OF THE FIFTH CENTURY, B.C. 659 



(3.) Plato was a man of peculiar idiosyncrasy, a great intellect confessedly, 

 but a crotchety pedant in some matters, and a transcendental dreamer in others. 

 His witness — at bottom the only serious testimony against the Sophists — (for of 

 the great jester Aristophanes in such matters we need take no account) is con- 

 sequently of no value, and cannot, without the grossest injustice, be quoted against 

 such sober, sensible, and practical thinkers as Protagoras and Gorgias. 



(4.) The immoral teaching, attributed to the Sophists, and set forth by Plato 

 through the mouth of Callicles in the Gorgias and Thrasymachus in the 

 Republic, must be a figment ; for the whole history of the Athenian democracy 

 shows that such doctrines would have been utterly revolting to them, and men 

 professing such doctrines never would have been allowed the slightest influence 

 in the education of their sons. 



(5.) The Sophists, in fact, as a body, had no peculiar system of morals, either 

 bad or good ; as little had they any system of philosophic doctrine. They were 

 a profession, not a sect. 



(6.) The standing objection made to the Sophists by Plato, in almost all his 

 Dialogues, that they were a venal and mercantile crew, because they taught 

 philosophy for a fee, need scarcely require refutation at our hands, living, as we 

 do, in a country where the expediency of payment for all sorts of professional 

 work is universally recognised. One does not, indeed, see how the Sophists could 

 have performed their duties as general Hellenic teachers, travelling from land to 

 land, had they not exacted a considerable fee, if it were only to pay their travel- 

 ling expenses. 



These propositions, it will be seen, have a polemical aspect, as indeed it is 

 both the vice and the virtue of Mr Grote's book generally, that he is everywhere 

 writing down an old view of Hellenic matters, and writing up a new one. In 

 order, therefore, fully to understand the drift of his statements, we must set dis- 

 tinctly before us the old doctrine about the Sophists which he affects to have 

 overturned ; and though this might be done by a large array of testimonies 

 from many quarters, it will be sufficient for our present purpose to cite two of 

 the best known authorities, Brucker and Gillies, who may be looked on as the 

 generally recognised exponents of the ante-Grotian doctrine with regard to the 

 Sophists. In his " History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 549, the erudite old Augsburg 

 theologian says : — " Erant turn temporis Athenis Sophistce, magistri docendi, quotes 

 Leontinus Gorgias, Thrasymachus, Protagoras A bderites, Prodicus Ceius, Hippias 

 Eleus aliique, qui in eo potissimum artem consistere arrogantibus verbis jactabant, 

 quemadmodum caussa inferior, dicendo superior evadere posset ; id quod, docente 

 Cicerone sententiarum magis concinnitate argutoque et circumscripta verborum 

 ambitu quam eorum pondere efficere tentabant. Hinc homines vani, ambitiosi, avari, 

 quique soli sibi sapere videbantur, et omnium disciplinarum cognitionem sibi arroga- 

 bant, rton tantum hanc in utramque partem de quams re proposita invictis argtt- 



