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Brill’s Companion to George Grote
and the Classical Tradition
Edited by
Kyriakos N. Demetriou
|
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Introduction
Kyriakos N. Demetriou
1 George Grote, The Philosophic Radical and Politician
Bruce Kinzer
2 James Mill and George Grote: A Benthamite Defence of
“Theoretic Reform”
Antis Loizides
3 George Grote and Natural Religion
John R. Gibbins
4 Bentham, Mill, Grote, and An Analysis of the Inluence of
Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind
Catherine Fuller †
5 A Regular Politician in Breeches: The Life and Work of
Harriet Lewin Grote
Sarah Richardson
6 Grote’s Athens: The Character of Democracy
James Kierstead
7 The Comparative Approach in Grote’s History of Greece
Peter Liddel
8 Grote’s Sparta/Sparta’s Grote
Paul Cartledge
9 Grote’s Plato
Catherine Zuckert
10 The Sophists in Context: George Grote’s Reappraisal
Giovanni Giorgini
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11 Grote on Alexander the Great
Pierre Briant
12 Grote on Aristotle’s Logic
Robin Smith
13 Grote’s Moral Philosophy and its Context
Jerome B. Schneewind
Appendix: George Grote on James Mill’s “Government”
Transcribed and edited by Antis Loizides
Index of Names and Subjects
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© , , | ./_
10
The Sophists in Context: George Grote’s Reappraisal
Giovanni Giorgini
Enter the Sophists
The sophists had a bad press from a very early stage on. When they rst
appeared on the scene at Athens (and in other important cities in mainland
Greece and in Sicily), around the middle of the fth century , they pre-
sented themselves as masters of language and teachers of the art of persua-
sion and public speaking: George Grote himself already noticed that they thus
lled a vacuum in “higher education” in the city as well as answer a request
for experts able to teach auent citizens how to be efective with speech in
politics and in court: Athenian democracy had been since its inception a “gov-
ernment through speech”; and “equal possibility to speak” (isegoria) as well as
the “possibility to speak up one’s mind” (parrhesia) had been two of its main
ideological pillars, two catchwords almost synonymous of democracy. Other
factors made ability to speak publicly a recommendable skill: a lawsuit was not
an unlikely event in the life of an ordinary Athenian so it was prudent to be well
prepared for the occasion; in democratic regimes trials were very frequent and
citizens had to appear in court personally and therefore needed some ability
to speak persuasively and argue efectively. With his amazing historical knowl-
edge and sensibility Grote also noticed that after the Ionic revolt ( )
and the Persian invasions of Greece (–) the relations between Greek
cities became more frequent and more complicated and required more talent,
and especially rhetorical skills, in the politicians who managed them. Training
in speech then became as essential as training in arms for a Greek citizen and
the sophists asserted to be able to provide exactly such an education.
Although they evidently performed a useful service, the sophists acquired
a bad reputation in a very short time: as early as , when Aristophanes’
Clouds was performed, the playwright could count on the fact that the public
would understand his mocking picture of Socrates as a sophist because they
could recognize a sophist when they encountered one. A number of factors
contributed to this undeserved bad repute: social envy, for the sophists taught
George Grote, A History of Greece [–] vols. (New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, ;
reprinted from the second London edition of by J. Murray), vol. , chapter , .
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for money and therefore only rich people could aford to pay for their services;
conservative attitude, for they employed their verbal skills to examine, if not
question, the traditional beliefs of their contemporaries; political enmity, for
many of them were attracted to Athens by Pericles’ patronage and democratic
freedom and were therefore held in suspicion, or plainly hated, by political
opponents; intellectual rivalry, as in the case of Plato, Aristotle and Isocrates,
who for diferent reasons despised their teaching because had diferent intellec-
tual and educational programmes. Plato, in particular, was keen to emphasize
the diference between his former teacher, Socrates, and the sophists who,
in his opinion, were pursuing two completely diferent line of activity: while
Socrates used dialogue and dialectics to search for the truth about the most
important matters in the belief that this pursuit could be done only “chorally,”
the sophists used discourses and linguistic tricks in order to win the argument
and increase their prestige (and consequent honorarium). If we add to this
that what we know about the sophists has arrived down to us mostly from their
critics whilst only fragments survive of their original works, it is not dicult
to realize why it is still dicult to dispel the accusation of “sophistry” levelled
at them.
The Image of the Sophists in England before Grote
With rash conciseness we may say that two main factors contributed to pre-
venting a fair evaluation of the sophists and of their contribution to the history
of philosophy: Plato’s judgement, inspired by his desire to diferentiate them
from Socrates and from his own intellectual activity; and their association with
Athenian democracy, which prompted authors of anti-democratic leaning to
regard them as a product as well as an efect of the “spirit of democracy.” In
the most authoritative history of Greek philosophy of the nineteenth century,
Eduard Zeller’s Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlische Entwicklung
This also explains the number of trials which involved sophists and other intellectuals and
artists who belonged to the circle of Pericles: these were political trials which aimed at sap-
ping Pericles’ hegemonic position in Athens by touching people around him when they
could not get him.
This is evident in most Platonic dialogues, especially the Gorgias. Plato was aware that
the two gures, the philosopher/dialectician and the sophist/rhetorician, were not easily
distinguishable; however, just like the dog and the wolf, they looked similar but had in fact
completely diferent natures: see his Sophist and the exercise of the “art of division” (diaire-
sis) to arrive at a theoretical denition of the two gures.
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(–), the sophists were still depicted as shallow thinkers who upheld rela-
tivism in morality as well as in the theory of knowledge. Zeller’s interpretation
was strongly inuenced by Hegel’s vision of the development of philosophy.
Hegel had the merit to attribute an important role to the sophists, considered,
together with Socrates, as a moment of subjective “antithesis” to the “objec-
tive” moment represented by the Ionians: they were thus reinstated in the
history of philosophy albeit with a negative role. In England the situation was
not much better: the philosopher F.D. Maurice, author of an inuential history
of philosophy, held a very negative view of Athenian democracy and gave a
very critical account of the sophists in his work. As for the historians, they
typically associated the sophists with the “commercial spirit” of democracy:
they loved luxury and extravagance; they asked for payment for their teach-
ing and bent their theories to please the hearers; they indulged in all sorts
of material pleasures. It is signicant in this respect, as Karen Whedbee has
persuasively argued, that “historians of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries made no pretence about their own objectivity. They engaged the
history of Greece as an instrument for reinforcing enduring lessons about
political and moral principles.” The role of the demagogues in manipulat-
ing popular opinion, the institution of ostracism in order to curb the best and
most eminent citizens, the inuence of the sophists in corrupting the young
were typical topics in the indictment of Athenian democracy. It comes as no
surprise, then, that the sophists ofered to these historians an illustration of
the dangers of populism and malicious intellectual inquiry. The most inu-
ential History of Greece of the late eighteenth century was undoubtedly that
of William Mitford, published in and reprinted many times in the next
Eduard Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlische Entwicklung (Tübingen:
Fues, –); the book was translated in many languages, including English: A History of
Greek Philosophy, trans. S.F. Alleyne, vols. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., ).
