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Philosophy and Political Power
in Antiquity
Edited by
Cinzia Arruzza and Dmitri Nikulin
|
For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV
Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction1
Cinzia Arruzza and Dmitri Nikulin
1 The Power of Speech: The Inuence of the Sophists on Greek Politics9
Giovanni Giorgini
2 Philosophical Dogs and Tyrannical Wolves in Plato’s Republic41
Cinzia Arruzza
3 What’s the Good of Knowing the Forms?67
Chris Bobonich
4 Individual Competence and Collective Deliberation in Aristotle’s
Politics94
Christoph Horn
5 Diogenes the Comic, or How to Tell the Truth in the Face of a
Tyrant114
Dmitri Nikulin
6 Dio of Prusa and the Roman Stoics on How to Speak the Truth to Oneself
and to Power134
Gretchen Reydams-Schils
7 Stoic Utopia Reconsidered: Pyrrhonism, Ethics, and Politics148
Emidio Spinelli
8 Plato’s Tyrant in Neoplatonic Philosophy164
Dominic J. O’Meara
General Index179
Ancient Sources182
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© , , | ./_
The Power of Speech: The Inuence of the Sophists
on Greek Politics
Giovanni Giorgini
1 Some Methodological Problems
What did it mean to be a ‘sophist’? ‘Sophist’ is one of those words whose his-
tory needs to be traced in order to fully understand who the people that bore
that name were, what their role was, how they presented themselves to the
public and, conversely, how they were perceived by their audience and more
generally by the ordinary citizens of the cities where they happened to work.
The sophists were not a school or a movement, properly speaking, but they
had in common some research interests and a general approach which we
may call ‘rationalistic:’ they all believed, in a rather aggressive way which to
some interpreters reminded the iconoclastic attitude of the seventeenth cen-
tury Enlightenment philosophers, that the unfettered use of reason was the
key to arrive at the truth of the matter, whatever that was. In addition, they
all pursued their investigations to their logical conclusion regardless of how
shocking and subversive this could be with respect to traditional beliefs and
values: received opinions were regarded as prejudices and nothing could stand
unchallenged before the bright light of reason. This fact put them inevitably
in contrast with the traditional ‘masters of truth’ of Greece: the poets, whose
* All translations are mine. All dates are unless specied or evident from the context.
I am not the rst person to pose this question. For an introduction to the answer see
Untersteiner 1954; Dillon and Gergel 2005; Gagarin and Woodruf 2008; O’Grady 2013.
I am here thinking of such works as Theodor Gomperz’s inuential Griechische Denker,
which described the impact of philosophy and the sophists on fth-century Greek society as
‘the Age of Enlightenment;’ or W.K.C. Guthrie’s 3rd volume of his History of Greek Philosophy
titled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment.
If this sounds too literary and emphatic one may see the aggressive stance displayed by
Eteocles in his confrontation with Polinices in Euripides’ Phoenician Women: Eteocles speaks
with the force of the newfound truth he reached with his reasoning. Conversely, one may
observe the qualms that this ‘rationalistic’ attitude induced in many people in Sophocles’
dramatic treatment of Oedipus, who solved the enigma of the Sphinx with his reason
unaided by supernatural forces, only to discover his own condition of παδα τ ψυχ.
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teaching the sophists challenged and eventually replaced, and the diviners
and soothsayers, whose methods they rendered obsolete and ridiculed. These
features made ordinary citizens uneasy, as it is reected by such reactions
as the decree of 432 named after the soothsayer Diopeithes that sanctioned
people who scrutinized τ µετέωρα, the celestial bodies, or by Aristophanes’
mocking portrait of Socrates, depicted as a ‘sophist’ at home in the clouds.
The sophists also shared some traits although they obviously had their char-
acteristic individuality: they considered themselves professionals in some art
and therefore asked for a fee for their teaching—a rather novel practice at the
time, although it has to be noticed that other practitioners of the art of dis-
course (such as schoolmasters and writers of forensic discourses, the logogra-
phers) were paid too. Plato’s dismay and aristocratic disdain for this practice
was thus unwarranted. They also difered in their political views: Protagoras
was a democrat; Antiphon and Critias a moderate and a staunch oligarch,
respectively. Being a sophist therefore did not issue in one specic political
stance.
And here enters Plato. Today the word ‘sophist’ and its cognates—sophis-
tic, sophistry—has mostly a derogatory connotation, while ‘sophisticated’ is
ambiguous. However, Diogenes Laertius (, 12) already remarked that σοφό
and σοφιστή were once synonymous in identifying someone who possessed
σοφία, wisdom of some kind. The reason for the derogatory undertone that the
word ‘sophist’ acquired is twofold. In the rst place there was the animosity
that the sophists’ teaching stirred up in ordinary citizens: their critical atti-
tude was perceived as subversive of current laws and moral values; they were
in general perceived as a corrosive element of the traditional ethos and piety
of the city. As Gagarin and Woodruf aptly put it: “In challenging traditional
views, the sophists liked to use deliberately provocative, sometimes paradox-
ical arguments that seem aimed at capturing the audience’s attention rather
than enlightening them.” Hence the trials for impiety that befell many soph-
ists (and philosophers in general), including Socrates, who was not perceived
as diferent from an Anaxagoras or a Protagoras. In addition, in fth century
democratic Athens, the most interesting and attractive city for the sophists,
See for instance Protagoras’ statement that “the greatest part of a man’s education is to be
clever about poetry” (Plato, Prot. 338e). Plato himself followed in the wake of the sophists in
challenging the poets’ pretences about truth.
On the decree of Diopeithes see Plutarch, Pericles, 32, 1; Dover 1976.
To mention only the most famous example. The Attic comedy is replete of lost plays mocking
the ‘new intellectuals,’ their eager patrons and their gullible pupils.
Gagarin and Woodruf 2008.
