, 10.7; Wallace 1989: 77–93. On Damon, see Plutarch Pericles 4.1–3; Plato Republic 424c; [Aristotle] Constitution of the Athenians 27.4; Wallace 2015. On Lampon, see Plutarch Pericles 6.2–3; Diodorus 12.10.3–4; Aristophanes Birds 988, Clouds 332; IG I3 78a, line 47 (on tithes to Demeter and Kore); Flower 2008: 123–4. On Phidias, see Plutarch Pericles 13, 31; Hurwit 1999: 310–12; Nails 2002: 236–7. Phidias’ name comes to mind in the company of Polycleitus and Homer in Plato Protagoras 311c–e and heads a list of (otherwise unnamed) sculptors of renown at Meno 91d. On Aspasia, see Plutarch Pericles 24; Plato Menexenus 235e–236a, describing Aspasia as speechwriter for Pericles; Henry 1995 and Nails 2002: 58–62 review the sources that commented on her. The availability at Athens of all good things from abroad is praised by Pericles in the funeral oration, Thucydides 2.38.2, and the subject is elaborated by the “Old Oligarch” (Pseudo-Xenophon) 2.7, 11–12.

78 mark munn keeping the peace that now prevailed.28 The peace in question was almost certainly the peace negotiated with Artaxerxes, known as the Peace of Callias, and the deliberations announced were preliminary to the building program that soon began on the Acropolis.29 The grand vision of worldwide peace announced by Pericles and sanctified by the gods would certainly encourage the advent of men with a vision of cosmic order, and plausibly such was the motive of the gathering of men, young and old, described in Plato’s Parmenides.30 The gathering included the young Socrates and two other Athenians bound for prominent careers, Pythodorus – in whose house the gathering took place and whose later service as a general in Italy and Sicily suggests that he or his family had personal connections that brought the Italian visitors to his home – and Aristoteles, also later an elected general, and eventually a member of the oligarchy of the Thirty.31 Plato’s report of this gathering is testimony to the reputation of Pericles at promoting Athens as “the very capital of wisdom in Hellas.”32 28

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32

The invitation is reported by Plutarch Pericles 17, as a decree proposed by Pericles demonstrating the greatness (megalophrosynê) of Pericles’ vision. Referred to as the “Congress Decree,” Plutarch’s text is widely believed to be based on a genuine document. On this document and the controversies surrounding it, see Meiggs 1972: 152–3, 512–15; MacDonald 1982. On the likely relationship of the Congress Decree and the Peace of Callias to the planning for the construction of the Parthenon, which began in 447 BCE, see Hurwit 1999: 157–8. The Callias associated with the peace negotiated with the Persians was the grandfather of that Callias made famous for his patronage of Sophists in Plato’s Protagoras and his Apology 20a. The Congress Decree (Plutarch Pericles 17) does not specify invitations to the Greeks of Italy and the west. But Periclean interests and contacts in the west at this time are indicated by the foundation of Thurii under Athenian leadership (Plutarch Pericles 11.5), which took place in 443, and is said to have involved Protagoras and Lampon from among the circle of Pericles’ associates (Diogenes Laertius 9.50; Diodorus 12.10.3–6). Plato Parmenides 127b–d on the setting and group; Nails 2002: 308–9 describes the consensus on the dramatic date and provides the references establishing the identities of Aristoteles (pp. 57–8) and Pythodorus (pp. 259–60), the latter of whose military career included an important if unsuccessful assignment to Sicily and southern Italy (Thucydides 3.115). This appraisal of Athens is from Plato Protagoras 337d, where Hippias describes the gathering of Sophists in the home of Callias as σοφωτάτους δὲ ὄντας τῶν Ἑλλήνων, καὶ κατ’ αὐτὸ τοῦτο νῦν συνεληλυθότας τῆς τε Ἑλλάδος εἰς αὐτὸ τὸ πρυτανεῖον τῆς σοφίας. The opinion is echoed in Plato’s Apology 29d; Herodotus 1.60.3.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 79 Gatherings of sophoi like those associated with Pericles or described in Plato’s Parmenides resemble the social practices that had been characteristic of elite society for many decades. Those coming to the home of their host were guests or friends, xenoi or philoi, or political allies brought together by shared interests and by hospitality, and also by their desire to enhance their reputations by association with other persons of power and influence. Young men able to join such company, as Ion with Cimon or Socrates with Zeno and Parmenides, were being initiated into the society of their future peers in much the same manner as such groups had reproduced themselves for generations. But connections with established families were no longer the only path to prominence. Over the course of the fifth century, at Athens in particular, opportunities for social advancement were becoming less dependent upon relations of friendship and hospitality and more dependent on the growing influence of money.33

the economy of sophistic education One of the most significant transformational factors at Athens in Pericles’ day was the growing influence of public wealth and the widening sphere of private wealth. Athens over the middle decades of the fifth century experienced an influx of money into public coffers at a level never before realized by a Greek state.34 Wealth in the form of an abundance of silver coinage was the basis of Athenian military might through the strength of its navy, and surplus wealth was becoming the basis for wide-ranging changes in the balance of social and political power at Athens.35 These were the conditions under 33

34

35

Pythodorus, according to Plato[?] Alcibiades 119a, was offering Zeno more than hospitality, paying him the phenomenal sum of 100 minas in order “to become wise and famous” (sophos te kai ellogimos). Analysis of numismatic evidence and the evidence for silver mining and smelting operations in southern Attica have led scholars to estimate that by the mid-fifth century Athens was producing some twenty metric tons of silver each year, yielding more than a million tetradrachms a year; see Kallet and Kroll 2020: 17–25. Thucydides 1.7–15 famously describes the acquisition of surplus wealth (periousia chrêmatôn) as the essential basis of naval power; see also Pericles’ summary of

80 mark munn which Pericles assumed leadership of the demos, advocating that the people’s money should go to the people.36 Pericles recognized where the tide of public sentiment was heading and became the champion of the demos, facilitating especially the means of sharing the wealth of Athens with its people through pay for public service and an ambitious program of public works.37 The access to personal wealth for a growing segment of the Athenian population was destabilizing the traditional distinctions of social and political hierarchy and intensifying the competition for distinction at the upper echelons of Athenian society. Families seeking to gain or maintain high social standing recognized the importance of introducing their young men to the intellectual culture patronized by leading individuals at Athens. Those with means offered monetary emoluments for tutelage to a growing number of intellectuals and artists ready to teach on such terms, some of them celebrities of the day, such as Protagoras, Zeno, Ion, Damon, and Thrasymachus.38 Aristophanes, in his first comedy, Banqueters, and more famously in his Clouds, makes it clear that the young men of

36

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Athenian resources for war, Thucydides 2.13, and see the discussion of these themes by Kallet-Marx 1993. On the social implications of the growing monetary economy, see Von Reden 1995 and 1997; Kurke 1999; Seaford 2004. Plutarch Pericles 9.2 describes Pericles’ policies in the distribution of public monies. [Aristotle] Constitution of the Athenians 24 summarizes the nature and effects of the growing revenues of Athens. Plutarch Pericles 11.4–14 describes the popular spending policies of Pericles and reactions to them; cf. [Aristotle] Constitution of the Athenians 27.3–4. Sharp criticism of the effects of these policies is found in the “Old Oligarch” (for the dating of this work to the mid-420s, see Marr and Rhodes 2008). Socrates, according to Plato Gorgias 515, describes the wealth distributed by Pericles as pay for office holding and public service as a corrupting influence on Athenians. Protagoras’ long and lucrative career and its impact at Athens are well attested; see Nails 2002: 256–7. On Zeno, see Nails 2002 304–5 and note 23 in this chapter. Ion of Chios, named as a Sophist by Isocrates Antidosis 268, wrote not only tragedies and other works of poetry but also prose treatises, and was celebrated posthumously by Aristophanes in his Peace, 834–7, and by Plato in his Ion (if this Ion, celebrated rhapsode coming from Ephesus, is the same as Ion of Chios, as seems probable; for doubts, however, see Nails 2002: 175–6). On Damon, described as a Sophist by Plutarch Pericles 4 and as a teacher of Nicias’ son by Plato Laches 180d, see also Wallace 2015: 13–21. Thrasymachus of Chalcedon was well enough known as a teacher of clever speech to be the object of derision in Aristophanes’ first play, Banqueters, in 427 (fr. 205).

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 81 Athens were falling under the influence of sophistic teaching. Popular prejudices about elitist pretense aside, we can recognize that Sophists offered instruction in a wide variety of subjects, which could include poetry and its interpretation, ethical behavior, cosmology, astronomy, and mathematics.39 Intersecting all of these subjects were principles of logical argument and practice in debate.40 The object of all such studies was to hone the critical faculties and be able to hold one’s own in discussion of any controversial subject.41 By becoming conversant with ideas that were animating intellectual circles and by gaining confidence at speaking in company (es to meson, to quote Herodotus’ description of the final test of the suitors of Cleisthenes’ daughter), a young man could expect to be recognized among the kaloi k’agathoi, the “beautiful and the good,” as this self-styled elite described itself.42 Demand for such an education was high. In Plato’s Laches, set in the 420s, several prominent Athenians discuss with Socrates the 39

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With prose discourse as the medium, even when poetry was sometimes the subject, the Sophists were “representatives of an intellectualist movement that favored abstract thinking over what Havelock has called the poetic mind” (Schiappa 2003: 55). The instruction provided by Protagoras certainly included verbal artistry, as reflected in the attested titles of his works, such as Art of Debating (Technê eristikôn) and two books of Contradictory Arguments (Antilogiôn). Likewise, the teachings of Thrasymachus mark him as an early practitioner of rhetorical teaching (see note 38 in this chapter). Socrates and his “school,” as a stand-in for the popular view of Sophists in Aristophanes’ Clouds, taught verbal chicanery along with other abstruse subjects. In another comic parody of sophistry, Eupolis has a character address a Sophist as a teacher of idle chatter, fr. 353 (Kock): ἀλλ’ ἀδολεσχεῖν αὐτὸν ἐκδίδαξον, ὦ σοφιστά. According to the speakers in Euripides, Hippolytus 916–22, out of the myriads of subjects (technas myrias) that men teach, the ultimate goal of a capable Sophist (deinos sophistês) is to teach students to think critically (eu phronein), although it is a vain effort in the case of those with no intellectual capacity (hoisin ouk enesti nous). Cf. Isocrates Antidosis 264–6, who describes the study of subjects such as geometry and astronomy as “gymnastics of the mind” that sharpen the faculties of speech. Hippias of Elis, according to Plato Hippias Minor 363d–368b, exemplified the polymathy of sophistic instruction, claiming to be able to discourse on any given subject. Also translated as “noble and good,” kalos has both an aesthetic and moral valence. Donlan 1973 and more substantially Bourriot 1995 show that the terminology of kalokagathia became current in the latter decades of the fifth century, concurrent with the influence of sophistic teaching.

82 mark munn nature of aretê and whether it can be taught to their sons and by whom. Socrates declares that, though he has always wanted to find such instruction for himself, he has never been able to pay the fees to Sophists, “who were the only ones who professed to be able to make me kalos k’agathos.”43 Confirming the image that Aristophanes and others were parodying on stage, Plato’s dialogues depict the Sophists as traffickers of intellectual refinement specifically to the young and as profiting handsomely from their trade. The trend is vividly described by Socrates, according to the following conversation with the Sophist Hippias in the Hippias Major. The eminent Gorgias, the Sophist of Leontini, came here from his home on an official mission, selected because he was the ablest statesman of his city. By general consent he spoke most eloquently before the Assembly and in his private capacity, by giving demonstrations to the young and associating with them, he earned and took away with him a large sum of Athenian money. Or again, there is our distinguished friend Prodicus. He has often been at Athens on public business from Ceos; the last time he came on such a mission, quite lately, he was much admired for his eloquence before the Council and also as a private person he made an astonishing amount of money by giving demonstrations (epideixeis) to the young and admitting them to his society . . . Either of the two I have mentioned has earned more from his wisdom than any other craftsman from his art, whatever it may have been, and so did Protagoras before them. (Hippias Major 282b–e, tr. Jowett)

Hippias replies: “Socrates, you know nothing of the real charms of all this business. If you were told how much I have earned, you would be astounded.” Hippias then reports making 150 minas (2.5 talents) during a trip to Sicily, and 20 minas (2,000 drachmas) from one small town. From other sources, the fees reportedly charged by Sophists for an individualized course of instruction range from 43

Plato Laches 186c.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 83 a fabulous 100 minas reported for each Protagoras, Zeno, and Gorgias, to 10 minas reportedly paid to Isocrates, to 5 minas charged by Euenus of Paros.44 Aside from personalized lessons, we learn that Prodicus could charge his listeners 50 drachmas for a single lecture (epideixis), and Socrates laments that he could only afford the 1-drachma version.45 These figures are reported in various sources starting with Plato and his contemporaries in the fourth century, and while there may be exaggeration at the high end of the scale, the general range of 5–20 minas for a series of personal lessons is not implausible given that a talent (60 minas) could pass on the contemporary comic stage as a fee for sophistic instruction.46 To place these figures in context, a modest or average house in Athens could cost in the range of 3–5 minas, and a luxurious house in Athens could cost 20–30 minas.47 Personal instruction was clearly a luxury, but among the well-to-do there was certainly enough demand to sustain these prices. Even among those who could not afford private lessons our sources attest a general enthusiasm for the displays of wit and verbal dexterity that characterized public lectures by Sophists. Hippias, according to Plato’s Lesser Hippias, describes his epideixeis at the Olympic festivals as competitive events, where he could claim superiority in speaking on any subject, either prepared or impromptu.48 The most serious verbal contests were those waged before large crowds in the law courts or in the Assembly of Athens, where victory was measured by votes and where the outcome could mean life or death. Thucydides gives vivid testimony to the influence of sophistic 44

45 46

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Protagoras: Diogenes Laertius 9.52; Zeno: [Plato] Alcibiades I 119a; Gorgias: Diodorus 12.53.2; Isocrates: Demosthenes 35.15, 40–43; Euenus: Plato Apology 20a–b. Prodicus: Plato Cratylus 384b; Aristotle Rhetoric 3.14.10 (1415b, lines 15–17). Aristophanes Clouds 876; Alexis fr. 37 (KA). These and other testimonia to the fees charged by Sophists and speechwriters are collected and evaluated by Loomis 1998: 62–75. For general statements of the profits made by Sophists as tutors for wealthy young men, see Plato Protagoras 316c; Plato Sophist 223b; [Plato] Hippias Major 283e; Isocrates Antidosis 15.161. On a small house (oikidion) in Athens costing less than 300 drachmas, see Isaeus 2.35; on a house at Eleusis costing 500 drachmas and houses in Athens costing 2,000 and 3,000 drachmas, see Isaeus 11.42, 44. Plato Lesser Hippias 363c–364a.

84 mark munn argument in public debate in his report of the speech by the demagogue Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, to the Athenian Assembly, convened to reconsider the decision to visit the harshest punishment on the people of Mytilene for their attempted revolt.49 Speaking in 427, the same year in which Gorgias made his first appearance before the Athenians, Cleon opens by denouncing any opposing speaker who proposes to show that the harm done by the Mytileneans to the Athenians has really been a benefit to them (that is, to make the worse argument defeat the better). In his words, speakers who want to show off their cleverness (dexiotês) place winning ahead of good judgment, while those who lack learning (amathia) but have good sense (sôphrosynê) do a better of job of making sound decisions. He then he inveighs against that segment of his audience whom he knows to be ready to cheer on such speakers. You are to blame for stupidly instituting these competitive displays! You have become regular speech-goers . . . Any novelty in argument deceives you at once, but when the argument is tried and proved you become unwilling to follow it; you look with suspicion on what is normal and are the slaves of every paradox that comes your way. The chief wish of each one of you is to be able to make a speech himself, and if you cannot do that, the next best thing is to compete with those who can make this sort of speech by not looking as though you were all out of your depth while listening to the views put forward . . . You are completely at the mercy of the pleasure of listening, and are more like spectators gathered around Sophists than those deliberating affairs of state! (Thucydides 3.38.4–7, tr. Warner, modified)

Cleon describes the same fascination with debate for its own sake that animated the anonymous crowds that gathered around Socrates to 49

Thucydides 3.37–40, where Cleon is introduced as “the most forceful (biaiotatos) of the citizens and by far the most persuasive (pithanôtatos) to the demos at that time” (3.36.6). On Cleon and the pattern he set for demagogic politicians at Athens, see Connor 1971: 91–136.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 85 listen to his repartee with various Sophists, or the gatherings of young men that Aristophanes says were often seen discussing the latest rhetorical tropes overheard in the law courts.50 Over the second half of the fifth century it is clear that a significant section of the Athenian public was in awe of the influence of intellectual celebrities.

the goals of sophistic education Periclean rhetoric sought to ennoble all Athenians and to inspire rich and poor alike to embrace the ethical, aesthetic, and intellectual refinements that enabled Pericles to call Athens the paideusis, the education, of Hellas.51 The traits foregrounded by Pericles were the basis for Herodotus’ appraisal of Athenians as preeminent among all Greeks in intelligence (prôtoi . . . sophiên), a reputation that accompanied their fascination with novelty and innovation (Athenians were neôteropoioi, in the words of a Corinthian critic).52 Imbued by such values, young Athenians were motivated to prove their cleverness among their peers in various ways, and Sophists offered a variety of avenues toward intellectual excellence – aretê of the mind – to those who could afford it. Isocrates paints a picture of his youthful education in this setting, Athens of the 420s, when he reports that his father 50

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Plato Lysis 203a–204a describes a crowd of young men gathered in a palaestra where the Sophist Miccus was teaching; in the Protagoras, fourteen named guests and the host, Callias, along with many unnamed citizens and foreigners, attend the discourses of three great Sophists; in Meno 82a–b and 90a, Socrates refers to “many followers” who are attending his conversation with Meno, later joined by Anytus; in Euthydemus 271a, Socrates is said to have been conversing with the Sophists Euthydemus and Dionysodorus in the company of a crowd (ochlos) at the Lyceum; in Laches, Lesser Hippias, and Gorgias, conversations take place immediately after an epideixis by a Sophist, where the number of onlookers is unspecified. Aristophanes Knights 1375–83 describes beardless boys (ageneios, meirakia) who habitually gathered at the perfume vendors in the agora to discuss the latest verbal twists displayed in court. Xenophon Memorabilia 2.1.21 and Aristotle Rhetoric 3.14 1415b15 refer to Prodicus speaking to a crowd. In the funeral oration (Thucydides 2.35–46) Pericles three times describes those who enjoy wealth or experience poverty as equally serviceable to, and served by, the city (2.37.1, 2.40.1, 2.42.4) and he embraces all Athenians in his famous expression of distinctive Athenian values, φιλοκαλοῦμέν τε γὰρ μετ᾽ εὐτελείας καὶ φιλοσοφοῦμεν ἄνευ μαλακίας (2.40.1). Likewise, Pericles is emphatically inclusive in his still more famous phrase, ξυνελών τε λέγω τήν τε πᾶσαν πόλιν τῆς Ἑλλάδος παίδευσιν εἶναι (2.41.1). Herodotus 1.60.3; Thucydides 1.70.2.

86 mark munn spent a good deal of the family’s wealth on education for Isocrates in order to make him “more conspicuous (epiphanesteron) and more distinguished (gnôrimôteron) among his age-mates and fellow students (sympaideuomenoi).”53 Isocrates and his age-mates were competing for recognition of their aretê in ways that remained rooted in aristocratic tradition, if embellished by new modes of discourse and levels of intellectual refinement. The gymnasium provided the social space where physical aretê would be on display, while symposia, held in andrônes (men’s dining rooms), remained the principal formal arena for young men to display intellectual aretê and to win social esteem and status.54 Aristophanes offers a fine parody of the niceties that were customary in the sympotic culture of the educated elite in his Wasps. Philocleon, the father figure, a man of unrefined tastes and a devotee of Cleon’s populist style in the assembly and the law courts, has been bested in a courtroom drama by his son, Bdelycleon, a young sophisticate who has proven to be a skillful debater. In consolation, Bdelycleon says the following to his father. Don’t take it hard, Dad, I’ll take good care of you and take you everywhere with me: to dinner, to the symposium, to public spectacles, and you will spend the rest of your days enjoyably. And no deceitful popular demagogue will get a laugh at your expense. (Aristophanes Wasps 1003–7)

In the scenes that follow Aristophanes depicts an inversion of the customary treatment of a father introducing his son into good society. First the son dresses his father in exotic fineries and then encourages 53 54

Isocrates Antidosis 15.161. On andrônes as regular features of Classical houses, see Nevett 1999: 18–19, 70–3, 163–4. Among numerous excavated examples, Cahill (2002: 80, 180–7) discusses those found in the late-fifth-century and early-fourth-century houses of Olynthus, and Ault (2005: 69–70) describes those in the mid- to late-fourth-century houses of Halieis. Typical andrônes accommodated seven couches, with two or three diners per couch; smaller andrônes, and, by the later fourth century, much larger examples accommodating fifteen or more couches are also well attested. For further discussion of their forms and social function, see Jameson 1990: 188–91.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 87 him to prepare “to speak seriously in the company of well-informed and clever men (polymathôn kai dexiôn),” and “to converse as sophoi are supposed to speak.”55 Trying to tutor him how to behave among gentlemen (andrasi kalois te kagathois), the son advises his father to tell tales of manly exploits and to be ready to cap the verses of his companions in song. And should the drinking lead to any rowdy behavior afterwards – as it does – members of the company will be able to talk their way out of paying for damages.56 The father proves more adept at the indulgences of the symposium and its aftermath than its refinements, all to the comedic effect that Aristophanes intends. In the end, Aristophanes winks at both the boorish simplicity of the father and the supercilious affectations of the son. Through the inversion of father-son roles, the father comes out of his son’s tutelage behaving like the young wayward aristocrat, ready to commit outrageous acts against anyone he meets in the street and expecting to get away with them. The ersatz “father,” Bdelycleon, keen to have his “son,” Philocleon, make his mark in respectable company, is a parody of a real social universe of Athens, where Sophists pitched their talents to fathers who wanted their young men to be witty and filled with much learning.57 Wit and learnedness, in such circles, were the currency of aretê and the key to winning esteem among peers. The peer groups formed around the dining couches of the andrôn were philoi, friends, who could be counted on whenever social or political matters called for support.58 One’s standing in an elite circle of philoi was therefore foundational for a career that would enable one to rise to 55 57

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56 Aristophanes Wasps 1174–5, 1196. Aristophanes Wasps 1253–62. Hippias was noted for being a polymathês (cf. Plato Lesser Hippias 363d), which Socrates turns into a barb by implying that because he knows so many things he never gives the same opinion on the same subject (Xenophon Memorabilia 4.4.6). A similar criticism was leveled by Heraclitus against Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus for their polymathia, which did not teach them intelligence (D20/B40). Plato Laws 810e–811b, 819a warns against the popular belief that polymathia is a proper goal of education. Aristophanes Birds 127–35 presents a delightful counterfactual vignette of philoi banging on a friend’s door early in the morning to summon the friend urgently – to a wedding feast, instead of the usual summons to come and support a friend on his day

88 mark munn “the greatest influence in the affairs of state, both as a speaker and as a man of action,” as Plato’s Protagoras promised to young men interested in his course of personal betterment.59 A principal avenue to the promised eminence was the didactic strategy of turning any discussion into a zero-sum debate, where logical traps were laid to confute any proposition, producing winners and losers out of the repartee among the reclining diners. This was eristic or disputation, a distinctive feature of sophistry characterized in Plato’s Sophist as agônistikê, the athletics of debate.60 From this feature, in the same passage, the exemplary Sophist is described as antilogikos, “disputatious” or “expert in disputation,” who teaches students to be able to controvert any statement, any law, or any political matter.61 This focus of sophistry on verbal dexterity without regard to the significance of the subject under discussion was the basis of Cleon’s rebuke to those members of the Athenian Assembly whom he likened to “spectators sitting around Sophists.”62 Likewise, in the Clouds Aristophanes builds his satire on this popular impression of the folly of eristic debate when he represents his protagonist, Strepsiades, seeking instruction in the art of “exacting hairsplitting argument” from Socrates’ fabulous school of sophistry with the goal of refuting his creditors’ claims on the debts he owes them.63

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in court. On the importance of philoi in the arena of real politics, see Connor 1971: 35–49. Plato Protagoras 319a. The Platonic Seventh Letter 325c–d affirms that philoi and loyal companions, hetairoi pistoi, were essential if one aimed to become active in politics. Plato Sophist 231e. Plato Sophist 232b–e. Diogenes Laertius 9.52.55 credits Protagoras as the founder of eristics and composer of a treatise, Eristikê technê; cf. Plato Protagoras 312d. Plato Euthydemus 272a–b states that eristic debate is characteristic of the teachings of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. Socrates, in Plato Meno 75e, complains about the futility of debating with sophoi who were eristikoi and agônistikoi, and Phaedo 90c likewise denounces those who destabilize meanings by their devotion to antilogistikous logous. Isocrates Antidosis 15.261–2 characterizes Sophists broadly as preoccupied with eristics, seen by most people as idle chatter and hairsplitting (adoleschia kai mikrologia). 63 Thucydides 3.38.7, quoted on p. 84. Aristophanes Clouds 130.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 89 While verbal dexterity for its own sake could be derided for its irrelevance or denounced for its perversity, the art of clever speaking had real value in forensic and deliberative settings. Skill in argumentation was therefore a valued feature in the societies of philoi formed in sympotic circles around men of standing who might become entangled in lawsuits or who might be ambitious for public office, or likely both. By the opening years of the Peloponnesian War skill in public speaking was one of the most recognized prizes of sophistic training. The chief attraction of Protagoras’ instruction, according to the young Hippocrates in Plato’s dialogue on the Sophist, was Protagoras’ “supreme ability to make clever speakers.”64 At about the time Protagoras was reaching the end of his career, Gorgias of Leontini came to prominence, promising instruction in the art of rhetoric that would enable one, according to Plato, “to persuade with words jurors in the courts, councilors in the council, citizens gathered in the assembly, and in any other political gathering that may exist.”65 Gorgias’ teachings were influential for many, and he is credited as the educator of leading teachers of rhetoric and related arts in the following generation.66 Among his students who achieved political prominence at Athens in his lifetime, by later accounts, Gorgias could number Critias and Alcibiades.67 Reliable testimony indicates that his teachings had an impact in the politics of other parts of the Greek world as well: in Thessaly, Thebes, and Argos.68 Notable is the fact that the name of Gorgias is associated with men who were more interested in personal supremacy than in upholding the laws and practices of democracy, a fact that gives some foundation to a popular antipathy to Sophists.69 64 65 66

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Plato Protagoras 312d, where Protagoras is said to be ἐπιστάτην τοῦ ποιῆσαι δεινὸν λέγειν. Plato Gorgias 452e. Famous students of Gorgias include Isocrates, Antisthenes, Polus, and Alcidamus; see P7–13. Philostratus Lives of the Sophists 1.9.3 (P14). On Gorgias in Thessaly, specifically Larisa: Plato Meno 70b; Pausanias 6.17.9. On Gorgias in Thebes: Xenophon Anabasis 2.6.16. On Gorgias in Argos: Olympiodorus Commentary on Plato’s Gorgias 7.2 (P19). Gorgias’ association with Alcibiades and Critias (note 67 in this chapter) is prime evidence for the undemocratic effects of sophistic training. Gorgias’ host, Callicles, in Plato’s dialogue on the Sophist, although otherwise an unknown figure, is certainly

90 mark munn Antiphon son of Sophilus, of the deme Rhamnus, stands out as an Athenian among the Sophists of his generation. The variety of works attributed to Antiphon, rhetorical as well as philosophical, may be taken as evidence of the range of themes that could come up for discussion in the company of the philoi and students of such a Sophist.70 Antiphon is noted as a teacher of rhetoric as well as a composer of forensic and deliberative speeches.71 He is also noted as the mastermind behind the anti-democratic plot that led to the oligarchy of the Four Hundred controlling Athens briefly in 411, in the aftermath of the disastrous Sicilian expedition. Thucydides describes the plot to overthrow the democracy as having been hatched in the groups known as hetaireiai, associations that were more closely committed to mutual support than those of mere philoi.72 These hetaireiai, or political clubs, became notorious as sworn political action groups that could motivate their younger associates to threaten violence and commit murder to advance their causes during times of political instability.73 The role of Antiphon behind the scenes of the events at Athens in the summer of 411 provides an instructive

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presented as no advocate of democracy; see Gorgias 482e–484c. Gorgias’ known associates or admirers in Thessaly, including Jason, the tyrant of Pherae, were no supporters of democracy, and Gorgias is said to have been declared a public enemy in Argos (note 68 in this chapter). On the range of Antiphon’s surviving works and fragments, see Gagarin 2002, who argues that the variety of fields represented in works attributed to Antiphon (ethics, logic, speech writing, dream interpretation) are the works of one and the same Antiphon; so also Laks and Most 2016: 9.2–3. Pendrick 2002: 1–26 separates the works of Antiphon the Sophist from those of Antiphon the speechwriter. Antiphon is numbered first of the canonical Attic orators in Pseudo-Plutarch Lives of the Ten Orators, as he is the earliest of those whose speeches, both forensic and didactic, were preserved for posterity. Plato Menexenus 236a describes Antiphon as a teacher of rhetoric; Xenophon Memorabilia 1.6 depicts Antiphon as chiefly concerned with deriving income from his teachings, a feature for which he was lampooned in comedy, according to Pseudo-Plutarch 1.16. See Connor 1971: 25–32 and the fundamental study of Calhoun 1913. Thucydides 3.82–3 generalizes about the conditions of factional violence that many cities experienced in the course of the Peloponnesian War, characterizing incidents of premeditated violence that he describes more specifically taking place at Athens in the lead-up to the oligarchy of the Four Hundred. Thucydides 8.65.2 describes the murder of Androcles, a popular politician, and unnamed others by a band of “younger” men (neôteroi) who hoped thereby to ingratiate themselves with the faction promoting the oligarchic movement; at 8.69.4 he describes a band of armed youths

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 91 example of how an influential Sophist, in other respects having pursued a career of teaching and writing comparable to that of other Sophists of his day, could be seen as – and could actually be – a committed enemy of the Athenian demos. As he describes the suspension of the democracy by the public measures of the statesman Peisander, Thucydides goes on to explain the genesis of the revolutionary moment. But the man who contrived the whole plan to bring matters to this point and who had devoted his attention to it for the longest time was Antiphon, a man second to none in aretê and one who was extremely forceful in thinking and saying what he thought; and though he did not willingly appear before the assembly or take part in any other debate, and was suspect in the eyes of the populace because of his reputation for great cleverness, he was nonetheless the one man who was most able to help whoever asked his advice when they were involved in contests, both in the law court and in the assembly. (Thucydides 8.68.1, tr. Laks and Most)

For his role in this oligarchic movement, and specifically for his role in negotiations with the Spartans to sue for peace on behalf of the oligarchy, soon after the collapse of the oligarchic government, Antiphon was put on trial and condemned to death by the Athenians.74

sophistic education in retrospect Of all the subjects on which the Sophists are said to have spoken or written, the one most often remembered or alluded to is that they were teachers of the art of persuasive speaking. This was how Aristophanes and Eupolis presented them, how Thucydides refers to

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accompanying leading conspirators in the process of intimidating democratic officers into yielding control of the government. Thucydides 8.68.2, 8.90.1–2. Up to the very end of his career, Thucydides notes, Antiphon distinguished himself as a speaker: “on trial for his life, he seems to have given the most capable defense of anyone who in my day was implicated in these affairs” (8.68.2).

92 mark munn them, how Antiphon typified them, how Plato represented them, and how posterity chiefly remembers them. While the subjects of their teachings and of the writings attributed to them range well beyond the art of rhetoric, they chiefly concern matters of human nature, human behavior, the nature of cognition, and the nature of language, all matters that concern human society, all relevant ultimately to the meanings of social relationships as they were lived in the context of the polis. And since the dynamics of political society were negotiated through speech, particularly speech before large bodies of people, it was easy to characterize the Sophists in simple terms as teachers of the art of persuasive speaking.75 The public displays of the Sophists were demonstrations of artful and persuasive speech, and their words enthralled large audiences in various gatherings around the Greek world. The opportunity to study the techniques of sophistic speech was always limited to a select group who could consort personally with Sophists in exchange for honoraria, which could also be described as fees for instruction. These were members of the “respectable” (epieikeis) class, the kaloi k’agathoi, who sought to differentiate themselves from the masses of the demos.76 Popular leaders like Cleon were ready to denounce speakers who displayed the studied habits of sophistic teaching, characterizing them as out to mislead the people for personal gain, or even as secret plotters against the democracy.77 In the course of the tumultuous events of war and political intrigue over 75

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So the Sophists are broadly described as teachers of “the fledgling art of rhetoric” by de Romilly 1992: 58 in her chapter on “Rhetorical Education” (pp. 57–92). From the fourth century the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians 28 viewed the politics of Athens in the later fifth century as an ongoing competition between popular demagogues like Cleon and men of distinction, epieikeis, like Nicias, men described as wellborn (eugeneis) and notable (gnôrimoi) members of the kaloi k’agathoi. Thucydides 8.93.2 characterizes men who were disposed to listen favorably to the overtures of the oligarchy of the Four Hundred as epieikeis. Aristophanes repeatedly has characters representing Cleon and his supporters denounce their opponents as xynômotai, “conspirators”: Knights 257, 452, 628, 862; Wasps 345, 483, 488, 507, 953. Actual antidemocratic conspiracies are described in the same terms by Thucydides 6.27.3, 6.57.2, 6.60.1 (xynômosia oligarchikê), 6.61.1; 8.48.2, 8.49.1, 8.54.4, 8.69.2, 8.73.2, 8.81.2.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 93 the 420s and 410s, some of the hetaireiai formed around men like Alcibiades, Antiphon, Theramenes, and Critias, groups known to be frequented by Sophists, and some of these actually became antidemocratic political action groups.78 Especially in the aftermath of the failed oligarchy of the Four Hundred, Sophists were in bad repute among politicians who made a point of their loyalty to the demos. This attitude is reflected by Plato’s Meno in his depiction of Anytus, a leading democratic politician (and eventually one of the prosecutors of Socrates), when Socrates asks him to whom he could send his Thessalian friend, Meno, to acquire “the kind of sophia and aretê that enable men to manage their households and cities well, and to take care of their parents, and to know how to treat citizens and foreigners alike in a manner worthy of a good man.” Socrates suggests the logical answer: he should consult those who profess to teach aretê, to be the common instructors of the Greeks, and to do so for a fee. When Anytus asks whom precisely Socrates means, he replies: “Oh, surely you know that these are the ones whom people call Sophists.” Anytus responds “By Heracles, Socrates! No one I care for, neither family nor friends, neither citizen nor foreigner, should be so mad as to be caught consorting with those people! They are manifestly the disgrace and ruin of those who keep their company!” (Plato Meno 91b–c). So, Socrates goes on to ask, who among the Athenians should Meno consort with? “With any one of the good and noble Athenians he should happen to meet,” responds Anytus; “no one of them could fail to make him a better man than Sophists would.”79 Like a true democratic politician, Anytus is a defender of the innate nobility of all Athenians. In this regard Anytus was speaking as Pericles did, encouraging all Athenians to envision themselves as ennobled by their city, and each Athenian, therefore, able to represent the true aretê that inhered in Athenian-ness. Pericles was relying on the natural 78

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For a discussion of the historical context of these developments, see Munn 2000: 80–91, 101–20, 134–51, 187–231. Plato Meno 92e.