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy () (Lincoln-London: University of
Nebraska Press, ), vol. , –. On Hegel’s reception of the sophists see John Poulakos,
Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ).
Frederick Denison Maurice, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy. Ancient Philosophy ()
(London-Glasgow: Grin & Co., ). This essay was part of the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana
devised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Nadia Urbinati comments that “for Maurice, Athenian
democracy was corrupt and intolerant because it was based on doxa and exalted the vita
activa”: Mill on Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ).
Karen E. Whedbee, “Making the Worse Case Appear the Better: British Reception of the
Greek Sophists prior to ,” Rhetoric & Public Afairs , no. (): –; see also her
very interesting “Reclaiming Rhetorical Democracy: George Grote’s Defense of Cleon and the
Athenian Demagogues,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly , no. , (): –.
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half century. Mitford was a rabid anti-Jacobin and Tory, who had been espe-
cially impressed by the Athenian democracy’s failure to protect individual
rights, notably of the richest and most eminent citizens. In his description,
the Athenian government had already become “a tyranny in the hands of the
people” by the time of Solon; as for the sophists, they had been instrumental
in debasing the morality of young Athenians through their moral relativism
and by their ability to “make the worse appear the better cause.” Mitford’s
anti-democratic bias was so obvious that it may seem strange today that his
account of classical Greece was so popular. But, as Whedbee notices, “Mitford’s
description of the sophists was inuential precisely because it reected the
political and intellectual orthodoxies of his age.” It is interesting to note
that even James Mill, who rejected the view of Athenian democracy depicted
by conservative historians such a Mitford and who sharply criticised the neo-
Platonic reading of Plato propounded by Thomas Taylor “The Platonist,” con-
sidered the sophists shallow thinkers who “lled the minds of the youth with a
spirit of mere logomachy.” Furthermore, it was typical in the literature of the
age to contrast Socrates’ pursuit of truth in morality with the sophists’ ability
to teach whatever value was most expedient, in a battle of the “just” against
the “useful”; conversely, Socrates and Plato were compared to Christianity and
often considered its forerunners if not pre-Christian saints altogether.
In the early nineteenth century a few voices of dissent started to be heard
and the stature of the sophists’ intellectual accomplishment and the qual-
ity of their morality were re-evaluated and sometimes even commended.
An important gure in questioning the received view of the sophists was the
Whig historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay, who published a
very detailed and critical review of Mitford’s History in the Knight’s Quarterly,
William Mitford, The History of Greece, vols. (London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, –).
See the very critical review by George Grote, “Institutions of Ancient Greece,” Westminster
Review (): –.
Whedbee, “British Reception of the Greek Sophists prior to ,” .
James Mill, “Taylor’s Plato,” Edinburgh Review (): . Antis Loizides argues for a
more nuanced appreciation of James Mill’s position on the sophists, for in an early entry
of his Commonplace Books () he described them as “ordinary philosophers” who
taught appropriate virtues to their audience: see Antis Loizides, John Stuart Mill’s Platonic
Heritage (Lanham: Lexington Books, ), fn .
Loizides, Mill’s Platonic Heritage, –.
T.B. Macaulay’s contributions to Knight’s Quarterly magazine are reprinted in The
Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay vols. (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and
Roberts, ).
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with the explicit intent to “reduce an overpraised writer to his proper level.”
Macaulay connected his rehabilitation of the sophists with a reassessment
of the experience of Athenian democracy, which he considered a success-
ful experiment: democratic government was suited to the Athenian people;
its commercial inclination produced economic wealth which, in turn, pro-
vided leisure to the citizens who could devote time to art and philosophy.
Another important contribution to this reappraisal was given by the eccen-
tric and eclectic intellectual G.H. Lewes, the author of a Biographical History of
Philosophy () where the sophists were the subject of a thorough rehabilita-
tion: Lewes questioned the authority of Plato, a biased witness in his opinion,
and advocated a re-reading of the sophists against the Platonic tradition of
condemnation; he argued that the sophists, especially Protagoras, were practi-
cally-minded people who exhibited good sense and trained young Athenians
how to attain efective practical results. Finally, Grote himself had contrib-
uted to an early reassessment of the sophists in his critical review of Mitford’s
History published in the Westminster Review ().
Grote’s History of Greece: The Sophist as a Free-thinker
It is interesting to notice that in his History of Greece Grote examined the
role of the sophists, together with the rest of the intellectual development of
the fth century, as a way to explain what he considered an “event of para-
mount interest,” namely the trial and condemnation of Socrates. He was inter-
ested in both the intellectual and the political context of this fateful event.
Grote argued that from the year downwards there had appeared two
important classes of men in Greece unknown to Solon or even to Pericles,
which he termed the Rhetoricians and the Dialecticians, for whom “the ground
had been gradually prepared by the politics, the poetry, and the speculation,
of the preceding period.” Following in Plato’s wake, Grote sharply distin-
guished the two groups: the Rhetoricians catered to the needs of men of action
whereas the Dialecticians had no direct link to public life; they opened new
Thomas Babington Macaulay, “On Mitford’s History of Greece” [], in The Miscellaneous
Writings of Lord Macaulay, vol. , .
“A good government, like a good coat,—he remarked shrewdly—is that which ts the
body for which it is designed,” Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, .
George Henry Lewes, The Biographical History of Philosophy, vols. (London: Charles
Knight, ).
Grote, History of Greece, vol. , chapter , .
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lines of intellectual pursuit and appealed to men interested in abstract spec-
ulation. Grote provided an interesting evaluation also of the role of the Old
Comedy, and especially of Aristophanes. He commented that it was a sign of
the strength of democracy and its men and institutions that they could “toler-
ate unfriendly tongues either in earnest or in jest.” He went on to argue for the
importance of freedom of speech in society in all ages:
It was the blessing and the glory of Athens, that every man could speak
out his sentiments and his criticisms with a freedom unparalleled in the
ancient world, and hardly paralleled even in the modern, in which a vast
body of dissent both is, and always has been, condemned to absolute
silence.