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they lured and taught the richest members of the elite, thus raising the sus-
picions of well-meaning democratic citizens. Even a casual glance at Plato’s
Protagoras renders the theatrical self-condence of Protagoras, the reverence
of his audience (which includes Pericles’ two sons and the Athenian enfant
gaté Alcibiades) and the eager patronage of rich Athenians like Callias (who
is hosting also Hippias and Prodicus in his house). Secondly, there is the
extra-ordinary inuence of Plato’s condemnation. Plato had a vehement dis-
agreement with the sophists’ approach to the problem of education as well as
having a diferent political agenda. Plato believed that the appropriate object
of research for a philosopher was the truth about the most important matters,
from which a correct education of the pupils would follow; at the same time he
wanted to separate the activity of his former teacher Socrates from the soph-
ists’ practice: they looked very similar (and indeed the ordinary Aristophanic
citizen could not distinguish them) but they were as diferent as a wolf and a
dog, which also look very much alike.
We should note, incidentally, that we derive much of the information we
have about the sophists from Plato’s dialogues and from the brief ‘history of
philosophy’ Aristotle provides in the Metaphysics; namely, from two giant
authors who had great original theories and shared a scarce sympathy for the
sophists. In addition, they both had a clear philosophical agenda, namely prov-
ing that Socrates was altogether diferent from a sophist (Plato) and that no
thinker in the past had matched his own philosophical discoveries (Aristotle):
not exactly the best foundation for a fair assessment of an author. My stance
on this matter is simple and clear: Plato and Aristotle obviously interpreted
the thought of other thinkers through their subjective philosophical frame
but they had no interest in misrepresenting their thought; they may have mis-
understood it at times but with no malicious intent. Especially in the case of
Plato, I nd it evident that all the characters of the dialogues are given a voice
by him and therefore are, in a sense, his creation; however, Plato shows a
genuine interest in the doctrines of the sophists and does his best to portray
their thought as formidable as possible in order to refute them completely.
The intellectual honesty which characterizes philosophy has little room for
ad hoc straw-men. In addition, Plato wrote in an age not so far remote from the
This impression of welcome and reverence enjoyed by the sophists is conrmed by other
Platonic dialogues, such as the Gorgias, the Euthydemus and the two Hippias.
The reference is obviously to Aristophanes’ Clouds and to Plato’s Sophist.
See Vegetti 2005. Also Nightingale 1995. In her interesting book The Origins of Democratic
Thinking Cynthia Farrar speaks of “Platagoras” to indicate the mixture of Protagorean and
Platonic doctrines in Plato’s portrayal.
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sophists’; his readers might have known or heard some of the original sophists
and could therefore spot a biased or blatantly incorrect representation.
How was being a philosopher and being a sophist so diferent then, we
may ask? The rst philosophers were investigators and describers of nature
(φυσιολόγοι). They had the common persuasion that reality was not as it
seemed and that there was a unifying element in all things; everything
that appeared (τ φαινόµενα) originated in fact from some common ele-
ment, the ρχ πάντων. They disagreed about its identication—water, air,
re, the ‘boundless’—but agreed on the premise that ‘reality’ was more than
simply what appeared to our senses. The sophists extended this kind of scepti-
cism about reality to include everything that could not be perceived (the gods)
or empirically tested (the stars and the planets) and examined the very foun-
dation of reality: the truth of the matter, φύσι. They were therefore instrumen-
tal in creating a ‘spirit of the age,’ a Stimmung of exalted inquisitiveness that
afected the entire Greek world and inuenced culture and many arts such as
drama, history, medicine and oratory. And politics. From this perspective we
nd ourselves in a better position to answer the question, “was Socrates a soph-
ist?” He certainly shared that inquisitive drive that characterized the sophists
and was second to none in challenging the received views. He did not ask for
pay and notoriously addressed a motley audience that included shoemakers
as well as young prominent aristocrats; but he denitively was part of that cli-
mate of fervent research which he himself contributed to create. We may add
that Socrates had a remarkable inuence on contemporary Athenian politics.
Although his statement to the efect that he was the only person in Athens to
practice the true political art was meant to sound deliberately counterintui-
tive, because he avoided engagement in politics and was only interested in the
theory of politics, Socrates questioned some of the ideological underpinning
of Greek politics and especially of Athenian democracy. For he maintained,
using an argument from the arts, that only competent and expert people
should rule the cities, not unskilled people coming from diferent ways of life
and chosen by lot. In addition, Socrates attracted a number of young men,
mostly aristocrats, who wished to learn from him those ‘political’ skills that
they could use to enter a political career: people like Alcibiades and Critias,
In the Gorgias Socrates rst states “I am not a politician” (473e) but then goes on to argue
for a diferent view of politics, conceived as education of the citizens on what is right
and wrong, and can therefore state that he is the only practitioner of this diferent art of
politics: Gorgias 521d. Pericles, Cimon and Miltiades, and other famous ‘politicians’ were
not able to educate their fellow-citizens; indeed, they were not even able to educate their
children.
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whose engagements in the temporary overthrowing of democracy proved fatal
also for their former teacher.
We may recall that earlier uses of σοφιστή—identifying a wise person,
knowledgeable in something, often with a practical bent—applied to poets
(including Homer, Hesiod and Solon); musicians and rhapsodists; diviners;
the Seven wise Men; other early wise men; pre-Socratic philosophers. It was
only natural that the notion of ‘sophist’ was often connected to that of τέχνη.
In the fth century there was a proliferation of treatises on all sorts of arts:
culinary, wrestling, architecture, sculpture, painting, and medicine. It thus
comes as no surprise that Aeschylus called Prometheus a sophist, because he
brought the arts to mankind. Some sophists—such as Protagoras, Prodicus
and Hippias—introduced themselves as teachers of the ‘art of life:’ they
imparted recommendations so that their pupils might successfully face life’s
circumstances (καιρό) and practical needs (τ δέοντα). One of the earliest, if
not the rst such practical adviser, was the Athenian Mnesiphilus, mentioned
by Herodotus (, 57) as an adviser to Themistocles; about him Plutarch says
something very interesting which enables us to appreciate the proper identity
of a ‘sophist:’
He was neither an orator nor one of those called philosophers of nature.