94 mark munn inclination toward justice and the collective good that Protagoras articulates, in his parable (mythos) about the creation of humankind, the formation of human society, and the perfection of society in the institutions of a well-ordered polis.80 But the city as educator, as it had been under the guidance of Pericles, had been disrupted by war, “a violent teacher,” as Thucydides calls it, which eroded faith in a common understanding of aretê and which gradually reduced all matters to the pursuit of sectional interests by increasingly drastic and ultimately violent means.81 The Athenians experienced defeat in war and endured a second, more violent episode of oligarchic rule under the Thirty, when Critias and his followers applied a most severe standard to the definition of essential Athenian-ness, executing many and expelling more. Recovering from such catastrophe in the final years of the fifth century, the Athenians reestablished their democracy with a renewed commitment to define and enable what they still felt was the essential good at the heart of their identity as Athenians. This impetus had various consequences, among them a more restrictive imposition of the laws of legitimate citizenship traced back to Pericles, and a deliberate effort to formalize collective piety through a revision of the code of publicly funded sacrifices to the gods.82 Because recent experience had cast the legacy of sophistic teaching in a problematic light, the reputation of sophia, or of those who sought and taught it, was also in need of redefinition. The trial of Socrates, taking place just four years after the restoration of democratic government at Athens, was in large part motivated by the need to find a scapegoat to expunge the malignant influence attributed to sophistic teaching. Anytus and his fellow 80

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Plato Protagoras 320c–327e. See Ober 2001 on the democratic ethos of the politeia and the laws as the prime locus of civic education for Athenians. Thucydides describes the corrosive effects of war, the biaios didaskalos (3.82.2), in his digression on the common course of civil wars experienced by many Greek cities in the period of the Peloponnesian War, when “words changed their accustomed meanings in order to justify the actions taken” (3.82.4). See Munn 2000: 247–91 for discussion of these developments in Athens within the first few years after the surrender and civil war at Athens.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 95 accusers of Socrates felt that they could burnish their reputations for loyalty to the Athenian demos by putting on trial a man known to have been at the center of many gatherings of Sophists and their followers, some of whom had proved to be enemies of the Athenian demos. It would be well if we could know the terms in which the prosecutors of Socrates made their case; as it is, we only know what the followers of Socrates, principally Plato and Xenophon in particular, made of his arguments in his defense. Socrates, or his followers, clearly felt that he had to separate himself from the Sophists by professing a life devoted to seeking sophia and aretê but never pretending to instruct others on their meaning. He never took money for teaching – not that the prosecution or general public cared, but Plato and other Socratics took teaching for pay as definitional of a Sophist. Socrates was condemned for what was perceived as his role in the destruction of the native goodness of young men and for the fact that he had done so under alien influence, “not believing in the gods that the Athenians believe in.”83 In the Apology and in his Socratic dialogues generally, Plato is widely understood as being critical of Sophists, and concerned with making the distinction between Sophists and philosophers that posterity has come to accept.84 This can be seen in part as an effort to absolve Socrates from the ill repute associated with the teachers of sophistic rhetoric and their influence over the past generation.85 In Plato’s generation and thereafter the competitive pursuit of aretê was as much a characteristic of the culture of the educated as it ever had been. But the arenas of competition had evolved. Through the turbulent experiences of the Athenian democracy over the 83

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See Munn 2000: 272–91 for discussion of the context and import of the trial of Socrates. On Plato’s role in distinguishing philosophers from Sophists, see Nightingale 2000: esp. 156, 167–72; Schiappa 2003: 4–7; Wallace 2007b: 215–18; Tell 2011. The effort to deny that Socrates was a clever speaker (deinos legein) or used the ornamented phraseology (kekalliepêmenous logous) of studied orators like his accusers is explicit at the opening of Plato’s Apology 17b–c. Likewise, Xenophon’s Apology of Socrates opens with a portrayal of Socrates’ rejection of the idea of prepared rhetoric.

96 mark munn previous generation, the general level of public awareness and engagement in politics had been raised by the participation of thousands of Athenians in the offices of government.86 With the survival of the city at stake, a generation of Athenians had witnessed the contests for preeminence among ambitious men in the Assembly and the law courts. And the same generation had contemplated the dissection of rhetoric, for both tragic and comic effect, by the playwrights of Athens. Rhetorical skill had become commonplace among the political elites of fourth-century Athens, even as they warned their audiences against the deceptive speaking abilities of their well-tutored opponents.87 Success in public speaking could not come without study, but such proficiency had to be presented as innate ability, for to be called a Sophist and a speechwriter was to receive a cutting insult.88 Speakers who won the praises of the majority were often awarded crowns of honor, “on account of their virtue (aretês heneka),” by the Athenian demos.89 Gorgias himself, who remained active as a teacher of rhetoric into the early decades of the fourth century, received public recognition for his unrivaled ability “to train the soul for contests of aretê,” according to the inscription on the base of his statue at Olympia.90 Gorgias’ most celebrated student and successor as a teacher of rhetoric, Isocrates, condemned the 86

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See Ober 1989: 156–65 on the wisdom of the masses gained through their experience of politics. Ober 1989: 165–91. So Demosthenes On the False Embassy 246, 250 and Against Lacritus 39–40. Disquiet about being labeled a Sophist or a speechwriter is expressed in Plato Protagoras 311e–312a and Phaedrus 257c–d. E.g., IG II3 1 306, dated to 343/2, records honors voted “for the sake of virtue and justice (aretês heneka kai dikaiosynês)” for Phanodemus son of Diyllus as “the man who seemed to it to have spoken and acted best and incorruptibly on behalf of the Athenian Council and people throughout the year” (lines 5–7). Phanodemus, like his fellow councilor Androtion (son of Andron, who is numbered by Plato Protagoras 315c among the followers of Hippias in the earlier generation), was also distinguished as an Atthidographer, a writer of scholarly treatises on Athenian lore and history, and both men were therefore exponents of a kind of polymathy that Hippias of Elis represented. Die Inschriften von Olympia 293, line 6 (= Hansen 1989, no. 830; P34b), discussed in the context of the image in Plato Phaedrus 235e of conspicuous honors for giving speeches by Morgan 1994: 378.

the sophists between aristocracy and democracy 97 exaggerated claims of those he called Sophists, but defended his own ability to make eloquent speakers and men of high standing of those who associated with him, characterizing his art as a practical form of philosophia.91 It is clear that among the contemporaries of Plato and Isocrates there were many professional speechwriters, men like Lysias and Isaeus, who would teach rhetorical techniques to enable the ambitious to excel whenever speaking in public mattered. It is also apparent that paths of professionalization were diverging, and that Plato and others were opening paths to a more reflective, intellectual aretê that did not involve the public display of rhetorical proficiency. This form of education became a quest for an inner harmony of appetites and desires with essential principles of goodness that would allow an individual to live a meaningful life. The questions that inspired Plato, even where his writing ascended to the metaphysics of ideal forms, were still matters that had provoked Socrates to interrogate the Sophists on the subjects of their teachings, namely, ethical questions about the nature of justice and principles of human nature and what they implied about the proper or practicable forms of social and political order. These equally were questions that inspired Isocrates to offer instruction in disciplines of the mind that would serve a more active, politically engaged life. Students attracted to the schools that both Isocrates and Plato established were motivated by the drive to achieve aretê in the endeavors of the mind that were offered to them by their teachers, and that had been opened to them by their teachers’ teachers. The agonistic, competitive nature of Greek society itself fueled the drive to achieve and demonstrate intellectual excellence as much among the great Sophists of the fifth century as among their intellectual heirs thereafter.

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So Isocrates Against the Sophists 13.6–7 and Antidosis 15.203–204. Isocrates’ nuanced positioning of himself among those he calls philosophers is discussed by Moore 2020a: 210–16.

3

The Professional Lives of the Sophists Håkan Tell

preliminary caveats Central to the discussion in this chapter is how we understand the word “professional” in its title. This word has often been used as the only meaningful defining characteristic to separate the Sophists from the traditional philosophers discussed in Plato and Aristotle. Most scholars have come to reject as exaggerated the view that the Sophists were qualitatively different from the Presocratic philosophers, appreciating the fluidity between categories in the Greek wisdom tradition. But many have still assumed there must be some criterion by which to differentiate the categories of Sophist and philosopher. They have often looked to the repeated claim that the Sophists were professionals and, by contrast with philosophers, charged money for their services.1 Plato is one of the first to promote such a view in the Hippias Major, where he contrasts the philosophers of old and their practices with those of the Sophists. But none of these early thinkers thought fit to charge a monetary fee or give displays of his wisdom (ἐπιδείξεις ποιήσασθαι) for all comers. They were so simple they didn’t realize the great value of money. But Gorgias and Prodicus each made more money from wisdom than any craftsman (δημιουργός) of any kind ever made from his skill. And Protagoras did the same even earlier. (282c–d, tr. Woodruff.)

What is especially noteworthy in this passage, in addition to the claim that Gorgias, Prodicus, and Protagoras were first to charge money, is 1

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Consider, for example, Wolfsdorf 2015: 74, who singles out professionalism as “the differentiating condition between all the figures [scil. the Sophists] discussed in this chapter and men such as Socrates, Plato, and, so far as we know, most of the so-called Presocratic philosophers.”

the professional lives of the sophists 99 the comparison made between the Sophist and the craftsman – reinforcing the idea of the Sophists’ intellectual professionalism in contrast to the dilettantism of their predecessors. In this chapter, the term “professional” is not used as a shorthand for the Sophists’ unique social or economic status as contrasted with philosophers, both of which are retrospective categories, not capturing the lived reality of the fifth century. Instead, the word refers to the intellectual activities in which the Sophists engaged as part of their role as practitioners of wisdom. I would go one step further and argue that a similar exploration of the professional activities of the Presocratics would be both possible and productive; however, providing that lies beyond the scope of the present discussion. In other words, the exploration of the Sophists’ professional activities pursued in this chapter is not undertaken with the aim of distinguishing them from their contemporary wisdom experts. Quite the opposite – when we review the evidence, the Sophists appear to be less exceptional and more embedded in a broader economy of wisdom than has hitherto been realized. One of the greatest difficulties in reconstructing the Sophists’ professional lives lies in the fact that their activities are often described in the ancient sources in invective contexts. Consider, for example, Isocrates’ description in the Antidosis (from about 353 BCE). For they [scil. The Athenians] see most of the Sophists . . . making their intellectual displays (ἐπιδείξεις ποιουμένους) in the public assemblies or in private gatherings, contesting against each other, making extravagant professions, disputing, reviling each other, omitting nothing in the language of abuse, but in effect damaging their own cause and giving license to their auditors, now to ridicule what they say, sometimes to praise them, most often to despise them, and again to think of them whatever they like. (15.147–8, tr. Norlin, modified)

In the same breath as we hear about the two distinct types of contexts in which the Sophists engage their audience – in large public settings

100 ha˚kan tell (πανηγύρεις) and in private meetings (ἴδιοι σύλλογοι) – we are also informed of the hyperbolic nature of their claims, the counterproductive nature of their interactions, and the hatred they incur from those who listen to them. Is it safe to take away from this testimonium that the Sophists mainly operated in these two contexts and that their main form of interaction was the epideixis? Should we also conclude that they were universally despised and ridiculed, and that the context for their intellectual activities was polemical to the point of being abusive? As we can see from these introductory remarks, it can be tricky to make any definitive claims about the Sophists, so, in recognition of the plurality of scholarly positions on them, the main focus of this chapter will be on reviewing what the ancient sources have to say about their professional lives. I will provide additional context and commentary to help readers evaluate the relevance of specific claims, but my goal is to present an overview of the primary sources to help facilitate fresh and independent interpretations of their vocational practices. What is the potential benefit from paying attention to the professional lives of the Sophists? Our understanding of their contribution to Greek philosophy is intrinsically linked to the way we understand their professional lives. If, for example, we follow M. I. Marrou and see the entirety of their activities as serving the purpose of providing them with an income, our view of their contribution to Greek intellectual culture would probably be limited, as it indeed was for Marrou: “they were not thinkers or seekers after truth, they were teachers,” and the “only thing they had in common was their profession.”2 If in turn we detect in their professional practices not only educational purposes but also an ambition to participate in and contribute to ongoing intellectual debates, as does, for example, G. B. Kerferd, we would likely have a different view of their role in Greek intellectual culture, and we might even see in their activities 2

Marrou 1956: 48 and 49.

the professional lives of the sophists 101 the establishment of early intellectual practices that have left an imprint on much of the subsequent intellectual development in the West. Therefore, how we interpret their vocational lives matters a great deal. Another aspect that an exploration of the Sophists’ professional lives can help us understand is their social position, which in turn can shed light on the cultural legitimacy accorded them and their intellectual practices by their contemporaries. If, for example, we agree with W. K. C. Guthrie that their traveling status is owed to the fact that they had outgrown their hometowns and flocked to Athens in pursuit of money and reputation, then we would most likely think of them as socially and intellectually marginal figures.3 But if we understand their itineracy as reflective of their ability to navigate in socially recognized capacities among geographically and culturally diverse poleis, we might see their professional activities as being embedded in elite networks that facilitate inter-poleis travel and interaction among the aristocracy. Again, how we interpret the Sophists’ professional activities helps shape our understanding of their intellectual legacy.

travel One of the most emphasized features in our primary sources is the Sophists’ itinerant status. Most modern scholars have left the Sophists’ ability to travel without comment. It has often been taken for granted that anyone with an enterprising personality and keen wits could establish themselves as sophoi and travel the world.4 There is probably some truth to that view, but it seems that the focus on wits and personality needs to be combined with attention to cultural considerations. What, for example, were the sources of 3

4

Guthrie 1971: 40: “They were foreigners, provincials whose genius had outgrown the confines of their own minor cities.” See, for example, Lloyd 1987: 103: “Anyone could set himself up as a philosopher or as a sophist or, come to that, as a doctor. You depended not on legally recognised qualifications . . . nor even simply on accreditation . . . What you had to rely on, largely, was your own wits and personality.”

102 ha˚kan tell authority available to sophoi? How could they travel from polis to polis in a culturally recognized capacity? It seems reasonable to consider institutional frameworks and forms of social authority in addition to, if not at the expense of, individual personality traits. From this perspective, wide-ranging travel is a problem that requires an explanation, especially when seen against the backdrop of Thucydides’ reflection of the difficulty of inter-polis travel in antiquity. He remarks how Brasidas and the Spartans made sure to secure escort before crossing into the territory of Thessaly in 424 BCE: “For it was normally not easy to cross through Thessaly without escort, and especially so when carrying arms; and it was suspicious to all Greeks alike to cross through the territory of one’s neighbor without permission” (4.78.2).5 This passage concerns itself with the crossing by armed troops of another polis’s sovereign territory and is on the face of it ill-suited to shed much light on travel by wisdom experts.6 What it does help illustrate, however, is the seemingly universal requirement of acquiring special provisions before entering another polis’s territory. We have regrettably few ancient sources discussing the mechanics of travel and know little about the conventions regulating its practices, so the testimony from Thucydides is relevant in establishing that ancient travel should not be assumed to have been unproblematic and that it needs additional scholarly attention. With the exception of Antiphon, not one of the canonical Sophists came from Athens, and the evidence suggests that much of their professional activity occurred elsewhere, though all of them at some point spent time in Athens. Plato’s Apology offers good evidence for that view regarding Gorgias, Prodicus, and Hippias: “Every one of them can go into each of the poleis and persuade the young men, who can associate with whomever of their citizens they please at no cost, to leave their company and affiliate with them instead, paying a fee and thanking them besides” (19e–20a). 5 6

Translations are by the author unless noted otherwise. For a fuller discussion of this passage, see Hornblower 1996: 258–9.

the professional lives of the sophists 103 In Plato’s Protagoras, we hear of similar practices on the part of Protagoras.7 According to Heraclides Ponticus, Protagoras wrote the laws for the Athenian colony Thurii in southern Italy – a project initiated by Pericles – which implies travel to Athens (plausibly before Thurii’s founding in 443/2) and, possibly, to Thurii.8 He is said to have visited Sicily in a professional capacity and to have died on a return trip there.9 In the opening of the Protagoras the young Athenian Hippocrates pleads with Socrates to introduce him to Protagoras. It is now or never, says Hippocrates, since last time Protagoras was in town Hippocrates was only a young boy, and it may be many years before Protagoras comes back for another visit (310e). Gorgias is said to have made a splash at the panhellenic festivals at Delphi, Olympia, Athens, and elsewhere, and he dazzled the Athenians when, at the age of sixty, he first visited in 427 as an ambassador from his city of Leontini in Sicily.10 We hear that he taught in Argos, Boeotia, and Thessaly, and Isocrates writes that he did not live in any city for long (Antidosis 156). Interestingly, both Protagoras and Gorgias seem to have had limited exposure to Athens. If we believe Plato, Hippocrates’ concerns would make us conclude that Protagoras spent most of his time elsewhere, presumably traveling from city to city. As for Gorgias, his reputation preceded him when he first arrived in Athens in his sixties – and it seems safe to assume that he built that reputation over several decades while being active throughout Greece. Prodicus, in addition to being mentioned in the Apology passage above as one who could walk into any Greek city, is also said to have served his own city in an official capacity on numerous diplomatic 7

8 9 10

In the case of Protagoras, Plato again proves to be the most relevant source. In the Protagoras, Protagoras describes his practices: “Caution is in order for a foreigner who goes into the great cities and tries to persuade the best of the young men in them to abandon their associations with others, relatives and acquaintances, young and old alike, and to associate with him instead on the grounds that they will be improved by this association” (316c–d, tr. Lombardo and Bell, in Cooper 1997). For the ancient evidence, see Fleming 2002: 8–9. A3; Hippias Major 282d–e = Hippias P4/A9. Philostratus Lives of the Sophists 1.1 = D27/A1; Diodorus Siculus 12.53 = P13b/A4.

104 ha˚kan tell embassies, and Plato adds that Prodicus successfully combined his public missions with private lectures (Hippias Major 282c). Philostratus preserves a story that Xenophon, while a prisoner in Boeotia, was released on bail to attend Prodicus’ lectures there (Lives of the Sophists 1.12). Hippias, also featured in the Apology passage above, traveled throughout Greece in a professional capacity.11 As we have seen them do with Prodicus, our sources highlight Hippias’ diplomatic activity on the part of his hometown, Elis, but he is also said to have traveled frequently to the festival at Olympia, where he enchanted the audience, and to Sparta, to promote and perform his own work. Plato also mentions that he pursued professional opportunities in Inycum, a small town in Sicily. Two further figures are worth discussing in the context of travel who less easily fit the mold of the itinerant intellectual. Thrasymachus, though born and buried in Chalcedon in Asia Minor (P6/A8), must have spent substantial time in Athens – indeed, may have adopted it as the base of his professional activity – for his presence to have been expected at a gathering like that portrayed by Plato in the Republic. Among his works is attested a speech on the constitution addressed to the Athenians, which further testifies to his importance there (D16/B1). And there is Antiphon, the only Athenian among the canonical Sophists, who seems to have made his career as a speechwriter and politician close to home.12 But we have reports that he set up an office in Corinth (P10/A6), testifying to a reputation beyond Athens, and during the oligarchy of 411, he likely traveled as an ambassador to Sparta (P16). Athens could support an ecosystem of professional intellectuals, both native and foreign, itinerant and established in the city; and while Athens clearly was an important center for the Sophists’ professional lives, it would not have been the only one. 11

12

In what other capacities would people travel in antiquity? To name just a few: To participate in religious festivals; to visit friends; to fight in a war; to trade; to participate in the founding of a colony. Gagarin 2002: 5.

the professional lives of the sophists 105

diplomacy and xenia It is noteworthy that Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, and Antiphon are linked to diplomatic activities on the part of their cities, and that they are said to have combined their public missions with their activities as wisdom experts. Though the diplomatic framework in antiquity was rudimentary, and though the individuals serving on diplomatic missions neither had special rights and privileges nor held institutionalized positions in their poleis, it was generally true that these missions were awarded to citizens of social standing in their communities.13 In fact, diplomatic activity was sustained and facilitated by the elite xenia network, through which members of the elite formed ties among geographically disparate poleis. These inter-poleis ties became formalized in the institution of proxenia.14 It thus seems reasonable to assume that the Sophists were individuals of social standing in their respective poleis and that their ties to the xenia network helped facilitate inter-poleis travel and opened up access to the local elite in whatever community they entered. In Antiphon’s case, this xenia network would likely have consolidated his own aristocratic beliefs and helped him and the oligarchy he led gain support from friendly city-states. Evidence of the Sophists’ access to the Athenian elite can be found in many of Plato’s dialogues. Generally, whenever a Sophist visits Athens, he stays in an aristocratic household. In the Protagoras, for example, Callias is playing host to the Sophist and those who attend his public discussion with Socrates are what Martin Ostwald has described as “a ‘Who’s Who’ of the upper class” of Athens.15 13 14

15

Wolpert 2001: 71–88. Adcock and Mosley 1975: 11: “Ties existed between rulers and men of social standing in their respective communities. Such ties between families or individuals involved the courtesies of hospitality and induced reciprocal services. In time such practices found an institution in proxenia, in which the ties of xenia, guest-friendship between individuals, were extended to communities or their visiting representatives.” For a fuller discussion of the xenia network, see Herman 1987. There are compelling examples of the role of xenia in facilitating interaction and travel in the Archaic poets, especially Pindar (for example, the opening of Nemean 9); cf. Hunter and Rutherford 2009: 13. Ostwald 1992: 343.

106 ha˚kan tell Plato’s Gorgias depicts a similar arrangement, in which Callicles serves as host to the visiting Gorgias. Though Callicles’ historicity is in dispute, his aristocratic status is not. By hosting such illustrious foreign intellectuals, wealthy citizens could gain access to an inner circle of students and burnish their own reputation for intellect. When considering the non-Athenian Sophists’ connection with the xenia network and diplomatic activities, we have reason to believe that they were not peripheral figures in their communities or that they primarily traveled from the provinces – where their talents were wasted – to the cultural center of Athens. Instead, they seem to have been prominent members of their poleis, whose affiliation with the elite network of xenia made travel both feasible and beneficial. Athens would certainly have been one of the more important sites to visit, but there would have been numerous other poleis included in their itinerary. We find compelling analogies in the poetic tradition, where poets interacted with their patrons through the institutions of xenia – and frequently described their relationship with their patrons as one between two xenoi, or guest-friends, even though, as Hunter and Rutherford point out, “financial transactions were in fact fundamental” to their relationship.16 We even have a few examples of poets serving as diplomats.17 Perhaps we can assume a synergy between wisdom expertise, broadly speaking, and diplomacy – all facilitated through participation in the xenia network – where the ability to travel and the cultural status of practitioners of wisdom made them ideal 16 17

Hunter and Rutherford 2009: 13. Hunter and Rutherford 2009: 19, where references are made to the Alexandrian poet (and diplomat) Heraclitus of Halicarnassus and diplomats from Teos who employed music and song as part of their professional activities. There is also compelling evidence for diplomatic activity by the seventh-century-BCE poet Terpander of Lesbos (or Cyme). For a discussion of Terpander, see Tell 2011: 82–3. Analogies between poets and Sophists are not incidental. There was a great deal of overlap among them in the wisdom tradition – to the point where poets and Sophists were often referred to by the Greek word sophos, “wise person.” The corollary is that the travel of poets is not categorically different from that of other wisdom experts: “it would be misleading to try to draw firm and persistent distinctions between ‘wandering poets’ and other kinds of ‘wanderers’ . . . ‘wandering poets’ are in fact just one facet of a much broader phenomenon of Greek culture” (Hunter and Rutherford 2009: 3).

the professional lives of the sophists 107 representatives of their own poleis in inter-poleis mediations and negotiations. There was a strong connection between travel and wisdom in Greek culture, dating back at least to the Archaic period.18 In fact, in many of our sources, travel is said to have been undertaken for the very reason of wisdom. Consider, for example, Pythagoras, who, Isocrates says, owed his philosophy to his travels and studies in Egypt;19 or Solon, who, after implementing his legislative reforms in Athens, left for ten years to travel for the sake of theôria (“to see the world”).20 As part of his travels, he visited Egypt and then Croesus’ prosperous court in Lydia. Herodotus describes Solon’s travel to Lydia as being part of a steady eastward stream of Greek wisdom experts, whom he labels sophistai (1.29). When Croesus solicits Solon’s opinion on who the happiest man in the world is, he makes explicit how intertwined travel and wisdom is: “You have a great reputation among us both because of your wisdom and your travels, since you have traveled the world widely in the pursuit of wisdom” (1.30). Similar sentiments can be found elsewhere in our sources, for example, in one of Democritus’ fragments, where he ties his extensive travels to his equally extensive inquiries.21 The cultural association of travel and wisdom could also express itself in other ways. Empedocles, for example, in the opening of his Purifications, describes his itinerant lifestyle, how he goes from city to city, being revered by all, and followed by thousands of people who seek healing and advice.22 Yet another example of the way travel and wisdom 18 19 20

21

22

For the early connection between travel and wisdom, see Montiglio 2000. Busiris 28; cf. Herodotus 2.81, where Pythagoras is also connected with Egypt. Though the real reason for his travels, writes Herodotus, was to prevent any of his laws from being repealed (1.29). Theôria is an important and difficult concept in Greek culture; see Nightingale 2004 for a fuller treatment of the concept. “I wandered over the most land of the men of my day, inquiring into the greatest things and I saw the most airs and lands and I listened to the most erudite men, and no one ever exceeded me in composition of treatises with proofs, not even those Egyptians called Arpedonaptae” (Atomists R115/B299). Diels deems the fragment, derived from Clement, inauthentic, though see Leszl’s persuasive defense of its authenticity (2007: 37n36). “My friends who live in the great town of the tawny Acragas, on the city’s citadel, who care for good deeds (havens of kindness for strangers, men ignorant of misfortune), greetings! I tell you I travel up and down as an immortal god, mortal no longer,

108 ha˚kan tell are linked can be found in the proem to Parmenides’ poem (D4/B1), where the process of enlightenment itself takes the form of a journey. We can thus observe that the association between travel and wisdom was well established before the Sophists, and that the cultural authority to be derived from this association did not originate with them. If anything, the Sophists operated in an already established cultural framework where itineracy and wisdom were interconnected.23 Travel, then, must have contributed substantially to the mystique of the Sophists. In addition to the traditional cultural association of travel with wisdom – which helped lend credibility and legitimacy to their intellectual practices – and the xenia network’s ability to facilitate inter-poleis communication, travel was also important in gaining access to intellectual venues and, perhaps most importantly, students.24 In both the Apology and the Protagoras, Sophists are said to travel to attract new disciples, and Protagoras is described as having an entourage of students whom he brings in his tow from city to city. In the next section, we will turn our attention to what the primary sources have to say about how the Sophists interacted with potential students and what measures they took to recruit them.

23

24

honored by all as it seems, crowned with ribbons and fresh garlands. Whenever I enter prospering towns I am revered by both men and women. They follow me in countless numbers, to ask where their advantage lies, some seeking prophecies, others, long pierced by harsh pains, ask to hear the word of healing for all kinds of illnesses” (D4/ B112, tr. Wright). Against this tradition of the link between wisdom and travel, Socrates’ reluctance to leave Athens, except for protracted periods of military service, stands out (e.g., Crito 52d–53a; Phaedrus 230d; Diogenes Laertius 2.22, but see Diogenes Laertius 2.23, citing Socrates’ contemporary Ion of Chios, for an exception). Though travel continues to be important to wisdom experts after the Sophists, the foundation of the three schools in Athens by Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle provided an alternate way to interact with students and engage in intellectual exchange. It is important to notice that both Plato and Aristotle traveled across Greece in their capacity as sophoi at the invitation of tyrants and kings, though their stays seem to have been more extended than those of the Sophists. Plato traveled to Sicily and Dionysius II, and Aristotle to Hermias, the tyrant of Atarneus, and the court of Philip of Macedon to tutor the young Alexander the Great. For Plato’s trips to Sicily, see Epistle 7, 327b–330b, 337e–340a, 344d–350b; Guthrie 1975: 24–31; Ostwald and Lynch 1994: 609. For Aristotle’s stay at the court of Philip, see Guthrie 1981: 35–8; Ostwald and Lynch 1994: 621; Natali 2013: 32–52.

the professional lives of the sophists 109

displaying wisdom and recruiting students We have already noted that Plato assumed that the Sophists traveled primarily to meet and recruit (paying) students. We will consider more fully below whether this was the only or even the most important reason for their travels. For now, however, we will explore the Platonic account. The Sophists are often described as engaging their students in two pedagogical formats: lectures and tutorials. In the Hippias Major (282c), for example, both Prodicus and Gorgias are said to have earned large sums of money by offering display pieces or lectures (ἐπιδείξεις) and by associating (συνών) with the young. We know little about what the seminar-style gatherings of the Sophists might have looked like, how many people would have attended, and whether the gatherings were held in conjunction with lectures at larger venues. The fictionalized setting of the Protagoras offers perhaps the best window into these more intimate meetings. Protagoras, Hippias, and Prodicus are depicted as gathered in Callias’ home. Hippias is described as surrounded by students who ask him questions about astronomy and physics, and Prodicus is portrayed as conversing with students who sit next to him. Protagoras, in turn, leads a chorus of followers through Callias’ portico. There are Athenian youths present at Callias’ house, who presumably interact with the Sophists only while they are in town, but we also hear of a separate group of students, mostly foreigners, who have been recruited by Protagoras as he passes through various cities. They are said to follow him around during his travels. There is mention of an Antimoerus of Mende, Protagoras’ star pupil, who is studying to become a Sophist himself. Antimoerus’ engagement with Protagoras is said to be professional (ἐπὶ τέχνῃ, 315a), whereas the young Athenian aristocrat Hippocrates, who barges into Socrates’ house at the beginning of the dialogue in his eagerness to study with Protagoras, is said to be interested in associating with Protagoras for the sake of a general education (ἐπὶ παιδείᾳ), as befits a gentleman (ὡς τὸν ἰδιώτην καὶ τὸν ἐλεύθερον πρέπει, 312b).

110 ha˚kan tell The sort of education (μάθησις) Hippocrates says he wants from Protagoras is compared to the one he received from his teachers of grammar, music, and gymnastics and is said to come at a steep fee (312b), so he may well wish to stay with Protagoras beyond his limited stint at Athens.25 But there may have been other arrangements available to students. Prodicus, for example, is said to have claimed that his 50-drachma lecture on names provided a complete education on the topic (Cratylus 384b). Though scholars have assumed that what is implied is not a single lecture but a whole course, it seems difficult to construe the Greek to mean that.26 Isocrates, on the other hand, talks about students spending three to four years with him (Antidosis 87). The evidence thus seems to imply three different levels of engagement: Short-time immersion while the Sophist is in town; longer-term engagement in which students follow the Sophist from town to town; and extended stay with the professional goal of becoming a Sophist.27

25

26

27

How long would Protagoras have stayed in Athens during his visit? Plato does not tell us, nor do any other of our primary sources. I am inclined to think weeks rather than months. There is an urgency to Hippocrates’ desire to meet Protagoras. Protagoras has been in town for two days when Hippocrates barges into Socrates’ house, and Hippocrates is not willing to lose another day before being introduced to his prospective teacher. If Protagoras had been scheduled to stay for, say, six months, Hippocrates’ urgency (and Socrates’ acquiescence) seems out of place. It also seems unlikely that Protagoras and his numerous followers (who accompany him from city to city) could have stayed for any greater length of time at Callias’ house. Our sources, especially Plato, emphasize how the Sophists in their professional capacity continually went from city to city, which gives the impression of a limited rather than extended length of stay (again, weeks rather than months). In Hippias Major (282d–e) we hear that Hippias made a lot of money in a very short amount of time (ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ) in Sicily – while Protagoras was also there. I think it is reasonable to envision limited stays – perhaps lasting as long as the duration of one of the larger festivals or a typical diplomatic mission. The word used, the singular form of ἐπίδειξις (epideixis, “display piece, lecture”), elsewhere refers to single lectures, as it undoubtedly does here, too. Kerferd 1981: 28; Guthrie 1971: 42n1. This classification relies exclusively on Plato and may be too rigid, especially the distinction between “longer-term engagements” and “extended stays,” but it seems likely that the division between short-term workshops (for lack of a better word) and extended instruction is sound.

the professional lives of the sophists 111 Based on our sources, we have reason to believe that members of the elite frequently made individualized arrangements with Sophists or other wisdom experts to help educate their sons and prepare them for public life. There are scattered remarks in our sources (mostly Plato) of people who spent money on sophistic education. Callias, in particular, is said to have spent considerably to educate his sons,28 paying tuition to both the usual suspects (Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus) and to Zeno of Elea (often labeled as a Presocratic philosopher), as well as to Evenus, who is variously referred to as poet and philosopher and is familiar from Plato’s Phaedo.29 In the Meno, Socrates implies that the logical place to send Meno to learn to keep his house and city in good order is to the Sophists (91b) and in the Theaetetus he says that he has sent many young men to study with Prodicus (151b).30 As to the format of the seminar-style sophistic education, the question-and-answer format on display in the Protagoras resonates with other references in our primary sources, where we repeatedly hear that Gorgias and Hippias made themselves available after their lectures for the audience to ask them anything they wanted.31 To judge from the force with which Socrates objects to Protagoras’ and Gorgias’ inclination to give long answers in the dialogues carrying their names, it seems that lecturing might have been a common practice even in the more intimate seminar settings.32 We may also assume that students would study and memorize written rhetorical texts, like the Tetralogies of Antiphon, or Gorgias’ Palamedes and Helen. Aristotle discusses how Gorgias’ teaching method was representative of sophistic teaching more broadly, which he says consisted of assigning rhetorical speeches and 28

29 30 31

32

Apology 20b, Alcibiades I 119a, Xenophon Symposium 1.5. Pythodorus is listed alongside Callias as having paid Zeno 100 minas. For a discussion of this passage in the Alcibiades I, see Tell 2011: 44–5. Nails 2002: 153. For a discussion of Socrates’ “matchmaking” skills, see Mintz 2007. Meno 70c; Philostratus Lives of the Sophists 1.9.11 = D11a/A1a; Hippias Minor 363c–d. Gorgias 449b and 461d; Protagoras 334d.