However, Grote observed, this freedom of speech gave voice also to a distinct
democratic sentiment of antipathy to new ideas and intellectual achievements:
this appeared very clearly in the case of the “retrograde spirit” of Aristophanes
who attacked philosophy, literature and eloquence “in the name of those
good old times of ignorance”; Grote hence lamented the “unfavourable and
degrading inuence of comedy on the Athenian mind.” And, especially in
the Clouds, the “misapplied wit and genius of Aristophanes” concurred to give
a biased portrait of Socrates (and consequently, we may add, of the sophists).
In preparing the ground for his interpretation of the sophists Grote argued for
the necessity to examine critically our sources, especially in the case of biased
witnesses:
If ever there was need to invoke this rare sentiment of candour, it is when
we come to discuss the history of the persons called sophists, who now
for the rst time appear as of note; the practical teachers of Athens and
of Greece, misconceived as well as misesteemed.
Grote recalled that the musical teacher Damon was called a sophist and so had
been called also Solon and Pythagoras. In his description, therefore, “a soph-
ist, in the genuine sense of the word, was a wise man, a clever man; one who
stood prominently before the public as distinguished for intellect or talent of
History, .
History, .
History, .
History, .
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some kind.” A denition followed by a long list of well-known people which
included Solon and Pythagoras, Aristippus and Antisthenes, Isocrates and
Plato himself. He then went on to argue that
In this large and comprehensive sense the word was originally used, and
always continued to be so understood among the general public. But
along with this idea, the title sophist also carried with it or connoted a
certain invidious feeling. The natural temper of people generally ignorant
towards superior intellect—the same temper which led to those charges
of magic so frequent in the Middle Ages- appears to be a union of admi-
ration with something of an unfavourable sentiment; [...] Timon, who
hated the philosophers, thus found the word sophist exactly suitable, in
sentiment as well as in meaning, to his purpose in addressing them.
Another characteristic could be added to this envy: the sophists taught for
pay, and people like Plato had repugnance against receiving pay for teach-
ing. Following Plato, one could contrast this attitude with that of the Platonic
Socrates, who assimilated the relation between teacher and pupil to that
between two lovers or two intimate friends. However, Grote very persuasively
argued that “if, in the middle of the Peloponnesian war, any Athenian had
been asked ‘Who are the principal sophists in your city?’ he would have named
Sokrates among the rst.” Indeed, “these men—whom modern writers set
down as the sophists, and denounce as the moral pestilence of their age—
were not distinguished in any marked or generic way from their predecessors.”
Sophists like Protagoras or Gorgias supplied the demand for higher education
in Athens with an unparalleled ability and success and hence “gained a dis-
tinction such as none of their predecessors had attained, were prized all over
Greece, travelled from city to city with general admiration, and obtained con-
siderable pay.” They incurred in increasing jealousy from “inferior teachers
and lovers of ignorance generally.” As for Plato, his hostility “may be explained
without at all supposing in them that corruption which modern writers have
been so ready not only to admit but to magnify. It arose from the radical difer-
ence between his point of view and theirs”: Plato was a radical reformer and
History, .
History, .
History, .
History, .
History, .
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found all political regimes of his age defective and was very critical of Athenian
democracy; the Sophists’ business, on the contrary, was to teach young people,
and especially Athenians, how to speak and act in their cities. Grote could thus
conclude that Plato’s “reforming, as well as his theorizing tendencies, brought
him into polemical controversy with all the leading agents by whom the busi-
ness of practical life at Athens was carried on.” The business of the sophists
was with ethical precepts, not ethical theory, because “it ought never to be for-
gotten, that those who taught for active life were bound, by the very condi-
tions of their profession, to adapt themselves to the place and the society as
it stood.” The diference, for Grote, is thus between the theoretical and the
practical approach to politics: Plato heralded in the former while the sophists
championed the latter. From this Grote went on to point out that we know the
sophists chiey from the evidence of Plato, their pronounced enemy; Aristotle,
on his part, followed the example of his master in giving a negative denition
of the term.
After this long preparatory discussion, Grote described the biased image of
the sophists current in his age thus:
The sophists are spoken of as a new class of men, or sometimes in lan-
guage which implies a new doctrinal sect, or school, as if they then
sprang up in Greece for the rst time; ostentatious imposters, attering
and duping the rich youth for their own personal gain; undermining the
morality of Athens, public and private, and encouraging their pupils to
the unscrupulous prosecution of ambition and cupidity.
He then commented: “I know few characters in history who have been so
hardly dealt with as these so-called sophists.” In his view they should rather
be called professors or public teachers. In fact, when Plato embarks on the
project to dene a sophist, the denition he comes up with suits Socrates
better than anyone else. In a footnote Grote very appropriately observed that
History, –.
History, . On this Grote agreed with John Stuart Mill’s view that the sophists were
“worldly-minded men” who taught arts conducive to worldly success; they could not
therefore be revolutionary thinkers. See John Stuart Mill, “Notes on Some of the More
Popular Dialogues of Plato” in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J.M. Robson (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, –), vols, vol. .
Grote refers to Aristotle, Rhetoric I, , .
History, .
History, .
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certain German interpreters (he singled out Ritter and Brandis in this case)
use Aristophanes’ Clouds as evidence that the sophists taught corrupting doc-
trines, with the paradoxical result that they do not use this author against
Socrates, whom he attacks, and they quote him against the sophists, whom
he does not attack! Another puzzling element which shows the unfair treat-
ment of the sophists in the contemporary literature was the condemnation of
Protagoras as an atheist by most commentators. This fact betrayed a patent
contradiction for—Grote observed—the people who consider pagan religion a
repugnant ction good for feeble, uncouth minds are the same who denounce
Protagoras for his alleged atheism: a disconcerting inconsistency.
Grote went on to point out another topic about which he disagreed with the
general opinion, especially that of German philologists: “It has been common
with recent German historians of philosophy to translate from Plato and dress
up a end called ‘Die Sophistik’ (Sophistic,) whom they assert to have poisoned
and demoralized, by corrupt teaching, the Athenian moral character, so that it
became degenerate at the end of the Peloponnesian war, compared with what
it had been in the time of Miltiades and Aristeides.” But the “Sophistic” is an
abstraction because the actual sophists did not share any common doctrines,
principles or method: “they had nothing in common except their profession,
as paid teachers, qualifying young men ‘to think, speak and act,’ these are the
words of Isokrates [...].” Grote rightly observed that there is no reason to
believe that Gorgias would have subscribed to Protagoras’ view that “man is
the measure of all things” and, conversely, Protagoras would have objected to
the doctrines put forth by Thrasymachus in book of Plato’s Republic. “It is
impossible therefore to predicate anything concerning doctrines, methods, or
tendencies, common and peculiar to all the sophists.” Grote also compared the
teaching of Hippias with that of Protagoras to show that the former prompted
his pupils to study all sorts of disciplines whereas the latter reproached him for
making them learn too many subjects. The abstract word “Die Sophistik” has
therefore no real meaning—Grote concluded.