Rather he made a practice of what was called wisdom (σοφία) but was
in reality political shrewdness and practical sagacity [...] his successors
combined it with the art of forensic eloquence and, transferring their
training from action to speech, were called sophists.
2 The Sophists and the City: Nature, Law and Humanity
A practical bent thus distinguished sophists from philosophers; the fact that
they still worked in the realm of theory and not in that of a craft diferenti-
ated them from other professionals such as logographers and politicians (usu-
ally referred to simply as ήτορε). Plato noticed with his usual acumen the
natural relation between the sophists and Athenian democracy and perfectly
I am persuaded that Socrates’ was a political trial, brought about mainly by his criticism
of the practices of Athenian democracy which, in a time of political turmoil, could be
construed as philo-laconism. On Socrates’ trial see Montuori 1974 and Watereld 2009.
See Kerferd 1950.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 62.
Plutarch, Themistocles, 2.
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identied their less than subversive role in the city, for they simply echoed and
worked with the current opinions and values. For Plato, on the contrary, phi-
losophia was inevitably subversive because the search for truth aims at replac-
ing common opinion. His acute observation, however, remained unheeded for
many centuries and the prevailing opinion for over two millennia held that the
sophists were shallow but efective thinkers who, nevertheless, succeeded in
sapping the foundations of Greek morality and politics. The role of the British
historian George Grote in overturning the biased portrait of the sophists and in
shaping their modern image can hardly be overestimated. In the deservedly
famous chapter 67 of his History of Greece (1846–56), and in his subsequent
Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates (1865), Grote gave the sophists a
fair appreciation and turned upside down their then current image as shallow
thinkers, demagogues and corruptors of Greek youth. With very sensible argu-
ments he showed that the success enjoyed by the sophists everywhere they
went was premised on their acceptance of the city’s values and opinions. In
general, the sophists’ interests were more practical than theoretical so it was
natural that they were interested in politics, the administration of the city and
everything that concerned public afairs (τ πολιτικά). Many of them actively
participated in politics and many others proposed themselves as teachers of
the art of politics (πολιτικ τέχνη). This activity is by denition linked to a spe-
cic city or political regime and therefore the sophists, far from questioning
the community’s traditional values, successfully worked with them.
We may notice the adaptability of the sophists’ teaching, which marks it
out as a real τέχνη capable of working in diferent contexts. The sophists vis-
ited many Greek cities in mainland Greece as well as in Sicily, often on o-
cial diplomatic missions. They all paid a visit to Athens because in the fth
century Athens was the richest and most powerful Greek city; the long-time
‘rst citizen,’ Pericles, liked to have artists, philosophers and men of letters
around, both for his personal pleasure and for the glamour they brought to
the city; in addition, many rich Athenians imitated him and opened their
Cf. Plato, Republic , 493a; Meno 92. On the relationship between philosophy and politics
in fth century Athens see the collection of essays in Casertano 1988.
For an assessment of Grote’s role see Giorgini 2014.
This was the case of Gorgias of Leontini (DK82A4), Prodicus of Ceos (DK84A1a; A3) and
Hippias of Elis (DK86A2), for instance.
For a diferent opinion see Stadter 1991, who maintains that the idea of a close relation-
ship between Pericles and the sophists was an invention of Plato and the comic poets and
concludes that Pericles was not the centre of intellectual life in Athens or the protector
of the sophists. I nd his argument elaborate but unconvincing. Many ancient authors
stressed Pericles’ interest in discussing with the leading philosophers and sophists of the
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homes (and their wallets) to the sophists. Finally, the features of the dem-
ocratic government were perfectly suited to the sophists’ role because they
required the ability to speak in public: democracy was government of the
word and by the word. Its two main features were ‘equality before the law’
(σονοµία) and the equal possibility to speak one’s mind (παρρησία; σηγορία).
The sophists thus lled a gap in ‘higher education’ and addressed them-
selves to those persons aspiring to become leaders of the people, mostly rich
young citizens who hoped to be taught rhetoric, if not actual political ρετή.
The sophists asserted to be able to teach such art, which was part of a more
comprehensive teaching whose result was the fullment of human potenti-
alities. We can appreciate here the strict connection between democracy and
the education imparted by the sophists as well as the revolutionary character
of the ‘spirit of the age.’ Democracy reversed the aristocratic view that excel-
lence (ρετή) and prudence in practical matters (γνώµη) are inherited through
noble blood and armed a new ideal of intellectual aristocracy: the political
art can be acquired because it is inborn in human nature—as Protagoras’
“Great Speech” eloquently shows. This new ideal was premised on the novel
conception of ‘human nature,’ which emerged mainly from the method and
discoveries of the new medicine. In the Hippocratic texts we nd perfectly
described the notion of a unifying φύσι that is common to all human beings
and is the basis of the physician’s art: it responds uniformly to the same stim-
uli and drugs. It is from this physical description that a more comprehensive
view of human nature, with its moral overtones, evolved. We see here how
‘nature’ is an ideologically-laden notion; for it purports to describe a state of
afairs while it actually reects the persuasion of the thinker who uses the
word. Fifth century authors agree that there is an inborn, unifying character
in all human beings but they disagree in their description: some have a posi-
tive, some have a negative view of it. For instance, the idea of ‘human nature’
(νθρωπεία φύσι: , 45, 7), to be conceived as a ‘necessary nature’ (φύσι
ναγκαία: , 105, 2), permeates Thucydides’ work; it is the foundation of his
age. We also know that Damon, an atypical sophist because he did not ask for money for
his teaching, was a counsellor to Pericles. He was an Athenian, like Antiphon.
For instance, Protagoras is a character in Eupolis’ Kolakes (“Flatterers”), which won the
rst prize in the Dionysian festivals in 421; in it the poet attacks the proigate Callias who
squanders money on sophists and parasites.