112 ha˚kan tell question-and-answer discussions to students for memorization (Sophistical Refutations 183b). Cicero, in turn, while discussing the history of rhetoric, says that Protagoras produced written discussions on important topics, that Gorgias did the same (though with a thematic focus on praise and blame), and that Antiphon produced similar writings (Brutus 46–7). Evidently various written materials circulated, on a range of topics and with a range of lengths. If these written discussions mentioned in Cicero were produced for educational purposes to be distributed among students – Cicero is not clear whether they were – it would support the idea of memorization of set pieces and rhetorical coaching as foundational to sophistic education.33 A related practice, which we find attributed to Antiphon, was logography, the writing of speeches for others to deliver in forensic or deliberative contexts.34 As for the set pieces or lectures (epideixis) – the other venue in which the Sophists displayed their wisdom and recruited students – we have substantial information in our ancient sources. Before proceeding to explore these sources, however, a note of caution is in order. Although the word epideixis has been almost universally accepted as a descriptive term for part of the Sophists’ professional activities, it is worth pointing out that it often carries derogatory connotations. It is not found in any of the preserved fragments from the Sophists themselves, and it is mostly by reference to its occurrence in Plato that it is attributed to their practices.35 In Thucydides, for example, the word is used in regard to disingenuous public speeches in the assembly delivered by bribed politicians (3.42.3), and 33

34

35

Cf. Cole 1991, who sees in these set pieces evidence that the Sophists’ education was primarily concerned with eloquence and not rhetoric, which he argues arrived first with Plato and Aristotle: “a pedagogy that proceeds exclusively or primarily by examples lacks the analytical metalanguage characteristic of later rhetoric, and with it the ability, either to formulate general principles governing the use of discourse, or relate them to particular instances” (p. 92). A number of forensic speeches are preserved in his corpus. He is described in Thucydides 8.68.1 as not speaking in public himself until his trial for capital charges. “The term ἐπίδειξις seems to have been introduced by the Sophists (cf. Hippias Major 282bc),” Dodds 1959: 189.

the professional lives of the sophists 113 Isocrates makes the distinction between ineffectual oratorical displays – which he labels epideixis – and persuasive speeches that produce actual results (4.17). Plato contrasts epideixis to apodeixis; the latter carries the meaning of a rigorous demonstration aiming at the truth, whereas the former implies a dazzling rhetorical display with no consideration of the claims’ truth.36 Given these observations, although we have much textual evidence for the Sophists’ public displays and lectures, referring to them with the word epideixis is reflective of Plato’s word choice and most likely not representative of how the Sophists themselves would have referred to them. We hear of sophistic lectures taking take place both in public and in private – without any noticeable difference in content or format. In the opening of the Gorgias, for example, Socrates and Chaerephon have just missed Gorgias’ public performance and are invited to the home of Callicles, where Gorgias is willing to deliver another lecture; and, in a later source, Prodicus is said to have given a lecture at Callias’ house ([Plato] Axiochus 366c), just as Protagoras is said to have done in the Protagoras. As for lectures in public venues, in the Hippias Major, Hippias says that he will give one in the school of Pheidostratus (286b), and in another later source Prodicus is said to have delivered one at the Lyceum ([Plato] Eryxias 397c–d), where, incidentally, Protagoras too gave a public reading of his On the Gods,37 according to Diogenes Laertius (9.54). In the passage from Antidosis (147) quoted above, Isocrates distinguishes

between

lectures

given

in

public

assemblies

(πανηγύρεις) and in private gatherings (οἱ ἴδιοι σύλλογοι). Here the public and private distinction seems to line up with the evidence we have of Sophists lecturing at the panhellenic festival sites throughout Greece. 36

37

Denyer 2001: 141: “An ἀπόδειξις is a rigorous argument whereby something is shown to be true. An ἐπίδειξις is a rhetorical performance whereby the performer shows off his virtuosity.” Contrast, for example, the use of ἀποδείκνυμι and ἐπιδείκνυμι in Alcibiades 114b and 114d; and Hippias Minor 369c illustrates well the sense of ἀποδείκνυμι as providing a rational argument supported by evidence. For further discussion of the semantic evolution of ἀποδείκνυμι and ἀπόδειξις, see Russo 2004: 171–202. Diogenes adds that others reported the location of Protagoras’ public reading to be the house of Euripides or Megaclides.

114 ha˚kan tell Gorgias, for example, is said to have been conspicuous at the festivals (πανηγύρεις), especially in delivering a Pythian Speech at Delphi, an Olympian Speech at Olympia, and a funeral oration at Athens.38 Hippias, too, is said to have made frequent visits to Olympia, where he offered to speak on any topic he had prepared and to answer any question from the audience (Hippias Minor 363c). We have, moreover, a substantial passage from what is apparently a public speech given by Thrasymachus in Athens concerning the Athenian constitution (D16/B1). There were thus a wide range of venues and modes in which the Sophists interacted with their students and the wider public. Lectures, as we have seen, were widespread as an instructional and communicative medium and were by no means restricted to or representative of larger performance venues. They could be delivered either in private or in public (gymnasium or individual house, for example), in the intimate setting of a seminar, or in a larger venue, even before the collected Greeks at the panhellenic festivals. More intimate seminar settings allowed for additional and personalized forms of student-teacher interaction, such as question-based discussions and one-on-one tutoring. This format could also extend over longer periods of time – days rather than hours – and was most likely organized in someone’s home. As for the content of the lectures, there is a great variety of topics documented in our sources. As we have seen, Hippias offered to talk about anything he had prepared at Olympia, and the intellectual breadth of the prepared works he brought is dizzying: poems, epics, tragedies, dithyrambs, prose writings about arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, rhythms, harmonies, the correctness of letters,39 and the art of memory (Hippias Minor 368b–e). Gorgias, too, is said to have 38 39

D27/A1. It is not clear what the “correctness of letters” refers to. Kerferd 1981: 68 suggests that it might have to do with the “correctness in the written forms of words,” though it is far from certain. Some (e.g., Barney 2001: 97) translate the Greek so that “correctness” also governs “rhythms” and “harmonies,” that is, “correctness of rhythms and harmonies and letters.” Other Sophists showed an interest in the correctness of various aspects of the use of language. Protagoras wrote on the “Correctness of Words” (Cratylus 391c3) and a certain “Correctness of Dictions” (ὀρθοέπειά τις, Phaedrus

the professional lives of the sophists 115 offered to talk about anything whatsoever during his display at the theater of the Athenians (Philostratus Lives of the Sophists 1.1 = D11a/A1a). Based on the preserved fragments or quotations from sophistic display pieces, we might suggest a tripartite division in content among political themes, mythological parables, and philosophical treatises, though occasionally a speech contains elements of more than one type, as does, for example, Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen. It is important to note that this tripartite division is mine and classifies the sophistic material in accordance with modern disciplinary standards. This division would most likely have seemed curious to the Sophists, for whom the totality of the content of the display pieces would comfortably fit under the flexible rubric of sophia (“wisdom”).40 There is the added complication of not knowing with any degree of certainty whether a piece was designed exclusively for oral performance before an audience or with a reading public in mind, or both, so it is possible that some of the titles listed in my discussion never formed part of a display lecture. As for political pieces, Gorgias delivered a speech on concord at Olympia and Delphi – a theme he also managed to work into his funeral oration in Athens (Philostratus Lives of the Sophists 1.9.4–5 = D27/A1). As far as mythological parables go, Xenophon has preserved Prodicus’ composition called the Choice of Heracles. Gorgias wrote and presumably delivered the Encomium of Helen and Defense of Palamedes, and Hippias makes mention of a speech he composed and performed at Sparta and Athens that dramatized a conversation between Nestor and Neoptolemus about how a young man should live (Hippias Major 286a–b). The Protagoras represents Protagoras’ “Great Speech,” which provides a mythological account of how all living things came into existence and in what manner justice and sense of shame (aidôs) were

40

267c), while Prodicus lectured on the “Correctness of Names” (Cratylus 384a8–c1). On the former, see Woodruff 2017; on the latter, see Wolfsdorf 2011. For the impressive intellectual breadth of the term sophia in antiquity, see Lloyd 1987: 83–108.

116 ha˚kan tell distributed among mortals. Among the philosophical treatises, we have Hippias’ Synagôgê (Collection), which is considered one of the earliest examples of doxography. Based on modern attempts at reconstructing the Synagôgê, it seems that Hippias quoted sayings from contemporary philosophers and traced the underlying thought back to one of the canonical poets of old, such as Homer or Hesiod.41 It has been argued – convincingly, in my view – that Hippias’ work influenced how both Plato and Aristotle structured their discussions of their predecessors and early philosophical thought.42 Another example of a philosophical treatise is Gorgias’ On Not-Being, also labeled On Nature, which engages with Parmenides and Eleatic thought more broadly. In it, he defends three theses: Nothing exists; even if something exists, it is unknowable to human beings; and even if it were known to human beings, they would not be able to communicate it to others. Scholars have debated Gorgias’ intent with this piece, whether it was meant seriously or written in jest, but, regardless, it engages with and promotes philosophical views that have affected subsequent discussions of Parmenidean thought. The typical format of sophistic lectures seems to have been presentation of a topic followed by a question-and-answer period. Gorgias and Hippias invited their audiences to ask questions after their presentations. But this might not have been the only format. Some presentations may have taken the form of competitive public debates among several participants. Good evidence of such public debates is found in the opening of the Hippocratic On the Nature of Man, where the author complains about those discussions of human nature that go beyond its relevance to medicine.43 It is clear that analyzing humans as comprising air, fire, water, and earth achieves no solid understanding; attend one of their debates (ἀντιλέγουσιν), he 41 42

43

For attempts at reconstructing the Synagôgê, see Snell 1944 and Patzer 1986: 33–42. Mansfeld 1990: 69 has argued that the organizing principles of the Sophists’ doxographical works, especially the exposition of related ideas, are reflected in both Plato and Aristotle. In a similar vein, Gorgias mentions “the verbal disputes of philosophers” (Helen 13), though the public nature of these debates is not emphasized.

the professional lives of the sophists 117 says, and see that the same speaker, addressing the same audience, never wins the debate three times in a row; victory goes to whoever happens to have the glibbest tongue before the crowd. The author goes on to argue that the reason the debaters trip themselves up (ἑωυτοὺς καταβάλλειν) is their lack of knowledge (On the Nature of Man 1). In this treatise, we find evidence of a public debate among several speakers before a crowd regarding the topic of the nature of man (ἡ ἀνθρωπίνη φύσις). There are some compelling indicators and historical overlaps between this Hippocratic work and that of the Sophists. On the Nature of Man is tentatively dated to 440–400, roughly contemporaneous with the professional activities of many of the Sophists, and it uses language that closely overlaps with sophistic works. Specifically, the verbs used to describe the debates and intellectual stumbles of the participants, antilegein and kataballein, evoke two titles of Protagoras’ works, Kataballontes (Overthrowing Arguments) and Antilogiai (Contradictory Arguments).44 Dio Chrysostom provides us with another account of sophistic public displays that seem to take the form of competitive intellectual contests among several participants. In a passage that describes the activities of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (ca. 403–323 BCE) at the Isthmian Games around 350 BCE, Dio makes the following observations in his Diogenes, or On Virtue. That was the time, too, when one could hear crowds of wretched Sophists around Poseidon’s temple shouting and reviling one another, and their disciples, as they were called, fighting with one another, many writers reading aloud their stupid works, many poets reciting their poems while others applauded them, many thaumatοpoioi (θαυματαποιῶν) displaying (ἐπιδεικνύντων) their tricks (θαύματα), many fortune-tellers interpreting fortunes, lawyers innumerable perverting judgment, and peddlers not a few peddling whatever they happened to have. (Dio Chrysostom 8.9, tr. Cohoon, modified)

44

D3/B1, D1/A1. Gorgias and Antiphon both use the verb καταβάλλω (Defense of Palamedes 35 = D25/B11a and D55/B58), and Antiphon is said by Pollux to have used the participial form ἀντιλογούμενοι (B98).

118 ha˚kan tell Despite this testimonium being separated by some 400 years from Diogenes’ reported visit to the Isthmian Games, it still resonates well with contemporary portrayals of the Sophists, especially in its use of specific words and phrases to describe their activities. The tone is similar to the passage from Isocrates’ Antidosis (147–8) quoted above. Both passages describe the professional activities of the Sophists by using forms of the noun and verb meaning to make a public display, from which we get the word epideixis. Both passages also describe their displays as competitive and the participants as verbally abusing one another. Of special importance is the word thaumatοpoios, which Dio uses to describe one group of wisdom experts present at the games. Its literal meaning is “wonder worker” but it is often translated as “juggler” (as Cohoon had). In this instance, however, it has a different meaning, one that harks back to Plato and Isocrates, both of whom use it to describe the Sophists and their professional activity.45 Drawing on these passages, then, we have reason to widen our understanding of the public displays of the Sophists to include competitive public debates involving multiple participants.46 This nicely fits with the statement in Diogenes Laertius that Protagoras was the first to institute “contests in arguments” (λόγων ἀγῶνας, 9.52). So, to be sure, while the Sophists aspired to attract students and promote themselves in their public lectures, that was only one of the goals; they also sought to participate actively in the philosophical and political issues of their time in their capacity as wisdom experts. 45

46

Plato applies the term most memorably in the last definition of the Sophist, where he uses the adjectival form of the word, θαυματοποιικός: “[Visitor] Imitation of the contrary-speech-producing, insincere and unknowing sort, of the appearance-making kind of copy-making, the word-juggling (θαυματοποιικόν) part of production that’s marked off as human and not divine. Anyone who says the Sophist is of this ‘blood and family’ will be saying, it seems, the complete truth. [Theaetetus] Absolutely” (Sophist 268c–d, tr. White). Isocrates, in turn, restricts the word to the “old Sophists,” who differ from those so identified by Plato. In Antidosis 269, Isocrates identifies Empedocles, Ion, Alcmaeon, Parmenides, Melissus, and Gorgias as Sophists. With the exception of Gorgias, most of the other “old Sophists” are usually labeled “Presocratics” in traditional scholarship. Kerferd 1981: 29 acknowledges but downplays the idea of competitive public debates among the Sophists: “If formal public debates did take place from time to time, it does not seem that they were a major part of sophistic activity.”

the professional lives of the sophists 119

teaching for pay In the final section, we will address one of the most contentious issues regarding the Sophists: the repeated claim that they were first to offer instruction for pay to all comers.47 What is contentious about this claim is not that they charged money for their instruction. That seems to be beyond dispute. The controversy instead surrounds how this arrangement is characterized in our ancient and modern sources and the ways in which the Sophists’ monetary practices are contrasted with those of other wisdom experts, such as the Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle. It is important to note at the outset that paid teachers of certain skills – music (taught by the kitharistês), gymnastics (taught by the paidotribês), reading and writing (taught by the grammatistês) – were well established and familiar within Greek culture.48 What (it is claimed) is distinctive to the Sophists is that the paid education they offered was a general one – not limited to a particular skill, but aiming to inculcate (as Plato’s Socrates puts it) culture (paideia) or excellence (aretê).49 Most of the ancient evidence for the Sophists’ practice of teaching for pay is derived from Plato. In Hippias Major, for example, Socrates mentions to Hippias that Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus all made a lot of money from their wisdom (282d–e). Similar comments in Plato about the Sophists’ ability to earn large sums of money are frequent, so much so that when the fourth-century-CE philosopher Themistius defends himself against the charge of being a Sophist, he says that, according to Plato, “to be a Sophist means charging the young and wealthy men for any form of instruction.”50 But Plato is not

47

48 50

Kerferd 1981: 25 succinctly sums up the criticism against the Sophists: “What is wrong is that the Sophists sell wisdom to all comers without discrimination – by charging fees they have deprived themselves of the right to pick and choose among their pupils.” 49 Harris 2020: 40–2. Protagoras 349a. 23.289d. The coupling of the Sophists and teaching for pay is ubiquitous in Plato. Some examples are: Laches 186c; Meno 91b; Protagoras 310d, 313c, 349a; Gorgias 519c–d; Sophist 223a, 224c, 226a.

120 ha˚kan tell alone in linking the Sophists with teaching for pay. References to this are also found in Xenophon, Isocrates, and Aristotle. What makes teaching for pay a controversial topic rests mainly on two issues. First, selling wisdom or appearing to engage in purely transactional intellectual activities was never culturally condoned. Isocrates may serve as a good example to illustrate this point. We know that there existed a financial rapport between him and his students, but this rapport is never referred to as transactional.51 Instead, it is described in terms of mutual friendship where the instruction is often said to serve the larger public good.52 The fee is not described as fulfilling a financial contract, but is said to be a freely given gift by a friend as a token of his gratitude for his teacher’s public service. Similar arrangements seem to have been at work at Aristotle’s school, the Lyceum, to judge from a passage in the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle seems open to the idea of accepting voluntary gifts from grateful students.53 Second, the context in which our sources discuss teaching for pay is often invective, which makes it hard to determine whether they are describing historical practices or seeking to belittle intellectual opponents – or doing both at the same time. Consider, for example, a passage from Xenophon, in which he writes that “those who sell their wisdom to anyone who wants it are called Sophists” (Memorabilia 1.6.13). This seems like a straightforward description of the Sophists’ professional practices, until we consider what Xenophon writes next, “just as if they were prostitutes.” Plato, too, often discusses teaching for pay in contexts that seem to express criticism of this practice, for example, in the Sophist, where the Sophist is defined as “a hired hunter of wealthy young men” (231d). Interestingly, the one source that discusses teaching for pay that 51 53

52 Antidosis 240–1; Ostwald and Lynch 1994: 596. See Too 1995: 109–11. “And so, too, it seems, should one make a return to those with whom one has studied philosophy; for their worth cannot be measured against money, and they can get no honour which will balance their services, but still it is perhaps enough, as it is with the gods and with one’s parents, to give them what one can (τὸ ἐνδεχόμενον)” (1164b2–6, tr. Barnes).

the professional lives of the sophists 121 predates Plato, Aristophanes’ Clouds, first performed in 423 BCE,54 has one of the characters describe Socrates and his disciples as teaching for money, and here, too, the characterization does not seem to be meant as a compliment. After all, Strepsiades explains that at the Thinkery Socrates and his disciples teach the students to win arguments, whether they are right or wrong.55 Given these considerations, it is difficult to know whether the Sophists were in fact the first to introduce the practice of general teaching for pay, as Plato and many after him claim, or that deriving an income from their expertise would set them apart from other practitioners of wisdom, such as Plato and Aristotle, who are both said not to have charged fees for their instruction. It seems reasonable to assume that most sophoi were dependent on fees, gifts, donations, and so on for their subsistence. If this is true, it may be that the Sophists would not have been radically innovative in how they interacted with their audience in that regard. We know remarkably little about the actual historical practices of teaching for pay or the financial arrangement surrounding what we might call higher education.56 Though there are sprinkled remarks in our texts that some sophoi or schools charged fees for their instruction, we know little about how, say, the Lyceum was funded and what fees, if any, students paid. To make matters worse, euphemisms seem to prevail when discussing the financial arrangements of instruction. It is more likely to hear about voluntary gifts motivated by friendship than obligatory payments. Poetic patronage may provide a useful analogy or comparandum. Poets, like the Sophists, were often referred to as sophoi and as having a natural claim to sophia. Surprisingly, this poetic material is rarely discussed in the same breath as the Sophists, perhaps because to us the 54

55

56

For a discussion of the two versions of the Clouds and the date of the performance, see Dover 1968: lxxx–xcviii. Clouds 98–9: οὗτοι διδάσκουσ᾽, ἀργύριον ἤν τις διδῷ, / λέγοντα νικᾶν καὶ δίκαια κἄδικα. “They [sc. the members of the Thinkery] teach you, if you pay them, to win arguments, regardless whether they’re right or wrong.” For other instances in the Clouds where Socrates and his disciples are said to teach for money, see lines 245 and 1146. This is also the case for the fourth-century philosophical schools; see Ostwald and Lynch 1994: 625; cf. Baltes 1993: 12.

122 ha˚kan tell categories of poet and philosopher are distinct. In antiquity, however, there was a greater degree of fluidity of categories, especially in the Greek wisdom tradition. Though, for the most part, poets portray their relationships with clients as embedded in ties of friendship, there are striking moments when the transactional nature of this relationship is highlighted. Pindar’s Isthmian 2 is especially intriguing for its characterization of the Muse as a lover of gain and a prostitute (6–8).57 What clearly stands out in our primary sources on the Sophists is the characterization of their relationship with students as transactional. What is less clear is the degree to which our sources reflect actual historical practices or are a result of unsympathetic attitudes regarding their intellectual outlook and practices. The invective context in which many of the comments on fee taking occur, however, gives us reason to be skeptical that our sources are merely conveying factual information about the Sophists’ professional practices. Linked with this is the sensitivity with which fees are discussed elsewhere, especially in Isocrates, where any kind of transactional relationship between student and teacher is avoided. In this context fees are embedded in the language of reciprocity and friendship. Even if this were often the case for the Sophists, highlighting the financial arrangements that surrounded sophistic practice would have been a way of casting doubt on the legitimacy of their teaching.

conclusion The scarcity of surviving sources authored by the Sophists and the need to rely on indirect representations of their professional activities in other, often hostile, accounts make it difficult to state almost anything definitively. Even so, I have attempted in this chapter to present our scattered primary sources and provide a tentative interpretation of the Sophists’ professional lives. In doing so, I have sought to shy away from offering strong opinions on topics where the

57

See Rawles 2018, esp. 133–54.

the professional lives of the sophists 123 scholarly community is still much divided or where, in my opinion, we do not have sufficient evidence to make conclusive claims. What we have seen is a group of wisdom experts embedded in traditional forms of cultural authority – figures of prominence in their communities (often tapped for diplomatic missions), who travel extensively within the elite network of xenia to provide instruction to eager students and to contribute to the contemporary intellectual debates. I have argued that we can detect a fair degree of overlap in the Sophists’ professional practices with those of contemporary wisdom experts – even to the degree where it becomes difficult to distinguish the Sophists as qualitatively different. In fact, I would suggest that we have reason to be skeptical about the traditional claim – made both by ancient and modern critics – that the Sophists are a sui generis phenomenon and that the Sophists should be treated as a separate group of practitioners of wisdom. Instead, we should understand them as a varied group of practitioners within the broader economy of wisdom. We have, for a variety of reasons, grown accustomed to a system of classification of ancient philosophers that places great emphasis on separating the development of Greek intellectual thought into distinct phases with distinct groups of practitioners. There is much to say in favor of such an approach, and it has no doubt been valuable in analyzing certain intellectual movements. When it comes to the Sophists, however, it has served to downplay how embedded they are in a larger wisdom tradition and the degree to which their intellectual practices must be understood in the broader context of fifth-century intellectual life.

4

The Sophists in the Fifth-Century Enlightenment Joshua Billings

The sophistic era has often been characterized as a kind of “enlightenment.” “The Fifth-Century Enlightenment” is the title of the third volume of W. K. C. Guthrie’s History of Greek Philosophy (1971), encompassing the Sophists and Socrates. The implied comparison between the late fifth century BCE and the eighteenth century CE has served to highlight aspects of Classical Athenian intellectual culture that are thought to be definitive for intellectual modernity: empiricism, skepticism, rationalism.1 At the same time, the comparison has often been employed to diminish the contribution of the Sophists to the history of philosophy, and even to deny it entirely. The second edition of Eduard Zeller’s epochal Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung established the pattern, writing that “the Sophists are the Aufklärer [‘Enlighteners’ or ‘Lumières’] of their time, the Encyclopedists of Greece, and they share the advantages as well as the deficiencies of this position.”2 These deficiencies, according to Zeller, are numerous: “the sophistic enlightenment is . . . in its essence superficial and one-sided, in its outcomes unscientific and dangerous.”3 The Sophists are important primarily because, just as the philosophes paved the way for Kant, the shortcomings of the Sophists motivated the rise of Socratic philosophy.4 Though this view moderated substantially in the century after Zeller, particularly through the influence of George Grote,5 a critic could respond to Guthrie’s largely positive comparison of the Sophists to Enlightenment thinkers with essentially the same high-handed dismissal: “they are like the philosophes of the eighteenth 1 4 5

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2 3 Guthrie 1971: 5–10. Zeller 1856: 1.793. Zeller 1856: 1.797. Zeller 1856: 1.797–8. The modern reception of the Sophists is discussed by Raymond in Chapter 14 of this volume. On Grote, see further Giorgini 2014.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 125 century, in fact, and belong, I suggest, rather to the ‘history of ideas’ than to the history of philosophy proper.”6 The “history of ideas,” of course, is a much wider field than the history of philosophy, and describing the Sophists as belonging to this history is accurate in the sense that their achievements are not only, nor best, understood within linear narratives of philosophical development. Their thought and activities were probably more multifaceted than those of the Socratics who established the first philosophical institutions, and full assessments of their significance must range beyond the narrowly disciplinary (as is true also of the philosophes). There is, of course, a danger of anachronism in pressing the comparison with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment too far; it threatens to make the Sophists too modern, ignoring much of what is strange and even uncomfortable in their thought.7 The idea of “enlightenment,” too, carries significant difficulties, for the way it can be used to valorize certain times and places as more “enlightened” than others – when we know well that both the fifth century BCE and the eighteenth century CE were, from our perspective, profoundly unenlightened in their treatment of foreigners, women, slaves, and many others. I will argue, though, that the term “enlightenment” can do important work for the intellectual historiography of the sophistic era in two respects. First, the term can be used to describe a selfconsciousness that is demonstrably widespread in the period.8 The intellectual culture of the later fifth century experienced itself as a period of profound change, in which traditional and novel viewpoints came into conflict and produced tensions that permeated the social world. The term “enlightenment,” on this understanding, does 6

7

8

Robinson 1971: 379. The distinction between the history of ideas and the history of philosophy is famously discussed in Kristeller 1964. Cf. the cautious reception in Skemp 1971: 178. The most prominent example of such a modernizing approach since Guthrie is the work of Barbara Cassin, especially Cassin 1995 – a brilliant work, which largely assimilates the Sophists to contemporary philosophical concerns. I see this as an advantage of the term “enlightenment” over “new learning,” used for similar currents by Woodruff 2010.

126 joshua billings not describe the triumph of reason over superstition or the emergence of humanity from its self-imposed immaturity, but a consciousness of rupture and rapid intellectual change.9 This consciousness is part of a wider spirit of questioning and epistemological modesty, which causes sophistic culture broadly to place into doubt assumptions and beliefs that had been accepted in the past. The second advantage of the term “enlightenment,” suggested above, is that it points to a much wider field than the narrowly philosophical, and allows us to better grasp the range of the Sophists’ thinking and writing, and the resonances of their thought with other areas of culture. The eclectic quality of the Sophists (as of the philosophes), though aberrant within traditional histories of philosophy, is typical of the public intellectual sphere of the late fifth century, which was, in significant respects, “pre-disciplinary” in the topics, methods, and professional lives of its major figures.10 Adopting a panoramic viewpoint on the intellectual culture of the time reveals that, in many respects, sophistic thought is late-fifth-century thought, and the Sophists were the characteristic thinkers of the fifthcentury enlightenment. This chapter will trace connections between the canonical Sophists and the wider enlightenment context, demonstrating the resonances of their thought and practice with nonphilosophical discourses of the time. The strength of these resonances is notable in itself; it testifies to the close interchanges between “philosophical” and “nonphilosophical” discourses in the sophistic period – a closeness that is unusual if not unique in previous or subsequent ages. The later fifth century sees thinkers across genres engaged in parallel and overlapping projects, prompted by the urgent questions of the intellectual and cultural life of the time. These projects, unsurprisingly, have substantial similarities between them – so much so 9

10

Edelstein 2010 makes an analogous argument concerning the European Enlightenment. For the origins of the discipline of philosophy (as pre-disciplinary until the time of Aristotle), see Moore 2020a.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 127 that locating the origins or tracing the circulation of the central ideas may be impossible, even if we had a much more complete evidentiary base. Moreover, it is not even clear that the most important thinkers of the time actually held doctrines with which they could be identified. Instead, we find in the Sophists strategies of experimentation, provocation, and dialectic that address major philosophical questions without necessarily attempting to put them to rest or to articulate an authoritative position. This open-ended quality of philosophical discourse characterizes the late fifth century broadly, and the intellectual achievements of the sophistic era are perhaps best understood to concentrate around approaches, methods, and ways of thinking, rather than particular ideas or doctrines. In approaching sophistic thought beyond the Sophists, this chapter draws centrally on Aristophanes’ Clouds, which represents by far the most extensive contemporary depiction of the intellectual culture of the late fifth century – as well as being itself a product of this culture. Clouds is a particularly valuable lens through which to approach sophistic thought in its contemporary context because, while it is in no way unbiased, it lacks the apologetic and disciplinary agendas of our other major contemporary sources. It thus offers us a more direct insight into the way new ideas and approaches were understood in the wider culture. While there is substantial debate about the relation between Aristophanes’ Socrates and the historical figure, for the present purposes what is important is simply that, in crucial respects, Aristophanes’ Socrates is portrayed as a representative contemporary intellectual, many of whose interests and methods are shared with the Sophists. This chapter will trace three characteristic modes of thought from the Aristophanic Socrates to the Sophists and beyond: pursuing and synthesizing research; arguing both sides of a question; and making critical arguments about divine causality. These approaches by no means exhaust the importance of the Sophists, but they represent areas of contact and continuity between the Sophists and the wider intellectual culture of the fifth century, and reveal some crucial aspects of the fifth-century enlightenment. Mapping these modes of thought

128 joshua billings across discourses will help, finally, to revisit the term “enlightenment” as a description of the fifth century BCE, and give greater contour to its meaning and application.

the sophists, “socrates,” and the sciences Late-fifth-century intellectuals engaged in a wide range of research and collection activities, which drew on and contributed to discourses well beyond philosophy. Aristophanes’ presentation of Socrates in Clouds, whatever its historical basis, evidences the way that interests in natural and social science were taken to be distinctive of novel intellectual pursuits. The philosophical interests of Aristophanes’ Socrates appear to center on nature, and especially on the skies, which he and his students investigate through various modes of empirical research. This is somewhat surprising in light of the Platonic and Xenophontic Socrates’ strong disavowal of the meteorological interests represented in the play (Apology 19c–d; Memorabilia 1.1.11) and his claim to have turned away from “what they call inquiry into nature” (Phaedo 96a, though it is possible that Clouds was influenced by this earlier period of investigation). Clouds’ portrayal of these interests may represent a lingering association of Socrates with Anaxagoras, which may or may not have had any biographical basis.11 The celebrity and controversy surrounding Anaxagoras (whose exile in the late 430s was still relatively recent at the time of the first version of Clouds in 423) could have cast all those engaged in novel intellectual pursuits in Athens into a similar mold, and led to the palpable sense of traditional values under assault from radical scientific inquiry.12 The Socrates of Clouds combines the natural-scientific interests associated with the earlier generation of philosophers with a range of investigations into what might be called the social sciences (primarily the study of language), which turn

11

12

The evidence is discussed in Moore 2020a: 158–64. Apollodorus 244 BNJ F 34 (= Diogenes Laertius 2.45) makes Socrates a pupil of Anaxagoras; Plato only describes Socrates hearing Anaxagoras’ book being read (Phaedo 98b), not an actual meeting – though there would have been good reason to downplay the association of two such controversial figures. See the discussion in Janko 2020.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 129 out to be even more resonant with the Sophists and other contemporary intellectuals.13 Clouds makes a running joke of Strepsiades’ fixation on learning to talk his way out of debt, which continually meets Socrates’ and his colleagues’ much greater interest in other topics. A range of research activities are discussed in Strepsiades’ initial encounter with a student: investigations of animal movement and physiology (144–52, 156–64), astronomy (171–3), and geometry (177–9). Some of these involve direct experimentation (affixing molten-wax shoes to a flea to measure its jump: 149–52) while some are more speculative, such as discussions of the orifice from which a gnat buzzes (160–4) or “searching about in darkness (ἐρεβοδιφῶσιν) below Tartarus” (192). Investigation of the skies, though, appears to be the major focus of activity; when Socrates finally appears, elevated on the stage crane, he describes his activity as astronomical contemplation: “I tread the air and scrutinize (περιφρονῶ) the sun” (225). What exactly Socrates is considering is unclear, though earlier he had been described as “investigating the paths and revolutions of the moon” (171–2) by gazing upward – as we also find his students doing, as they “learn to astronomize (ἀστρονομεῖν)” (194) with their backsides while hunched over the ground. The study of the heavens, it appears, takes place primarily through direct observation (and causal reasoning, which will be discussed later), and so, like the other activities of the school, has a strong empirical component. Though this may tell us very little about the historical Socrates, for Aristophanes at least it is clear that an important focus of intellectual culture is understanding nature and, especially, the skies. Aristophanic comedy associates the Sophists, as well as Socrates, strongly with investigation of the heavens. It is the clouds, Socrates claims, who are the true deities and causes of meteorological phenomena. The first words of the chorus of clouds, addressed to Socrates, pair him with Prodicus as inquirers into the heavens. 13

On the Sophists as social scientists, see Bett 2002: 254–8.

130 joshua billings We would not obey any other of today’s celestial Sophists (τῶν νῦν μετεωροσοφιστῶν) except Prodicus, him on account of his wisdom and intellect and you because you act arrogantly on the streets and turn your eyes askance and, unshod, you withstand many evils and you make solemn faces because of us. (360–3)

In the description of Socrates and Prodicus as among “today’s celestial Sophists (tôn nun meteôrosophistôn),” the association with ta meteôra is probably more significant than the term sophistês.14 Both terms could have been connected to Anaxagoras, whom a number of later reports describe as a “Sophist”15 and who was reportedly condemned for “teaching accounts concerning celestial things” (λόγους περὶ τῶν μεταρσίων διδάσκοντας) – which presumably included a skeptical outlook on the gods.16 Investigating ta meteôra brings with it a suspicion that such inquiries could lead to unconventional thinking concerning the gods – which we know all three engaged in.17 The association of intellectuals with ta meteôra appears to be conventional, carrying with it more or less vague attributions of impiety; Eupolis’ Flatterers twice contrasts Protagoras’ apparent interest in celestial matters with his real interest in pleasures of the body.18 There is again scant reason to see a physical-scientific interest in ta meteôra as part of Protagoras’ intellectual activities (though he clearly held unconventional theological views). Association with observation of the skies may be little more than a generic description for those engaged in novel – and suspect – forms of inquiry, but 14

15 16 17

18

On these lines, see Dover 1968: liv (overstating, I think, the respect they show to Prodicus). The term sophistês is used elsewhere in the play to describe contemporary intellectuals and seems to carry a vaguely disparaging sense: 331, 1111, 1309. On the terminology for Socrates and other intellectuals, see Edmunds 2006. Isocrates Antidosis 15.235; cf. P24/A17 (= Diodorus Siculus 12.39.2). P25/A17 (= Plutarch Pericles 32.1); cf. Janko 2020: 229. A passage of Birds (690–2) also associates Prodicus with ta meteôra and views on origins of the gods. See Dunbar 1995: 433–7. Mayhew 2011: 171–5 speculates about actual astronomical interests based on the comic passages. Further on Prodicus’ atheism, see Willink 1983. F 157, 158 KA. Like Prodicus, Protagoras would become famous as an atheist, but his agnosticism concerning the gods appears to be motivated by epistemological concerns.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 131 Aristophanes invests the association with a more definite character by depicting Socrates deep in astronomical contemplation and his school pursuing a range of physical and mathematical research. Though there is little firm evidence for the Sophists as astronomers, they clearly did engage in natural-scientific research, some of which seems parallel to that depicted in Clouds. Our strongest evidence is for Antiphon, whose On Truth touched on an astounding range of topics, including astronomy, biology and medicine, and geometry, in addition to the more familiar discussions of matter and human culture.19 The work seems to have been at least comparable in scope to the wide-ranging books of Parmenides and Anaxagoras – and, with its strong interest in ethics and human culture, likely even broader. Beyond Antiphon, there is evidence for Gorgias’ interests in fundamental nature (physis), most obviously in On Not-Being (alternately known as Peri physeôs), which clearly responds to Eleatic thought – though without, apparently, addressing the more empirical side of Parmenides’ text (i.e., the Doxa).20 Protagoras, in addition, was known for his geometric ideas and, along with Prodicus and Thrasymachus, is described by Cicero as having written de natura rerum (De oratore 3.32.128).21 Finally, there are scattered references to Hippias’ knowledge of astronomy, geometry and arithmetic, and music.22 While the Aristophanic Socrates seems more fully engaged in physical research than any of the canonical Sophists (and, likely, than the historical Socrates), these interests were by no means anomalous in the generation after Anaxagoras, if one thinks of Archelaus or Diogenes of Apollonia.23 The Socrates of Clouds is also an observer of human culture, and these aspects seem even more widely resonant than his natural-scientific 19 20

21

22 23

Pendrick 2002: 32–8. See Rodriguez, Chapter 7 in this volume. Gorgias does, though, seem to have suggested some kind of explanation of how light and fire travel through space: D45/B4–5; D45, cf. Sansone 1996. Another source records him describing the sun as a stone, along the lines of Anaxagoras: D46/B31. Protagoras’ geometrical investigations are mentioned sparsely: D33–4/B7. A few sources suggest Prodicus studied biology or anatomy: D1, D9/B4. These seem to be aspects of his polymathy, discussed below: D14/A11. For parallels, see Betegh 2013.