Grote went on to examine the doctrines of the sophists one by one, per-
forming in this a double task: he showed the diferences in their thought and
Grote refers the reader to Heinrich Ritter, Geschichte der Philosophie, vols. (Hamburg:
F. Berthes, –); Christian August Brandis, Handbuch der Geschichte der Griechisch-
Römischen Philosophie (Berlin: Reimer, –).
History, , fn .
History, .
History, .
History, .
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at the same time revealed the importance of their doctrines. One sophist
who received an utter rehabilitation as a serious thinker was Gorgias. Grote
maintained that in order to understand Gorgias one must take into account
the intellectual context, and especially Parmenides and the Eleatics, who were
looking for something existing behind and beyond the senses, a “noumenon”
in the Kantian sense. Seen on this background, Gorgias’ doctrine on Not-being
makes sense and it is not a matter of pure scepticism. Grote added that one
could venture to say that the purpose of his treatise on Not-being was to dis-
courage fruitless theoretical speculations in his students and to recommend
rhetorical exercises useful to full the duties of an active citizen. One of
Grote’s most rened treatments is devoted to the Platonic dialogue Gorgias
and its characters. He observed how Gorgias himself is treated with great
respect by Socrates and how the tone of the dialogue changes when his pupil
Polus and then Kallikles get to speak. Polus is insolent and Socrates deals with
him in a harsher way; as for Kallikles, he maintains what Grote describes as
“doctrines openly and avowedly anti-social.” His distinction between a law
of nature and the law of society is the prelude to his statement that the great
man, the strong man, is by nature entitled to act as he pleases while the laws
of the city, enacted by the weak many, are designed to imprison and tame him.
Justice by nature is thus the opposite of justice in society. Grote’s original and
strong point consists in denying rmly that this anti-social position may be
ascribed to “the sophists.” His argument is solid and rened and is the result of
the careful and unbiased reading of Plato’s text. First of all, “Kallikles himself is
not a sophist, nor represented by Plato as such. He is a young Athenian citizen,
of rank and station, [...] he disparages philosophy, and speaks with utter con-
tempt about the sophists.” Secondly, it is evident that such a bold anti-social
doctrine could not be propounded publicly by anyone because it would have
been considered revolting by the hearers. The sophists were public teach-
ers and therefore had to conform to the moral standards of the place where
they taught. Especially in the case of Athens such an anti-democratic teach-
ing, which included an exaltation of the tyranny of the strongest, would have
been considered utterly rebarbative by any audience. Even if a sophist dared to
think anything of the sort, he would have kept it for himself, as Polus did. Grote
could therefore conclude that the very point that Socrates and Plato wished to
establish in this dialogue was that sophists and rhetoricians cater indulgently
to the taste of the Athenian dêmos:
History, –.
History, .
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they courted, attered, and truckled to the sentiment of the Athenian
people, with degrading subservience; that they looked to the immedi-
ate gratication simply, and not to permanent moral improvement of
the people; that they had no courage to address to them any unpalatable
truths, however salutary, but would shift and modify opinions in every
way, so as to escape giving ofence; that no man who put himself promi-
nently forward at Athens had any chance of success, unless he became
moulded and assimilated, from the core, to the people and their type of
sentiment. Granting such charges to be true, how is it conceivable that
any sophist, or any rhetor, could venture to enforce upon an Athenian
public audience the doctrine laid down by Kallikles.
It is therefore absurd to imagine that such skilled rhetoricians would insult
their very audience, knowing very well the democratic sentiment prevalent
at Athens and wishing to please their public. Grote made a similar reasoning
with respect to Thrasymachus, whose portrait depicted by Plato in the Republic
he found unlikely. If there was something that the sophists had in common
it was that, far from being agents of revolution, they contributed to maintain
the intellectual and moral status quo because it was the basis of their teach-
ing and success. Grote could thus conclude that if there was a moral degen-
eration in Athens and in Greece in the interval after and the end of the
Peloponnesian war this fact should be attributed to some other cause than
“this imaginary abstraction called sophistic.” Moreover, if one looked at the
facts candidly, Athens was not more corrupt at the end of the Peloponnesian
war than in the times of Miltiades; “the matter of fact here alleged is as untrue,
as the cause alleged is unreal”—Grote commented. He went on to give ample
evidence of this, starting with the condemnation of Miltiades and the ostra-
cism of Aristeides to arrive to the favour the pious Nicias had with the Athenian
people regardless of his aws as a general. He concluded that if “we survey the
eighty-seven years of Athenian history, between the battle of Marathon and
the renovation of the democracy after the Thirty, we shall see no ground for the
assertion, so often made, of increased and increasing moral and political cor-
ruption. It is my belief that the people had become morally and politically
better, and that their democracy had worked to their improvement.” Grote
went on to state: “Yet such is the prejudice with which the history of the soph-
ists has been written, that the commentators on Plato accuse the sophists of
History, –.
History, .
History, .
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having originated what they ignorantly term, ‘the base theory of utility,’ here
propounded by Sokrates himself.” Grote considered Plato an unreliable wit-
ness when it comes to the criticism of his society. For Plato believed that his
society was totally corrupt, that all the political regimes of his day were bad
and not conducive to the creation of good citizens, and that all the sophists,
rhetoricians, musicians, poets, statesmen provided a corrupting inuence on
the citizens. But in fact there was a huge diference, say, between a compe-
tent statesman like Pericles and a pious but incompetent one like Nicias, and
Protagoras would have considered it an honour and a great achievement if he
had been able to inspire a student to become like Pericles. These statements
sound less impressive today, when we are accustomed to think that democ-
racy is evidently the best form of government devised by human beings; how-
ever, they were groundbreaking and revolutionary in Victorian England, when
especially the elites looked with fearful apprehension to the rise of masses and
their entrance into the political arena.
The Final Rehabilitation: Plato and the Other Companions of
Sokrates
When Grote devoted himself to an examination of the theories of the rst phi-
losophers, as an introduction to his study of Plato so that the context of his
thought could scatter light on Plato’s great achievements, he remarked that
any contemporary reader would be astonished that such far-fetched theories
could ever be propounded in earnest and believed. From this he went on to
argue that the self-assuredness with which certain contemporary philoso-
phers proclaimed their “rst truths or rst principles as universal, intuitive,
self-evident” was similarly unfounded. “Philosophy is, or aims at becom-
ing, reasoned truth”—Grote maintained; it “aspires to deliver not merely
truth, but reasoned truth.” He quoted approvingly Ferrier (The Institutes of
Metaphysics) according to whom “philosophy, in its ideal perfection, is a body
of reasoned truth.” Therefore philosophy is by necessity polemical because
individual reasoners who seek the truth through their reason inevitably
“dissent from the unreasoning belief which reigns authoritative in the social
History, .
George Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, vols. (London: J. Murray,
), vol. , .
Plato, vol. , v.
Plato, vol. , ; cf. .
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atmosphere around them.” It also follows that these independent reasoners
are always rare everywhere.
It is very interesting that Grote transposed this persuasion into his recon-
struction of ancient philosophy. The general picture he depicted of early Greek
philosophy is one of variety of belief, since each philosopher followed his own
reason and arrived at diferent conclusion from all others; and of essential dis-
sent, in that in so doing each thinker departed from the established creeds of
his society and incurred in its reproach: “There is no established philosophical
orthodoxy, but a collection of Dissenters”—he commented. He then went on
to depict again the general view of the sophists current in his age:
The received supposition that there were at Athens a class of men called
Sophists who made money and reputation by obvious fallacies employed
to bring about contradictions in dialogue—appears to me to pervert the
representations given of ancient philosophy.
To this view Grote opposed rst of all a commonsense argument drawn from
observation:
Of individuals, the varieties are innumerable: but no professional body of
men ever acquired gain or celebrity by maintaining theses, and employ-
ing arguments, which every one could easily detect as false.
With a striking revisionist approach, Grote depicts the celebrated Protagoras,
the target of accusations to teach relativism of values and impiety, thus: “The
Platonic Protagoras, spokesman of King Nomos, represents common sense,
sentiment, sympathies and antipathies, written laws, and traditional customs
known to all as well as revered by the majority.”
This is, however, only half of Grote’s contribution to a re-evaluation of the
sophists: having shown that it was unwarranted as well as counterintuitive to
attribute a revolutionary teaching, corrosive of established mores, to the soph-
ists, Grote went on to argue that it was in fact Socrates, and his pupil Plato,
Plato, vol. , vii. Cf. James Frederick Ferrier, The Institutes of Metaphysics (Edinburgh-
London: W. Blackwood & Sons, ).
Plato, vol. , –.
Plato, vol. , –.
Plato, vol. , . “King Nomos” was a very efective expression coined by Grote (after
Herodotus) to describe the power of custom, of a set of uncritically accepted traditional
beliefs. It tends to produce “the orthodox citizen.”
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who had an eristic character and “threw out more startling novelties in ethi-
cal doctrine, than either Hippias or Protagoras, or any of the other persons
denounced as Sophists.” Consequently, we can better appreciate the value
and innovativeness of Grote’s general depiction of the sophists when we
contrast it with his portrait of Socrates, which is similarly well-balanced and
innovative. In general, Socrates and the sophists are the champions of what
Grote called “the dialectic age.” In this denition he followed a hint from
Aristotle, who observed that the earlier philosophers had no part in dialectics:
“dialectical force did not yet exist.” Interestingly, in dating the beginning of
dialectics in the fth century Grote attributed its start to “the Athenian drama
and dikastery,” namely to the tragic poets and to the practices of courts, where
diverging opinions confronted each other in a battle for the truth. Grote
started his examination of Socrates by saying that he was the rst thinker
who “brought into conscious review the method of philosophising.” Socrates
introduced a complete revolution in method because he did not try to impart a
positive doctrine: Grote emphasized the “negative” aspect of Socratic dialectic,
namely the fact that Socrates questioned the basic assumptions of his soci-
ety concerning morality and politics: “A person more thoroughly Eristic than
Sokrates never lived”—he commented in his Plato. This is not Socrates’ only
claim to greatness: for Grote, he was also the rst thinker to “conceive the idea
of an ethical science with its appropriate end, and with precepts capable of
being tested and improved.” However, he saw in Socrates’ deliberate attempt
at questioning and shaking common-sense truths and commonplaces his most
original and important contribution. It is at this stage that the tone of Grote’s
Plato, vol. , .
Plato, vol. , viii.
Aristotle, Metaphysics A b. Cf. Grote, Plato, vol. , .
Plato, vol. , p. : “Both the drama and the dikastery recognise two or more diferent
ways of looking at a question, and require that no conclusion shall be pronounced until
opposing disputants have been heard and compared.”
Plato, vol. , .
Plato, vol. , . Elsewhere in this work Grote says that “the Elenchus is the grand and
sovereign purication” and the “great Sokratic accomplishment and mission”: vol. , .
History, , .
At the time of writing his Plato, in his examination of the Republic, Grote will provide a
more complex portrait of Socrates, or rather of Plato, which can be epitomized by the
following quote: “While his spokesman Sokrates was leader of the opposition, Plato
delighted to arm him with the maximum of negative cross-examining acuteness: but here
Sokrates has passed over to the ministerial benches [...]” (vol. , ). And further on
we read: “He [Socrates] is no longer a dissenter amidst a community of xed, inherited,
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prose rises and the horizon of his analysis broadens while his attention focuses
on his contemporary society:
The phenomenon here adverted to is too obvious, even at the present
day, to need further elucidation as matter of fact. In morals, in politics,
in political economy, on all subjects relating to man and society, the like
condent persuasion of knowledge without the reality is suciently
prevalent: the like generation and propagation, by authority and exam-
ple, of unveried convictions, resting upon strong sentiment, without
consciousness of the steps or conditions of their growth; the like enlist-
ment of reason as the one-sided advocate of a pre-established senti-
ment; the like illusion, because every man is familiar with the language,
that therefore every man is master of the complex facts, judgments, and
tendencies, involved in its signication, and competent both to apply
comprehensive words and to assume the truth or falsehood of large prop-
ositions, without any special analysis or study.
It is at this level that Grote makes his analysis of the ancient thinkers bear on
the contemporary situation by introducing the timeless notion of the “ortho-
dox citizen” who, in any epoch, “does not feel himself in need of philosophers
to tell him what is truth or what is virtue, nor what is the diference between
real and fancied knowledge.” This orthodox citizen belongs to any society of
any age, and is not characterized by any specic social, political or economic
condition but rather by his uncritical acceptance of the beliefs and values of
his society:
Such feeling of disapprobation and antipathy against speculative phi-
losophy and dialectic—against the libertas philosophandi—counts as
a branch of virtue among practical and orthodox citizens, rich or poor,
oligarchical or democratical, military or civil, ancient or modern.
Grote’s treatment of certain Platonic dialogues goes in the same direction and
serves the same purpose, namely to show the importance of the Socratic nega-
tive method. In this perspective, Grote interpreted the Euthyphro as Plato’s
convictions. He is himself in the throne of King Nomos: the infallible authority, temporal
as well as spiritual, from whom all public sentiment emanates, and by whom orthodoxy is
determined” (vol. , ).