Very interesting pages on this in Lloyd 1999, who shows that Aristotle used the expres-
sion ‘by nature’ to mean both what happened always or for the most part and what he
approved of; Lloyd identies thus a tension between a descriptive and a normative use of
‘nature’ in Aristotle.
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notion of a ‘law of nature’ according to which all men and political entities
want to aggrandize and have more (πλεονεξία) and justies his grim view that
war is thus inevitable. A similar pessimistic anthropology can be observed
in Antiphon and Critias (and in Plato’s brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus in
the Republic) while Protagoras and Herodotus had a positive view of human
nature. Diferent views of human nature gave rise to diverging visions of pol-
itics and prompted a debate on what justice actually is, therefore originating
the theoretical investigation of politics—political theory. Some sophists even
had a theory of evolution: they were interested in the “original condition of
mankind” and examined how men had arrived at the present condition
of civilization, sometimes foreseeing an evolution also in the future.
We may start to appreciate the sophists’ role and inuence by read-
ing Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists, where he comments that “when the
Athenians became aware of the great shrewdness of the sophists they began
to chase them from the courts, because their subtle arguments enabled
them to prevail over the just causes” (I.0). The rst places where the sophists’
inuence was greatly felt were the Athenian courts and the assembly. We know
from contemporary aristocratic critics of democracy—such as Thucydides,
Plato and the Old Oligarch—that Athenian courts were working almost every
day in the fth century; this was due to two main reasons. Beside the ordinary
private legal matters, the Athenian democratic constitution enabled single
citizens to sue magistrates (εσαελία) for misconduct. Then there was the
Delian League, in which Athens had a hegemonic role, which was structured
in such a way as to increase and emphasize the Athenian power; this included
holding all the disputes between the allies in Athens and by Athenian courts.
The courts thus were one of the instruments by which the Athenian demos
exercised its power and trials became one of the main features of Athenian
democracy. Indeed, the Old Oligarch reminds his interlocutor that the allies
have to come to Athens to settle their disputes and this benets the Athenian
people; it makes them important and rich, for they decide the destiny of allied
cities without leaving home.
Thucydides , 105. See Giorgini 2004.
It is the title of one of Protagoras’ works according to Diogenes Laertius , 55; it may have
been the basis for Plato’s representation in the Protagoras.
To the point that one Aristophanic character can joke that if there are no juries sitting the
place cannot be Athens (Clouds, 207–8). Jurors are the central subject of Aristophanes’
Wasps.
Ps. Xenophon, Athenian Constitution , 16–18.
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Similarly, the people’s assembly was the place where all political matters
were disputed and decisions taken; its meetings were attended not only by cit-
izens who “wished to do something useful for the city” but also by onlookers
who were interested in the discourses pronounced by ‘politicians.’ The ability
to face an audience (with all the legal risks this entailed) and be persuasive was
of fundamental importance. This produced a twofold order of consequences.
At a more practical level, the necessity of mastering the art of speaking in pub-
lic became vital; this included all the techniques to atter the people, keep
up their attention, be persuasive in the apportioned time. In court the old-
fashioned instruments to ascertain the truth—witnesses, oaths, torture—were
replaced with conclusions from logical reasoning. At a more theoretical level,
the degree of technical sophistication in court speeches originated a reection
on the foundations of the rhetorical art. More specically, the essence of the
concept of ‘truth’ itself was questioned. While this notion could previously be
linked to an objective, universal order—the κόσµο—it rst came under attack
when the sophists, being itinerant teachers, generalized their own observa-
tions together with those of merchants and sailors and pointed out that difer-
ent political organizations had diferent systems of justice and diferent laws.
Justice, being a ‘just citizen,’ lost its connection with the divine; ceased to be
a universal quality; and became linked to a time and a society: it was thus rel-
ativized. The κόσµο in shambles left the gods without a home in a process of
Entzauberung der Welt; in such a situation Protagoras consistently drew the
conclusion that their existence did not matter for us humans and they could
not be invoked as exemplars or standard of action.
Furthermore, it was observed that in court the ‘truth of the matter’ did not
necessarily reect the actual ‘truth’ but rather the result of the proceeding: the
‘truth’ was the end-result of the debate between competing arguments and
persuasion was of the essence. Again, Plato caught this fact very well in the
Gorgias when the homonymous sophist maintains that he teaches the most
important art—the art of persuasion about what is just and unjust—which
displays its efects mostly in courts and where people congregate. Plato
These were the words of the herald who opened the works of the assembly, quoted in
Euripides, Suppliant Women, 338–339.
On the importance of logos in Athens see Thucydides , 40; the Athenians’ attitude
towards discourses and their love for novelty are pilloried by Cleon in Thucydides ,
37–38.
On the ‘necessities’ of Athenian judicial procedures (including the water-clock) see the
brilliant essay by Allen 1996.
Plato, Gorgias, 454b.
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ends the dialogue with the realization of the limits of the Socratic method:
if you win the argument with your opponent, as in the case with Callicles, but
you fail to persuade him, your apparent victory has no practical signicance for
it will not change the opponent’s behaviour. Persuasion, then, is of the essence,
but in this case a new kind of philosophical persuasion aimed at educating the
opponent about the most important things (“the just and the unjust, the ugly
and the beautiful, the good and the evil”) rather than refuting him. The door
is open for the programme of the Republic, the ζήτησι which will completely
overturn the traditional Greek image of politics.