132 joshua billings interests. The concern with the diversity of human culture can be understood as a facet of enlightenment self-consciousness. The social sciences emerged as major topics for research and reflection, and led to new ways of organizing and presenting knowledge. We see this social-scientific side of the Aristophanic Socrates when he offers to teach Strepsiades “about measures or words or rhythms” (638). All of these areas could have been associated with Damon of Oa, a musical theorist and advisor to Pericles who seems to have been an important – and somewhat notorious – figure a generation older than Socrates (but roughly contemporary with Protagoras).24 Investigations of language and music seem much closer to the heart of what we know of the canonical Sophists’ interests. Socrates, after brief discussions of poetic meters and rhythms, moves on to words, and to an extended investigation of which animal and human names are “correctly” (659: orthôs) masculine and feminine.25 Socrates’ instruction centers on matching the gender suggested by a word’s ending with its actual or “felt” sex. These passages of Clouds are consistent with what we know of Protagoras’ and Prodicus’ thought on language. Both are attributed interests in orthoepeia or orthotês; in Protagoras’ case, this seems to have included pointing to the “proper” gender of words, while Prodicus seems to have concentrated on fine distinctions of meaning.26 Socrates’ teaching concerning linguistic gender may be as close as Clouds comes to a direct parody of sophistic ideas, making light of efforts to find or impose a logic onto linguistic convention and usage. Though Aristophanes and Plato present these linguistic investigations as wholly or partly comical, they demonstrate how the sophistic interest in language would have relied heavily on collection and analysis of evidence, and on a self-consciousness concerning the relation of theory and empiry. 24

25 26

Damon was ostracized at some point in the late 430s, apparently because he had become too powerful a counselor to Pericles. The evidence for Damon’s life and thought is collected in Wallace 2015. On orthoepeia, see Bonazzi, Chapter 6 in this volume. Orthoepeia: Protagoras D22/A26, cf. D23–5/A27–9. Orthotês: Prodicus D5/A16–18, cf. D6/A19. On Protagoras, see Rademaker 2013 and Huitink and Willi 2021; on Prodicus, Mayhew 2011: xiv–xvii.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 133 All of these inquiries, into nature and language alike, are predicated on some form of research and, frequently, on collection – on gathering and synthesizing information from a range of sources. This impulse can be set in a context of fifth-century “scientific” inquiry, historia, which we know best from Herodotus and medical authors, and is attested also by a range of earlier and fragmentary authors concerned with history and myth.27 The methods of these inquiries vary widely; physical experiments and observation played a role, especially in medical authors, but more significant seem to have been analysis of familiar cultural features (such as the gender of words or musical rhythms) and comparative investigation of traditions and customs across cultures (as we find in historical ethnographic and historical research, discussed below). All of these strands are present in Herodotus, whose work has increasingly been recognized as emerging from many of the same contexts as the Sophists and addressing many of the same questions.28 Herodotus shares the interest in physis and nomos that was so important among the Sophists,29 while the constitution debate in Book III speaks to contemporary questions in political thought, which the Sophists and Critias also discussed.30 Herodotus’ eclectic interest in physical science, moreover, is now well recognized for its parallels with contemporary natural philosophy, attesting to the wide range of fifth-century historia.31 Many of these projects, Herodotus’ included, seem to be motivated by an encyclopedic – or, in fifth-century terminology, a “polymathic” – impulse, an effort to bring together the knowledge accessible on a given topic and make it available to a reader or listener. This effort speaks to 27

28

29

30 31

The most important figures seem to be Hecataeus (born ca. 555) and Hellanicus (a rough contemporary to Herodotus). On the broader context, see Thomas 2000: 161–8; Fowler 2006. Texts and commentary are in Fowler 2000 and 2013, respectively. Fowler 1996 emphasizes the comparison to Protagoras; Thomas 2000 has a much wider scope, taking in the range of fifth-century inquiry. Kingsley forthcoming discusses Herodotus’ connections to Presocratic thought. On the interest in physis and nomos, see Bett, Chapter 5 in this volume. See further Thomas 2000: 102–34; Dihle 1962. Balla, Chapter 8 in this volume. See further Menn 2005; Apfel 2011: 114–206. Thomas 2000: 135–67.

134 joshua billings the self-consciousness of enlightenment discussed above; in collecting, organizing, and presenting information that had previously been scattered or inaccessible, polymathic works promise a quantitative (if not qualitative) leap in the possibilities of knowledge. Yet these investigations are also in a sense quite modest in their ambitions, in comparison to previous philosophical thought; in merely collecting what was known or found, the culture of polymathy could be disdained or satirized for its failure to grasp more fundamental principles, as in criticisms of polymathia found from Heraclitus (of Pythagoras and others) to Plato (of Hippias).32 Breadth of investigation could be thought to come at the expense of depth, or of the principles that would unify a field of knowledge. Such criticism, though, is evidence for the way that the pursuit of enlightenment was itself a subject of reflection and debate in the fifth century. The greatest of the sophistic collectors is the canonical Sophist we know least about, Hippias. Despite Plato’s withering portrait of him in the two dialogues bearing his name (and, less prominently and polemically, in the Protagoras), he seems to have been an extremely well-known and successful figure, who traveled widely through Greece as a researcher and performer. His activities may be better understood by comparison with Herodotus than with the other canonical Sophists. A generation younger than Herodotus, Hippias was famous for his polymathy and seems to have been the Sophist most associated with the opposition of physis and nomos.33 Some of Hippias’ activities clearly involved historical research, such as compiling the names of the Olympian victors and authoring a work on the Names of Peoples.34 In Plato’s dialogue, he boasts about performances at Sparta that addressed genealogies and foundations of cities – “in short, the whole of ancient history (archaiologia)” (Hippias Major 285d–e). 32

33 34

Heraclitus D20/B40; cf. Democritus B64, 65. A satirical perspective on Hippias’ polymathy is indirect but clearly evident in Socratic dialogues: Xenophon Memorabilia 4.4.6; Plato Hippias Major 368b–e, Protagoras 318e. On Herodotus in this context, see Wę cowski 2004. Xenophon Memorabilia 4.4; Plato Protagoras 337c–d; cf. Brancacci 2013. B2–3; D6–7. On the importance of Hippias as historiographer, see Wę cowski 2009.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 135 We have strong evidence, then, that Hippias acted as a kind of historian, collecting stories and information concerning diverse cultures, much like Herodotus. Hippias’ most important contribution was his Synagôgê (Collection), a kind of anthology of ideas and opinions that apparently excerpted from venerable texts of Greek culture and more recent thinkers.35 We know frustratingly little about the Synagôgê, but it may well have been as eclectic in scope as Herodotus’ text; indeed, the sole surviving passage attributed to it, probably coming from the opening section, lays out an ambition comparable to that of the Histories. . . . of these, equally, some have been spoken by Orpheus, some by Musaeus, briefly here and there, some by Hesiod and some by Homer, and others by other poets, and some in written texts, some by Greeks, others by barbarians. And I, putting together from all these the ones that are most important and similar, will make this new and multiform discourse (καινὸν καὶ πολυειδῆ τὸν λόγον). (B6; D22)

Precisely what it is that Hippias collects is not at all clear (the antecedent of the first word of the fragment, “these,” is not included in the quotation), but the scope of the Synagôgê must include both poetic and prose texts (from syngraphai, “writings” or perhaps even “collections”).36 While it has been argued that the text would be used extensively for the purposes of philosophical doxography, its intention seems to be much wider.37 Hippias touts the novelty and complexity of the work, establishing himself as a figure of enlightenment and presenting his audience with a previously inaccessible range of learning – even as the work itself was largely derived from earlier writing.

35 36

37

On the Synagôgê, see Patzer 1986 and Balaudé 2006. The word may itself suggest Ionian historia; it is used by Herodotus at 1.93 to describe his own recording project, and by Thucydides at 1.97.2 to describe Hellanicus’ Athenian history. Patzer 1986.

136 joshua billings Comparing our quotation of Hippias’ opening with the beginning of Herodotus’ Histories is instructive. Of Herodotus the Halicarnassian this is the display of inquiry (ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις), so that neither the events that took place through humans become faded in time, nor the great and marvelous deeds– some displayed by Greeks and some by barbarians–become unheard, including, among other things, especially for what cause they went to war against one another. (1.1)

Both texts are constructed through parataxis and antithesis, and both proclaim their intention of presenting a kind of comprehensive knowledge.38 While Herodotus’ work focuses on “the things that happened” and the “great and marvelous deeds” of Greeks and barbarians, Hippias concentrates on things spoken or written, but does so in a similarly ambitious and wide-ranging fashion. It is particularly intriguing that both Hippias and Herodotus describe their subjects as nonGreek as well as Greek and put the two on roughly the same footing.39 What this means for Hippias is hard to say but, rhetorically, it claims an encyclopedism comparable in scope to Herodotus’ deeds, “some displayed by Greeks and some by barbarians.” Both works promise their readers a comprehensive form of knowledge and insight that is only possible through wide-ranging research and collection. To be sure, both might also be criticized for their breadth and their relatively unsystematic modes of collection.40 This encyclopedic impulse and the controversy surrounding it manifest a consciousness of the present as a moment of intellectual consolidation and progress – a period of enlightenment. Seeing the Aristophanic Socrates in light of this wider enlightenment context of research, collection, and analysis reveals that – even if 38

39 40

Wę cowski 2004 discusses the notion of learning in the prologue, with comparison to Hippias. See the classic Hartog 1988 and further Rood 2006; Vasunia 2012. Whether or not Thucydides’ famous statement of method in History 1.21–2 is a direct dig at Herodotus, it certainly fits within the contours of other criticisms of polymathy, including those implicit in Plato and Xenophon’s treatment of Hippias.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 137 not accurate concerning Socrates himself – the Clouds presents a valuable window onto the “scientific” research of the sophistic era. This research clearly encompassed topics in both natural science (Antiphon) and language and its relation to human practices (Protagoras and Prodicus), and could be pursued through methods of historical collection and presentation (Hippias). At the heart of all these areas of sophistic inquiry is an interest in the empirical, which has often been occluded or downplayed by accounts of the history of philosophy in comparison to the Sophists’ more familiar investment in logic, epistemology, and ethics. Yet these empirical interests connect the Sophists closely to earlier Greek philosophers and to contemporaries not generally considered Sophists: Anaxagoras, Diogenes, Archelaus, and Democritus, to name a few. But the central role of collection among the Sophists – as opposed to theory building or prediction – manifests a distinctive epistemological modesty, insofar as it tends to eschew wider speculation, concentrating on what can be known from autopsy or direct report, much as Critias seems to do in his ethnological writings (and quite possibly akin as well to the musical theorizing of Damon).41 In line with such epistemic modesty, the Sophists seem to have been more invested in social than in natural science – and in this respect they differ from previous generations – but the relation between these two poles of inquiry should be understood as a spectrum rather than a binary. Thinkers could move freely between inquiries into nature and culture, making contributions based on collection and experimentation. The Sophists played a major – and underrated – role in this wideranging enlightenment culture of science.

antilogy and the ethics of sophistic argumentation The most prominent claim made about Socrates and his circle – though not the most prominent of their activities – is that they teach how to make a weaker argument prevail over a stronger one. 41

On Critias as collector, see Iannucci 2002: 79–107; on Damon, see Wallace 2015: 23–49.

138 joshua billings It is for this that Strepsiades seeks their training initially, in order to argue his way out of his son’s gambling debts, explaining as follows. They say there are among them both the arguments, the better, whatever it may be, and the worse. One of these two arguments, the worse, they say, prevails by speaking the more unjust case. (112–15)

The language here suggests that Strepsiades has only a vague knowledge of the practice, acquired through rumor. Various contrasts of the “worse argument” (ὁ ἥττων λόγος) and “better argument” (ὁ κρείττων λόγος) recur through the play before the two arguments are personified on

stage;

the

fixed

nature

of

the

phrases

suggest

they

are a kind of common currency. The claim to make the weaker argument the stronger is usually attributed to Protagoras, of whom Eudoxus reported that “he made the worse argument also the better one (τὸν ἥσσω καὶ κρείσσω λόγον πεποιηκέναι) and taught his students to praise and blame the same man.”42 Aristotle likewise attributes the phrase to Protagoras, expressing disapproval of the practice (Rhetoric 1402a). Though this may refer to nothing more than teaching students to argue both sides of a case, the idea that in the course of such argument one would cause an unjust case to prevail was obviously an arresting and controversial idea. Although Aristophanes’ Socrates never actually claims to be able to make the worse argument prevail, the idea seems to have stuck to the historical figure, and Plato’s Apology points to it repeatedly as a prominent cause for suspicion (18b, 19b, 23d). Socrates’ interrogation of conventional views may have seemed indistinguishable from the practice of arguing for unconventional views, and led Athenians to identify him with the practice of a more established and celebrated contemporary; indeed, Diogenes Laertius reports that Protagoras “was the first to introduce the Socratic form of arguments” (9.53). The practice of antilogy (antilogia) appears to have been widespread among thinkers of the late fifth century.43 A work with the 42 43

D28; A21; cf. A1, 20; D26–7. For a fuller perspective on sophistic antilogy, see Lee, Chapter 10 in this volume.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 139 title is attributed to Protagoras, though its contents are difficult to ascertain. We have a surviving example of the form in the Dissoi Logoi (“double arguments”), which has often been associated with Protagoras and his circle.44 Clouds repeatedly uses the word antilegein to characterize the skills of rhetoric, including in the agôn when the Worse Argument declares, “I will overturn it [a just speech] in turn by counterargument (ἀντιλέγων)” (901). There is evidence, moreover, that antilogies or “contests of speeches” (logôn agônas) would have been performed for entertainment purposes by Sophists and other contemporary intellectuals.45 Such displays assume the possibility of debate concerning accepted beliefs and practices and could consequently be thought dangerous to conventional morality. This is clearly one impulse behind Clouds, in which Aristophanes uses the fixed comic form of the epirrhematic agôn (opposing speeches in metrical responsion) to satirize the practice of antilogy as it existed among his contemporaries. Related rhetorical forms, such as we find in Antiphon’s Tetralogies, a series of paired prosecution and defense speeches, would have likewise been apposite to the kind of forensic rhetoric that Strepsiades seeks to learn.46 Strepsiades’ desire to become adept in arguing the weaker case points to a moral ambiguity that is inherent in the form of antilogy, which inevitably involves arguing as persuasively as possible for a weaker case. What transpires onstage between the Better and Worse Arguments ultimately hinges less on rhetorical skills than on a contrast between traditional and novel ways of living and thinking. The choice of arguments takes on a profound ethical dimension, with the Better Argument associated with traditional virtue and the Worse Argument with latter-day depravity. The Worse promises that he will bring to bear “new ideas” (896), which include simply denying the 44

45

46

The dating and context of the Dissoi Logoi are controversial; Maso 2018 and Molinelli 2018 are recent commentaries that reach markedly different conclusions. Only the first part of the text is organized into formal antilogy; see Wolfsdorf 2020a. Diogenes describes Protagoras as the first to institute such contests (9.52); for the contests, cf. Gorgias Helen 13, Hippocrates On the Nature of Man 1. See Gagarin 2001 on forms of sophistic rhetoric.

140 joshua billings existence of justice (902). The contrast between traditional and novel morality that emerges from the agôn could hardly be more clear – intellectual practices associated with Socrates both contribute to and reflect the decline of conventional understandings of right and wrong. There are notable similarities to Frogs’ agôn of Euripides and Aeschylus, which likewise hinges on a confrontation between a traditional, conventional moral outlook and a novel, philosophically inflected one, and associates Socrates with the rejected set of values (1491–5). The contents of both agônes, though, can be understood as emerging from the widespread tendency in the sophistic era toward thinking in juxtaposition.47 Antisthenes’ paired speeches of Ajax and Odysseus represent a mythological transposition of opposed speeches, though in a deliberative rather than forensic context. And even when not a formal practice of opposing arguments, ethical syncrises such as Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles and the discussion comparing Ajax and Odysseus in the Hippias Minor are an important form for exploring not just opposed arguments but different ways of life – which is what the agôn of the Arguments turns out, ultimately, to be. Though not formally structured as antilogies, these syncretic forms of thought may be closer in spirit to the agôn of Clouds.48 The play offers a kind of compendium of fifth-century argumentative practices, viewed through the lens of ethical and political concerns about Aristophanes’ contemporary Athens. Both the practice of double arguments and the concern about its moral ambiguity are widespread beyond philosophical texts. Thucydides’ History frequently juxtaposes contrary arguments and thematizes the power of speech to influence deliberation.49 There may be an explicit signal to the practice of antilogy in the text’s very first pair of speeches, when ambassadors from Corcyra and Corinth arrive at Athens. The two speeches seem models of rhetorical practice, with the Corcyraeans requesting an alliance and advancing a series of arguments concerning Athenian interests, which the 47 49

48 Billings 2021: 165–70. Papageorgiou 2004. Fundamental on Thucydides and the Sophists are Nestle 1914 and Finley 1967.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 141 Corinthians refute point by point, while reminding the Athenians of their previous cooperation and admonishing them to remain neutral. In introducing this confrontation, Thucydides writes that “when the assembly was convened, they came to antilogy (ἐς ἀντιλογίαν)” (1.31.4), the usage suggesting that “antilogy” was itself a recognizable way of describing deliberative debate.50 Thomas Cole has influentially argued that speeches in Thucydides are themselves a kind of protorhetorical handbook, and even if one understands their intention differently, they clearly emerge from a background of opposing speeches created for education and entertainment.51 An illustration of Thucydides’ practice of opposing arguments can be found in the Mytilene debate (3.37–50). This much-studied passage is introduced by language signaling formal antilogy and consists of Cleon’s and Diodotus’ opposing speeches to the Athenian Assembly concerning what to do with the citizens of Mytilene after their abortive revolt.52 The Athenians have initially decided to put all the adult men to death and to enslave women and children, but overnight they begin to reconsider, convening the day after to revisit the question. The entire debate has been analyzed for its views on rhetoric, but it is specifically the attitude toward oppositional speeches that I will focus on, which illustrates – in an exceptionally complex way – tensions surrounding display and competition in Athens in the sophistic era.53 Cleon’s speech opens with a condemnation of the Athenians, which targets their delight in linguistic agônes; they should not act themselves like ἀγωνισταί nor allow themselves to be influenced by “formidability and contestation (ἀγῶνι) of intellect” (3.37.4–5). Attributing the Athenians’ reconsideration of their decision to their susceptibility to persuasion 50

51 52

53

Herodotus uses the same phrase to describe being put to trial (9.87), while other usages in both historians refer simply to the practice of contradiction (Thucydides 1.73; Herodotus 8.77). Cole 1991: 104–11. ἀντέλεγε 3.41.1; ἐς ἀγῶνα 3.49.1. On the relation of the scene to rhetorical handbooks, see Gärtner 2004; Harris 2013. Yunis: 1996: 87–99; Ober 1998: 94–104; Hesk: 2000: 248–58.

142 joshua billings and love of argument for its own sake, he goes on to issue a stinging rebuke to their capacity as a deliberative body: “you are to blame for setting up contests (ἀγωνοθετοῦντες) badly, you who are used to being spectators of words but hearers of deeds” (3.38.4). Viewing themselves as spectators and auditors rather than involved participants, the Athenians have failed to understand the gravity of their situation and the consequences of their decision. Cleon finally points directly to the sophistic culture of rhetorical display as the source of the Athenians’ failure: “put simply, you are overcome by the pleasure of listening and like those sitting as spectators of sophists (σοφιστῶν θεαταῖς ἐοικότες καθημένοις) rather than those deliberating about the city” (3.38.7).54 Cleon’s speech is a direct indictment of sophistic performance and particularly of the Athenian predilection for rhetorical contests. Alongside Clouds, it offers important contemporary evidence for negative views of sophistic rhetoric (though there is no reason to see it as directed specifically against the canonical Sophists), claiming not that rhetorical contests are immoral but that they are fundamentally unserious. Thucydides’ Cleon is no model statesman or individual – he has been introduced just before the Mytilene debate as “the most violent” (3.36.6: βιαιότατος) and “most persuasive” (πιθανώτατος) of the citizens, and is advocating for a brutal policy that will eventually be reversed – but his charge is not easily dismissed. There are a series of significant ironies surrounding his harangue; his disavowal of rhetoric is posed in extraordinarily powerful rhetorical form.55 It is made, moreover, in a text that itself constantly juxtaposes speeches, yet claims for itself the programmatic ambition not to be a “contestwork to hear for the present” (1.22: ἀγώνισμα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆμα ἀκούειν).56 This is not the place to attempt to untangle the complexities surrounding agônes in Thucydides, but they point to the impact 54

55 56

This is the earliest use of sophistês that seems isomorphic with the Platonic presentation of the Sophists as primarily teachers and practitioners of rhetoric. Yunis 1996: 89–92. On agôn in Thucydides, see further Lateiner 2007 and Mader 2017.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 143 of sophistic culture, broadly speaking, and to the tensions glimpsed in Clouds concerning the use of rhetoric and, specifically, of opposing speeches. The practice of opposing speeches is fundamental to tragedy, which, especially in the works of Euripides, displays an intense consciousness of rhetorical technique. Our extant texts (only a small proportion of what actually was performed) demonstrate this as early as Aeschylus’ Eumenides, where speech and persuasion take central roles in Orestes’ trial by the Areopagus court. Eumenides demonstrates the proximity of public speech contexts in Athens to dramatic stagings of debate, and drama has fruitfully been seen as existing in a reciprocal relationship with oratory and deliberation.57 In tragedy, this is most visible in the formal agôn, which, though variously defined (and not as formalized as in comedy), is characterized generally by opposing arguments laid out in balanced confrontations.58 Though Sophocles stages such scenes in the Ajax and (more loosely) the Antigone, they are quite frequent in Euripides and can feature elaborately constructed speeches, which are often accompanied by reflections on the power of speech to lead to just or unjust ends. This self-consciousness can be signaled, like in Thucydides, by pointing to the very form of the debate as a “contest of words” (ἀγῶν or ἅμιλλα λόγων).59 Such debates are an area of continuity between sophistic writing and performance, political speech, and tragedy, and point to the intimate, reciprocal relationships between these contexts. A striking fragment of Euripides’ Antiope describes the practice of opposed arguments: “on every matter someone might establish a contest of double arguments (δισσῶν λόγων/ἀγῶνα), if he were wise in speaking” (F 189). In context, the fragment probably refers to the opposed arguments of the brothers Amphion and Zethus, who 57

58 59

See the essays in Markantonatos and Volonaki 2019; further, see Ober and Strauss 1990; Hall 2006: 353–92. Duchemin 1968; Lloyd 1992; Dubischar 2001. Examples: Medea 546; Phoenician Women 588; cf. Lloyd 1992: 4–5.

144 joshua billings famously debate the value of musical and contemplative pursuits, in contrast to activity and political engagement.60 The phrase dissoi logoi (“double arguments”) may have already been recognizable as pointing to the practice of opposed arguments for rhetorical purposes, and connects the play’s agôn directly to the intellectual culture of the time – an important background to Plato’s appropriation of the debate and agonistic form in the Gorgias.61 The recognition that one can argue on both sides of an issue leads naturally to the concern that speech becomes untethered from the sense of right and wrong, and Euripidean tragedy is full of characters warning against the eloquence of others, especially in agonistic contexts.62 Another fragment of the Antiope manifests this anxiety. My son, well-spoken speeches may be false and by the beauties of their words conquer the truth. But this is not the most certain [means of judging], but rather nature and the right (ἡ φύσις καὶ τοὐρθόν). Whoever conquers by eloquence is clever, but I consider deeds better (κρείσσω) than speeches all the time. (F 206)

This fragment may refer to a different context from the one quoted above, but it likewise figures speech as a kind of contest, and takes the next step of pointing to the dangers of judging by persuasiveness rather than moral content. In proclaiming adherence to “nature and the right,” the speaker nods to the nomos-physis opposition common among intellectuals, holding to the idea of a natural morality against the notion that ethics are merely conventional (another topic of discussion in Plato’s Gorgias). Asserting that actions are stronger than words, the speaker rejects contests of persuasion generally, using the adjective, kreissôn, that had characterized Aristophanes’ better argument.63 60 61 62

63

Billings 2021: 170–86. On Plato’s appropriation, see Nightingale 1992; Trivigno 2009. Examples: F56 and 61 from the agôn of the Alexandros; F 583 from the Palamedes trial; F 528 from the Meleager (likely a three-way agôn); F 928b (uncertain context); Hecuba 1187–91; Medea 576–83; Phoenician Women 526–7; Hippolytus 486–9; Trojan Women 966–8; see Mastronarde 2010: 211–22. Cf. Philoctetes 1246, where Neoptolemus asserts that “if [I do and speak] just things, these are stronger than clever things (τῶν σοφῶν κρείσσω).”

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 145 Tragedy thus stages Strepsiades’ claim that “the worse [argument] . . . prevails by speaking the more unjust case” – as well as the reaction against it. Though later doxography would identify Protagoras as a focal point for such argumentation, the practice (or the idea) of making the weaker argument stronger could have been associated with many prominent intellectuals of the time. We can ultimately say very little about how these concerns arose – whether they were initially connected to pedagogical practices, rhetorical epideixeis, or deliberative contexts – but they point to a widespread self-consciousness of rhetoric and argumentation that is a hallmark of enlightenment thought. This self-consciousness is visible, too, in the ways that sources describe practices of speaking using the stereotyped phrases discussed above and, more broadly, in the concurrent development and codification of rhetorical practices (the timeline of which is controversial, but which must begin in the sophistic era). The late fifth century experienced its own “rhetorical turn” that reached well beyond the Sophists and brought heightened scrutiny to language, meaning, and the possibility of persuasion.64 The recognition that, in Gorgias’ phrase, “logos is a great potentate (δυνάστης μέγας)” (Helen 8) leads naturally to the concern that the power of speech and argumentation could overthrow cultural norms and ethics. Aristophanes stages this fear in Clouds, just as Thucydides and Euripides do in their contests of speeches. Though there is little evidence that the canonical Sophists themselves advocated for unconventional ethical views, a danger was clearly felt to lie in their argumentative methods, which made them (along with Socrates and others) a target of anti-rhetorical backlash.65 Both the confidence in and suspicion of speech demonstrate the profound ethical and political importance attached to rhetorical practices in fifth-century Athens. As important performers, teachers, and 64

65

See Bonazzi, Chapter 6 in this volume. Jarratt 1991 offers a deconstructive reading of the rhetorical self-consciousness in sophistic thought. See Bett 2002 on sophistic ethics. The glaring exception is the papyrus fragments of Antiphon, but even these may have come from an antilogistic text or have been otherwise presented as nonauthoritative.

146 joshua billings researchers, the Sophists were at the center of a broad cultural reckoning with the power of language.

reasoning the unseen The late fifth century brings with it an intense scrutiny of notions of causality, and particularly of the way that the unseen or unknown affects the apparent. Of course, thinking about natural causality is central to earlier philosophical (and literary) reflection, which makes important contributions to the natural sciences, especially astronomy, by pointing to the reasons for celestial events.66 Anaxagoras’ explanation of eclipses appears to have been a major watershed in the move toward more naturalistic reasoning, and sophistic culture broadly follows (or parallels) this trend away from explanation by unseen or unknown forces, and develops distinctive modes of arguing about causality based on observation and direct inference. This tendency can broadly be understood as a facet of “enlightened” self-consciousness, insofar as it reflects a recognition of the limits (as well as the extent) of human reason. Perhaps the most significant question sophistic culture asks about causality and the unseen concerns the role of the gods. As Mirjam E. Kotwick’s Chapter 9 in this volume discusses, the sophistic era brings with it a range of new and controversial ideas about the existence of divinity, its role in human life, and the origins of belief and ritual practice. Clouds reflects this climate of theological questioning in its portrayal of Socrates, for whom cloud-goddesses take the place of the Olympian pantheon.67 Broadly speaking, thinkers of the late fifth century address the 66

67

Graham 2013 places the origin of what he calls “scientific astronomy” in the fifth century, with Anaxagoras and Parmenides as the central figures. This is probably the most recognizably Socratic aspect of the character’s intellectual activity; both Plato and Xenophon agree that Socrates understood himself to act in relation to a daimonion (P26) – a belief that at the very least set him outside of the theological mainstream, and must be related in some way to the charge of “not believing in the city’s gods” (P36) on which he was convicted. See McPherran 1996 and the essays in Smith and Woodruff 2000.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 147 role of divinity by scrutinizing its manifestations in human existence – a far cry from the more speculative theologies of Parmenides or Empedocles.68 Protagoras’ famous declaration of agnosticism is indicative of a recognition that aspects of the unseen are not knowable, explaining that “many things prevent me from knowing this [whether the gods exist or what form they have], its obscurity and the brevity of human life” (D10/B4). Phenomena observable to humans, he asserts, do not furnish adequate grounds for reasoning about the unseen. This is not the only position found among the Sophists, but it points to an increasing self-consciousness concerning reasoning about the divine that is a facet of enlightenment thought broadly. Socrates’ eccentric theology seems to be the focal point of Clouds’ hostility toward novel intellectual trends; the work closes with the phrontistêrion on fire and its denizens fleeing in terror while Strepsiades urges, “pursue them, hit them, pelt them, for many things, but especially keeping in mind that they wronged the gods! (τοὺς θεοὺς ὡς ἠδίκουν)” (1508–9). “Wronging the gods” in Clouds must take many forms, but is centrally connected to Socrates’ denial of the existence of the conventional gods. He expresses this view as a form of causal reasoning, specifically a modus tollens argument that posits a cause, and then shows that its expected effects are not found, thereby ostensibly denying that the cause applies. Such arguments are widely employed in sophistic culture to argue against conventional beliefs about divinity.69 In general, they isolate a conventional assumption (in Socrates’ case, that Zeus punishes perjurers by the lightning bolt) and, after showing that an expected consequence does not obtain (not all perjurers are struck by lightning, while trees and temples are), claims that the belief is faulty. 68

69

The important exception is of course Xenophanes, whose approach to divinity is highly reflective on the processes by which humans form ideas about the gods. See Tor 2017: 104–54. On early argumentative methods, see Lloyd 1979: 66–98.

148 joshua billings STREPSIADES: It is quite evident that Zeus throws this [his thunderbolt] at perjurers. SOCRATES: How could this be, you idiot stinking of the Cronia, older than the moon! For if he really does strike perjurers, why then hasn’t he burned up Simon or Cleonymus or Theorus? For they’re major perjurers! But then he strikes his own temple and Sounion, the cape of Athens, and the great oaks – what’s he thinking? An oak surely doesn’t commit perjury! STREPSIADES: I don’t know, but it appears you speak well. (397–403)

Socrates’ argument against Zeus’s existence is transparently bad logic (Zeus might exist without always punishing perjurers), but it takes the form of more serious challenges to accepted beliefs about the gods that we find throughout sophistic culture. We see another use of such modus tollens argumentation in the Worse Argument’s speech, this time to deny the existence of justice: if justice existed, Zeus would have been punished for imprisoning his father; but he was not; therefore, justice does not exist (904–6).70 Such arguments are clearly associated with the new intellectual culture in Clouds, where they enable atheistic or scandalous positions by denying divine causality. The Aristophanic Socrates’ argument against the existence of Zeus is formally similar to a speech in Euripides’ Bellerophon, which denies the existence of all divinity on the grounds that there is no justice on earth. Does anyone say then that there are gods in heaven? There are not, there are not if anyone wishes not to be a fool and believe an ancient story. You yourselves, consider, not having an opinion on the basis of my words. I say that tyranny kills many and deprives them of possession and transgresses oaths to sack cities.

70

Zeus’s binding of his father seems to have been an acknowledged scandal and something of a topos for rhetoric; cf. Aeschylus Eumenides 640–2 (possibly the origin of the topos); Euripides Heracles 1341–6; Plato Euthyphro 5e; Republic 1.387b–c.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 149 And doing these things they are happy more than those acting piously in quiet every day. (F 286)

As in Clouds, the nonexistence of justice on earth – taken to be the essential province of divinity – ostensibly debunks belief in the existence of the gods. A crucial function of the gods is thought to be the maintenance of justice among humans, so the lack of apparent justice on earth appears to undermine belief in divine existence and causality. The same link is present in the Sisyphus fragment as well, which explains the idea of divinity as the creation of a “wise and shrewd” man.71 In the fragment, the fear of divine punishment ensures that humans will act justly. The speech describes how, by lodging the gods in the skies, “whence he knew came the fears for mortals and the benefits for their wretched life,” the clever inventor played on existing human fears about the inscrutability of the heavens.72 The idea of the gods grows stronger from its apparent demonstrability; the violence of the skies testifies to divine existence and to their concern for justice in human action. The same close linkage of justice and the nature of the gods is present in a fragment of Thrasymachus: “the gods do not notice human affairs; for they would not have failed to take account of the greatest thing of all for humans, justice (δικαιοσύνην). For we see that humans do not practice this.”73 Though the conclusion is not atheistic, it is certainly contrary to the conventional belief that the gods are involved in human affairs and, especially, that they care for justice. The form of demonstration is the same as that employed by Socrates and Bellerophon; since justice is not observable in human affairs, the gods either do not exist or do not involve themselves in human existence. The denial of the gods’ role in human affairs is arguably even more extreme than the denial of the gods’ existence; in breaking the causal link between divinity and human observation, the assertion renders questions about the gods unanswerable, somewhat along the lines of Protagoras’ agnosticism. A late report concerning 71

B25 = F19.12.

72

B25 = F19.29–30.

73

D17/B8.