History, .
Plato, vol. , .
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subtle attempt at showing how the pretence of knowledge about divine things
may prompt a believer to commit terrible acts like indicting one’s own father.
Examining the two Hippias, he commented—on the authority of Aristotle-
that the search for denitions was a valuable novelty introduced by Socrates to
which his contemporaries, including the sophists, were not accustomed to. The
result is that Hippias is derided in the two dialogues because unable to grasp a
general denition instead of providing examples.
On a more general level, Grote found that Socrates’ way to purge the mind of
its presumption to knowledge and to search for the truth was a “genuine induc-
tive method” and was therefore similar to that of Bacon. In support of this
necessity of intellectual purication preached by Socrates as a precondition
to genuine knowledge, Grote quoted many passages from the Novum Organon
and even from the contemporary astronomer John Herschel. Consequently,
he saw in Plato’s depiction of Socrates in his dialogues—arguing and coun-
ter-arguing often without reaching an apparent positive result—a conrma-
tion of the mostly didactic value Plato attributed to them: the dialogues were
designed to illustrate the genuine Socratic spirit and his “negative” dialectic.
And Grote very reasonably added that if Plato had wished to communicate a
positive doctrine to his readers, he would have plainly done so, without leav-
ing his “purpose thus in the dark, visible only by the microscope of a critic.”
As a result, Grote consistently interpreted the many Platonic dialogues which
end with an apparently negative result “as being really negative and nothing
beyond.” The great merit of the dialogues of search, he will say further on,
is to be suggestive of the process of trial and error by which the human mind
dispels mistakes and searches for the truth.
By comparing the method and respective target of Socrates and the soph-
ists, Grote concluded that it was wrong to suppose that, because they were
at variance and Socrates was obviously a good person and philosopher, the
latter were corrupt teachers. For “as they aimed at qualifying young men for
active life, they accepted the current ethical and political sentiment, with its
unexamined commonplaces and inconsistencies, merely seeking to shape it
into what was accounted a meritorious character at Athens.” Conversely,
the method and mission of Socrates “could not but prove eminently unpop-
ular and obnoxious.” For he showed people who were convinced of their
History, .
Plato, vol. , .
Plato, vol. , .
History, .
History, .
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knowledge that they were in fact profoundly ignorant; this painful realization
made some of these people his ercest enemies. Grote states this very clearly
in his Plato: “Nothing can be more repugnant to an ordinary mind than the
thorough sifting of deep-seated, long familiarised, notions.”
In depicting such unconventional portraits of Socrates and the sophists
Grote succeeded in showing their theoretical diferences while emphasiz-
ing their similar practical impact on their contemporaries: they were almost
undistinguishable by the ordinary Athenian who found them subversive think-
ers, critics of the customs and mores. Grote then attacked the contemporary
historians of philosophy who accused the sophists of being corruptors of the
Greek youth and drew a sharp distinction between them and Socrates by
remarking that the charges they press on the sophists are exactly the same
which were urged against Socrates by his contemporaries. This unfair treat-
ment is evident if one looks at dialogues such as the Parmenides, with its con-
tradictory hypotheses about the one and the many, which would be considered
empty sophistry if attributed to an author other than Plato. In addition, by
looking at the evidence fairly, it appeared evident that the sophists had no
reason to question the beliefs and values of the cities they visited and where
they thrived whereas Socrates used his dialectical tools exactly for this pur-
pose: “the negative analysis was the weapon of Sokrates, and not of Protagoras,
Prodikus, Hippias, &c.” This conviction is reinforced by his examination of
the Apology of Socrates, which in his opinion substantially reproduces the real
defence pronounced by Socrates before the jury and the people of Athens. This
work shows that Socrates thought his general mission to be to question the
established beliefs passing for knowledge “whereby King Nomos governs.”
The Crito is interpreted as both a sequel to and a correction of the Apology, for
in it Plato shows Socrates’ constitutional allegiance as well as his individuality
as a free thinker. Indeed, in Socrates’ statement that there can be no common
deliberation between those who uphold an opinion like his and those who do
not, Grote found an example of the “Protagorean dogma,” namely the doctrine
of the homo mensura: “my reason and conscience is the measure for me.”
It is in his examination of the Platonic dialogues devoted to the two greatest
sophists, Protagoras and Gorgias, that Grote gave his best in his novel interpre-
tation of the sophists. When he came to examine the Protagoras he found in it
a contrast between Socrates “the analytical enquirer and cross-examiner” and
Plato, vol. , .
Plato, vol. , , fn k.
Plato, vol. , .
Plato, vol. , .
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the famous sophist portrayed as an “eloquent popular lecturer,” who adopts
a showy method in order to teach the same morality upheld by all citizens:
far from questioning or overthrowing the values of the city, Protagoras gives
them for granted and “xed in the public sentiments.” And when it comes to
the content of Protagoras’ doctrines, Grote nds them not only in conformity
with the common opinion of the age but also quite true. He can then conclude
that Plato’s intention in this dialogue does not seem to be to prove Protagoras
wrong and to deride his ideas but rather to work through the dialogue his idea
that virtue is knowledge and consists in a right measurement and choice of
pleasures and pain, obtained through an art (or science) of measurement.
Again, in the examination of the Gorgias Grote’s sound reasoning, based on
textual evidence as well as on matter-of-fact observation of everyday life,
issues in a solid argument in defence of the sophists. It was (and still is) typical
to argue that the character of Callicles propounds theories taught by the soph-
ists at Athens, such as the superiority by nature of the strongest. But—Grote
observed- besides being unlikely if not altogether impossible that the sophists
taught such a doctrine in a democratic city, it must be noted that Plato intro-
duces Callicles as a rhetorician who aspires at becoming an inuential politi-
cian: he is not presented as a sophist; indeed, Callicles despises sophists and
philosophers alike. We may then refer to the Theaetetus for further illumina-
tion. This dialogue presents and deals with Protagoras’ most famous doctrine,
according to which “man is the measure of all things.” Grote maintained that
this celebrated statement should not be construed as implying that every opin-
ion is true but rather that “every opinion delivered by any man is true, to that
man himself.” Plato omits this all-important qualication in his discussion
with the result of making Protagoras’ doctrine self-refuting: a consequence
which is easily avoided if the doctrine is correctly interpreted as meaning that
each truth is relative to the person who maintains it. What Protagoras meant
to argue was that there is no object without a subject; in modern, Kantian
language we could say that he wanted to deny the existence of “the Thing in
itself,” of something existing beyond our perceptions. Furthermore, Protagoras
did not maintain that all measures are equal in value for some are better than
others: “How far any person is a measure of truth to others, depends upon the
estimation in which he is held by others.” The Protagorean doctrine is thus
perfectly consistent with great diversity in knowledge and other capacities
between one human being and the other.