These considerations opened the door to that momentous distinction
which characterized the fth century in Greece and created the conditions for
the birth of political theory: the distinction between νόµο and φύσι or, more
precisely, between what is valid or just by ‘nature’ and what is valid or just by
‘law’ or ‘convention’. The sophists explored diferent variations on this theme
which had profound and lasting efects. It paved the way both for the idea of
a natural law and for cultural relativism, to the supremacy of nature as well
as to the dominance of convention. It is indeed in the fth century that we
nd the origin of the idea of a natural law, that is valid everywhere and at all
times, a law that exists from time immemorial and that can be identied
by human beings through their reason. The notion of a higher law discrete
from human laws famously made its appearance in Sophocles’ Antigone, where
“the unfaltering unwritten laws of the gods”, γραπτα κσφαλ θεν νόµιµα, are
contrasted with the decrees of the city and the superiority of the former is
armed. In Sophocles, however, the contrast is between human and divine
laws: Antigone remarks that she disobeyed a law that was not “proclaimed by
Zeus or Dike who lives with the nether gods.” The shift to the notion of nat-
ural law is quite remarkable because nature, not god, becomes the criterion
of general validity and universality. Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, will
explore the theoretical implications of this issue. On the opposite side there is
Herodotus and his interpretation of Pindar’s famous statement that, “Nomos
is the king of all things;” from the context of Herodotus’ narrative we may infer
that for him “Nomos” meant custom and custom rules among human beings.
The distinction between νόµο and φύσι can also be conceived as a distinction
between opinion and truth and therefore it underpins the distinction between
Plato, Gorgias, 459d.
Sophocles, Antigone, 450–455.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 10, 1134b18–1135a5.
Herodotus , 38; see the old but still valid Gigante 1956; also Humphreys 1987.
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appearance and reality. We may add that this distinction does not inevitably
lead to opposition, as it appears clearly in Demosthenes, De corona 275, where
we read: “This [distinction] will be found not only embodied in our laws, but
laid down by nature herself in her unwritten laws and in men’s moral sense.”
However, it is evident that any time that nature is invoked in contrast with law
it is for polemical reasons, namely in order to criticise the existing laws and
customs. It is precisely in this sense that we nd the sophists Antiphon
and Hippias bringing it up in Plato’s Protagoras. We may look at another impor-
tant opposition elaborated in the fth century: that between the rule of law and
the arbitrary will of the tyrant or despot. The opposition between νόµο
and φύσι could seem to run against the supremacy of the law. Plato laments
that it leads to questioning the gods (Plato, Laws 889e) who are seen as human
contrivances, but again, this is not a necessary consequence. In itself, we may
conclude, the opposition between νόµο and φύσι is not relativistic, for it
makes nature the xed criterion of justice; nor is it necessarily polemical.
3 The Avant-Garde of the Nouvelle Vogue: Protagoras and Gorgias
The two sophists who best caught the implications of this new state of afairs
were Gorgias (485–380) and Protagoras (492–415). Both foreigners—one com-
ing from the West (Leontini in Sicily), the other from the North-East (Abdera
in Thrace)—they symbolized in their being strangers the ‘strangeness’ of the
doctrines they brought with them and introduced into Athens. They both
had an extra-ordinary personal success as well as a profound inuence on
Athenian politics. In this respect no one compares to Protagoras, who accord-
ing to tradition had also a practical role in writing the laws for the Pan-Hellenic
colony of Thurii, founded in southern Italy upon Pericles’ prompting in 444.
This idea was already put forth by Reinhardt 1916. See Lee 2005, 222–3. Also Decleva Caizzi
1999, 311–31.
This was not the usual cleruchy of Athenian settlers but a Pan-Hellenic enterprise
under the leadership of Athens devised to increase Athens’ prestige among Greek cit-
ies. Diodorus , 11, 3 mentions Charondas as the legislator of the new colony but this
is chronologically impossible. In the laws of Thurii there was one that made learning
how to read and write compulsory for all the sons of citizens and provided for the sal-
ary of the teachers. The soothsayer Lampon, the historian Herodotus (who, despite being
born in Halicarnassus, ‘signed’ his work as “Herodotus of Thurii”: , 1), the city planner
Hippodamus of Miletus (who drew the layout of the city) and the family of Lysias were
also among the participants to this enterprise. The site for the new city was chosen by the
oracle at Delphi. See Muir 1982, 17–24.
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There might be an allusion to his activity as a lawgiver in Isocrates’ To Philip,
where the existence of laws and constitutions written by sophists is men-
tioned: “Such speeches are quite as inefectual as the legal codes and constitu-
tions drawn up by the sophists.” This activity as lawgiver would testify to his
familiarity with Pericles and the high esteem he enjoyed in Athens. It might
be corroborated by the well-known anecdote in Plutarch according to which
Pericles and Protagoras spent an entire day discussing a question of moral and
legal responsibility which involved the issue of causation.
Protagoras invented the literary genre of the Antilogiai, pair of conicting
discourses on the same subject. He famously maintained that there are two
opposed arguments about any topic. He derived this idea from the practice of
forensic argument, where there is a case for the defence and one for the prose-
cution. He transformed the practice into an intellectual exercise or, rather, into
a theoretical assumption and drew the conclusion that truth consists in the
most persuasive argument, which is not necessarily the ‘true’ or ‘just’ one. We
should notice that this kind of intellectual exercise aims at showing the com-
plexity of reality, the many perspectives one may adopt to observe and judge
an event. It betrays the loss of innocence in viewing and moving around in the
world: the familiar certainty about the gods, justice, good and evil of the old
days is dissolved in this age of crisis (in the etymological sense—everything
is up for evaluation and judgement, κρίσι). Protagoras and other sophists—
such as Gorgias and Antiphon—were less interested in showing that one side
is right and the other is wrong; they aimed at showing how elusive and many-
sided truth is and, consequently, how dramatic is reality. Their approach, if
not their ideological content, is similar to that of contemporary dramatists
who put on stage δίκη against δίκη. By realizing that injustice is not always on
Isocrates, To Philip , 12. Possibly a disparaging reference to Plato’s Republic and Laws:
see Blass 1979, , 4. But more probably it was an attack on Isocrates’ unfriendly rival,
Antisthenes who, according to D.L. , 1, 16, wrote a work On Law, or the Constitution of
a City.
