called into existence a class of teachers known as sophists. They were
a professional class rather than a Greek school or a category of Greek
philosophy, and as such they were scattered over Greece and exhibited
professional rivalries. The educational demand was partly for genuine
knowledge, but mostly reflected a desire for spurious learning that
would lead to political success. They wandered about Greece from place
to place, gave lectures, took pupils, and entered into disputations.
For these services they exacted large fees, and were, in fact, the
first in Greece to take fees for teaching wisdom. Though not
disgraceful in itself, the wise men of Greece had never accepted
payment for their teaching. The sophists were not, technically
speaking, philosophers, but, instead taught any subject for which
there was a popular demand. Topics included rhetoric, politics,
grammar, etymology, history, physics, and mathematics. Early on they
were seen as teachers of virtue in the sense that they taught people
to perform their function in the state. Protagoras of Abdera, who
appeared about 445 BCE. is named as the first Sophist; after him the
most important is Gorgias of Leontini, Prodicus of Ceos and Hippias of
Elis. Wherever they appeared, especially in Athens, they were received
with enthusiasm and many flocked to hear them. Even such people as
Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates sought their company.
The most popular career of a Greek of ability at the time was
politics; hence the sophists largely concentrated on teaching
rhetoric. The aims of the young politicians whom they trained were to
persuade the multitude of whatever they wished them to believed. The
search for truth was not top priority. Consequently the sophists
undertook to provide a stock of arguments on any subject, or to prove
any position. They boasted of their ability to make the worse appear
the better reason, to prove that black is white. Some, like Gorgias,
asserted that it was not necessary to have any knowledge of a subject
to give satisfactory replies as regards it. Thus, Gorgias
ostentatiously answered any question on any subject instantly and
without consideration. To attain these ends mere quibbling, and the
scoring of verbal points were employed. In this way, the sophists
tried to entangle, entrap, and confuse their opponents, and even, if
this were not possible, to beat them down by mere violence and noise.
They sought also to dazzle by means of strange or flowery metaphors,
by unusual figures of speech, by epigrams and paradoxes, and in
general by being clever and smart, rather than earnest and truthful.
Hence our word "sophistry": the use of fallacious arguments knowing
them to be such. Early on Sophists were seen to be of merit as people
of superior skill or wisdom, as we find in Pindar and Herodotus. We
learn from Plato, though, that even in the 5th century there was a
prejudice against the name "sophist". By Aristotle's time, the name
bore a contemptuous meaning, as he defines "sophist" as one who
reasons falsely for the sake of gain.
With the revival of Greek eloquence, from about the beginning of the
second century CE., the name "sophist" attained a new distinction. At
that time the name was given to the professional orators, who appeared
in public with great pomp and delivered declamations either prepared
beforehand or improvised on the spot. Like the earlier sophists, they
went generally from place to place, and were overwhelmed with applause
and with marks of distinction by their contemporaries, including the
Roman Emperors. Dion Chrysostom, Herodes Atticus, Aristides, Lucian,
and Philostratus the Elder belong to the flourishing period of this
second school of sophists, a period which extends over the entire
second century. They appear afresh about the middle of the fourth
century, devoting their philosophic culture to the zealous but
unavailing defense of paganism. Among them was the emperor Julian and
his contemporaries Libanius, Himerius, and Themistius. Synesius may be
considered the last sophist of importance.
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