Plato, vol. , –.
Plato, vol. , –.
Plato, vol. , .
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It is at this level that the tone of Grote’s prose rises again, when he states his
profound dissent with Socrates’ criticism of Protagoras: for he believes that the
logic of the homo mensura formula is not only inescapable in philosophical
argument, where each speaker is taken as the measure of truth for oneself; but
it is also the foundation of any liberal society which does not silence discus-
sion. In fact, dialectical discussion, philosophical argument, the very Socratic
method stand on the premise that each man’s beliefs are true relatively to him;
but this does not imply that he is omniscient or infallible. The signicance
Grote attributes to this point is signalled by his entering the discussion using
the rst person: “I for my part admit this distinction to be real and important.
Most other persons admit the same.” By denying the truth of the Protagorean
assumption, “the basis of all free discussion and scrutiny is withdrawn: phi-
losophy, or what is properly called reasoned truth, disappears.” The foundation
of philosophy, interpreted as the search for truth, implying the questioning
and replacement of opinion, is exactly the Protagorean formula, because the
philosopher as free thinker, as opposed to the dogmatist, wants to examine
even the most revered opinions (and allows others to do the same with his):
indeed, “no one demands more emphatically to be a measure for himself, even
when all authority is opposed to him, than Sokrates in the Platonic Gorgias.”
Grote maintains that the alternative to the Protagorean position is to pro-
nounce someone unt to be the measure of truth for himself and then substi-
tute oneself for him or her; or some other authority, like “the King, the Pope,
the Priest, the Judges or Censors, the author of some book, or the promulgator
of such and such doctrine.” Such a view is despotic in character and contra-
dicted by evidence, because observation shows that this natural intolerance
prevalent among mankind is coupled with diversity of opinion about truth:
“that which governs the mind as infallible authority in one part of the globe, is
treated with indiference or contempt elsewhere”—he judiciously observed.
Since “no infallible objective mark, no common measure, no canon of evi-
dence, recognised by all, has yet been found” a consistent philosopher (and
a liberal thinker) must rest content to be a measure for himself and for those
Plato, vol. , .
Plato, vol. , . In his examination of Plato’s Sophist Grote points out that the conclu-
sion urged there—that the intelligible world is also relative—amounts to a defence of
Protagoras’ dictum, which denied the existence of an Absolute: vol. , .
Plato, vol. , .
Plato, vol. , .
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who are persuaded by his arguments; again, the alternative is intolerance and
despotism.
Quite naturally, the rehabilitation of the sophists from the accusation
of immorality and impiety went hand in hand with Grote’s re-evaluation of
Athenian democracy. Far from attacking the democratic government which
condemned Socrates, Grote observed that he was allowed to continue his mis-
sion of cross-examining his fellow-citizens for over twenty-ve years, a feat
impossible in any other Greek city:
It was this established liberality of the democratical sentiment at Athens
which so long protected the noble eccentricity of Sokrates from being
disturbed by the numerous enemies which he provoked.
Grote’s Legacy
It is hard to underestimate the daring novelty of Grote’s interpretation of the
sophists: the combination of subtle philosophical analysis, background histori-
cal knowledge, sheer good sense in dealing with diferent interpretations, com-
plete familiarity with the contemporary literature and the evident presence of
a political agenda (which gave to his account a vibrant twist) made his image
of the sophists almost revolutionary for the age. Grote succeeded in rescuing
the sophists from their bad fame, in demonstrating—both with reasoning and
with textual evidence- that they were serious thinkers undeserving of the name
It is very interesting, and noteworthy, that Grote’s friend and liberal theorist John Stuart
Mill completely disagreed with him on this point. For Mill “the truth of a belief does
not consist in its being believed, but in its being in accordance with fact”: John Stuart
Mill, “Grote’s Aristotle” in Collected Works, vol. , – fn. See also his “Grote’s Plato”
in Collected Works, vol. , . Among the reception of Grote’s portrait of Protagoras
especially interesting is E.M. Cope’s, “Plato’s ‘Theaetetus’ and Mr. Grote’s Criticisms” in
Kyriakos N. Demetriou, ed., Classics in the Nineteenth Century: Responses to George Grote
(Bristol: Thoemmes, ), vol. , xliv, xlv.
History, . Grote reiterated this idea in his Plato: “Nowhere else except at Athens could
Sokrates have gone on until seventy years of age talking freely in the market-place against
the received political and religious orthodoxy” (vol. , ).
This is not to deny that there were, or had been, other dissonant voices in the interpreta-
tion of the sophists. See Whedbee, “British Reception of the Greek Sophists prior to ,”
f. Grote, however, accomplished something unprecedented because of the unique
renement and completeness of his account, which had an unparalleled inuence on the
readers.
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of corruptors of the Greek mores. His portrait was at once accurate in using
the historical sources and unprecedented in its nal results. In addition, he
presented the readers with a novel image of the relationship between Socrates
(and Plato) and the sophists, where the former was shown to be the real
“dissenter” who questioned the traditional beliefs and the authority of conven-
tion (King Nomos); whilst the latter more readily accepted the values of the
city where they worked and thrived as teachers of virtue and the art of speech:
they taught the traditional morality of the city and the rules of speaking in a
specic context and political arrangement.
However, Plato’s inuence and old philosophical and political prejudices
proved hard to dispel and Grote’s image of the sophists remained far from
mainstream. If his close friend and fellow Radical philosopher John Stuart Mill
shared almost completely his portrait of the sophists, it is fair to say that
Grote’s line of interpretation remained a minority position. It was likely a com-
bination of philosophical and political reasons which continued to keep the
sophists in a minor role in the history of Greek, and more generally, Western
philosophy. Grote was successful in dispelling the accusation of their being
mere quibblers and corruptors of the youth; but he was not able to credit
them with being original and important thinkers, their importance being
almost always completely overshadowed by Plato. However, Grote’s rened
and comprehensive account provided for the rst time a powerful counter-
interpretation of the thought and role of the sophists in Greek civilization and
Western thought, an alternative to the dominant, nay hegemonic, view cur-
rent at the age (and for centuries before). An interesting contemporary case
is represented by the book of Théophile Funck-Brentano, Les sophistes grecs
et les sophistes contemporaines, where thinkers such as Comte, J.S. Mill and
Spencer are portrayed as maintaining similar philosophical outlooks as the
ancient sophists: they are persuaded that there is no truth and that a battle of
interpretations rages in all elds. On the other hand, two great British clas-
sicists, Benjamin Jowett and Alexander Grant, acknowledged the many merits
of Grote’s assessment of the sophists but maintained that philosophically they
were second-rate thinkers and that the moral accusations levelled at them was
not an invention of Plato since they had incurred ill repute at Athens before his
For their diferences see Giovanni Giorgini, “Radical Plato: John Stuart Mill, George Grote
and the Revival of Plato in Nineteenth-Century England,” History of Political Thought
(): –.