DK80A10 = Plutarch, Pericles 36, 3 (after Stesimbrotos). I am inclined to consider this
account true not least because of the wording: it is very interesting that Protagoras and
Pericles debate the question of responsibility in that circumstance “according to the most
correct reasoning” (κατ τν ρθότατον λόγον); the question of ρθότη as well as the idea
that there are multiple possible discourses about the same topic are very Protagorean.
For a rened appreciation of Protagoras as a thinker see Schiappa 2003, 2nd ed.
The author who stressed most Protagoras’ discovery of the ‘tragic’ dimension of reality
was Mario Untersteiner in his pioneering work I Sosti (1949). This extra-ordinary philo-
sophical achievement has been subsequently reprinted twice and translated into many
languages, including English (see above, p. 9n1).
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the other side, the viewer (and reader) could acquire a deeper understanding
of justice itself.
In antiquity, and then in our philosophical tradition, Protagoras has been
mostly known for his celebrated, trenchant statement to the efect that πάντων
χρηµάτων µέτρον’ νθρωπον εναι, which opened his work aptly titled Truth. But
in order to better understand the background of this sentence it is convenient
to look at another of his works, On the Gods, which also opened with a trench-
ant statement:
Concerning the gods, I cannot verify that they exist or that they do not
exist nor what their shape is; for many are the obstacles that prevent our
knowledge: not only the obscurity [of the problem] but also the brevity
of human life. (DK80 B4)
In this profession of agnosticism Protagoras argues that the existence of the
gods cannot be veried and any truth is necessarily human; man is the mea-
sure of all things and the gods are silent—as Cynthia Farrar efectively put it.
Protagoras was the rst sophist who did not believe in the benecent inu-
ence of the gods on human society. The existence (or non-existence) of the
gods does not afect human conduct or political matters: the gods abandon
the city and leave human beings to themselves. They have no role in his
doctrine not even as a paradigm or standard of action, as it will be the case
in Plato. Men cannot found their moral values and political doctrines on the
notion of φύσι or on the image of the gods. However, normal, ordinary human
beings are characterized by respect and justice: this is human nature, the only
φύσι that has a normative role.
Let’s now turn to the man-measure fragment and let’s rst quote in full this
famous statement:
Man is the measure of all things: of the things which are, that they are,
and of the things which are not, that they are not. (DK80B1)
Farrar 1988, 51.
See Terray 1990, 21. In the Theaetetus Plato has Protagoras maintain that he excludes
the gods from anything he says or write and does not care whether they exist or not: Th.
162e. This is obviously in sharp contrast with the role of the gods in the Great Speech
but Protagoras prefaced it by saying it was a myth and we can therefore allow for poetic
embellishments.
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What strikes us rst about this statement is Protagoras’ belief that man is the
measure also of what is not, of non-existence. If we connect this statement
with his opinion about the gods, we may argue that Protagoras thought that
about matters of which no empirical evidence is possible, human beings must
suspend their judgment or, alternatively, make decisions at their own risk: in
any case they are the ultimate deciders.
The most interesting interpretative approach consists in following Plato
in his account of Protagoras’ thought. We must remark, rst of all, that
Plato shows respect for Protagoras and his ideas and a genuine interest in
presenting his doctrines and spelling out their ultimate meaning; whereas he
has a completely diferent approach to other sophists. For instance, he treats
Gorgias as a good man but his ideas appear weak and are easily refuted and
the same applies to Hippias while Euthydemus is simply ridiculed. Only
Parmenides has a role similar to Protagoras’ in Plato’s dialogues. Secondly, it
is clear from the Theaetetus that Plato was inuenced by Protagoras, or, bet-
ter, accepted his conclusion about sense-perception: if we conne ourselves to
sense- perception, truth becomes a matter of individual feeling with the result
that each human being inhabits a private world just like Heraclitus’ sleepwalk-
ers. The possibility of objective knowledge disappears as well as the possibility
of communication (at least communication based on the truth of the matter).
Plato had to nd a solution which guaranteed a rmer and objective notion of
truth: the Forms, eternal and alike for everyone, were the solution.
In the Theaetetus Socrates interprets the man-measure theory as meaning
that “as each thing appears to me, so it is for me, and as it appears to you,
so it is for you—you and I each being a man” (Th. 152a). Consistent with his
belief in the impossibility of knowing the gods, Protagoras maintains that our
knowledge is limited to the phenomenal realm. In the subsequent “Apology”
the sophist reiterates his position on knowledge, and then adds some elements
which combine his epistemological view with a moral and political stance.
He argues that “each one of us—the single individual—is the measure both
of what is and of what is not;” then he adds: “But there are countless difer-
ences between men for just this very reason, that diferent things both are and
appear to be to diferent subjects.” Some of these semblances (φαντάσµατα,
representations) are “better” (βελτίω) than others, although in no way “truer”
In presenting the man-measure theory Socrates remarks, without irony (because he goes
on examining it at length), that “it is likely that such a wise man does not say something
senseless”: Plato, Th. 152a.
In an earlier dialogue, the Meno (91d–92a), Plato gives a general assessment of the soph-
ists which is less favourable to Protagoras.
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(ληθέστερα)—as some maintain out of ignorance (Th. 167b). Each person is
the judge (κριτ: 160c) of what is relative to himself, and therefore no one
judges what is false: epistemological relativism is unavoidable but has practical
limits, because some opinions are better, more useful than others, although
not truer. From the realm of knowledge and theory we have shifted almost
imperceptibly to that of practice. It is in this realm of practice that the exist-
ence of wisdom and of wise men can be maintained (Th. 166d).
The wise man, identied with the sophist, operates as a physician, turning
bad states of mind (or soul) into better states, which enable his listeners and
students to have better perceptions, using words instead of drugs: he cannot
persuade people they are wrong (because there is no right or wrong as far as
truth is concerned) but he can make them change attitude (ξι), thus mould-
ing good citizens. It is in this connection that we may interpret another famous
saying of Protagoras: to “make the worse discourse better” means to transform
an opinion or a situation from bad to good. The value of things is anthropocen-
tric, it is not discrete from men’s needs and desires. This is the civilizing mis-
sion of the sophist and the all-important role of education for human beings:
it changes (µεταβάειν, repeated many times) the disposition of a human
being, so that something that appears (and is) bad seems (and is) good (166d).