150 joshua billings Antiphon suggests he may have taken a similarly skeptical view of divine involvement in human affairs, “abolishing providence (τὴν πρόνοιαν ἀναιρῶν) in his writings entitled On Truth.”74 It is hard to say what precisely this means, or how Antiphon might have argued, but it points to another voice who questioned the ability of humans to know the gods on the basis of their effects on human life.75 The recognition of the limits of human cognition concerning the gods is a significant way that the sophistic era is self-conscious concerning its mode of enlightenment. The method of debunking beliefs about divine causality by reference to demonstrable phenomena is common in the Hippocratic corpus and has often been taken as grounds to consider such texts “sophistic.”76 On the Sacred Disease attacks the idea that epilepsy has a divine cause with the logic that, if seizures did come from the gods, they should affect those with varied constitutions – but, since they only affect the phlegmatic, they must not be divine in origin (5). Accordingly, the author argues, the disease should be considered no more and no less sacred than any other disease, a naturalizing explanation that nevertheless preserves the idea that all diseases are brought on equally by divinity. A similar point is made in Airs, Waters, Places, where the impotence of certain Scythians is attributed to their riding horses; if the symptom had a divine cause, it would affect all Scythians equally, but since it only affects the wealthy, it must have a natural cause (22). While debunking one idea of divine causality, the treatises support another, even broader, view of the role of divinity in human life, claiming the high ground of enlightened piety against superstitious opposing views.77 Indeed, On the Sacred Disease goes even further in its claim that “one is more likely to be purified and sanctified by the god than polluted” (4), demonstrating a theological optimism that places it in a tradition going back to Xenophanes and Heraclitus and continuing 74 75

76

D37/B12. A number of words attributed to Antiphon by later lexicographers suggest that the relation between the apparent and the unseen was of particular interest to him: D2–4/ B4–6. 77 Laskaris 2002: 108–10. Jouanna 2012: 97–118.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 151 with Socrates. The Hippocratic corpus, then, shows how “sophistic” argumentative strategies concerning divine causality need not in themselves be skeptical or atheistic; in fact, they can be placed in service of traditional piety as much as they can be opposed to it. But like the skeptical views discussed above, the Hippocratic texts place natural causation and observable phenomena (rather than tradition or inspiration, say) at the center of their reasoning concerning the gods. Finally, it is worth considering an important alternative – and possibly an implicit or explicit response – to skeptical argumentation about divine causality. This way of thinking reasons from observable phenomena to infer the benevolence of the gods as causal of human existence – what David Sedley calls “creationism” or divine teleology.78 Sedley argues that Socrates may have expounded such a view on the basis of passages in the Memorabilia and Phaedo in which he expresses the belief that the gods created human beings and their environment for their benefit – expressing a kind of “creationist piety.”79 In Memorabilia 1.4, Xenophon’s Socrates argues in favor of divine providence (πρόνοια: 1.4.6), the quality apparently denied by Antiphon, by pointing to the ways that the human body is constructed to the best advantage. In a related passage of Book 4, Xenophon points to the way that Socrates tried to make his companions “prudent (σώφρονας) toward the gods” (4.3.2) by recounting a conversation with one Euthydemus. Socrates seeks to demonstrate “how carefully the gods have provided the things that humans need” (4.3.3). He goes on to describe a number of aspects of the human environment that address human needs; we are able to see because of the light from the sun, we can take rest because of the night, yet the stars allow us to note the hours passing while it is dark, and the moon allows us to track the passage of the month (4.3.4–5). He mentions a range of other benefactions: food and water, fire, measured warmth and cold, and the existence of other animals to aid in human labor (4.3.6–10). Each of these, Socrates suggests, exists for the benefit of 78

Sedley 2007: 78–92; 2008.

79

Sedley 2007: 82.

152 joshua billings humans, and thus offers reason to be thankful: “perceiving which things, it is necessary not to disdain what is not seen but realizing its power from the things that are, to honor the divinity” (4.3.14). If Aristophanes’ Socrates had reasoned from causal observations to the nonexistence of the gods, Xenophon’s Socrates does precisely the opposite, pointing to the physical environment as an effect of the benevolence of divinity. We find a strikingly similar argument in Euripides’ Suppliants, a work roughly contemporary to Clouds and predating Xenophon’s by at least three decades.80 There, the Athenian king Theseus delivers a speech on divine benevolence that anticipates the methods, terms, and conclusions of Xenophon’s Socrates, arguing that the human environment offers ample testimony to divinity’s presence in human existence. Recalling a debate he once engaged in, Theseus explains that he believes that human life has more of good than of bad, and goes on to list a series of divine benefactions that conduce to his optimistic worldview. I praise the god who set our life in order, rescuing it from its confused and brutish state. First he put reason in us, then he gave us a tongue to utter words, so that we can understand speech, gave us too the fruit of the ground as nourishment and with it the rain from heaven, so that it might nourish what grows in the earth and quench our bellies’ thirst. Furthermore he gave us protection against the winter cold and a way to ward off the sun god’s blazing heat, and the means to sail the sea so that each land might trade with others for the things it lacks. Matters that are unclear and of which we have no reliable 80

Sedley 2007: 80n12 dismisses the similarity because Euripides’ lines do not concern human creation (which is his focus, discussed in Memorabilia 1.4) but the human environment; yet Xenophon’s Socrates discusses many of these same aspects in Memorabilia 4.3. Even if the ultimate inference in Euripides relates to the conditions of humans rather than their creation, there is substantial overlap in argumentation. This similarity was recognized at least as early as Theiler 1924 [1965], who traced it to a common source in Diogenes of Apollonia – a thesis that has since been rejected (largely on the basis of Laks 1983: 250–7). But Theiler was right to see that the passages are importantly related – if not in a common source (which I find hard to rule out), then certainly in a common theological moment.

the sophists in the fifth-century enlightenment 153 knowledge are foretold to us by seers who examine fire, the folds of entrails, or the flight of birds. (201–13)

Nearly all of the benefactions Theseus points to are paralleled in the Memorabilia: intellect (4.3.11), speech (4.3.12), food (4.3.5), water (4.3.6), protection from the seasons (4.3.8–9), and even mantic capacity (4.3.12), which is similarly presented as a compensation for limited human knowledge.81 The fundamental claim, too, is similar: that human beings should recognize evidence of the kindness of the gods in their own capacities and natural environment. One might account for these similarities in different ways, but even assuming that the two texts are entirely independent, they offer a clear demonstration of the common questions and approaches across late-fifth-century intellectual culture. Divinity is considered in its causal relation to human existence, and nature scrutinized for what it reveals about the gods. Theseus’ reasoned praise of divinity represents an important document of the methods and conclusions of enlightenment thought concerning the gods, a serious (and, as far as our evidence allows us to see, original) contribution to contemporary theology. Theseus and Xenophon’s Socrates both expound an enlightened theology that derives claims about the gods not from myth, poetry, or religion, but from human experience. They have this fundamental method in common with Aristophanes’ Socrates and Euripides’ Bellerophon, who debunk traditional religion on the basis of observation. The late fifth century’s empirical tendency, discussed in the first section of this chapter, is manifest in both approaches to divine causality. An openness to competing and opposing claims, too, is evident in the way that all these speakers seek to convince their interlocutors of novel perspectives, and do so in dialogic forms. As this chapter has argued, these are all in a broad sense “sophistic” ways of thinking, even though the Sophists themselves may not be (and in some cases surely are not) 81

A more remote parallel is the chorus of Birds, who claim that birds act as gods to humans in marking the seasons and enabling commerce and divination (708–22). Though the method of reasoning is different, it attests to the interest in understanding humans relationally.

154 joshua billings their origins. All are bound by a sense of epistemological modesty and a readiness to revisit accepted beliefs. This points back to the first of the advantages of thinking about the late fifth century in terms of “enlightenment”: that the term recognizes an important aspect of the selfconsciousness of the period. The age of the Sophists experienced itself as one of rapid intellectual change, which brought exciting developments as well as more ambivalent ones. The confrontation of different views toward this climate of novelty is the source of some of the period’s most combustible tensions.82 Like the modern European Enlightenment, the fifth-century enlightenment was an age of revolution in intellectual, artistic, and political spheres.83 The second advantage of the term “enlightenment” is contained in this chapter’s project of recognizing the interconnections between spheres of thought ranging well beyond what we narrowly and anachronistically determine as “philosophy.” The Sophists’ own activity took place at the nexus of public and private, popular and elite contexts, and their ideas and approaches resonated with those of artists, researchers, educators, politicians, and many more. Indeed, the Sophists assumed all of these professional identities, to a greater or lesser extent. This multifaceted quality is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the Sophists in historical perspective – akin more to figures like Voltaire and Diderot than to their contemporaries Socrates or Democritus. This has, as Zeller noted in applying the term “enlightenment” to the era, advantages and drawbacks for our assessment of the Sophists in their time; their contributions may appear limited and eccentric within the history of philosophy, strictly construed, but they are undeniably central figures in the history of ideas. They reflect and shape this history of their time as much as any of their contemporaries do, as both products and producers of enlightenment. Recognizing this wider enlightenment context is an essential step toward understanding the Sophists. 82 83

These tensions are the subject of D’Angour 2011. See the essays in Goldhill and Osborne 2006 and Osborne 2007. As Koselleck 2004: 43–57 points out, the very meaning of the term “revolution” takes on its modern shape (as radical, disruptive change) toward the end of the European Enlightenment.

part ii

Thought

5

Nature and Norms Richard Bett

One central thing uniting the major Sophists – Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Antiphon, and Thrasymachus – is an interest in methods of effective public speaking and the teaching of rhetoric, and the title “Sophist” is often extended to other, lesser-known figures, some of them anonymous, on this basis. But they also had numerous theoretical interests. These were quite various, and included topics in what we would now call the natural sciences. But among the most significant is a distinction between physis, “nature,” and nomos, “norm”;1 almost all these thinkers – I find only one exception – drew this distinction implicitly or explicitly. They are not the only ones, or even perhaps the first, to do so. But they stand out for the manner in which they develop this distinction, laying out a number of novel views about the nature of human society and the way individuals should regard themselves in relation to it; these views seem to have a broader cultural influence, but the Sophists seem to be their core proponents. We can think of the Sophists as early social scientists,2 and their treatment of the nomos-physis distinction is a key aspect of this. We can perhaps go even further and see them as raising for the first time some central philosophical questions in what we would now call meta-ethics. While it is important to clarify the specific views involved, and the differences between them,3 this chapter will also address the issue I would like to thank the participants at the December 2019 Princeton workshop who commented on a draft of this chapter, especially Mauro Bonazzi and David Wolfsdorf. I also thank the two editors for a host of helpful written comments. 1 On the translations of these terms, see Kerferd 1981: 111–12. On physis, Beardslee 1918 is still instructive. I shall mostly use the Greek words. 2 I have argued for this in Bett 2002. 3 Fuller treatments of this subject include Heinimann 1945; Guthrie 1971: chap. 4; Kerferd 1981: chap. 10; de Romilly 1992: chaps. 4–6; Hofmann 1997; Bett 2002.

157

158 richard bett at a more general level. I aim to consider the origin of the physisnomos contrast itself, and what is distinctive about the way the Sophists exploit it. This, of course, will require some examination of non-Sophistic authors and texts.

physis and nomos: basic meanings and early usage Both terms go back to the earliest phase of Greek literature – physis appears in Homer and nomos in Hesiod – but they were not originally seen as a contrasting pair. A few general points concerning their meaning and usage will be helpful background.4 Physis is related to the verb phyô, the basic meaning of which is “grow” or “be born”; and physis itself can sometimes be used in the sense “birth” or “origin.”5 But the perfect tense of the verb, pephyka, expressing the state that has resulted from such growth or birth, can often simply mean “be” – with a strong suggestion, however, that this “being” is due to a process in the world independent of any human intervention.6 And this makes sense of the more common uses of the noun physis, where “nature” is usually the best one-word translation. At the beginning of the second book of his Physics, Aristotle says that things that exist “by nature” (physei) (by contrast with artifacts) are those with their own source of motion (192b13–15); and this is complemented in his so-called philosophical lexicon (Metaphysics Δ), where he gives the primary meaning of physis as “the being of those things that have a source of motion in themselves, as themselves” (Δ.4 1015a14–15). Moving specifically to the human sphere, he says at the beginning of the Politics that “what each thing is like when its coming-into-being is completed we call the physis of each thing” (1252b32–3), and on this basis he famously declares that “the human being is by nature (physei) a political animal” (1253a2–3). Some reference to a process is present in all these general statements, 4 5

6

This is discussed in detail in Heinimann 1945: chap. 2. An early philosophical example is Empedocles (early to mid-fifth century BCE), D53/B8. Indeed, according to LSJ, phyô is actually related to the English “be.”

nature and norms 159 but it is a process inherent in the things themselves, not one that we humans might have a role in shaping. And that also applies to the statement about human nature as political; we are political animals anyway, whatever we might try to do about it. Aristotle lives several generations later than the figures usually classified as Sophists. But the central point – the independence of physis from human influence – is already explicit in Gorgias: “The things we see have not the nature we want, but the one that each happens to have” (Helen 15). The same point is clearly presupposed in the Hippocratic medical treatises; for example, On the Nature [Physios] of Human Beings is interested in what human beings are made of and how they function, physiologically speaking, and in On Ancient Medicine, physis frequently refers to an individual’s physical constitution – an unalterable state that the doctor has to take into account in devising treatments (e.g., 3, 20). Physis, then, is what things are like as a result of processes in the world over which we have no control. “What things are like” can, of course, be understood in various different ways – certainly not only in terms of their physical constitution – and it has recently been said with some justice that “phusis manifests exceptional semantic stretch.”7 But this central point should be sufficient for our purposes. As for nomos, there is somewhat more to say about its preSophistic conception. Nomos can refer to written law, but also to customs or conventions not spelled out in any explicit prescription. However, prescriptiveness of some kind is central to the notion of nomos.8 Most generally, a nomos specifies something that is 7

8

Lloyd 2018: 37. Thanks to David Wolfsdorf for pointing out to me how expansive and underspecified the question “what is this thing’s nature?” can be. This is important in interpreting the famous statement of Democritus, “by convention (nomoi) sweet, by convention bitter [etc. – the list varies in different sources], in reality (eteêi) atoms and void” (D14/B9, D23/B125, D24/B117). It is “by convention” that we call things sweet or bitter, when in fact they are merely assemblages of atoms and void; this linguistic usage is a result of social pressure, just like the more overtly social and political nomoi that are the main subject of this chapter. Galen, in commenting on Democritus’ statement (D23b/A49), is right that nomos is here contrasted with an independent reality – in this respect Democritus is fully in accord with those who employ the nomos-physis distinction – but he misses the aspect of prescriptiveness. See Furley 1993: 75–8.

160 richard bett supposed to be done – and, in a more or less functional society, actually is done most of the time. But the source of these prescriptions is not necessarily society itself, and in the pre-Sophistic period nomos frequently refers to some kind of suprahuman law. In Hesiod it originates from Zeus; it applies to humans, and governs how humans should administer justice, but its source is divine (Works and Days 274–80). Heraclitus does speak of human law, but insists that “all the human laws are fed by the one divine law” (D105/B114). A much-cited fragment of Pindar speaks of “nomos king of all, mortal and immortal” (fr. 169a Snell-Maehler); what exactly Pindar was talking about is highly debatable, but here nomos seems to be superior even to the gods. And the idea of an unwritten divine law that transcends merely human edicts is central to the plot of Sophocles’ Antigone – which is usually dated in the 440s, around the time the first Sophists were starting to be active.9 This understanding of nomos does not lend itself to a contrast with physis – at least in the human realm, which is our concern here; both are thought of as unalterable by human decision or action and instead as exerting constraints on them. In order for nomos to be contrasted with physis, it needs to be regarded as purely a product of human society. Nevertheless, some of the texts just mentioned suggest how that shift might have become possible. By distinguishing between divine law and human law, even while stressing that the former provides necessary support for the latter, Heraclitus opens the possibility that the two might diverge. And in Sophocles’ Antigone – or rather, according to the character Antigone – this possibility becomes actual. The ruler Creon’s edict, that the traitor Polyneices’ body should not be buried – which Antigone ignores in favor of the divine law – is also called nomos, both by Creon himself and by Antigone (449, 452). If you think that there is a suprahuman divine 9

See especially Antigone 450–7: “It was not Zeus who issued this edict to me, nor did Justice, dwelling with the gods below, set up such laws for humans; nor did I think your edicts (mortal as you are) had such force as to be able to override the unwritten, unshakeable laws of the gods. They are not of today or yesterday, but live forever, and no one knows from whence they came.”

nature and norms 161 law, obviously you will think that human laws ought to conform to it. But if it is acknowledged that the two can diverge, that points toward a notion of nomos as merely human or merely social. To get there, of course, one would have to shed the notion of divine law. I doubt we can give a full and precise account of how that happened. But two related intellectual developments appear to be instrumental in that transition, and these I address in the next section. One is a growing interest in, and awareness of, differences in the nomoi of different societies. The other is a proliferation of accounts of the origins and development of human civilization.10 Both come in different flavors, and neither forces one to regard nomos and society as purely a human construct, with physis, nature, as something altogether different. But that thought becomes considerably easier in the atmosphere produced by these two intellectual trends.

nomos as contrasted with physis Clear evidence for the first trend is hard to find much before the Sophistic period. Xenophanes (ca. 560–465 BCE) emphasizes that different peoples depict gods in their own image and speculates that if animals had gods, they would do the same (D13/B16, D14/B15). One could well imagine this being combined with broader observations about different customs in different societies. But there is no evidence of that, and Xenophanes’ interest seems rather in showing the errors in conventional anthropomorphic thinking about the divine by contrast with his own conception of god. Often invoked in this connection is Hecataeus of Miletus (active around 500 BCE), who wrote a work of geography centered on the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The fragments show that he referred to a great many cities; but how far he elaborated on the varying customs in those cities is impossible to say from the meager remains of his work.11 Where we do find this kind of information (true or false) is much later, in Herodotus, 10

11

Both are drawn attention to in Kahn 1981, which is still essential reading on this subject. I register a few disagreements below. The fragments are collected in BNJ 1.

162 richard bett generally counted as the first Greek historian and roughly contemporary with the earliest Sophist Protagoras – thus active early in the second half of the fifth century BCE. Though introduced as concerning the war between the Greeks and the Persians, much of his rambling Histories consists of accounts of the customs of various nonGreek peoples. A similar interest is apparent in the collection of works ascribed to Hippocrates, the earliest of which are probably from the same period. In particular, the treatise Airs, Waters, Places compares numerous European and Asian peoples with respect to their physical characteristics and also to their nomoi (14, 16, 19). A recurring interest in the diversity of nomoi, then, can be traced back at least to the beginning of the Sophistic period, and is very possibly older than that. Something similar can be said about the second trend, the interest in the development of human civilization. Some have attempted to trace it well before the Sophistic period.12 Again Xenophanes is sometimes invoked, in virtue of the following two lines: “The gods did not reveal all things to mortals from the beginning, but in time by searching they discover better” (D53/B18). This is often read as a salute to human progress through the generations. But the point may just be that we do better by patiently searching for ourselves than by waiting for divine revelations – in which case it has nothing to do with human progress over time.13 Another candidate is Anaxagoras (probably 500–428 BCE), who says that there must be other worlds besides our own and in which (like here) there are humans living in cities and cultivating the earth (D13/B4). But I see no reference here to the development of human institutions and expertise. Where we do find clear evidence of this is in tragedy of the mid-fifth century – which no doubt reflects broader discussions of the subject at the time. Prometheus Bound includes a long speech describing an original, pre-civilized 12

13

Most extreme is Naddaf 2005, claiming to find accounts of the growth of human society in the earliest Presocratic thought; for the problems here, see Schofield 2006 and Mansfeld 1997 (on the original French version). Kahn 1981 is much more cautious but still, I think, over-optimistic. For this reading, see Lesher 1991.

nature and norms 163 “state of nature” for humans, followed by the development of many forms of expertise, among them arithmetic, writing, agriculture, and seafaring (lines 436–506). The speaker is Prometheus, who takes sole credit for all this, but the topic does not require a mythological framework.14 Prometheus Bound is ascribed to Aeschylus, who died in 456 BCE. But his authorship has been widely doubted,15 and the play may be a little later. Another such case is, again, Sophocles’ Antigone, in the famous choral ode describing the wonders of humanity (332–75), which speaks of similar technical achievements – this time due to humans themselves rather than a god – but also political ones, including nomos (355, 368).16 The Hippocratic corpus is relevant here, too; the treatise On Ancient Medicine speculates about early humanity and its gradual discovery of medicine (3). To repeat, these kinds of accounts alone do not yet take us to a clear physis-nomos distinction. A famous story in Herodotus, illustrating the diversity of nomoi, has the Persian king Darius asking Greeks and Indians how much money it would take for them each to adopt the burial practices of the others; the answer is that no amount would be enough (3.38). The moral is that each culture considers its own nomoi the best. But instead of this leading to reflections on the culturally restricted character of nomos, by contrast with a physis over which we have no control, it instead leads Herodotus to quote Pindar’s saying that “nomos is king of all” and to declare that making fun of religious practices sanctioned by nomos is insane. As we saw, Pindar’s own point is obscure, and so is the precise lesson Herodotus takes from his words. However, it is clear that Herodotus is not trying to flag nomos as a product of human society; he is simply not thinking along those lines at all.17 As for the stories of early 14

15 16

17

See the next section on Protagoras’ use of the same device, clearly recognizing its dispensability. For a brief review of the issue, see Lloyd 2010: 28–30. Whether Sophocles sees this as an unalloyed positive is another question; I have discussed this in Bett forthcoming: section III. Thomas 2000: 125 suggests that Herodotus’ stress on the importance of nomos implies a sense of some alternative (though she does not commit herself to any particular one). This may well be correct but does not alter the present point.

164 richard bett human development, we saw that some of these do not even mention nomos, or social and political institutions; they are instead wholly preoccupied with various forms of practical expertise (technê). Another example of this is the prehistorical opening of the History of Diodorus Siculus (first century BCE), which is generally thought to be based on a fifth-century source or sources.18 After discussing the origin of the world, including living things, it talks of the first humans and their discovery of various technai (1.8). One of these is language, which of course can be used for social and political, or more generally normative, ends. But although the resulting linguistic groups are called “communities” (systêmata), and though the need for safety is said to bring people into groups in the first place, that theme receives no elaboration whatever.19 To dwell on these topics, then, does not automatically bring about a contrast between physis and nomos. Nevertheless, it is in the same loosely defined period of most of the texts just considered – early in the second half of the fifth century – that we first find a thinker to whom a physis-nomos distinction is explicitly attributed. This is Archelaus, cited by several sources as a teacher of Socrates and pupil of Anaxagoras.20 We do not know his dates, but these associations suggest he was active around 450 BCE or a little later. Little evidence for his thought survives, but he seems to have concerned himself primarily with physical questions, following Anaxagoras on several points. However, we are told that he was also interested in ethics – as one would certainly expect given the link with Socrates. Diogenes Laertius says that, in addition to physical topics, “he philosophized about laws (nomôn) and what is fine and just,” and held “that the just and the shameful are not by physis but by nomos” (D22/A1, cf. D21/A6); the 18

19

20

The source is often taken to be Democritus; see Cole 1967 (though with qualifications at 59) and valid suspicions at Kerferd 1981: 141. Kerferd 1981 considers the Diodorus passage a text of “major importance” in a chapter called “The Theory of Society” (p. 141). While the passage certainly has interesting links with other passages deserving this description (on which more later), he seems to me to exaggerate its social dimension. P1–6. A valuable recent study of Archelaus on this topic is Betegh 2016.

nature and norms 165 Suda repeats the last point.21 The Refutation of All Heresies, generally attributed to the early Christian Hippolytus,22 gives a little more detail; after some information on the origins of the cosmos, including that humans and other animals first came from and were nourished by mud (a detail also in Diogenes), he adds, “And the humans were separated from the others and established leaders and laws (nomous) and skills and cities and the rest” (1.9 = D2/A4). There is no hint here of any role for the divine in ethics or politics; a god appears in the testimonies only as a purely physical principle (D9–11/A11, 12, 14), and it is humans themselves who create these various institutions. We have a clear distinction between what is natural and immune to human manipulation (including the origin of the human species itself) and what is due to human activity or decision, with ethics and politics on the latter side. While we cannot be absolutely sure that the pair of terms itself goes back to Archelaus, this is, at least in effect, the fully developed physis-nomos contrast. What inferences, if any, Archelaus may have drawn from his contrast we cannot say. A very interesting case has been made for Archelaus as the thinker primarily under attack in Aristophanes’ Clouds (first produced in 423, although the version we have has been revised).23 The play casts a sharp eye at various ideas in vogue among intellectuals at the time. A major facet of this attack is that if one thinks of society’s rules as mere nomoi – that is, as human prescriptions not anchored in anything outside themselves – there is no reason to obey them if it suits one not to do so; the end point of this is that it is fine for a son to beat his father – or even his mother. Aristophanes draws attention to a potentially dangerous implication of the nomos-physis contrast. But even if Archelaus is the target, that does not show that Archelaus himself endorsed this implication. 21 22

23

Suda s.v. “Archelaus” = A2 (not in LM). Marcovich 1986: 8–17 makes the case for Hippolytus. But LM still lists the author as “(Ps.-?) Hippolytus.” Betegh 2013.

166 richard bett As this case shows, the nomos-physis contrast is not limited to those usually called Sophists. Nor is it universally employed by those who are; I see no use of it, for example, in the surviving testimony on Gorgias.24 Perhaps the absence of such a contrast supports Meno’s claim, in Plato’s Meno (95c), that unlike other Sophists Gorgias limited himself to teaching rhetoric and did not involve himself with ethical questions (though Plato clearly thinks this is not the whole story – more on this later). A number of scholars have questioned the traditional use of the term “Sophist,” arguing that it is too beholden to Plato’s jaundiced views, and fails to take into account both the variety of ideas held by those usually called Sophists and the many connections between these ideas and the broader intellectual culture.25 What I have just said about who adopts the physis-nomos distinction may seem to give further support to this. However, with the notable exception of Gorgias, it is those traditionally called Sophists who seem to go furthest in drawing out implications from the physis-nomos contrast; rather than merely alluding to the contrast, they develop it. While our evidence for this is often Plato, there are other sources as well. So perhaps there is more to the notion of the Sophists as a distinct intellectual movement than its recent detractors have allowed. We can find the nomos-physis distinction in both Herodotus and the Hippocratic corpus. But the distinction is typically just mentioned and then dropped; it does not get developed into any kind of substantive thesis. A few examples must suffice. In Herodotus, certain points about the extent of the continents (4.39, 4.45) or about where Egypt begins and ends (2.16–17) are said to be established only by nomos, where this indicates that it is in some way arbitrary. One 24

25

I have found only three mentions of nomos in the remains of Gorgias: two in the Economium of Helen (7 and 16) and one in the fragmentary Funeral Oration (D28/B6). In none of these cases is there any hint of a contrast with physis. Indeed, in the Funeral Oration, Gorgias dismissively contrasts human law with a higher, “most divine and most common law,” which seems to hark back to the earlier picture found in Heraclitus and in Sophocles’ Antigone. Of course, one would not expect a funeral speech to reflect cutting-edge philosophizing. See, e.g., Wallace 1998; 2015: 19–21; Tell 2011.

nature and norms 167 might expect him to contrast this with how things really are (perhaps signaled with the term physis). But regarding the continents this does not happen; Herodotus is happy to follow the nomos in question. In the case of Egypt, the Greeks’ nomos is contrasted with what he calls the “correct account” (orthos logos); but he simply mentions the Greeks’ erroneous belief and moves on.26 Again, at one point in Airs, Waters, Places, nomos is juxtaposed with physis (14). The Macrocephaloi (Long-Heads) are said to live up to their name. This effect was originally produced by a kind of binding process that squeezed their heads out of the natural round shape – this was nomos. But eventually this nomos-induced lengthening became the physis of these people; they are now just naturally long-headed – nomos is no longer needed. However, the author appears not entirely convinced of this; he adds that long-headed children are not being born from these people as frequently as before, and explains it as a result of a weakened observation of the head-binding nomos. One could easily imagine this becoming the occasion for more general reflections about nature versus nurture, but that is not what happens; these brief and confusing remarks about the relative influence of nomos and physis are all we get.27 One might say that we would not expect a historian, or a medical writer, to expound on the physis-nomos contrast in detail; they have other concerns. But this just confirms my point that, while the contrast itself may be widely familiar, the Sophists are distinctive in what they do with it. Their interest in the contrast is (as we would now say) sociological or philosophical; while they exploit it in several different ways, they are concerned, broadly, with the nature of human society and, even more broadly, with the nature of value. The remainder of the chapter attempts to document this.

26

27

See also 2.45, 7.103–4. For these examples I am indebted to Thomas 2000: chap. 4. Thomas argues that Herodotus is much more integrated into the new learning of his time than a traditional image of him would have allowed. The case is a strong one, but consistent, I think, with my proposed picture of the Sophists’ distinctiveness. See also On the Nature of Human Beings 2, 5; On Regimen 4, 11.

168 richard bett

the sophists’ developments of the contrast I begin with the first Sophist, Protagoras. Our evidence for Protagoras’ concern with physis and nomos consists almost entirely in the long speech given to him by Plato in the Protagoras. Obviously we cannot tell how precisely Plato is reproducing the ideas of the historical Protagoras. But Plato himself provides evidence elsewhere (in his Meno) that the topic of this speech – whether virtue can be taught – was of concern to the Sophists. Besides, the ideas expressed in the speech are quite atypical within the totality of Plato’s writings; and it is hard to see why he would misrepresent the thinking of someone well known and (at the time of composition) relatively recent. All this suggests that in composing this speech for Protagoras he is drawing on the writings of Protagoras himself.28 Like the author of Prometheus Bound, Protagoras tells a story of the origins of human society featuring Prometheus. However, Protagoras offers his audience the choice of a story or an argument (logos, 320c). The implication is that he could have conveyed the same ideas without reference to Prometheus. Since we know from a fragment of his own words that the historical Protagoras was an agnostic (D10/B4), and since Plato’s Protagoras says that a story would be “more pleasant (chariesteron, 320c6–7), it looks as if the mythical framework (which he eventually abandons, 324d) is for entertainment, along with a certain nod to tradition; what he is really talking about is the development of human society by humans themselves. Again we are told of the invention (or, in the mythical telling, the bestowal) of various forms of expertise (technai). But a crucial technê, on which he dwells at length, is the technê of politics. The first attempts at human communities failed because people did not yet have this technê and so could not get along; this inability to live together is remedied only once they are given “justice and shame” (dikên . . . kai aidô, 322c7). It is stressed that, unlike other human abilities, these must be given to everyone; otherwise communities cannot survive. Thus the Athenians, in their democracy, 28

On the question of authenticity, see Manuwald 2013.

nature and norms 169 are right to give everyone a say in general political matters; as Protagoras puts it, one must have some trace of justice (and thus the ability to make judgments and speak on it) or not be human (323c1–2). But Protagoras goes on to argue that this does not show, as Socrates had earlier suggested (319b–e), that virtue cannot be taught. On the contrary, he says that people know very well that virtue (including justice, 323e3) does not belong to them by nature (physei), but by teaching and practice (323c5–6). This point is developed in some detail. The institution of punishment is cited as key evidence in its favor; but this in turn is connected with the existence of laws, nomoi, which are described as the “findings of good and ancient lawgivers” (326d6). The resulting picture is of some subtlety. The capacity to develop the social attitudes needed for a community to function is presented as universal among humans and hence presumably as natural. But the actual development of these attitudes requires growing up in a community and being molded by the pressures of what we could call socialization. Nomoi are not particularly highlighted among these pressures and, when he does mention them, Protagoras seems to have in mind written laws in particular (326d). But if we think of nomos more broadly as the norms embedded in a society’s habitual practices, it seems clear that the role of nomos in the development of the required attitudes is absolutely central. Nomos, then, is required for humans to become social beings, even though this process rests on a basis of physis; the account is not so different from what Aristotle says about the comparative roles of nature and habit in the development of virtue of character (Nicomachean Ethics II.1 1103a23–26). Protagoras does not explicitly observe that nomoi may differ from one society to another. But that is obviously compatible with this account, so long as these nomoi play their civilizing role. It is also possible that a society might find it necessary to revise existing nomoi, if this was needed to improve – or to prevent a decline in – the conditions of that society; Protagoras does not have to be seen as a defender of the status quo.29 29

Kerferd 1981: 129–30 is good on this topic. Kahn 1981: 106 provides a contrary view.

170 richard bett Nonetheless, there is no suggestion in this account of an antipathy between nomos and physis; on the contrary, the former builds on the latter. And to that extent it is not unreasonable to classify Protagoras as a “supporter of nomos” – alongside Herodotus, among others.30 But there is an essential difference between the two, seeing that in Protagoras we find sophisticated reflection about the relation between nomos and physis and about the contribution of each to the life of humans as social beings; as we saw, Herodotus shows nothing of the kind. This is what I meant by the Sophists’ distinctive contribution concerning the physis-nomos contrast. Other Sophists took their reflections on the subject in a different direction. For them, there was an opposition between physis and nomos; nomos imposed artificial barriers to what were conceived as naturally preferable states of affairs. Two different views along these lines are apparent from the period. One held that divisions, including comparative rankings, among people were due to nomos and that these divisions masked a fundamental, or natural, human equality. Another held that nomos restrained the natural pursuit of self-interest and that the sensible way to behave was to satisfy one’s natural drives and ignore nomos – as long as one could get away with it. While we might see these as very different in political flavor, the first sounding traditionally leftist and the second radically anarchist, there is in fact no necessary conflict between them; interestingly, both are to be found in the papyrus fragments of the same work, Truth, by the Sophist Antiphon. On the first point, Antiphon argues that by nature (physis) any of us is fitted to be either Greek or barbarian – that is, non-Greek – since we all have the same basic natural endowment of senses, hands, feet, and emotions (D38b/B44B). That we are estranged from the people of other nations is therefore a departure from nature, which Antiphon expresses by saying that “we have become ‘barbarianized’ (bebarbarômetha) toward each other.” This trades on the connotation 30

For this view, see, e.g., Guthrie 1971: 60–79; Kahn 1981: 105–7.

nature and norms 171 “barbarous” that the word barbaros had already acquired by the fifth century; we treat each other and are each viewed by the other not just as foreign but as savage or uncivilized. But since he regards this as a mistake, there is an irony in using the word with the latter implication; he is decrying this usage even while exploiting it.31 There is no explicit mention of nomos here, but this divergence from physis, as Antiphon sees it, is in context easily viewed as a product of nomos. Besides, immediately following the legible portion of the fragment are some very patchy remains that probably include the words “they agreed” and “laws.”32 It seems likely that Antiphon continued with an account of the origins of human society similar to those we saw earlier; if so, the juxtaposition of the natural condition of human equality with the invention of laws – these producing an outcome in which this natural equality is not respected – will surely have put the focus on nomos as the culprit.33 Plato gives the Sophist Hippias a speech of similar character (Protagoras 337c–d) and, as with Protagoras in the same dialogue, it is natural to see this as acknowledging a view he actually held. Pleading with the company to settle their differences over the rules for their discussion, Hippias says that all those present are kinsmen and fellow citizens – by physis, not by nomos; “by nature like is akin to like, but nomos, being a tyrant over humans, forces many things on us against nature” (337d1–3).34 It is not clear how far we are to take this; it is a kinship of wise men, and of Greeks only, albeit from different citystates. However, the notion of nomos as creating artificial and regrettable barriers to a naturally equal condition is common to Hippias and 31 32

33

34

I have discussed this further in Bett 2002: 247–9. Not included in LM. The full text with commentary is in Decleva Caizzi 1989. (Note, however, that Pendrick 2002 does not accept Decleva Caizzi’s reconstruction of these lines.) One might object that it would be nomos in the sense of “custom,” not explicitly enacted laws, that would lead to this outcome. But, at least in this period, the distinction between these two types of nomos seems to receive very little attention. The word “tyrant” (tyrannos) is surely a deliberate distortion of Pindar’s phrase. On the negative implications of the term tyrannos in this context, see Hoffmann 1997: 154–6.