See Théophile Funck-Brentano, Les sophistes grecs et les sophistes contemporaines (Paris:
Plon, ).
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appearance. However, Grote’s reassessment of the sophists received harsh
criticism but found also some admirers, such as the Cambridge utilitarian phi-
losopher Henry Sidgwick, who hailed it as a “historical discovery of the high-
est order.” Among the few authors who completely accepted Grote’s account
of the sophists in the late nineteenth century there was the Austrian ancient
philosopher Theodor Gomperz, author of a monumental and inuential work
on “the Greek Thinkers.” Gomperz, himself a liberal thinker and translator and
editor of John Stuart Mill in German, spoke of “The age of Enlightenment” to
describe fth century Greek philosophy and especially the impact of the soph-
ists and the atomistic philosophers on Greek society.
In the twentieth century the reception of the sophists began to change in
the s when Plato became associated with Fascism and Nazism. A dra-
matic turn occurred after World War Two or, more precisely, after the publica-
tion of Karl Popper’s The Open Society an Its Enemies (), where Plato was
indicted of being a “totalitarian” philosopher and the rst systematic defender
of a “holistic” view of the State. Regardless of its philosophical shortcom-
ings and factual philological mistakes, the book had a huge impact on Plato’s
scholarship and, more generally, on the interpretation of Greek philosophy. As
a fairly predictable consequence, the sophists were rehabilitated as champions
of free thinking, an interpretation which would nd its peak in E. Havelock’s
The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics, where the sophists appeared as Plato’s
counterpart and as proto-liberal thinkers. A more balanced assessment was
See Benjamin Jowett, Introduction to Plato’s Sophist in The Dialogues of Plato, vols.
(Oxford: Clarendon, ), vol. , f.; Alexander Grant, The Ethics of Aristotle,
vols. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., ), vol. , –.
See Henry Sidgwick, “The Sophists,” Journal of Philology (): –.
Theodor Gomperz, Griechische Denker (Leipzig: Velt, –); English translation: The
Greek Thinkers (London: J. Murray, –). Gomperz was the translator and editor of
John Stuart Mill’s works in German and became Mill’s friend and the promulgator of his
philosophy in the German-speaking world. See Adelaide Weinberg, Theodor Gomperz and
John Stuart Mill (Genève: Librairie Droz, ).
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vols. (London: Routledge, ),vol. :
The Spell of Plato. The book sparkled a huge controversy over Plato’s “totalitarianism,”
with accusers and defenders. For a good assessment see Renfort Bambrough, ed., Plato,
Popper and Politics (Cambridge: Hefer, ); Kyriakos N. Demetriou, “A ‘Legend’ in Crisis:
The Debate over Plato’s Politics, –,” Polis (): –.
Eric Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (London: Methuen, ). The book
was the target of a scathing review by Leo Strauss, who opposed solid philosophical and
historical reasons to the alleged existence of a Greek Enlightenment and of an ancient
Liberalism: “The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy” [], reprinted in Leo
Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, ), –.
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put forth by the Cambridge classicist W.K.C. Guthrie, author of a very inuential
History of Greek Philosophy, who in could still write: “Until comparatively
recently the prevailing view, the view in which a scholar of my own genera-
tion was brought up, was that in his quarrel with the Sophists Plato was right.
He was what he claimed to be, the real philosopher or lover of wisdom, and the
Sophists were supercial, destructive, and at worst deliberate deceivers, pur-
veyors of sophistry in the modern sense of the term.” After Guthrie another
English author has been instrumental in reviving the thought of the sophists
and in reassessing their value: G.B. Kerferd. In his The Sophistic Movement
(), Kerferd described the traditional position of the sophists in these terms:
“Condemned to a kind of half-life between Presocratics to the one hand and
Plato and Aristotle on the other, they seem to wander for ever as lost souls.”
Kerferd attributed their sad fate to a combination of factors: the fact that none
of their works survived to allow an independent exploration and Plato’s hostil-
ity, made worse by his literary and philosophical genius. In France a power-
ful reassessment strongly inuenced by Grote’s main ideas was given by the
Thucydides scholar Jacqueline de Romilly in Les grands sophistes dans l’Athènes
de Périclès: she depicted them, and especially Protagoras and Gorgias, as cham-
pions of free thought and masters of the art of reasoning who exercised consid-
erable inuence on the development of Western civilization. A generation
of ancient scholars, led by Barbara Cassin, followed in her footsteps. Finally,
in Italy an echo of Grote’s lesson can be found in the works of the ancient
philosopher Mario Untersteiner, author of a ground-breaking, dense volume
on the sophists (translated in many languages) and of an edition of their frag-
ments characterized by immense erudition coupled with very original inter-
pretations. Diferently from Grote, Untersteiner believed that “la Sostica”
was a school characterized by free thinking and criticism of the Parmenidean
W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, ), vol. , .
George B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
), .
Jacqueline de Romilly, Les grands sophistes dans l’Athènes de Périclès (Paris: Editions de
Fallois, ); English edition: The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, ). De Romilly describes the sophists as “maitres à penser” and “maitres à parler”
who produced a “real intellectual and moral revolution” ().
Barbara Cassin, ed., Positions de la sophistique (Paris: Vrin, ); L’efet sophistique (Paris:
Gallimard, ).
Mario Untersteiner, I Sosti (Turin: Einaudi, ); I Sosti. Testimonianze e frammenti
vols. (Florence: La Nuova Italia, –). There exists an English translation by Kathleen
Freeman: The Sophists (Oxford: Blackwell, ). Very interesting, also as a testimony of
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substance; he credited the sophists, together with the poet Aeschylus, to have
discovered the “tragedy of being” because, as Protagoras put it, “about every
thing (pragma) there are two contrasting discourses”; the sophists and the
dramatic poets pointed out the existence of tragic moral dilemmas character-
ized by dike against dike: the possibility of having two contrasting logoi about
everything meant, in Untersteiner’s interpretation, acknowledging the relativ-
ity of all values and the tragic impossibility to overcome the contradictions of
reality; hence Protagoras’ grand view of man as the measure of all things in a
world devoid of gods.
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