Education (παιδεία) transforms man, making him change from a worse to a
better disposition; the analogy with the physician also reveals that the soph-
ist is a wise man and deserves to be paid for his service. For it is the sophist,
through his educational role, that creates ‘civilized’ men and rhetoricians, who
in turn persuade the city to adopt the most useful laws for the citizens. It is
important to notice that the absence of truth in politics, far from opening an
abyss of violence or despair, in fact enables men to deliberate about justice on
an equal footing: it paves the way to democracy. The law is thus conceived as
δόγµα πόλεω, the opinion of the city about what is just. Protagoras may very
consistently conclude that
Whatever in any city is regarded as just and admirable is just and admi-
rable, in that city and for so long as that convention maintains itself; but
the wise man replaces each pernicious convention by a wholesome one,
making this both be and seem just. (Th. 167c)
Cf. Nussbaum 1990, 164.
On the connection between Protagoras’ thought and Athenian democracy see Bonazzi
2004, 333–359.
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There is no truth or general rule in politics as well as in life because on every
topic two opposing arguments can be presented: the choice, the decision
between competing truths, rests with each man and in this resides both the
greatness and the tragedy of human life. However, cities and human beings can
live with that; if correctness, ρθότη, is the problem, the sophist and the edu-
cated man are the solution. For judging from his experience, the sophist can
suggest to a city the most convenient political arrangement in order to mould
good citizens. Again, in so doing, the sophist acts as a physician, who stud-
ies the symptoms of an illness as well as the constitution of the patient and
adapts the treatment to the circumstances: there is no general rule; rather the
“judgement resides in perception” of the single case, as we read in [Hippocrates]
De antiqua medicina 9. The physician is guided by an un-stated, obvious prem-
ise: health is better than disease. Likewise, to keep up the analogy, the sophist
has seen that civil strife is like an ailment in the body politic and he will resort
to his technique to prevent its insurgence inside a city. Harmony, µόνοια, and
political friendship constitute the natural, healthy condition of the city. Stasis,
turmoil, and conict disrupt this harmony and the sophist’s task is to restore
the order inside the community.
This highly-praised educational role of the sophist is the leading theme also
of Protagoras’ “Great Speech” in Plato’s Protagoras. There the sophist ofers to
his listeners the choice between a delightful myth and a rational argument
and then opts for delivering a beautiful mythical narration in order to be more
entertaining. The choice of myth over logos is prompted by the convivial atmos-
phere in Callias’ house but Protagoras could as well have recurred to his logical
and argumentative skills: this explains such poetic licence as the intervention
of the gods in human life. He tells Socrates that his job is to teach prudence in
afairs private as well as public. More specically, Protagoras (Prot. 318e–319a)
claims to teach εβουλία, the ability to foresee and control future circum-
stances. In this respect εβουλία is the true, rational form of divination. In
Protagoras’ view human beings are pious by nature but they are unjust: they
spontaneously, immediately erect altars to the gods but they cannot get along
with each other and risk destroying the entire human race. Political science
comes as a gift from Zeus; it is an art and is exercised through the logos, the
word. For Protagoras πολιτικ τέχνη, a capacity owned by every human being,
saves mankind; for Socrates it is the µετρητικ τέχνη, which is possessed only
by few people.
Let’s recall that the question at issue between Protagoras and Socrates is
whether virtue can be taught and the sophist’s position is that human beings
Cf. Magris 1985.
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are by nature endowed with the potentiality for virtue but this has to be cul-
tivated through education. The conclusion of the myth is that all men are by
nature endowed with the two qualities, or virtues, of ‘respect’ and ‘justice’
which make them ‘political beings’, apt to rule and to be ruled; as a conse-
quence, democracy is the most ‘natural’ and most ecient form of govern-
ment because it reects in its laws and institutions that equality of capacity
that exists in nature: it does not exclude any citizen endowed with political art
(πολιτικ τέχνη) from participating in politics; on the other hand, lack of αδώ
and δίκη excludes human beings from the cities. This is the kind of ‘truth’, or
rather vision, that Protagoras can consistently claim to belong to his baggage
of expertise; this knowledge, which issues from his experience as a man-of-
the-world, can be serviceable to political entities. Experience—he may argue
efectively—shows that a democratic city is more powerful and its citizens are
happier than in any other political arrangement. He could have stated, just like
Thucydides, that the city’s power is the proof of the goodness of the Athenian
constitutional system.
Gorgias of Leontini originated the ancient sophistry, namely that kind of
sophistry which examined general subjects; indeed, he was its father accord-
ing to Philostratus. Although also in the case of Gorgias we sufer from the
loss of most of his books, it is possible to extract a consistent Weltanschauung
from his extant works. Regardless of the opinion we may have about his cele-
brated book On Nature or On Not-Being—was it a serious attempt at refuting
the Eleatic thinkers or just a piece of bravura to impress the audience?—this
work captures well the sophistic approach to reality and its consequences: It
maintains that nothing is; and even if something is, it cannot be known; and
even if it can be known it cannot be communicated to someone else. It fol-
lows that human beings move around and have their dealings in a world of
appearance, where nothing has an objective consistency but everything is as it
appears to the single individual. However, we should be careful to read this as
an attack on the ‘foundationalist’ idea that there is an objective world, discrete
and contrasted to the one which appears to our senses. What Gorgias is in fact
arguing is that there is no true account of the world; he is thus refuting both
Parmenides and Protagoras, the idea that thought and being are the same as
well as the idea that perception and being are the same. His conclusion is that, if
we cannot invoke truth, we must rely on persuasion. Hence the all- importance
Αδώ refers to the moral values citizens must share; δίκη to the legal and political realm,
the laws of the city.