172 richard bett Antiphon.35 We also know that some people prior to Aristotle argued that slavery is against nature, because he explicitly argues against this in the first book of his Politics; he does not name its proponents, but it is easy enough to connect it with this line of thought promoted by some Sophists. The same can perhaps be said about the suggestion in some of Euripides’ plays (especially Medea and Hippolytus) that the position of women in society is not what it should be. I return now to the other way of driving a wedge between physis and nomos, also to be found in Antiphon (D38a/B44A). Antiphon begins by saying that justice consists in following the laws of the city of which one happens to be a member. He continues: “A person would therefore use justice most advantageously for himself if he treated the laws (nomous) as important when there are witnesses, but matters of nature (ta tês physeôs) when left alone without witnesses.” The text then expands on the advantages of following nature – that is, the dictates of one’s own natural desires – and the disadvantages of treating law as more important than nature: “most of those things that are just according to law are laid down in a way that is at war with nature” and “the advantages laid down by the laws are shackles on nature, but those laid down by nature are free.”36 This is a very different take on the relation between physis and nomos from what we found in Protagoras; nomos is an unwelcome obstacle to the expression of one’s true nature.37 Similar positions are rather better known from Plato. The Sophist Thrasymachus, as portrayed by Plato near the beginning of 35

36

37

Xenophon also attributes to Hippias a dismissive attitude toward nomos (Memorabilia 4.4.14), the central point being that they are so easily alterable; the same people who enact laws often reject or amend them later. On the significance of this, see Furley 1981. Law is also referred to as a peisma (col. 6, l.3) – at least, if the usual reconstruction of the text is correct. Peisma may mean “rope,” which would continue the theme of law as binding us against our will (so Gagarin and Woodruff 1995 and Decleva Caizzi 1989). But peisma may also mean “confidence,” and it is possible to read the text with this sense (so LM – “it would not be useless to obey the laws”). This interpretation has been resisted by some, but appears to me (as to Furley 1981) the clear implication of the text. See further Bett 2002: 249–50. In addition to the scholars cited there for opposing interpretations, see Gagarin 2002: chap. 3.

nature and norms 173 his Republic, agrees implicitly with Antiphon in identifying justice, in any given city, with the prevailing laws. This leads him to declare that justice is “nothing but the interest of the stronger” (1.338c1–2), since the faction in power will always create laws to benefit itself. It also leads him, later in the discussion, to claim that injustice is one’s own interest (1.344c8) – it will suit those outside the ruling faction better to ignore the prevailing laws than to follow them. Thrasymachus does not use the language of physis to set against this cynical view of nomos, but the position is otherwise close to Antiphon’s. Whether all this can be attributed to the historical figure Thrasymachus is hard to say; unlike the set-piece speeches that Plato puts in the mouths of Protagoras and Hippias, Thrasymachus’ position develops in the course of debate with Socrates, and we know very little about Thrasymachus independently of Plato.38 However, it is clear that Plato thinks a dismissive attitude toward nomos can result only in a recommendation to ignore it in favor of narrowly selfish concerns – much as Aristophanes, in the Clouds, seems to have sensed danger in the physis-nomos distinction itself. Plato takes this line of thinking still further in the character of Callicles in his Gorgias. Callicles is certainly not a Sophist in the traditional sense; he is presented not as teaching rhetoric for a living but rather as seeking the political life (in some unspecified form). But he takes the rejection of conventional nomos to an extreme, arguing instead for a “law of nature” (nomos physeôs, 483e3 – a paradoxical formulation, surely intended to provoke) that dictates the pursuit of one’s own interest, including the trampling of the strong on the weak when convenient. Since he is never mentioned outside of Plato’s Gorgias, Callicles may not have existed; he may simply be Plato’s fiction, a nightmare vision of where sophistic thinking and practice (embodied in the seemingly benign figure of Gorgias earlier in the dialogue) might lead. However, the example of Antiphon shows that Plato is not just inventing this position. 38

Maguire 1971 argues that while the initial claim about justice can be connected with the real Thrasymachus, the idea that injustice is one’s own interest cannot. The case is not conclusive, but neither can it be dismissed.

174 richard bett The anti-nomos position, especially in this second version, received some pushback. Some pages from the Protrepticus of the late Platonist Iamblichus seem to be lifted from a text of the fifth or fourth century BCE, which is responding to those who would reject nomos. The Anonymous of Iamblichus, as this unknown author of the Anonymus Iamblichi is referred to (LM 40/DK 89), argues for the importance of eunomia, “lawfulness” (6.4, 7.1, etc.). The insistence on this, and on the inability of human beings to live together without it, has much in common with the position expounded in Protagoras’ speech. But Anonymous is aware of views that advocate rejection of nomos (anomia), and replies, “One should not rush to grab more than one’s fair share, nor think that the power that results from grabbing more than one’s fair share is virtue, and that obeying the nomoi is cowardice” (6.1). Like Protagoras he does not wholly separate nomos from physis, stating that “these [i.e., law and justice] are strongly bound in nature,” where the context makes clear that this is human nature (6.1);39 and he makes what looks like yet another reference to Pindar’s saying “nomos is king of all” (6.1) – but this time at face value, as Herodotus did, not critically like Hippias. Some have attempted to identify the author as one of the known Sophists, but lack of evidence means that we simply cannot tell. What we can say is that Anonymous provides a clear indication of the reach of Sophistic reflections on physis, nomos, and the relations between them. Another indication of this reach is a fragment of drama quoted by Sextus Empiricus (Adversus Mathematicos 9.54 = T63); the play was probably a satyr play called Sisyphus, though Sextus does not specify this.40 Sextus does say that the author was Critias, a cousin of Plato’s mother – although a few of the same lines are quoted elsewhere (Aëtius 1.7.2) and Euripides is given as the author. Either way, the author is not a Sophist; yet the fragment is so clearly connected 39 40

On this, see Hoffmann 1997: 304–6. I have discussed these lines and the scholarship surrounding them in Bett 2002: 251–4; here I give only a bare outline.

nature and norms 175 with the ideas we have been discussing that it is regularly included (under the name of Critias) in collections of materials from the Sophists. The lines begin by describing an original violent state of nature that is overcome by the creation of nomos. However, this proved not to be enough; people followed nomos in public but ignored it when no one was watching. The solution to this problem was the invention by a “wise and clever man” of the idea of god. According to the story put about by this shrewd character, there never is a situation when no one is watching you; even if no humans are around, a god is watching you, who could punish you for any transgressions. Thus religion is conceived as a device to instill compliance with nomos. This device is clearly portrayed as beneficial – respect for nomos is essential for the survival of society, and this ensures it – and to that extent the view expressed by the speaker seems akin to that of Protagoras and the Anonymus Iamblichi. The catch is that the fragment very explicitly presents this idea of a divine overseer as a fiction. And this seems to push the thought more toward the antinomian views of Antiphon, Thrasymachus, and Callicles; nomos is imposed on us as something obligatory, but there is actually no reason to follow it except when you risk being found out. I do not think there is any solution to this conundrum; the fragment pushes in two conflicting directions, each of which we have seen in other thinkers. But since it is a speech given in a play rather than part of a philosophical treatise, the author no doubt has other aims than consistency of doctrine; with no other lines of the play surviving, we are not likely to discover what these were. The idea of god as a backup for human authorities is not attested in any of the Sophists, though Aristotle later gave it partial endorsement (Metaphysics Λ.8 1074b3–8). However, we do find a slightly different version of the idea that god is a human invention. This brings us to Prodicus, the major Sophist I have not yet mentioned. Numerous texts present Prodicus as holding that aspects of the natural world that particularly benefit human life, as well as humans who made particularly beneficial inventions or discoveries, came to

176 richard bett be revered as gods;41 belief in gods is thus the product of a kind of confused gratitude. On this view we could think of religion itself as a nomos, a set of practices and norms that are purely a product of human society; and, indeed, in this context Sextus appears to quote a sentence of Prodicus using the verb corresponding to nomos. Ancient humans, Prodicus says, “considered as (enomisan) gods everything that benefits our life” (9.18); while the verb can simply mean “think,” it often has the connotation “treat as a nomos.” This could, of course, easily have been combined with the idea that belief in god has socially beneficial effects; but we have no evidence of this in the testimonies on Prodicus. It is, however, tempting to suppose that Protagoras may have pursued some such line of thinking. As I mentioned earlier, Protagoras is known to have been an agnostic. And we are told that the sentence declaring his agnosticism (cited by several authors) came at the beginning of a book of his called On the Gods (Eusebius Praeparatio evangelica 14.3.7). If that was how it started, what else could the book have contained? A plausible answer is that it addressed the social functions belief in god can have, whether or not gods actually exist.

conclusion I close with a few more general reflections. First, this sociological approach to religion, as we may call it, which is attested in at least one Sophist, and which the Critias fragment shows must have been circulating at the time, may be more important than has generally been realized for the growth of the cluster of views about nomos and its relation to physis that we have examined here. We saw that the earliest references to nomos treated it as something divine and hence as not clearly differentiable from physis. We also saw that two developments that might seem to have encouraged the drawing of this distinction – emphasis on the diversity of nomoi and interest in 41

See, e.g., Cicero De natura deorum 1.118; Sextus Adversus Mathematicos 9.18, 50–2. The full evidence is in Mayhew 2011, texts 70–8. I have discussed this in Bett 2013; on god, see especially pp. 299–303.

nature and norms 177 the development of human civilization – did not by themselves necessarily lead to nomos being set in contrast to physis. What will definitely get one to that distinction is to shift from a traditional religious conception of the gods to a focus on the human phenomenon of belief in the divine. If religion itself is a nomos, a human product, then laws and all the other institutions that allow society to function are hard not to regard as human products as well; and this in turn makes one wonder which features of human existence are due not simply to the influence of society but in fact belong to our nature.42 If there is anything to this line of interpretation, then the harsh ending of Aristophanes’ Clouds – where the divine Clouds call out Strepsiades for failing to respect them and the other gods, and he then burns down the school that has led him and his son astray – perhaps shows more insight into the heart of Sophistic thinking than it has been given credit for. At any rate, that thinking may be seen as raising for the first time, even if not in a fully explicit way, the question of the objectivity (or otherwise) of values, as well as the question of our reasons for behaving ethically. To treat nomos as a product of human decision is not necessarily to conclude that values are not objective; for, as we have seen, some views of this kind nonetheless retain some link between nomos and physis. But it does at least force the issue of the status of ethical values and the nature of their hold on us (if any); and this is still more obvious when it comes to views that portray nomos as in some way in conflict with physis. Plato’s Republic answers the question “why be just?” Since he features Thrasymachus in the first book, and since Glaucon’s crucial challenge at the beginning of the second book is explicitly presented as a reformulation of Thrasymachus’ position (2.358b–c), it is pretty clear that Plato has Sophistic treatments of nomos and physis in mind as the primary target. If the question 42

Prodicus wrote a book called On the Nature of Human Beings (possibly in response to the Hippocratic work of the same title), which may have considered that question. But we know virtually nothing about what it contained; see Mayhew 2011, texts 63–5 with commentary.

178 richard bett “why should I be moral?” is still important for us today, and if we can see this question as recognizably related to the Republic’s question, the Sophists’ reflections on this topic can be regarded as having an abiding significance. Finally, to the extent that reflections on this topic can be seen as characteristic of the Sophists – and I have tried to argue that there is some truth to this – this seems to put them sharply at odds with Socrates (despite his apparent link with Archelaus, who was our earliest evidence for the physis-nomos distinction). Some scholars are inclined to count Socrates as part of the Sophistic movement.43 But neither Plato’s nor Xenophon’s Socrates shows the slightest tendency to regard values as a matter of human decision; the nature of the virtues, and, more generally, how one should live – the central question for Socrates – is always treated as something we need to find out. (A satisfactory answer may depend on something about human beings, but that too will be something that obtains independently of our decisions.) Nor, for that matter, does Socrates show any interest in the diversity of nomoi or in the origins of human civilization,44 the two intellectual trends that, I suggested, pointed in the direction of a nomos-physis contrast. Nietzsche’s call for philosophers to “create values” (Beyond Good and Evil 211) would have been anathema to Socrates. But I think the Sophists would have been at least to some extent on Nietzsche’s wavelength. Moreover, since we have seen many signs that the Sophists’ interest in the nomos-physis contrast is continuous with the wider intellectual culture, it is Socrates and Plato, and not the Sophists, who (at least on this score) come across as the outliers – a point that Nietzsche would certainly have appreciated.45

43

44

45

E.g., Kerferd 1981: 55–7; LM, who include Socrates in their volumes on the Sophists (section 33). The Republic is not a counterexample to this (even supposing we can associate this with the historical Socrates); its account of the growth of a society is an account of how society should develop, not how it did. I have discussed this further in Bett 2002: section IV. See, e.g., Twilight of the Idols, “What I Owe to the Ancients,” 2.

6

The Turn to Language Mauro Bonazzi

introduction An interest in and an admiration for those capable of speaking well was a recurrent feature of the Greek world from its most Archaic period, and became especially important in the fifth century BCE. It does not come as a surprise, then, that much of the Sophists’ controversial fame depended on their ability to speak, and that a prominent part of their teaching was devoted to making their students “clever at speaking” (deinos legein), as the young Hippocrates remarks in Plato’s Protagoras (312d). Speeches, logoi, are the Sophists’ specialty. At stake, however, was not only the practical issue of how to use words successfully in public debates and private meetings. As George Kerferd, among others, has remarked, logos in Greek refers to speeches, words, and arguments, but also to mental processes, and it can even indicate structural principles or natural laws.1 The Sophists explored these problems from all angles, with a truly remarkable breadth of perspective and competence. The aim of the present chapter is to offer an overview of their investigations. It will trace three specific areas on which the Sophists brought to bear their interest in logos: grammar and the issue of the correct names; the criticism of and engagement with poetry; and rhetoric and the effectiveness of argumentative techniques. 1

Kerferd 1981: 83: “There are three main areas of its [logos’] application or use, all related to an underlying conceptual unity. These are first of all the area of language and linguistic formulation, hence speech, discourse, description, statement, arguments (as expressed in words) and so on; secondly the area of thought and mental processes, hence thinking, reasoning, accounting for, explanation (cf. orthos logos) etc.; thirdly, the area of the world, that about which we are able to speak and to think, hence structural principles, formulae, natural laws and so on, provided that in each case they are regarded as actually present in and exhibited in the world-process.” See also Gagarin 2008.

179

180 mauro bonazzi As it will turn out, these explorations cannot be said to be part of, or to aim at, a systematic theory. But they nonetheless helped to inaugurate the study of language for its own sake, a topic that would play an important role in the philosophical debates of the following centuries.2 For the Sophists, the interest in logos aims not only at mobilizing means of persuasion to affect their (or their clients and students’) success; it emerges also as a way of stimulating critical reflection on the values of the society and of investigating the human condition in all its complexity and richness. This richness is evidenced by the broad importance of the notion of “correctness” (orthotês), which occurs regularly throughout their testimonies and fragments. Certain of the Sophists’ approaches are based on the contention

that

logos

is

our

only

means

of

developing

a relationship with reality – or, an even stronger thesis associated with Gorgias, that logos constitutes and creates its own reality. Whereas

for

many

previous

thinkers

(e.g.,

Parmenides

or

Heraclitus) logos enables us to get in touch with an objective and well-ordered reality, for the Sophists it is a tool that a human can – and must – use to give meaning to things, a meaning that things do not necessarily possess in themselves. The Sophists’ claim to be able to define or create such meaning is at the heart of the education they offered.

correcting words Many sources bear witness to the Sophists’ interest in grammar. This applies especially to Protagoras, who focused on morphological and syntactic issues; apparently, he was the first to distinguish the gender of nouns (male, female, and neuter, D23/A27), while also proposing several corrections for names in use in his day. Thus, he suggested that the female nouns mênis (“wrath,” “frenzy”) and pêlêx (“helmet”), two terms familiar to Homer’s audience, should be regarded as masculine – either on the basis of morphological criteria (because names ending in 2

Guthrie 1971: 220.

the turn to language 181 sigma (ς) or xi (ξ) are usually masculine) or because of their meaning (insofar as war is an eminently masculine pursuit; see D24/A28).3 Protagoras also distinguished four verbal modes (indicative, subjunctive, optative, and imperative), which he linked to four types of speech (request, question, reply, and command), once again taking the occasion to criticize Homer, who had addressed the goddess with a command (“Sing, Goddess, the wrath”) rather than a prayer (D25/ A29). Finally, Diogenes Laertius (9.52) seems to inform us, more controversially, of his interest in the tenses of the verbs.4 Protagoras was not the only Sophist to deal with these problems. Prodicus too was famous for his linguistic classifications, as we will soon see; Hippias investigated rhythms, harmonies, and correctness of letters (D15/A12); and Alcidamas of Elaea, a pupil of Gorgias’ active early in the fourth century BCE, proposed an alternative to Protagoras’ speech-type division (affirmation, negation, question, and address; fr. 24 Patillon). The coining of neologisms can probably be traced back to the same context as well. Among the others, Antiphon and Critias appear to have been particularly keen on inventing new terms, a remarkable number of which survive.5 “First, as Prodicus says, you must learn about the correctness of words (peri onomatôn orthotêtos),” Socrates tells the young Clinias in Plato’s Euthydemus, confirming the Sophist’s authority on linguistic analysis (A16/D5a). If language was a major topic of investigation for the Sophists, the issue of correctness of names (orthotês onomatôn, orthoepeia), a notion with a wide range of applications, seems to be 3

4 5

Interestingly, our source, Aristotle, uses ἄρρηνα, θήλεα, and σκεύη, this latter term indicating “thing words.” On the assumption that this is the Protagorean usage, Adriaan Rademaker has suggested that Protagoras was referring not to the grammatical distinction (in which case he could have used the grammatical term τὸ/τὰ μεταξύ) but rather to a “semantic distinction between words referring to male, females and things that reflects the real-life properties of their referents” (Rademaker 2013: 89; see also Brancacci 2002: 182). In favor of the morphological explanation (cf. Aristotle Poetics 1458a9–10), see Fehling 1965: 215 and Huitink and Willi 2021: 74; see also, more generally, Kerferd 1981: 68–9. See, for instance, Dunn 2001; Rademaker 2013: 93–4. See, for Antiphon, D2/B4, D9/B10, D68–9/B71–2, D70–1/B74–5; as for Critias, see B53–70.

182 mauro bonazzi one of the headings under which the problem was discussed.6 In the case of Prodicus, correctness has to do with detailed analysis of synonyms, which apparently earned him great repute among the men of his day (D5c/A17, P4/A3, P5/A11). By first grouping synonyms together and then distinguishing (diairein) them, Prodicus sought to connect each name to its concrete reality.7 It is difficult to determine on what basis Prodicus drew his distinctions; in some cases, he would appear to rely on the traditional use of terms (e.g., A18, partially reproduced in D24), while elsewhere he seems to suggest radical innovations based on their etymology (D9/B4).8 In any case, his theory presupposes a one-to-one relation between words and their referents, such that the phenomenon of synonymity is only apparent. Whereas Socrates seems to have asked about individual concepts, “what is x?,” Prodicus appears to proceed by asking “how does x differ from y?”9 Given the scarcity of testimonies, it is also difficult to understand the role and scope of these distinctions precisely. As has been repeatedly remarked, such distinctions did not only aim at grammatical analysis, but played a major role in the training of the pupils.10 Indeed, these explorations aimed concretely at teaching pupils to exploit language to advance their goals. It is by mastering language that one can use it more effectively, which is to say more persuasively, as Aristophanes’ Socrates explains to Strepsiades in the Clouds when teaching grammatical gender in a way that recalls Protagoras’ 6

7 8

9

10

Not only among the Sophists; see also, e.g., Antisthenes and Democritus (B20a and 26). Plato’s Cratylus was “On the Correctness of Names,” as its (late) subtitle indicates. As Guthrie 1971: 205 remarks, the distinction between these two expressions, orthotês and orthoepeia, is unclear. Momigliano 1930; Mayhew 2011: 107–59. See Classen 1976: 232–7. As noted by Dorion 2009: 531n22 in relation to A16, Prodicus also investigated the problem of homonymy, which is to say the phenomenon of the semantic ambiguity of a term (the term in this particular case being manthanein, which in Greek means both “to understand” and “to learn”). Classen 1976: 232; Kerferd 1981: 74. Interestingly, as Guthrie 1971: 275 has rightly remarked, in Plato’s dialogues Socrates often presents himself as one of his pupils (see Plato Protagoras 341a, Cratylus 384b, and Meno 96d), despite being roughly of the same age (they were both born around 470 BCE). Classen 1976: 223–5; Untersteiner 1967: 325. Huitink and Willi 2021 argue for Protagoras’ systematic interest in grammar.

the turn to language 183 distinctions (Clouds 658–93; see Classen 1976: 221). Mastering words was one of the tools that would help students to be successfully persuasive.11 But there is also more at stake, as Prodicus’ case shows. In most cases (but not all; see D9/B4), his distinctions refer to terms and concepts pertaining to the field of ethics or moral psychology.12 This has led some scholars to set Prodicus in contrast “to people the likes of Callicles and Thrasymachus,” as an opponent of the relativism and immoralism typical of those thinkers and the upholder of a certain foundation for the moral principles that are to govern people’s lives.13 As a matter of fact, it is debatable that we can label the Sophists as relativist, and the notion of immoralism is highly controversial.14 That said, it is tempting to suggest that Prodicus’ distinctions and classifications, and more generally the debates on the “correctness of names,” were not driven by erudite interests only, but also had more concrete aims, both in the sense of practically training the pupils and stimulating them to reflect on the values of their society.15 As we will shortly see, this attitude holds as much for many other Sophists as it does for Prodicus.

correcting poets The notion of orthotês is also important for Protagoras, one of whose works, Plato reports in the Phaedrus, was entitled Orthoepeia (“The Correctness of Language”; Phaedrus 267c). Regrettably, the content of this book is unknown, but it is a reasonable assumption that the issue of correctness played a role in his above-mentioned grammatical interests.16 Most interestingly, correctness emerges again in relation to the study of poetry, as Protagoras explains in the eponymous 11 12 13

14 16

On Protagoras and Aristophanes, see Balla forthcoming. Untersteiner 1967: 323; Dumont 1986; Wolfsdorf 2008b. Momigliano 1930. In this respect, it is interesting to note that, in the Euthydemus, Plato mentions Prodicus twice as a potential opponent of Sophists and eristic debaters such as Euthydemus and Dionysodorus; see Euthydemus 277e and 305c. 15 See Bett 1989 on sophistic relativism. Cole 1991: 100. See Cratylus 391c and Diogenes Laertius 9.55 with Gagarin 2008: 28–30.

184 mauro bonazzi Platonic dialogue, when he illustrates the aims of his teaching: “I think . . . that for a man the most important part of education consists in being expert concerning poems; and this means to be able to understand what is said correctly (orthôs) by the poets and what is not” (Plato Protagoras 338e–9a). In the dialogue, this claim is followed by the reading of a poem by Simonides, one of the great lyric poets of the Greek world, with the declared aim of highlighting its incongruities and contradictions with respect to questions of virtue and the good. It is not easy to assess the historical reliability of this specific discussion, but Plato’s dialogue offers an insightful description of the way this kind of investigation and debate might have looked.17 Protagoras follows a method of literal interpretation, which unfolds in three successive stages: understanding (synienai), analyzing (diairein), and giving account (logon dounai).18 Protagoras’ above-mentioned linguistic observations on Homer probably also belong to this context and show how he confronted the poets. As many scholars have recently made clear, Protagoras developed a linguistic apparatus to critique Homer, rather than using Homeric verses to explain his linguistic theories.19 Thus, the notion of “correctness” serves as a tool to explore the use of words, whether they properly describe their referent (as in the case of Protagoras’ criticism of the feminine pêlêx and mênis referring to masculine things, D24–5, 30/A28–30), but also, more generally, to investigate the relation between different parts of a phrase or of a given text.20 17

18 19

20

See also Themistius Oration 23, 350.20 Dindorf. As Segal 1970 suggests, an interesting testimony for these debates is Aristophanes Frogs 1119–97; another parallel is the interpretation of Pindar in Plato’s Gorgias (484b). Plato, Protagoras 338e8–339a3; see Brancacci 2002: 177. Fehling 1976: 343. On Protagoras and Homer, see also Capra 2005 and Corradi 2006: 56–63. More specifically, a likely polemical target of this method of literal exegesis is the allegorical exegesis developed by Theagenes of Rhegium in the sixth century BCE and later taken up in Athens by another great intellectual of the period, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and by his pupil Metrodorus of Lampsacus (who were wont to interpret theomachies as symbolizing the oppositions between natural elements, such as hot and cold or dry and moist; on these authors, see Morgan 2000: 98–101). Interestingly, from one scholium to Iliad 21.240 = D32/A30, we know that Protagoras also commented on Homeric narrative techniques about composition.

the turn to language 185 Finally, in the case of a reasoning or arguments, correctness refers to soundness, as I discuss below. All this has to be taken into account when reading a poem.21 Clearly, it is not only a matter of exegesis. More importantly, the goal is to discuss a text critically and thereby fulfill an educational goal. The study of poetical texts was an important part of traditional Greek education. As Xenophanes famously said, “from the beginning everyone learned from Homer” (B10). Pupils were expected to assimilate the moral values of their community by learning by heart epic and didactic poems. Hence, Protagoras’ interest in poetical texts seems a natural extension of traditional education. In his case, however, innovations are more important, because the wisdom of the poets is no longer taken for granted.22 Literary criticism is a useful intellectual exercise that enables the individual to grow familiar with the works of the poets and hence with traditional values. But, in addition, as the confrontation with Socrates in Plato’s Protagoras shows (where the example of incorrect poetic composition involves two apparently contradictory ethical generalizations), scrutinizing the consistency of poetical texts will also put pupils in the position of engaging with these traditional values, either approving or rejecting them.23 If this is correct, two further points are worth observing. First of all, it is now clear how the study of poetry becomes part of Protagoras’ teaching. Clearly, analysis and criticism serve also to teach pupils to discuss issues of right and wrong; as a consequence, they also train them to hone their own ideas and to discuss and challenge their interlocutors’ views more generally.24 We need not repeat how important this was in the competitive world of the fifth- and fourth-century cities.

21 22 23 24

See Rademaker 2013: 96–104; Brancacci 2002: 177–8. Rademaker 2013: 98 See also Gagarin 2002: 27. Morgan 2000: 94. The examples of Xenophanes criticizing Homer’s and Hesiod’s anthropomorphic gods (22B11) or of Heraclitus attacking Hesiod’s polymathiê show that there already was a critical tradition before Protagoras.

186 mauro bonazzi As for the teacher Protagoras, the confrontation with poets gave him a unique opportunity for self-promotion. As already mentioned, poets were traditionally regarded as the educators and as the custodians of the most genuine Greek tradition; poetry was a treasure trove of useful knowledge, an encyclopedia of ethics, politics, and history that every good citizen was expected to assimilate as the core of his education. The poet’s task was to preserve and transmit the system of values on which the life of his community was founded. To engage with poetry, therefore, was to engage with the tradition. By showing his ability to discuss such great authorities as Homer or Simonides, while at the same time taking the liberty of criticizing them, Protagoras reinforced his claim to be the new teacher, the educator capable of imparting teachings suited to the needs of the new world of the polis.25 For this reason it is interesting to observe that Protagoras’ most famous claim, that “man is the measure” (D1/B1), seems to target, among others, the poets. Several poets had already drawn upon the idea of “measure” to assert their importance; a poet – to quote Solon and Theognis – is someone who, by grace of the Muses, knows the “measure” of loving wisdom (Solon fr. 1.51–2 Gentili-Prato) and possesses the “measure” of wisdom (Theognis 873–6).26 A poet, in other words, is someone who, by virtue of the divine protection he enjoys, is capable of speaking the truth and distinguishing it from falsehood; he is the custodian of the order of reality and this justifies his prominent role in society.27 Opposing this tradition, Protagoras argues that the truth is no longer guaranteed by gods and inspired poets, since humans are now the measure of all things, each according to their own perspective.28 25

26 28

Together with Homer and Pindar, Protagoras seems to be also confronting Hesiod in the myth that the Sophist tells in Plato’s Protagoras; see Bonazzi 2020a: 71–2. More generally, see Pfeiffer 1968: 16–17 and Ford 2002: 202–3. Very interesting reflections are also to be found in Most 1986, who stresses the importance of the interpretation of literary texts as a distinctive feature of the Sophists. Indeed, the Sophists’ penchant for the written word constitutes a distinguishing element with respect to the oral culture in which poets found themselves operating; see again Pfeiffer 1968: 24–30. 27 See Corradi 2007. Detienne 2006: 113–24. By contrast with the way Plato and Aristotle introduces this theory (as a first manifestation of an empirical model of knowledge; consider the example of the wind at Theaetetus 152a–b), Protagoras’ view seems to reevaluate human experience.

the turn to language 187 And Protagoras can present himself as the teacher who can help others find their bearings in the ambiguous world that surrounds them, in which contrasting opinions take the place of absolute truth and falsehood. Again, we see that the Sophist’s strategy is one of appropriation, in which an engagement with traditional knowledge represents the starting point of his attempt to acquire a dominant position in the Athenian and, more generally, Greek cultural scene. The character Protagoras claims as much at the beginning of Plato’s Protagoras when he proclaims himself as the heir of a centuries-old tradition of sophistry going back to Homer and Hesiod (316d–e). This claim is designed not merely to place Protagoras under the aegis of a well-rooted tradition; it contributes to a more complex strategy of appropriation, which, through an apparently faithful adherence, brings about a reversal.29 Protagoras was not the only Sophist to have an interest in poetry in relation to traditional education.30 The names of Critias and Hippias can be mentioned, and the case of Gorgias deserves special attention, as we will see in the next section.31 As already remarked, we know that Hippias dealt with the division and length of syllables, probably in relation to metrical and rhythmic issues (see D14b/A2, D15/A12). He was also interested in Homer (D25/A10, D26/B9, D24/ B18). Moreover, he was well known in antiquity for his “antiquarian” interests, that is, for having gathered and catalogued quotes from the great masters of past centuries – most notably poets such as Orpheus,

29

30

31

The measure is not humanity generically taken nor “man” being abstractly taken, but each person with their personal history, opinions, and expectations. The true measure is therefore each individual experience (Mansfeld 1981: 44–6). From this epistemological thesis derives the practical task of reconciling these different views into an agreement (see D38/A21), which is what Protagoras was proud to teach (D37/A5); for a more detailed reconstruction, see Bonazzi 2020a: 13–26 with further bibliography. Goldhill 1986: 222–43; Morgan 2000: 89–94. Only part of this passage is included in the Diels-Kranz edition, as A5 (the whole text appears in Bonazzi 2009 as T6 and LM as Soph. R11). It is worth recalling that some Sophists were also the authors of poetical works: Hippias (D2, 4/A12, B1), Critias (elegiac and hexametric poetry: B1–9, and tragedies and satyr plays: B10–25, but see below), and possibly Antiphon (see P8/A6a9). Wolfsdorf 2008: 4–8 makes the reasonable suggestion that Prodicus’ classifications were somehow dependent on (and were meant to explain) the poetic texts of the tradition (Hesiod’s, most notably).

188 mauro bonazzi Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, among others (D22/B6).32 It is not entirely clear what the use of these collections was; concretely, they provided a series of quotes that could be used in speeches and discussions. More generally, however, this work of selection and collection may also be seen to promote a more detached approach to the tradition, which is no longer viewed as the depository of unquestionable truths, but rather from a historical perspective as a pool from which to draw in order to produce new ideas.33 Within this context, the testimony informing us that he presented himself in the garb of a rhapsode need not be taken as the sign of eccentricity but as another concrete proof of the Sophists’ attempts to challenge educational authorities by appropriating their role (P18/A9). The case of Critias is more problematic. Probably following Philostratus’ lead, Diels reckoned him among the Sophists. Certainly, Critias’ interest in antiquarian traditions and poetry finds a parallel in the work of other Sophists.34 However, his ideology seems to follow a radically different direction, insofar as he apparently upholds a return to tradition and poetry (a genre he practiced extensively) against the threats posed by the new rhetorical education.35 If his knowledge of and engagement with many of the issues discussed 32

33

34

35

Hippias’ “antiquarian” interests were not limited to poetic extracts, since he also made lists of the winners at the Olympics (to establish a reliable chronology of Greek history, D7/B3), the founding of cities, human genealogies (D14b, 30/A2, B2), and many other items pertaining to mythological, ethnographic, geographical, and philosophical traditions (D22–3, 26–8/B6–9, 12). On Hippias’ pursuits as a polymath, see Pfeiffer 1968: 51–4; Brunschwig 1984; Mansfeld 1986; Patzer 1986; Balaudé 2006. This work of critical revision of poetic lore finds further confirmation in the method of memorization that made Hippias famous (D12–13/A2, 5a, 11–12, 16). Up until then, memory had served as the poet’s key “religious” tool, preserving knowledge of present, past, and future. With Hippias – and Simonides before him – memory becomes a “‘secular’ technique, a psychological faculty that each person exercises according to well-defined rules, rules that are available to everyone.” This engenders a new attitude to time, regarded not as the “power of oblivion,” but as the context in which human endeavors take place (Detienne 2006: 191–2). See also Morgan 2000: 95–6. Pfeiffer 1968: 54–5. An eloquent example of Critias’ antiquarian interests is B2 on inventions; see also B6 on the Spartan traditions. See Brisson 2009: 395 and more extensively Iannucci 2002 on Critias’ poems. See, for instance, the celebration of Spartan traditional moderation and the aristocratic code in B22 on the opposition between character (tropos) and law (nomos) and rhetoric.

the turn to language 189 in fifth-century Greece is unquestionable, his overall production seems to express more a reaction than an adherence to the new ideas introduced by the Sophists.

gorgias on language Gorgias deserves special attention among the Sophists for the breadth of his investigations into the problem of logos. While Protagoras seems to focus entirely on the rational and rationally analyzable aspects of (poetic) language, Gorgias shows an interest in its psychagogic and creative aspects as well – without, however, overlooking the importance of rational arguments. The assumptions and aims, however, are the same: to assert the centrality of logos, around which most of Gorgias’ speculation and activity revolves, and to establish one’s own credentials as the most successful teacher (D47/A21).36 A major difficulty in the case of Gorgias is how to reconcile the two apparently incompatible claims that we find in two of his texts, the treatise On Not-Being and the declamation Encomium of Helen. Whereas the former ends with an acknowledgment of the failure of words, the latter assigns words a sort of divine omnipotence. Upon closer scrutiny, however, it might be argued that these two texts explore two different conceptions of language, with the conclusion reached in the former text paving the way to the alternative conception of the latter.37 Of the three theses explored in the On Not-Being – “nothing is; and if it is, it is unknowable; and if it both is and is knowable, it cannot be indicated to other people” – the first thesis has attracted much of the scholarly interest, with many interpretations.38 36

37

38

The decision to set up a golden statue in Delphi for himself, so great was his success in teaching, is an eloquent confirmation of Gorgias’ ambition (P33/A7); there was also a statue dedicated to Gorgias in Olympia, where two eloquent inscriptions have been found (P34b/A8). Ioli 2010: 90. On the function of language in Gorgias, see also Calogero 1932: 262; Mourelatos 1987: 627–30. See Rodriguez, Chapter 7 in this volume.

190 mauro bonazzi Much less attention has been dedicated to the third one. Yet it might be argued that the most interesting one, and perhaps even the most important for Gorgias, was this third thesis, for which, unlike the first two, no alternative is given. The progression of the arguments suggests that the problem at stake in the text is not only the denial of reality, which has been the object of many discussions about Gorgias’ nihilism, but also the problem of language, the acknowledgment that an unbridgeable gulf separates things from words. Unfortunately, the corrupt state of Gorgias’ text prevents an exact reconstruction of the specific arguments. But the general claim is clear. Just as sight does not see sound, so logos does not speak things, but merely words. We can grant that reality exists and that we know it, but we cannot communicate our knowledge; logos is always heterogeneous with respect to reality. Logos (words, speech) is a failed translation of reality because it is incapable of taking the place of things.39 This conclusion seems to be very different from what we find in the Helen, which was apparently composed to defend the memory of Homer’s famous heroine, guilty of having fled with Paris and bringing about the Trojan War. As often happens in this period, a mythological theme, one of the most conspicuous in the Greek tradition, is used to convey new and provocative ideas.40 Among the various reasons that may have led Helen to flee to Troy, Gorgias considers the arguments by which Paris might have persuaded her, and this allows him to embark on a famous digression on the power of logos and what constitutes it, namely words: “Speech (logos) is a great potentate that by means of an extremely tiny and entirely invisible body performs the most divine deeds. For it is able to stop fear, to remove grief, to instill joy, and to increase pity (Helen 8).”

39

40

Kerferd 1984: 218–21; Palmer 2009: 87–8. Interestingly, this conclusion can also be read as a polemical reference to Prodicus; see above in the first section and Untersteiner 1967: 322. On Gorgias’ (and other Sophists’) use of myth as a way of confronting the cultural tradition, see Morgan 2000: 119–31.

the turn to language 191 Indeed, the acknowledgment of this power of words, a power that is also magical and divine,41 seems to be at odds with the conclusion of the treatise On Not-Being about the weakness of logos. To be sure, maybe one need not reconcile such different texts of an author who was clearly not interested in articulating a systematic thought. An alternative reading, also appropriate to his style of thinking, however, is that these two texts were exploring different functions of language. What is under attack in the On Not-Being is the view that the task of language is to provide an objective and faithful description of reality, as if reality were something that could accurately be represented. But can we really speak of an isolated and stable reality, removed from the contingencies of human culture and language? As a matter of fact, Gorgias argues, the true nature of things is always beyond our reach (see also D25.35/B11a35 and D34/B26) and resists any unitary reconstruction. What remains, then, is a world of seeming and opinions. Human logos is always subjective or relative. By expressing one specific perspective on this elusive reality, it always reflects a given point of view or opinion, and not absolute truth. Interestingly, the Helen complements this view by underlining the autonomy of logos. Language is not a reflection of things or the natural means by which to objectively describe reality. Logos is its own “master” (dynastês), it is autonomous; its function is not of stating the truth or describing reality, but of creating emotions and opinions which are our ways of giving meaning to reality, of turning the multiplicity of our experiences into some kind of order – a provisional order, yet one still capable of orienting human actions. Logos is the creator of its own reality and can prove successful because – as we have seen – despite its apparent nonreferentiality, it is actually very powerful.42 Paradoxically, Gorgias’ emphasis on the limits of human experience ultimately leads to a celebration of the creative power of logos.43 41 43

42 De Romilly 1975: 16. Cassin 1995: 73 and 152. This does not exclude, especially in the case of Gorgias, that it is also difficult to control the power of logos; see Cole 1991: 146–52.

192 mauro bonazzi Gorgias’ emphasis on logos as a creative power finds another interesting confirmation in a testimony on deception (apatê), which provides us with some information about his aesthetic views.44 According to Plutarch, Gorgias described tragedy as “a deception, in which the one who deceives is more just than the one who does not deceive, and the one who is deceived is more intelligent than the one who is not deceived” (D35/B23).45 The notion of deceit can probably be traced back to Parmenides and to the poetic tradition of earlier centuries. In Gorgias, however, it lacks the negative valence that it possesses in Parmenides and the poets. When Parmenides describes his cosmology as deceptive, he is not saying that it is false or fallacious but is warning his audience that what they are dealing with is still the world of appearances and not that of true reality.46 Much the same holds true for the poets.47 In Gorgias, by contrast, there is no longer any room for a “true divine reality” beyond the changing world of appearances; all that remains is phenomena and the uncertain opinions of men (see Helen 11). The importance of deception stems from this precarious situation. But it is evident that in this context deception loses all negative connotations, for such is the human condition. Logoi are intrinsically deceitful, to the extent that they cannot faithfully represent a reality that cannot be faithfully represented.48 It is from this situation that poetry can set out to achieve its goals, proving its “justice and wisdom.” The aim of the “deception” 44

45

46 47

48

See also Helen 8 and 10 with Rosenmeyer 1955; Verdenius 1981; Horky 2006. This idea is also taken up in the Dissoi Logoi 3.10–12, which quotes verses by the poets Cleobulina and Aeschylus. Similarly, see also the anecdote about Simonides saying that the Thessalians were too stupid to be deceived by him (Plutarch De Audiendis Poetis 15d). Other testimonies on Gorgias’ interest in tragedy: D36/B24 on Aeschylus; Aristotle Rhetoric 1406b14 on Gorgias’ joking about tragic style. See D8.57/B8.52 with Verdenius 1981: 124. See, for instance, Homer Iliad 1.526 and 22.229; Hesiod Theogony 224, Pindar Olympian 1.28–9, and Nemean 7.20–4 with Rosenmeyer 1955: 228–33. On the poetic tradition more generally, see de Romilly 1973 and 1975: 1–22, who also notes that this conception of poetry as something magical and illusionary (see, e.g., Helen 9) might reflect an influence from Empedocles (whose disciple Gorgias may have been: P4–5/ A3, 10). Kerferd 1981: 81; Rosenmeyer 1955: 232.

the turn to language 193 embodied by a poetic composition such as a tragedy is to charm the soul by rousing feelings of pleasure, joy, or pain.49 And the triggering of an emotional response is also a way to know oneself better and building a relationship with reality, which, according to Gorgias, is always “other” with respect to us – a way of making sense of ourselves and the things around us. Paradoxically, it is therefore more just to deceive and wiser to be deceived than the contrary.50 Deception, in other words, is to be fostered because it allows us to build a relationship with the reality of things and the reality of our very own being. In conclusion, it might be observed that Gorgias, not unlike Protagoras, implements a subtle strategy by appropriating traditional poetic lore, as poetry is nothing but “a speech (logos) that possesses meter” (Helen 9). What matters, then, is logos and the ability to make suitable use of it. After all, as in the case of On Not-Being, the real object of the speech is not Helen but logos; so much was at stake in Gorgias’ challenge to the poet who mistreated and misrepresented the heroine (Helen 2).51 This justifies the subsuming of poetry under the broader genre of rhetoric, the art of logos which is the object of Gorgias’ teaching; like Protagoras, Gorgias plays with tradition in order to appropriate it.52 The lore safeguarded by the poet has now been integrated into the wisdom of the Sophists.

correcting speeches, exploring reality As should be clear by now, an interest in logos is central to the Sophists’ thinking. In the previous section, we examined how the Sophists used their technical skills and ideas in relation to – and in competition with – the traditional knowledge embodied by poetry. We can now move on to analyze how this interest in logos relates to

49 51 52

50 Segal 1962: 124. See also Verdenius 1981: 117–18. Segal 1962: 102; Poulakos 1983. In Gorgias’ case, appropriation also entails an attempt to adapt the poetic style to the kind of prose declamations typical of his oeuvre; see D21b/A29 and de Romilly 1975: 8–11; Schiappa 1999: 98–102.

194 mauro bonazzi rhetoric, which developed as an independent form of knowledge in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE. The extent of the Sophists’ contribution to rhetoric has been at the center of a lively debate in scholarship. The traditional view argues that rhetoric was first developed in Sicily by two almost unknown figures, Tisias and Corax. From Sicily, rhetoric would then have reached Athens thanks to Gorgias (who famously visited Athens as an ambassador in 427, P13b/A4); and Gorgias would have influenced other Sophists such as Antiphon (assuming, of course, that the rhetor and the Sophist of this name are one and the same person) and Thrasymachus.53 In this context, it is also important to remark that several Sophists were credited with the authorship of textbooks (the so-called logôn technai).54 Some modern scholars, however, have noted that the surviving testimonies seem to suggest that the development of rhetoric as an independent literary genre occurred later.55 It is difficult to take a side in the debate, given that the sources at our disposal do not allow us to determine clearly the extent to which the Sophists may have developed theoretical or technical problems (for example, the classification of different rhetorical genres, such as the deliberative, epideictic, and judicial) or stylistics (for instance, the distinction between high and low style). What is certain is that although the Sophists were not the “official” founders of rhetoric, they showed an interest in logos and what is related to it, bringing to the fore a series of questions that later became the focus of the discipline. Contrary to the Platonic prejudice that Sophists and rhetors employed deceptive means of persuasion, we find cogent and rigorous argumentation in many early rhetorical texts.56 To be sure, there were 53

54

55 56

Among the modern champions of this view, see Kennedy 1963 and, more recently, Pernot 2006. See Protagoras: D1; Gorgias: D5–6; Thrasymachus: D1–3; Polus: fr. 3 Radermacher (= Plato Gorgias 462b). See esp. Cole 1991: 71–112; Schiappa 1999; Ford 2002; Gagarin 2007. See, for example, Lloyd 1979: 79–86. In the case of Gorgias, consider the parallel with medical texts, such as the Hippocratic On Winds; cf. Ford 2002: 176–87.

the turn to language 195 Sophists like Thrasymachus who were famous for the ability to play with the audience’s feelings,57 and we already remarked that Gorgias in his Helen attributed a sort of magical power to words. But if we consider Gorgias and Antiphon, the two Sophists from whom full speeches survive, several types of argument may be found: arguments from probability (or likelihood: eikos),58 antinomy, induction from exemplary cases, reductio ad absurdum, and the so-called apagôgê (where the speaker explains all possibilities in order then to criticize each of them; this appears to be Gorgias’ favorite strategy).59 We can see considerable effort expended in developing many different types of argument – this is one object of the Sophists’ teaching, which found concrete applications in model speeches handed down for students to memorize.60 The appeal to feelings is certainly present, but rational analysis is equally important. By appealing to reason as well as emotion, the Sophists developed means of carrying out investigations and discussions in contexts where the truth is not self-evident. Their frequent resort to arguments from probability or induction from exemplary cases does not reflect their opposition to factual argumentation, as later authors such as Plato and Aristotle presented it, but the simple reality that truth is in many cases unclear.61 57 58

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D13; see Macé 2008. One variation of this argument is what we might call the “counter-probability” argument; see, e.g., Antiphon Tetralogies 1.2.2.3 and 2.2.6. A classic example is the case of a fight between a weak man and a strong one; in order to defend himself, the former argues that, being weak, it is unlikely that he wished to pick a fight with someone stronger. In turn, the latter replies by turning this reasoning on its head; it is unlikely that he was the one to start the fight because, being the stronger, he would immediately have been blamed for it. In other words, something is claimed to be unlikely precisely because it is likely; see Aristotle Rhetoric 2.24 (this argument was apparently “invented” by Corax). The most complete analysis is provided by Spatharas 2001; see also Rodriguez 2019. On Antiphon, see the analysis by Gagarin 2007 (who quite rightly reacts to Solmsen 1931, according to whom all of Antiphon’s orations were marked by the adoption of irrational argumentative schemes, such as the use of oaths and ordeals, which were typical of the Archaic age). For an overview, see also Tinsdale 2010. Examples of such texts are Antiphon’s Tetralogies and also Gorgias’ Helen and Palamedes. The prologue of Plato’s Phaedrus is a good example of this practice; see Natali 1986; Ford 2002: 90–1. See, for instance, Plato Phaedrus 267a, and Schiappa 1999: 50–1.

196 mauro bonazzi This explains once again the importance of “correctness,” as in the following testimony on Protagoras. When a competitor in the pentathlon unintentionally struck Epitimus of Pharsalus with a javelin and killed him, he [i.e., Pericles] spent a whole day with Protagoras examining the difficulty whether, according to the most correct reasoning (kata ton orthotaton logon), it was the javelin, or the man who threw it, or the umpires, that should be considered responsible for this unfortunate event. (D30/A10)

This testimony is a fine example of the Sophists’ way of reasoning, and it is not a coincidence that Antiphon, in the second Tetralogy, discussed the same issue.62 The facts are indisputable: a man has unintentionally killed another man. However, much remains to be said with regard to the issues of moral responsibility, legal guilt, and judgment of the whole incident. The same fact may be viewed from many different perspectives; for the physician, the javelin is the cause of the man’s death; for the judge, the javelin thrower is responsible; for the person who has organized the competition, it is the judge. This contrast gives the Sophist some room for action and argument; he will attempt to lend meaning and order to the event. The notion of correctness is the criterion that enables him to confront the validity and shortcomings of each of the different points of view. From the testimony it is not clear what Protagoras’ final verdict was (and Antiphon’s Tetralogy likewise does not end with a judgment).63 Indeed, the comparison with other Protagorean testimonies suggests that arriving at a single answer was not the real point. The anecdote seems rather a confirmation of Protagoras’ 62

63

See also Antiphon D38/B44 where the criterion of “correct reasoning” is used to establish what brings about pain and what brings about pleasure. Another interesting occurrence of the criterion of correctness is to be found in Helen 2, where Gorgias sets out “to say correctly (orthôs) what is necessary” in order to preserve Helen’s honor. This is how Plutarch introduces the testimony: “The first thing he did was to make public, in order to make men laugh, the way in which his father [Pericles] spent his time at home and the discussions he had with the Sophists” (Pericles 36.4, absent in LM).

the turn to language 197 claim that “concerning every question one can argue equally well in one direction or the other” (D27/A20; see also D26/B6a).64 Apparently weaker or counterintuitive views can be defended too, as is also implied by Protagoras’ (in)famous claim “to make the weaker argument the stronger one” (D28/A21).65 Given that there is some truth and validity in all points of view, the problem is not so much to extract the only possible solution as to find the one most suited to the situation, while foregoing any claim to come up with a single valid answer.66 The best speech is not the one that is true but that is best suited to the situation at hand and most capable of outdoing others from a formal and logical perspective.67 The importance of correctness, therefore, plays a decisive role in Protagoras’ thought at various and mutually related levels, both conceptual and linguistic; correct reasoning, which expresses the best possible solution, must find a counterpart in formal correctness, which makes one’s speech persuasive and hence allows one to gain the upper hand in each particular situation.68 The focus on argumentative strategies makes it possible to rectify the common scholarly view that the Sophists’ teaching was a simple transmission of practical advice designed to ensure victory in an argument – as though achieving successful persuasion and winning contests were the only things that mattered. If we consider the surviving texts by the Sophists, we soon realize that it was not only a matter of persuading the listener. The concrete need to win discussions and debates does not preclude a more profound reflection on the human world and the importance of logos, understood as the capacity to reason and to express oneself. 64 65

66 68

See Lee, Chapter 10 in this volume. Consider Antiphon’s parallel, defending the thesis that the boy who was killed and not the javelin thrower is responsible: “For a litigant defending a ‘weak’ position in court, it would seem a vital strategy to point out that prima facie assumptions about responsibility need not be the correct assumption, and to demolish the case of their opponent by means of a subtle but ‘consistent’ account that reframes the facts” (Rademacher 2013: 103). 67 Gagarin 2008: 30. See also Brancacci 2002: 183–90. Classen 1976: 222–5; Kerferd 1981: 73.

198 mauro bonazzi Likewise, it would be too simplistic to think that the aim of declamations such as the Encomium of Helen or the Defense of Palamedes was simply to convince the audience of the innocence of two mythological figures by developing sound arguments. Let us take, for instance, the aforementioned case of the Encomium of Helen, which Gorgias composed allegedly to defend the memory of Homer’s celebrated heroine, guilty of fleeing with Paris and causing the Trojan War. To absolve Helen, Gorgias lists the four possible reasons for her ending up in Paris’ arms, and shows that none make her responsible; the responsibility would lie with the gods, or with Paris’ force, or with the power of words, or with an impersonal force such as desire.69 Now, the attempt to cover all possibilities – this text is based on the method of apagôgê – clearly goes beyond the obligation to persuade someone of Helen’s innocence. Sure, this logos offers a brilliant model of a defense speech. But it is more than that. For in order to better understand the phenomenon of communication, Gorgias investigates human physiology, emotional dynamics, and the power of mechanisms of persuasion.70 Besides, he also raises interesting problems with regard to responsibility (as Protagoras and Antiphon did). Through his arguments, Gorgias raised thorny problems that call for a more in-depth reflection on the concept (and existence) of responsibility. Indeed, while in this text Gorgias states his intention of persuading the public, his intention to elicit intellectual pleasure by exploring the intricacies of our condition – like Helen, we are also subject to the power of logoi – is just as important.71 There is pleasure derived from Gorgias’ display of intelligence, from his capacity to provoke and to investigate the

69

70 71

Otherwise, he could have exploited an alternative version of the myth, according to which Helen never went to Troy (this is the version followed by the poet Stesichorus, among others; see Plato Phaedrus 243a–b; see too Herodotus 2.113–20 and Euripides’ Helen). The argument that Helen was innocent, despite the fact that she went to Troy, betrays a desire to provoke the audience with an implausible-seeming thesis. Segal 1962; Ford 2002: 172–87; Long 2015: 97–103. See Helen 13 (“a speech written with artistry . . . delights and persuades”) and Plutarch’s comment in the above-quoted D35 on tragedy (“the pleasure of words”) with Verdenius 1981: 118.

the turn to language 199 potential of language and human thought, and from his bold attempt to revisit – and at times to criticize – traditional knowledge.72 From Protagoras onwards, sophistic logoi were developed as a tool to examine a question in its complexity and ambiguity. When properly employed, such methods and argumentative strategies could be used to win arguments; yet they were just as significantly a means of discussing problematic cases, investigating different types of arguments, entertaining the public, and showcasing one’s skills.73 Moreover, they helped to examine values and ideas, and explore human experience in general (anticipating Aristotle’s investigation in the Rhetoric).74 To be sure, the Sophists were not concerned with developing an exhaustive philosophical system. Yet this does not mean that the problems raised by their reflections on logos and its centrality are unimportant. It is in precisely this capacity – to make crucial problems the focus of the debate, bringing out many previously undetected tensions – that the interest of the Sophists lies, in fifth-century Greece no less than today.

72

Gagarin 2001: 285–6.

73

Gagarin 2001: 289.

74

See Solmsen 1975.

7

Problems of Being Evan Rodriguez

Early Greek intellectuals explained being by offering broad accounts of what there is, from the gods and cosmological phenomena to the most fundamental elements of reality. Yet fifth-century thinkers, including the Sophists, found that a complete account of what there is needed to address the most general categories of being and not-being themselves. Their discussions even led to worries about the very possibility of discussing being and not-being in the first place. The focus of this chapter is ontology in this restricted sense, the study of being itself (in Greek, to on) and its attendant problems, as discussed by the Greek Sophists. Some have doubted whether the canonical Sophists played any role in discussions of ontology in this sense. Sophists are better known today for their concerns about the nature of language, politics, and other human constructions and are often portrayed as opposed to the rest of the early Greek tradition.1 It is the Eleatic philosophers Parmenides, Melissus, and Zeno who are more often associated with discussions of ontology. But Sophists such as Gorgias and Protagoras were indeed engaged in this broader discussion about to on. In fact, the history of this distinction between Sophist and philosopher is more fluid than one might expect. In Antidosis 268, Isocrates mentions Parmenides, Gorgias, and Melissus all in the same breath as “Sophists” (sophistai) who discussed “the number of the things that are.”2 He uses the same

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Thanks to the Center for Hellenic Studies and the Idaho Humanities Council for support during the drafting of this piece. Thanks also to Rachel Barney, Eric Guindon, Verity Harte, Suzanne Lye, Katy Meadows, Jacob Stump, the participants of the ISU Department of English and Philosophy Works in Progress seminar, and especially to this volume’s editors for their insight and for various helpful conversations along the way. This has not always been their reputation; see Billings, Chapter 4 in this volume, and the appendix of Laks and Most 2016, vol. 9 (notably T10, 18, 22, 23). τὸ πλῆθος . . . τῶν ὄντων (Gorgias R24/B1). Translations and accompanying Greek text are from Laks and Most 2016.

problems of being 201 “Sophist” label for Zeno, along with Gorgias and Melissus, in Helen 3. Isocrates’ grave depicted Gorgias holding an astronomical sphere, an emblem associated with natural philosophy.3 As a witness much closer to these figures than we are today, we should take seriously the idea that Isocrates’ “Sophists” were engaged in similar projects and perhaps even took similar approaches to the study of being. Isocrates distances himself from this type of study, portraying it as concerned with mere tricks and trivial puzzles. Yet, while the Sophists’ writing on this topic was indeed more dialectical than dogmatic, we will see that this is consistent with them engaging in serious discussion about problems of being. This chapter will focus on Gorgias’ On Not-Being, a sophistic contribution to ontology and the one for which we have the most surviving evidence. On Not-Being engages with Eleatic discussions of being and not-being and also highlights problems that arise concerning their knowability and communicability. To situate Gorgias’ direct engagement with the broader Eleatic context, we will begin with a discussion of Parmenides, the first of the Eleatics, who set much of the agenda for later ontological discussion.4 After looking at Gorgias’ work we will then turn to the Eleatics Zeno and Melissus to see how they too discussed ontology in a similar puzzle-raising and puzzlesolving mode. The next section, on Protagoras, Xeniades, and Lycophron, will focus on the more limited evidence that survives about these Sophists’ contributions to ontology, evidence that nonetheless speaks to the broader conversation on this topic. Thus, while contemporary scholarship has tended to focus on the differences between those figures that Isocrates and others grouped together, I will suggest that seeing them as part of a broader discussion of ontology reveals important commonalities in both content and approach. The Sophists shared a deep and serious interest in the problems of being that was foundational for later ontological theorizing in the Greek tradition. 3 4

P35/A17. Much of what I say here in terms of both content and approach could also be said about Heraclitus or Xenophanes.

202 evan rodriguez

parmenides Parmenides’ poem – he appears to have written just one – is the locus classicus for ancient Greek discussions of ontology in the sense outlined above. Written in verse, it begins with an elaborate proem where the narrator describes being taken along a cosmic path to meet an unnamed goddess. The goddess then begins her speech as follows, offering to give the narrator a comprehensive account of all things. χαῖρ᾽, ἐπεὶ οὔτι σε μοῖρα κακὴ προὔπεμπε νέεσθαι τήνδ’ ὁδόν (ἦ γὰρ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων ἐκτὸς πάτου ἐστίν) ἀλλὰ Θέμις τε Δίκη τε. Χρεὼ το σε πάντα πυθέσθαι ἠμὲν Ἀληθείης εὐπειθέος ἀτρεμὲς ἦτορ ἠδὲ βροτῶν δόξας, ταῖς οὐκ ἔνι πίστις ἀληθής. ἀλλ’ ἔμπης καὶ ταῦτα μαθήσεαι, ὡς τὰ δοκοῦντα χρῆν δοκίμως εἶναι διὰ παντὸς πάντα περῶντα. I greet you: for it is no evil fate that has sent you to travel This road (for indeed it is remote from the paths of men), But Right and Justice. It is necessary that you learn everything, Both the unshakeable heart of well-convincing truth And the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true belief. But nonetheless you will learn this too: how opinions Would have to be acceptable, forever penetrating all things.5 (D4/B1.26–32)

The last three lines above may come as a bit of a surprise; the goddess promises to tell the truth, as one might expect, but then goes on to promise an account of the false opinions of mortals as well. She makes good on her promises in two further sections, traditionally labeled “the way of truth” and “the way of opinion.” But equally striking is the approach that the goddess takes in both of these sections. The goddess begins the way of truth by describing two “roads of inquiry” with bare forms of the verb “to be” (einai in Greek). The 5

The same Greek word, panta, is translated as “everything” in line 28 and as “all things” in line 32.

problems of being 203 description no doubt sounded as odd to ancient readers as it still does today. ἡ μὲν ὅπως ἔστιν τε καὶ ὡς οὐκ ἔστι μὴ εἶναι, Πειθοῦς ἐστι κέλευθος (ἀληθείηι γὰρ ὀπηδεῖ), ἡ δ´ ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν τε καὶ ὡς χρεών ἐστι μὴ εἶναι, τὴν δή τοι φράζω παναπευθέα ἔμμεν ἀταρπόν· οὔτε γὰρ ἂν γνοίης το γε μὴ ἐὸν (οὐ γὰρ ἀνυστόν) οὔτε φράσαις. The one, that “is,” and that it is not possible that “is not,” Is the path of conviction, for it accompanies truth; The other, that “is not,” and that it is necessary that “is not” – I show you that it is a path that cannot be inquired into at all. For you could not know that which is not (for this is impracticable) Nor could you show it. (D6/B2.3–8)

Many have rightly puzzled over this odd use of “is” and “is not.”6 It is complicated by the fact that, just as interpreters today disagree about how to translate and understand these lines, Parmenides’ contemporaries may have had various interpretations as well. Yet, on any interpretation, this beginning suggests that reflecting on “is” and “is not” themselves plays an important role in giving a comprehensive account of all things. Parmenides gives a clear injunction against the being, knowability, and communicability of “is not,” leaving us only with “is” for a true account of reality. We do get more information about this first road, “is,” a little later in the poem. There the goddess specifies that what-is “is ungenerated, indestructible, / complete, single-born, untrembling, and unending / . . . together, whole / one, continuous.”7 In addition to ascribing these positive and negative attributes, Parmenides goes on to pick out the subject at hand more clearly by using the substantive

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7

Sedley 1999 offers a particularly lucid and concise description of the difficulty. See also Curd 2004; Mourelatos 2008; and the introduction to Parmenides in Laks and Most 2016: 5.4–5. ἀγένητον . . . καὶ ἀνώλεθρόν ἐστιν, / οὖλον μουνογενές τε καὶ ἀτρεμὲς ἠδ’ ἀτέλεστον· / . . . ὁμοῦ πᾶν, / ἕν, συνεχές (D8.8–11/B8.3–6).

204 evan rodriguez phrase “being” or “what-is” (to on), a phrase that becomes standard in later discussions of ontology.8 These lines have inspired a monist interpretation of the poem where only one thing, being, exists.9 On a strict monist interpretation, however, the poem undermines itself; if monism is true, then the whole setup with the goddess addressing the narrator (not to mention the various other beings mentioned or distinctions between author, poem, and audience) would be impossible. And while the goddess does suggest that the way of mortals is mistaken, more than half of the poem (nine-tenths on some estimates) is dedicated to the way of opinion, including elaborate contributions to psychology, physiology, and cosmology.10 This may give us some pause in straightforwardly accepting any single part of the poem as the author’s ultimate view.11 Parmenides’ poem presages how Zeno, Gorgias, and Protagoras give opposed arguments with similar effect. Zeno and Melissus are both traditionally associated with Parmenides as fellow “Eleatics” (Zeno and Parmenides were both from Elea, though Melissus was from Samos and only an “Eleatic” in the sense of defending a Parmenidean position). The two seem to have taken Parmenides’ project in very different directions. Melissus picks 8

9

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11

D8.37–43/B8.32–8, D10/B4.2. In Parmenides’ Ionic dialect the phrase is to eon. I will use “what-is” and “being” interchangeably as translations of to on and its cognates for the purposes of this essay. “Being” is the most literal translation of to on but gives a more technical air than the term is likely to have had in its earlier uses. The common translation “what-is” has the advantage of a less technical register. In Greek, too, there is not a single formulation that is consistently used across authors or across contexts to discuss being at the most general level. Like Parmenides, Melissus often relies on the unspecified subject of the verb to be in the singular (as in the phrase “it is only one,” D11/B8) and at times employs the participial phrase to eon (D9, 10, 11/B10, 7, 8), but also uses “the one” (to hen, D11/B8). Plato uses the alternative phrase “the all” (to pan) to refer to the subject of Parmenides’ poem (Parmenides 128a8–b1 = R23). There is controversy over how exactly to understand Parmenides’ monism. See Della Rocca 2020: chap. 1 for a recent discussion of the underlying philosophical and interpretative issues. For the deceptive nature of the way of opinion, see also D8.55–7/B850–2. Tor 2017 gives a detailed analysis of the relation between the two main parts of the poem (see especially chap. 4). See Mackenzie 1982 for a dialectical reading of the poem along these lines; Parmenides’ poem uses dialectical strategies to highlight the problems that arise when trying to reconcile reason and perception.

problems of being 205 up on Parmenides’ description of what-is; he defends a strict form of monism on which only one thing exists and then emphasizes the different predicates that are best used to describe the one being. Zeno did not explicitly defend monism, nor did he straightforwardly defend any single view; instead, he challenged common notions about what there is and what it is like, including the notions of place, motion, and plurality. Plato allows that these arguments could be taken to defend Parmenides’ position;12 but, regardless of Zeno’s intent, his arguments address ontological concerns about the nature and extent of what-is at the most general level.13 We will return to both figures and their relation to Parmenides and the Sophists below.

gorgias The final member of this group of “Sophists” singled out by Isocrates is Gorgias. Gorgias, too, takes up the project of discussing what-is at the most general level, in his On Not-Being or On Nature (ONB).14 Yet he takes Parmenides and Melissus’ already counterintuitive monism and does it one better – he goes beyond rejecting pluralism to rejecting even the Eleatic “one,” suggesting that nothing at all is. He also flouts Parmenides’ injunction against speaking about “is not” by treating it on par with what-is, examining each equally as the subject for his negative arguments. And while Parmenides asserted that whatis-not cannot be, be known, or be communicated, Gorgias argues that even what-is cannot be, be known, or be communicated. Thus, Gorgias ends up with an injunction even against Parmenides’ “is.” In part due to historical accident, Gorgias’ ONB also does Parmenides’ poem one better in the difficulties of reconstructing the heart of the text. The text itself no longer exists, at least not in any surviving version that we are aware of. Only two summaries survive, one in the pseudo-Aristotelian On Melissus, Xenophanes, and 12 13

14

Parmenides 127e8–8e4. Take, for example, D5/B1: “If what exists (to on) did not have magnitude, it would not exist either.” D26/B3. For more on the title, see note 44 in this chapter.

206 evan rodriguez Gorgias (the author is hereafter referred to as “Anonymous”) and the other in Sextus Empiricus’ Against the Logicians.15 As a result, we have to triangulate between these two divergent summaries to glimpse the missing original and, as with many early Greek texts, relinquish any certainty about its content. But the summaries do agree in many details, including the tripartite structure of Gorgias’ argument: Nothing is; even if anything is it cannot be known; and even if it could be known it cannot be communicated. Despite the incompleteness of our evidence, this is the most extensive surviving contribution to ontology from the canonical Sophists. Close attention to each section helps us better understand Gorgias’ arguments, his conversation with the Eleatics, and his interest in the problems that arise when discussing being. Anonymous’ summary of the first part in particular points to how Gorgias compiled a systematic and structured series of arguments on the topic from other thinkers. Many of the individual arguments in ONB are not original to Gorgias, and Anonymous is careful to distinguish those that are borrowed from those that are new. Gorgias’ strategy involves identifying pairs of opposites (for instance, eternal/generated, one/many) and collecting arguments against anything having those properties. If, in order to be, something has to be either one or many but, whatever it is, it can be neither one nor many, then we can reject the claim that it is in the first place. In other words, if we have a simple case where there are only two options (for example, what-is is either one or many), and we have an argument from author A ruling out the first (presumably to accept the second, for example, a pluralist arguing against monism) and one from author B ruling out the second (presumably to accept the first, for example, a monist arguing against pluralism), then Gorgias can combine the two arguments to challenge the underlying presupposition (in this case, 15

Laks and Most 2016 print them as D26a and D26b respectively. Diels-Kranz only print Sextus’ summary as B3. According to scholarly consensus, the attribution of Anonymous’ summary to Aristotle (in manuscripts and booklists) is false. Sedley 2017, 25n43, suggests that the work comes from the fourth century BCE, though others have typically assumed it is from the first century CE or later.

problems of being 207 the presupposition that something is). One obvious borrowing comes in the argument against the eternality of what-is; we know that Melissus too derives its being unlimited from its being eternal, that is, ungenerated.16 In this way, ONB is an early example of what is now known as doxography, collecting the views of various thinkers – in this case, on the topic of ontology – and putting them in conversation with one another.17 Sextus’ summary of this first part highlights an important feature of Gorgias’ setup that parallels the methodology Gorgias uses elsewhere. Gorgias often surveys an exhaustive – or what are at least taken to be exhaustive – set of hypotheses (that is, hypotheses that cover all possible scenarios conditional on any underlying assumptions). He then shows that the same result follows from each, in which case we can be confident of that result no matter what. This formal structure is sometimes called “argument by cases” in a mathematical context.18 Time and again in his Helen and Palamedes, the only two speeches of his that survive in full, Gorgias uses this structure to prove some conclusion without taking a stance on the truth of any of the hypothetical scenarios involved. In the Helen, for example, Gorgias can prove that Helen was not to blame for the Trojan war without discussing or even knowing what actually happened.19 This is the structure we see in the argument for the first thesis of On Not-Being.20 According to Sextus, Gorgias 16

17

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Melissus D3/B2; cf. Gorgias D26a.9, b/B3.69. Brémond 2019 cites other parallels and argues that Melissus, not Parmenides, is Gorgias’ main interlocutor. Anonymous does not mention any arguments derived from Parmenides specifically, though one may see the arguments against what-is being generated as harkening back to Parmenides’ poem (D8.11–19, 25–6/B8.6–14, 20–1, though cf. Melissus D2/B1). Anonymous does mention arguments borrowed from Zeno and Leucippus as well, though parallels with surviving texts are not as clear as in the case of Melissus. Sedley 2017 reconstructs Zeno’s place paradox and explains how Anonymous might have seen Gorgias’ argument as related (p. 25). Mansfeld 1986 makes this point and also discusses how Hippias appears to have compiled a proto-doxography in his Collection (see D22/B6). I call Gorgias’ version of the method “playing both sides” and go through the applications in his extant works in Rodriguez 2020. The argument also appears to generalize so that almost no one is ever to blame for anything at all. See Barney 2016 for a philosophical discussion of the speech. I offer a more detailed comparison between these structures as they appear in Gorgias’ extant works in Rodriguez 2019, where I also argue that Sextus’ summary gives a more

208 evan rodriguez begins with a unique division of the possibilities at hand; if anything is, then either being is, or not-being is, or both being and not-being are.21 He then examines each in turn, concluding that it is not the case that any of these proposed entities is. This way he can show that, no matter what you take to be, an argument is available to deny that that thing is. If this is right, then nothing is. Next, Gorgias sets aside the argument of the first part in order to consider potential attributes of being (as his Eleatic contemporaries did). He considers, granting that something is, whether it can be known or communicated. He once again comes to a negative conclusion and thereby challenges Parmenides’ claim that at least being can be thought of and known.22 Parmenides’ two roads of investigation are roads for thought23 and he implies that what-is can be thought of in his claim that “it is the same, to think and also to be.”24 Both summaries of the second section of ONB involve a direct response to this thought, concluding that nothing can be grasped or known.25

21

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23 24

25

accurate picture of the overarching structure in the first part of ONB. Giombini 2018 offers another recent argument that Sextus preserves more of the argumentative structure despite a recent trend to privilege Anonymous’ summary. For a recent study that puts more credence in the structure of the latter, see Bett 2020a. D26b/B3.66. The option that both being and not-being are stands out as potentially redundant, and Gorgias’ argument against it is one of the cases where Anonymous suggests that it is Gorgias’ own invention. The three options may be seen as a response to each of three possibilities to be found in Parmenides’ poem (is, is not, or is and is not, the latter corresponding to the mistaken way of mortals). Either way, the division does have a striking parallel in the logical form of the tetralemma or catuskoti ˙ ˙ common in Indian logic (A, not-A, both A and not-A, neither A nor not-A). Whether being can be communicated on Parmenides’ view is less cut-and-dry. The goddess certainly seems optimistic about communicating the way things are to the narrator, but this point is especially vulnerable to the potentially self-undermining nature of Parmenides’ poem discussed above. D6/B2.2. τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι (D6.8/B3.1; cf. D8.39–41/B8.34–9, D10/B4.1). Long 1996 offers a detailed discussion of Parmenides’ point here. The summaries use different language to report the main conclusion of the second part. Sextus in particular varies the language he uses to report the conclusion, but both describe the conclusion at one point or another using the term agnôstos (“unknowable”: D26a.1, 20; D26b/B3.77). The term translated as “know” in Parmenides’ D6/B2 quoted above is gignôskein (“know” or “come to know”). That being said, the argument in both versions focuses on the broader question of what can be thought (here

problems of being 209 Sextus begins with the following general framework. If things that are thought of are not things that are, then what-is cannot be thought of.26 Parmenides, by contrast, had claimed that what can genuinely be thought is; Gorgias’ burden is to deny this, which he does with two arguments, from which he can conclude that what-is cannot be thought of.27 Since Gorgias argues that nothing can be thought of, the weaker thesis, that nothing can be known, follows (though Sextus does not cite it). Even if something is, then, it cannot be thought of or known. Anonymous reports a different strategy for concluding that what-is cannot be known.28 This version has Gorgias accept the Parmenidean claim that what is thought is and derive from it the claim that falsehood is impossible. After all, if all objects of thought are and what-is-not cannot be an object of thought, how could there be false thoughts?29 Apparently Gorgias would have argued that knowledge requires the ability to distinguish between true and false;

26

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29

the Greek verb is phronein, whereas the verb translated as “think” above is noein). Given the status of our evidence it is difficult to know with any certainty what precise vocabulary Gorgias used, and even if we did know there would be a question about how best to translate it. Caston 2002 distinguishes between what he calls “the intentional reading” and the “epistemic reading” (p. 210). The first is a stronger reading where what is at issue is what can be thought of at all; the second is a weaker reading where what is at issue is what can be known (or, more broadly, what can be thought of in some specific way). D26b/B3.78. This form of antithesis is common throughout Gorgias’ works. Compare this with similar instances in the Palamedes (D25/B11a.5, 26) and the first part of ONB (D26b/B3.72, 76). As Caston 2002 points out, there are challenges when it comes to assessing the validity of this inference. There are systematic ambiguities in terms of the scope of negation and quantification, and no clear way to interpret them such that all of the inferences in this section are valid. Caston takes this as evidence that Sextus has misread the original, though we cannot rule out that Gorgias himself could have taken advantage of these ambiguities (nor would this be surprising for an argument with such a strong skeptical conclusion). There are textual difficulties throughout our sources for Anonymous’ summary, but they are especially severe in this section of the argument. LM offer a possible reconstruction and references to other recent editions. Caston 2002 offers a philosophical analysis that relies on a different reconstruction of the text and also offers extensive references to relevant earlier literature. This problem was widely influential in Gorgias’ time and takes center stage in Plato’s Sophist.

210 evan rodriguez without falsehoods, then, there is no knowledge (though, as in Sextus, Anonymous does not cite this final argument).30 The third section of ONB goes on to argue that even if what-is can be known, it cannot be communicated to others. The two summaries differ in their formulations, but both use the verb dêloun, often translated as “make clear,” “show,” or “indicate.” Both summaries also base their argument on the claim that speech has as its content simply speech, not things themselves. As Sextus puts it: “what we indicate by is speech (logos), but the things that underlie it (ta hypokeimena) and that are are not speech.”31 Anonymous reports a similar line of reasoning: “someone who speaks utters a speech, but not a color or a thing.”32 Both suggest that the content of speech and that of reality are entirely different in kind. Anonymous suggests that Gorgias added an additional argument that focuses on the inability of the hearer to understand what the speaker says in precisely the same way that the speaker does.33 Thus, in addition to a clever engagement with Parmenides and his attempt to describe being at the most general level, the final two parts of ONB are an early contribution to what philosophers today would call skepticism about knowledge and the philosophy of language. But why add these two parts in the first place? After all, if nothing is, as argued in the first part, it seems to follow directly that nothing can be known or communicated. Why concede, if only for the sake of argument, that anything is? Gorgias appears to have been interested in the problems that arise when trying to give a general account of being and, more specifically, problems that arise not just from describing what-is but from understanding our relationship to it

30

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32 33

In Plato’s Euthydemus a similar line is taken in the opposite direction to the conclusion that everyone knows everything (293b1–6d4). Xeniades, by contrast, suggested that all things are false and that nothing can be known on that basis. ᾧ γὰρ μηνύομεν, ἔστι λόγος, λόγος δὲ οὐκ ἔστι τὰ ὑποκείμενα καὶ ὄντα (D26b/B3.84). Translation slightly modified from LM’s looser rendering of ta hypokeimena, “the things that exist.” λέγει ὁ λέγων, ἀλλ᾽ οὐ χρῶμα οὐδὲ πρᾶγμα (D26a.21). Mourelatos 1987 gives an extended discussion of this section of the argument.

problems of being 211 as human beings. And, as Isocrates recognized, he certainly was not the only one.

zeno and melissus We have already seen how both Parmenides and Gorgias offered surprising arguments for counterintuitive, even self-undermining conclusions. It was common practice for early Greek thinkers to raise philosophical puzzles or “sophisms” and to respond to the puzzles of others. Zeno and Melissus are prominent examples of this trend, too; a survey of their contributions highlights how Gorgias’ On Not-Being is at home in this broader puzzle-raising and puzzle-solving context. Zeno’s arguments all raise puzzles without giving any immediate indication for how to resolve them. While Gorgias focuses on epistemological problems that arise in giving an account of being, Zeno raises metaphysical problems with our ordinary notions about the things around us in general. More specifically, Zeno challenges our notions of everyday things as extended, moving, plural entities composed of different parts. Zeno frequently used an argument form where contradictory statements are derived from some hypothesis. He derived from the hypothesis that many things exist, for example, that they are both so small as to have no size and so large as to be unlimited.34 The same may be said for Zeno’s other arguments against plurality and the argument against place.35 He received the reputation for offering antilogiai or “opposed arguments,” a term often associated with the Sophists; Zeno’s arguments aim to refute an opposed view and, more specifically, do so by deriving opposed statements from that view.36 Gorgias uses this same form of argument in the first part of ONB in addition to the broader structure of considering each of a set of opposed hypotheses described above. 34 36

35 D6/B1. D4–11, 13/B1–3, A16, 21, 22, 24. Plato associates Zeno with antilogia at Phaedrus 261b6–e4 and Parmenides 128d2. Plutarch does as well (R6/A4). Protagoras also used this specific form of antilogia; see the discussion of the Simonides poem portrayed in Plato’s Protagoras for an example of Protagoras highlighting contradictory statements as part of an attempt at refutation (338e6–9e3 = D42/A25). For more on antilogia, see Lee, Chapter 10 in this volume.

212 evan rodriguez Some have speculated that Zeno’s arguments, too, may have been paired as part of a broader structure, though no direct evidence of this survives.37 Other arguments survive in a slightly different form. The arguments against motion do not derive contradictory statements from a single hypothesis but set up a seemingly ordinary situation and use it to derive a counterintuitive result. Aristotle reports four of them, all meant to show that motion is impossible.38 Each argument makes this salient with concrete examples, whether it be the impossibility of traversing some distance, Achilles overtaking a tortoise, or an arrow flying through the air.39 The millet paradox stands out in that it is reported as a dialectical conversation between Zeno and Protagoras. In this case, Zeno asks Protagoras a series of questions, first getting him to admit that a single grain of millet does not make a sound when it falls and then that a whole load of millet does make a sound when it falls. Zeno then derives from the second claim the denial of the first.40 At least some of Zeno’s arguments were collected into a single work, later described as a book of forty arguments.41 But while we have some idea of the form and content of individual arguments, it is difficult to pin down Zeno’s intent. This was as true in ancient times as it is today. Timon, for example, called Zeno “two-tongued” and said that he “catches everyone by surprise.”42 Some see him as a defender of Parmenidean monism, others as a dialectician ready to refute any view put forward, still others as a nihilist, arguing along with Gorgias that 37 38

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Sattler 2020: 134–6 discusses this possibility. See D14–19/A25–8, B4. The details of the underlying arguments are at times difficult to decipher given how little textual evidence survives. For more detailed contemporary reconstructions, see Huggett 2019; Palmer 2021; Sattler 2020. The Stadium Paradox, also called “the Moving Rows,” might still fit the general form of deriving contradictory statements from some hypothesis. According to Aristotle, Zeno argued that “one half of a period of time is equal to its double” (D18/A28). This may be part of why, according to Diogenes Laertius, Aristotle saw Zeno as the first dialectician (R4/A10; cf. also his claim that Protagoras started the Socratic form of argument, D15/A1). Striker 1996 endorses calling the Sophists “dialecticians” in the Aristotelian sense. D2–3/A15. ἀμφοτερογλώσσου τε μέγα σθένος οὐκ ἀλαπαδνόν / Ζήνωνος πάντων ἐπιλήπτορος (R7/A1).

problems of being 213 nothing exists at all. Of course, his intent may also have changed in the course of his lifetime.43 But, either way, the arguments’ effect of provoking further reflection on being and its most basic attributes is clear. Returning to Isocrates’ list of “Sophists,” Melissus stands out for more straightforwardly defending a monistic view. Again, the subject matter is clear; Melissus titled his work On Nature or On Being and follows Parmenides in the discussion of being in general along with its most fundamental attributes.44 Unlike Parmenides, Melissus organizes those attributes in a specific explanatory order, deriving one from the next: from ungenerated to everlasting, from everlasting to unlimited, from unlimited to one, and so on. But Melissus was also engaged in raising and responding to problems that arise from a general discussion of being. He addresses head-on the tension between our everyday experience of a world of multiplicity and his monistic conclusions derived from abstract reasoning about what-is. We cannot help but perceive many different things around us, so to defend his monism Melissus questions the accuracy of our perceptions. He argues that our impressions must be false given that we perceive things as having contradictory properties (iron, for example, we perceive as hard but is then rubbed away by a finger). Those false impressions include things seeming to us to be many.45 He also responds to the sort of nihilism defended by Gorgias (and perhaps Zeno?) by reflecting on the very fact of our communication about it: “If nothing is, what could one say about it, as if it were something?”46 43

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See Sedley 2017: 2–6 for a survey of these options. Sedley argues that we have a better case for attributing nihilism to Zeno than we do for attributing it to Gorgias. Thus, Gorgias’ title On Not-Being or On Nature is likely a parody of Melissus’ title. Scholars are generally skeptical of reports of early works being titled On Nature since it was not customary for early writers to title their works; in many cases, later authors imposed this traditional title on earlier writings that were seen as covering similar topics. The fact that we have the unique “On Being” for Melissus and “On Not-Being” for Gorgias suggests that they may well have been titled as such by the authors themselves (cf. 23D2/24A2). D11, 18/B8, 29A23. εἰ μὲν μηδὲν ἔστι, περὶ τούτου τί ἂν λέγοιτο ὡς ὄντος τινός; (D20, inserted among the B fragments as a paraphrase on I.268–73 of DK). It is disputed whether this is a direct quotation or a paraphrase. See Harriman 2018: 38–43 for discussion.

214 evan rodriguez Finally, he continues the tradition of thinking about both being and not-being by arguing for the impossibility of void. He then uses the impossibility of void to argue for the impossibility of motion.47 As David Sedley (1999) points out, Melissus bases his arguments on physical principles, beginning with the impossibility of something coming to be out of nothing, that would have been shared by contemporary cosmologists. This is in contrast to Parmenides’ focus on the logical operations of “is” and “is not” and to Zeno’s emphasis on ordinary assumptions about space and time. As we have seen, Gorgias borrows liberally from earlier traditions but comes to a distinctive focus on how we think about and communicate what-is. While each thinker has his own emphasis, their concerns all share an underlying interest in what can be said about what-is and what-is-not and the problems that arise when discussing being at such a general level. Thus, even if Isocrates was overly dismissive of these works, he had good reason to group them together.

protagoras, xeniades, and lycophron There is good reason to think that other canonical Sophists discussed being in this general sense as well. We are unfortunate to have lost almost all of Protagoras’ writing, but even the scant evidence we do have suggests that he too was engaging with Parmenides and this broader conversation about being. We can see this from testimony we have about the titles of his works, especially in conjunction with his interest in opposed arguments, antilogiai, and from one of the few fragments that does survive from his writings. We need to be cautious when it comes to the evidence we have about the titles of Protagoras’ works, especially since the different lists that survive vary significantly. But what is clear, no matter which individual titles are accurate, is that Protagoras wrote on a variety of topics that very likely included ontological discussions. Surviving titles range from On Truth and On the Original Settled 47

D10/B7. For recent discussions of Melissus’ arguments and helpful references to earlier literature, see Brémond 2017; Harriman 2018.

problems of being 215 Order to On the Gods and On What Is in Hades.48 Cicero claims that Protagoras (along with Prodicus and Thrasymachus) spoke and wrote “even about nature,”49 and Aristotle reports his “refuting the geometers.”50 This breadth is not surprising given his interest in antilogiai.51 But one title in particular sticks out for present purposes; Porphyry reports that Protagoras argued against monism in a work titled “On Being.”52 This title is not attested elsewhere, and it could be that it was just one piece of a larger work. The testimony that he argued against monism is consistent with the possibility that he offered arguments both against monism and against pluralism as paired antilogiai. But, either way, Porphyry’s testimony suggests that Protagoras did indeed write on the topic of being. We also have some corroboration of this idea in Plato’s Sophist. Plato highlights the connection between a Sophist being an expert at giving antilogiai and their speaking on a wide variety of topics.53 His list includes topics one might expect for the Sophists (law, politics, and the gods) and topics one might not expect (crafts or skills, earth and the heavens). Among the list of those 48 51

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49 50 See D1–8/A1, 24, B1–4, 8. D6/84B3. D33/B7. Diogenes Laertius claims that Protagoras believed there to be two arguments on every issue (D26/B6a). Seneca plausibly adds that Protagoras said one can even argue on either side of this very issue (that is, the issue whether one can argue on either side of an issue). Note, however, that Seneca portrays the issue as whether one can argue on either side “equally” (D27/A20). D7/B2. Furthermore, he reports that Plato borrowed many of these arguments in his own work (see R2/B2 for the full context). Lee 2005: 24–9 discusses the surviving titles and their sources. She suggests that On Being may have been one of several titles (including On Truth, Knockdown Arguments, and Opposing Arguments) that survive for a single work. Sophist 232a1–e2. The sophistic Dissoi Logoi (Dual Accounts on David Wolfsdorf’s recommended translation) may well have been influenced by Protagoras and gives us a more sympathetic glimpse of how such a case might be made. The work gives numerous antilogiai in the first few sections and later announces: “I think that it belongs man and to the same art to be able to discuss briefly, to know truth of things, to judge a legal case correctly, to be able to make speeches to the people, to know the arts of speeches, and to teach about the nature of all things, both their present condition and their origin” (8.1). Unfortunately, the arguments in favor of this claim in what follows are obscured by gaps in the transmitted text. Nevertheless, see Wolfsdorf 2020a for a way to fit each section of the text fits, including section 8.

216 evan rodriguez one might not expect are general statements about being and becoming.54 Plato then has his character Theaetetus make the connection to Protagoras specifically.55 In this light, we can also see Protagoras’ famous measure thesis as engaging with contemporary discussions about being. We are told that the following appeared at the beginning of one of his works (variously reported as “On Truth” or “Knockdown Arguments”). πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος, τῶν μὲν ὄντων ὠς ἔστιν, τὼν δὲ οὐκ ὄντων ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν. Of all things the measure is man:56 of those that are, that they are; of those that are not, that they are not.57 (D9/B1)

Interpreting the text is controversial. In fact, there has been controversy over just about every word. But it is undeniable that this thesis picks up our theme of discussing both what-is and what-is-not. Like Gorgias, Protagoras also shows a peculiar interest in our relationship with what-is, literally putting “man” at the center of his account.58 Without the full text (which, once again, may have included statements opposed to this initial thesis), we will inevitably have to resort to some level of speculation in understanding its significance. But by 54 56

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55 232c8. 232d9–e1 = D2/B8. See Untersteiner 1971. The Greek here is anthrôpos in the singular. “Man” captures some of the ambiguities of the Greek; like anthrôpos, it can be used in an abstract or generic sense on the one hand or refer to an individual human being on the other. Unlike “man” in the prevailing English sense, however, and more like “human” or “person,” anthrôpos is gender neutral. “Men” in the quotation from Parmenides above translates this same word (D4/B1.27). Note the similarity with later formulations of a correspondence theory of truth in Plato’s Sophist (240e10–241a2) and Aristotle’s Metaphysics Γ (1011b25–29). Antiphon supposedly claimed that time is a thought or measure (D17/B9). Like Protagoras he wrote on a wide variety of topics, including mathematics, cosmology, and a work of his own titled On Truth. It would not be surprising if he too wrote about ontology, but no direct evidence of this survives. Thanks to Rachel Barney for pointing out to me how this must have had a dramatic effect. Upon hearing “of all things the measure is . . .” the audience would have likely been surprised to then hear “man.” Van Berkel 2013, 51–3, also discusses how “man” might have stood out here and situates the measure thesis within the broader tradition of Greek wisdom literature. For example: “one must always measure all things according to his own point of view” (Pindar Pythian 2.34).

problems of being 217 calling us a “measure” he suggests that we have within us a standard for determining what-is and what-is-not, even at the most general level. At least on the face of it, this sounds much more optimistic than Parmenides on mortal opinions, Zeno on everyday notions, Melissus on perception, or Gorgias on our ability to even grasp what-is in the first place. Granted, this depends on the sense in which we are a measure, and Protagoras does not specify in this opening line whether we are the correct measure of all things. Readers may be familiar with the tradition, going back to ancient times, of interpreting Protagoras as a relativist in one sense or another based primarily on this fragment. One common interpretation is that Protagoras is relativizing truth, or even reality, to the individual perceiver; as something appears to that perceiver, so it is for them.59 But this is by no means the only interpretation of the above line. There is a question, for example, about both the range of the subject “man” (anthrôpos) and of the object “all things.” Is Protagoras referring to individual human beings or to human beings in general (as opposed to, say, gods or other animals)? Furthermore, some have speculated that the word for “things” (chrêmata) implies a domain that is restricted to things used by us humans, while others restrict the domain to what we directly perceive. When it comes to the second half of the thesis, the word translated “that” (ôs) in the phrases “that they are” and “that they are not” could also be translated “how,” perhaps implying that we are the measure not of what exists but rather what qualities it has.60 And finally, does calling us “the measure” (or “a measure” as the Greek metron without the article 59

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Plato has Socrates interpret the measure thesis this way in the Theaetetus (152a6–9 = R5/B1). As a result, whether or not the thesis itself was intended as such by Protagoras, it has inspired much discussion about relativism. Lee 2005 acknowledges that this testimony from the Theaetetus is crucial for understanding Protagoras as a relativist and surveys different types of relativism that may be at play (pp. 12–13, 30–5). Bett 1989 cautions against understanding any of the Sophists as straightforwardly espousing a robust form of relativism, and Rachel Barney argues in a book manuscript that even Plato flags the fact that this interpretation goes beyond what is literally in the text. See also Notomi 2013 for a survey of ancient interpretations. The same issues surrounding how to understand the Greek verb “to be” in Parmenides apply here as well.

218 evan rodriguez could also be translated) mean that we are measurers, measuring instruments, standards of measurement, or units of measurement? And does it imply that we are the only or the best measures?61 While Protagoras is frustratingly difficult to pin down on this score, it is also worth remembering that he is not the only one. Parmenides, Zeno, and Gorgias offer similar difficulties despite more evidence surviving about the nature of their texts. It may not simply be a feature of our limited evidence, then, but rather of the provocative, puzzle-raising style of argumentation shared by all of these thinkers. Despite the underlying differences in their strategies for doing so, each has the effect of eliciting a similar type of puzzlement about how we might understand the way things are at the most general level. Of course, this is precisely the kind of puzzlement that later philosophers become famous for inducing as a crucial step in inspiring further philosophical inquiry. While Protagoras’ measure thesis, read in isolation, raises more questions than it gives answers, this may very well have been part of its design. Xeniades and Lycophron, two lesser-known Sophists62 likely a generation younger than Gorgias and Protagoras, were also part of the conversation about being and not-being and the puzzle-setting and puzzle-solving tradition that surrounded it. They were apparently part of a continuous tradition of discussing these topics that lasted through the time of Plato and Aristotle and beyond. Little survives about Xeniades’ life or his exact dates, but what does survive is the following description of a peculiar combination of Eleatic and anti-Eleatic views. [Ξενιάδης] εἰπὼν ψευδῆ καὶ πᾶσαν φαντασίαν καὶ δόξαν ψεύδεσθαι καὶ ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος πᾶν τὸ γινόμενον γίνεσθαι καὶ εἰς τὸ μὴ ὂν πᾶν τὸ φθειρόμενον φθείρεσθαι.

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Van Berkel 2013 offers an extensive semantic and cultural analysis of the word metron, surveying these and other possibilities for interpreting the measure thesis. She also gives a summary of the controversy surrounding other words in the fragment with helpful references (pp. 38–9). Aristotle calls Lycophron a “Sophist” (D3/A3). Xeniades is grouped with the Sophists because of the skeptical nature of his views.

problems of being 219 [Xeniades] asserted that all things are false, that every representation and opinion is false, that everything that comes to be comes to be out of what is not, and that everything that perishes perishes into what is not. (D1/81)

The author of the report, once again Sextus Empiricus, contrasts Xeniades’ assertion that every representation (in Greek: phantasia) is false with an interpretation of Protagoras on which every representation is true.63 There is a close connection here to the arguments in the second part of Gorgias’ On Not-Being (in fact, Sextus goes on to report that Xeniades inferred that all things are unknowable from their being false). As in Gorgias’ case, this appears to take the Eleatic skepticism about one domain (the domain of perception and mortal opinions) and expand it. Unlike Gorgias’, Xeniades’ position may have been grounded in a positive metaphysical thesis; his anti-Eleatic metaphysical position that everything comes to be out of and perishes into whatis-not may have motivated his epistemological claim that all things are false.64 While many thinkers around this time appear more comfortable discussing not-being than Parmenides might have liked, Xeniades is unique among them for directly contradicting the Parmenidean injunction against generation from what-is-not, central also to Melissus’ arguments and widely accepted by contemporary cosmologists. Xeniades not only embraces thought about not-being, he makes it the fundamental starting point, above and beyond being, for all generation.65 In doing so he must also embrace the attendant problems of discussing what-is-not, and seems to have done so in part by accepting Parmenides’ position that there is no accurate perception or true 63

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R2. Castagnoli 2010: 97 conjectures that Democritus applied the same sort of selfrefutation argument against both. Brunschwig 2002 argues for this connection between his metaphysical and epistemological claims. Brunschwig 2002 conjectures that Democritus would have seen several points of commonality between his own position and that of Xeniades, specifically their both positing not-being as a type of starting point or principle for their metaphysical system. Democritus, however, puts being and not-being on par with one another, while Xeniades appears to have privileged not-being.

220 evan rodriguez judgment on a theory that embraces not-being. Of course, as in the case of Gorgias’ ONB, this raises its own puzzle about the way Xeniades’ own statements could be accurately known or communicated. What we know of Lycophron presents a picture of someone who wanted to resolve some of these puzzles about the contradictions involved in giving an accurate account of what-is. There are several affinities between Lycophron and Gorgias: his interest in rhetorical style, his composition of praise speeches and, most importantly for us, his concern with problems of being and knowledge.66 According to Aristotle, Lycophron was concerned about how, when something is correctly described as having multiple properties, it might thereby also be described as having the contradictory properties of being both one and many. Lycophron responded by simply suppressing the word “is,” presumably replacing statements of the form “Socrates is white” with simply “Socrates white.”67 This suggests an attempt to preserve our everyday understanding of individual objects as unified despite simultaneously displaying different properties. Lycophron also posited an underlying unity involved in knowing. In a different context, Aristotle reports as follows. οἱ δὲ συνουσίαν, ὥσπερ Λυκόφρων φησὶν εἶναι τὴν ἐπιστήμην τοῦ ἐπίστασθαι καὶ ψυχῆς. Some people [scil. speak, in order to explain how the terms of a definition are united,] of “coexistence,” as Lycophron says that knowledge is [scil. the coexistence] of the act of knowing and the soul. (D2/1)

We can speculate that Lycophron may have been worried about the kind of puzzles about knowledge and communication raised in Gorgias’ ONB, especially given the other affinities with Gorgias mentioned above. Those puzzles relied in part on a separation between the 66 67

For the first two points, see D5–6/5–6. D1/2, cf. Simplicius’ commentary on this passage in Aristotle’s Physics (91.13–14) and Simplicius’ other discussions of Lycophron (93.29–30, 97.21–4). For more on this argument in its Aristotelean context, see Clarke 2019: chap. 3.

problems of being 221 objects of thought and things themselves, as well as a separation between thought and perception. Lycophron’s definition may have been an attempt at unifying the psychological processes involved in knowing in order to respond to these problems.

conclusion From the above survey it is clear that Sophists and Eleatic philosophers alike discussed being and not-being at the most general level, engaged in similar puzzles, and even did so in a similar way. Despite the Isocratean charge of triviality, our evidence also suggests that they shared a serious commitment to the investigation even when their methods were indirect. Gorgias, for example, leaves room for the pursuit of truth even when discussing our limited and imprecise understanding of the world around us. The Palamedes, a fictional court speech where Palamedes defends himself against Odysseus’ accusation of treason, draws a distinction between two bases for the accusation: knowledge and mere opinion. Gorgias has Palamedes go as far as to call opinion “the most untrustworthy of things” and contrast it with knowing the truth.68 On its own, this is compatible with thinking that either (a) knowledge is impossible and therefore we are left with mere opinion, however unreliable it may be, or (b) because of the unreliability of mere opinion, we should seek knowledge wherever possible. The Helen reflects on the effects of speech (logos) in general and especially on its power to mislead. Most famously, the narrator says that “whoever has persuaded, and also persuades, whomever about whatever [does so] by fabricating a false discourse (logos).”69 Thus, we might be tempted to think that (a) is Gorgias’ preferred position. But it would be a mistake to see this as an interest in the effects of logos to the exclusion of the truth of the underlying content. Both speeches do

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D25/B11a.24, cf. also sections 3, 22–3, and D24/B11.11 quoted in note 68 in this chapter. ὅσοι δὲ ὅσους περὶ ὅσων καὶ ἔπεισαν καὶ πείθουσι δὲ ψευδῆ λόγον πλάσαντες (D24/B11.11).

222 evan rodriguez in fact suggest that speech has a normative dimension that includes an accurate representation of the truth.70 Proclus confirms that Gorgias’ view was more along the lines of (b). According to Proclus, Gorgias said: “Being is without evidence if it does not encounter appearing, and appearing is without force if it does not encounter being.”71 Here the word translated as “appearing” (to dokein) is related to the word translated as “opinion” (doxa) elsewhere in this chapter. The first clause can be read as a criticism of Eleatic monism, which conflicts with the way things appear. Yet the second clause suggests that appearances alone are not enough either. This leaves room for an evidence-based understanding of being that fits with our appearances; in fact, it suggests an attempt by Gorgias not only to lay out the problems – as he does in ONB – but also to suggest a way that being and appearing can be reconciled.72 Returning to ONB, then, there is no good reason based on his other works to assume that it was dismissive of the shared project of seeking truth through discourse and reasoning. The level of detail and sophistication that can be gleaned from the summaries, incomplete though they are, gives the impression that Gorgias took the theorizing of his contemporaries seriously enough to be worth engaging. Like the contributions of the Eleatics, ONB serves as a goad to further thinking in response to Parmenides and to ontological theorizing more broadly. Gorgias’ conclusions, especially for the first thesis that nothing is, are highly dependent on the success of individual arguments, not all of 70

71 72

See D24/B11.1–2 and D25/B11a.4–5, 15, 33, 35. Valiavitcharska 2006 draws on Agathon’s speech in Plato’s Symposium, a parody of Gorgias’ style and approach, and the emphasis on correct speech (orthos logos) both there and in the Helen to support this claim. Interestingly, the parody also suggests a strategy of first praising something first for what it is, then for what it does, which Valiavitcharska identifies as operating in the Helen as well (pp. 154–5). Bermúdez 2017 also argues that there are several dimensions along which speech can be evaluated above and beyond mere persuasion on Gorgias’ view. τὸ μὲν εἶναι ἀφανὲς μὴ τυχὸν τοῦ δοκεῖν, τὸ δὲ δοκεῖν ἀσθενὲς μὴ τυχὸν τοῦ εἶναι (D34/B26). Segal 1962 emphasizes Gorgias’ wide-ranging interests and pushes back on the idea that Gorgias’ writings were not serious for reasons similar to the ones I offer here (see esp. pp. 100–4). Bonazzi 2020a: chap. 2 also discusses how generalizations used to distinguish Sophists from philosophers can be misleading.

problems of being 223 which are compelling; a follower of Parmenides would only need to respond to a few choice points. In other words, just as Gorgias has taken an Eleatic framework and tweaked a few arguments to get a radically different result, others can tweak Gorgias’ framework to change the overall result once again. In this way, there is a parallelism between the structure of the work, an elaborate sequence of negative arguments that sets itself up for similar treatment in kind, and its content, a claim about nonexistence, unknowability, and incommunicability that, if it is right, cannot itself exist, be known, or be communicated. What may at first seem like an exaggerated exercise given its defense of an extreme or insupportable view is instead a serious challenge; negative arguments are easy to come by, so it is on his interlocutors (or on the reader) to figure out where these arguments might have gone wrong. As in the case of the Eleatics, puzzles can be an effective tool for provoking further inquiry. Protagoras, too, is sometimes thought to have a cavalier attitude toward the truth. But not only is this nowhere directly evident in the early and most reliable testimony about Protagoras – as we saw, it is by no means a straightforward consequence of the measure thesis – it is also not obvious that Protagoras was even interested in presenting his own doctrines. We have some evidence that Protagoras stressed the importance of being able to think for oneself in his teaching rather than expecting his audience to accept some view on his authority. Plato portrays Protagoras as advertising good judgment (euboulia),73 which may very well be the kind of human ability needed to adjudicate the path forward when presented with opposed arguments.74 In this way, he need not have presented himself as an expert with a distinctive theory in order to impress his audience or attract new students. Instead, the practice of antilogia could serve to undermine 73 74

Protagoras 318e5 = D37/A5. See Woodruff 1999 and 2013 for an account of Protagorean euboulia and the role it played in his teaching. An overarching interest in giving opposing arguments would have necessarily involved multiple viewpoints and complicated the extent to which a single argument could be read as presenting Protagoras’ own view.

224 evan rodriguez rival claims to authority and provide an alternative ideal for his students to strive for. Even if this was not as explicit as Plato makes it out to be, we can see the practice of antilogia as speaking for itself, challenging the audience to make sense of its background and implications on their own. The commonalities between the dialectic of Parmenides and Protagoras or the puzzles of Zeno and Gorgias suggest a shared conversation about the nature of reality and our access to it, as well as a shared approach that encourages the reader or listener to think for themselves rather than simply deciding on a most trusted authority. This is not to say that they agreed on everything, but it is to say that their disagreements, rather than indicating a wholesale rejection of the others’ projects, arose out of a serious interest in and commitment to ontological inquiry.75 For Gorgias and Protagoras, that interest suggests that they were as “philosophical” as their Eleatic counterparts. For the Eleatics, the fact that they engaged in this discussion in an often indirect and self-undermining way suggests that they were equally “sophistic.” Though all of these figures highlighted the various barriers that we face when seeking to understand reality, they opened up a conversation about being at the most general level that was as serious as it was provocative. 75

Given our limited evidence it is difficult to know with any certainty to what extent these figures actually had the opportunity to talk with one another, whether face-toface or through their work. Zeno certainly would have had the chance to speak with Parmenides in their native city of Elea, and Plato portrays them as close acquaintances in the Parmenides. The same dialogue gives some indication of Zeno’s engagement with other thinkers as well; Plato portrays Zeno as writing his book as a response to those who argued against Parmenides’ logos (Parmenides 128b7–e4, R2/A12). Protagoras is a plausible candidate for one of these detractors given his reputation for antilogia and the way he picks up on both the form and content of Parmenides’ poem. Plato also uses the verbal form of antilogia (antilegein, 128d2) to describe Zeno’s response (128d2); we also already saw that Simplicius reports Zeno’s millet paradox as a dialectical exchange between the two thinkers. There could of course have been others that Zeno was responding to as well, including Gorgias (see Nestle 1922: 558, 560–1). I give further reasons for thinking that Plato alludes to Gorgias throughout the Parmenides in Rodriguez 2020.

8

Politics in Theory and Practice Chloe Balla

In the concluding chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that the Sophists profess to teach politics despite themselves never practicing it.1 Writing several decades after the time in which the so-called “Great Sophists” appeared on the scene of Periclean Athens, and reflecting the educational rivalry that Plato initiated, Aristotle focuses on a presumably established professional activity of tutors who offered their services to those who could afford their fees and wished to follow a technical training that would help them to succeed in public life.2 But Aristotle leaves out an aspect of the activity of the fifth-century Sophists, who often assumed the role of political advisors or ambassadors, and whose number includes major figures of both democratic and oligarchic politics in Athens. Aristotle was of course aware that Protagoras and Damon were associates of Pericles, who could have sought their advice on a number of practical issues.3 According to a later source, Protagoras was one of the legislators of Thurii, a panhellenic colony that was founded by the Athenians around 444 BCE.4 In his Constitution of the Athenians, Aristotle suggests that Damon “was the proposer of most of Pericles’ measures,” including payment For valuable suggestions in different stages of the composition of this chapter I would like to thank, besides the editors (whose guidance and perseverance with earlier drafts exceeded any expectation), Mauro Bonazzi, David Konstan, Mitzi Lee, Stephen Menn, and R. W. Wallace. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies for offering me a fellowship during which I did most of my research on this chapter and to acknowledge funding that I received from the Research Committee of the University of Crete (10433). 1 Nicomachean Ethics 10.9 1130b34–1131a1. 2 For Aristotle’s attitude toward “Sophists,” see Moore, Chapter 12 in this volume. 3 On Damon’s double capacity as a practitioner of sophia or wisdom and a political advisor, see further Wallace 2015: 3–19. 4 Diogenes Laertius 9.50, citing Heraclides Ponticus. All dates cited are BCE.

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226 chloe balla for the dicasts.5 Hippias, Gorgias, Prodicus, and possibly also Thrasymachus, all non-Athenian citizens, served as ambassadors of their home city-states.6 Antiphon, the only canonical Sophist who was an Athenian citizen, and who could thus participate in Athenian politics, played a leading role in the oligarchic coup of 411; Critias, another Athenian, tangentially related to the more familiar Sophists, became a leader of the oligarchic coup of 404/3.7 Why is it then that Aristotle fails to acknowledge that at least the earlier Sophists did contribute to practical politics? Any answer to this question will have to take into account a wedge between “academic” training and political participation that Aristotle, following Plato, projects on the class of people he describes as sophists. Submitting to that wedge, Aristotle would probably treat the earlier Sophists’ interest to practical politics as incidental to their main professional identity, which focused on their interest in the formal aspects of argumentation and speechmaking. Resisting Aristotle’s narrow understanding of the scope of sophistic thinking as a fourth-century anachronism, I would like to explore the idea that the combination of practical involvement and theoretical interest in political questions marked the Sophists’ double role as pedagogues and intellectuals with original and often implementable political ideas. In the chapter’s first section we will see how a practice of evaluative comparisons between forms of government led to the invention of a theoretical discourse on constitutions. We will discuss the role that the methodology of antilogia, “debate,” played in early theorizing on constitutions and trace its impact in the work of the two major philosophers of the next generation, Plato and Aristotle. In 5

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Athenaion Politeia 27.4. Denyer 2013 draws attention to the role Protagoras would have played as an inventor of the various ingenious measures through which Athenian democracy strove to achieve isonomia and secure consensus among the citizens. Hippias: P3/A6; Gorgias: P13/