Thucydides , 41, 2. Ober 2008 is a brilliant attempt at nding evidence for this claim.
Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists .
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of rhetoric: since truth is not a property of the world, it is up to rhetoric, in an
agonistic context, to persuade us of what is true; we can then use this truth in
our everyday life and even communicate it to others. Truth is thus the end-
result of an γών, a competitive confrontation which sees rival arguments: a
trial in court, a debate on the market-place, a philosophical argument.
Gorgias’ other works conrm this premise and draw the practical conclu-
sions. A good starting point is the Funeral Speech, an epideictic discourse
where Gorgias celebrates the Athenians who fell ghting for their country by
stating that, though mortal by nature, they were divine in their valour,
often preferring mild equity to stern justice, often straightness of speech
to exactness of law, considering that the most divine and universal law
is this—to speak, to stay silent and to do the proper thing at the proper
time.
Gorgias’ point is that these men paid less consideration to elements that are
considered xed and exact (law and justice) and more to elements which
are exible and contextual (fairness and speech). They formed the correct
opinion and were thus able to seize the καιρό and make the right decision
required by the circumstances. So great is the power of speech, that “powerful
lord” again celebrated in the Encomium of Helen in some memorable state-
ments: “The efect of speech upon the condition of the soul is comparable to
the power of drugs over the nature of bodies.” Logos alters our soul, enabling
it to form an opinion which will guide us in our actions. Gorgias believed he
could bring about such transformation of the soul because his rened, carefully
crafted words acted like incantations. No one in his age or later had a higher
consideration of the power of speech, not even his pupil Isocrates (DK82A2 =
Suidas) who mastered the Attic prose like no other. The only thinker who fully
appreciated Gorgias’ lesson and put it into efect for a completely diferent
On the importance of the agonistic context see Consigny 2001.
DK82B6. For an evaluation of this kind of discourses see the classic Loraux 1986.
DK82B11 = Encomium of Helen 14. The comparison of the sophist to the physician recurs
again often. Perhaps one of the most interesting pieces of information comes from
[Plutarch], Lives of the ten orators 18: Antiphon allegedly “advertised that he had the power
of curing those that were in trouble by means of speech; and discovering the causes of
their sickness by inquiry he consoled the sick”.
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purpose was Plato: the “art of converting the soul” (τέχνη τ περιαγωγ) of
the Republic is Plato’s response to Gorgias.
In antiquity Gorgias’ most famous political discourse was the Olympic
Speech, in which he recommended µόνοια among the Greeks and taking the
arms against the barbarians. Its tenor is well caught by this statement: “victo-
ries over the barbarians require hymns of celebration, over Greeks laments.”
The same argument will be elaborated in Isocrates’ Panegyricus (380 ca).
4 Antiphon, the Mystery Man
Antiphon (480–411) had a many-sided personality and displayed his talent in
many elds. He was a native Athenian and a slightly older contemporary of
Socrates: according to Xenophon (Memorabilia , 6) the two were rival teachers;
interestingly, at a few years’ distance, they met a similar demise at the hand of
the newly restored Athenian democracy. They both used their trials to deliver a
defence which was in fact an apology of their entire life-choices but they both
failed to persuade the jurors and decided to accept their fate instead of eeing
the city. The many diverse works attributed to Antiphon testify to his curiosity
and ability to write on subjects as diferent as politics and the interpretation
of dreams, trials for personal or political matters and the nature of ‘discourse’.
This fact, together with the diference in style of the surviving works, has since
antiquity prompted interpreters to wonder whether one single person could
be their author and already the grammarian Didymus ( century ) spoke
of two Antiphons, the logographer/orator and the sophist (whose biography is,
however, completely unknown); many other interpreters accepted this posi-
tion and, thanks to the difusion of the name, sometimes even added a third,
or more, Antiphon. In recent decades, however, the view that the works
attributed to Antiphon have only one author has gained wider acceptance.
The sensible and cogent arguments put forth by Michael Gagarin seem to me
We may appreciate this by looking at the transition from the Gorgias to the Republic. The
former dialogue ends with a defeated Callicles who tells Socrates that he is not persuaded
by his arguments although he is unable to refute him; and then quits discussing. We may
surmise that he will go back to his usual life since no change has happened to his soul. In
the Republic the “art of converting the soul” is applied to the conversion of Thrasymachus
who participates to the discussion up to the very end and, after nine books (out of ten),
leaves Cephalus’ house a diferent man.
DK82B5b.
See the interesting observations in Steinbock 2013.
See also the opinion of Hermogenes (2nd century ) in 87A2. Cf. Narcy 1996, 31–45.
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conclusive in supporting a unitarian view. Antiphon was the rst person to
write speeches for other people to use in court (logographer) while he himself
did not like to speak in public (Thucydides , 68). According to [Plutarch]
he served Athens in many roles—as a trierarch of two ships, as a general and as
an ambassador—and although he had had an active role in Athenian political
life his dening moment came when he was involved in the oligarchic coup of
411. It is interesting that Antiphon chose a moment that could have become an
historical turning-point in Athenian history to act: in retrospect, the events of
411 look like a failed coup quickly overcome by the democrats; but at the time
they arose the interest of many prominent citizens disgruntled at the demo-
cratic government and tired of the long confrontation and war with Sparta.
Thucydides’ judgement on the events is absolutely clear: the attempt at chang-
ing the regime in Athens was plotted and carried out by some of the nest men
in the city, such as Antiphon himself, Theramenes the son of Hagnon (“a man
of considerable eloquence and intellectual power”) and Peisander.
Another interesting piece of information we also get from Thucydides
(, 68) is that Antiphon was regarded with suspicion by the multitude for his
reputation for ‘cleverness’ (δεινότη). This judgement may reect Thucydides’
bias against the Athenian populace and its anti-intellectualism, but it is a fact
that in his defence Antiphon tackled the accusation of using his wits and abil-
ity with words to be a sophist and write discourses for others at a great prot;
indeed, he turned the tables at his accusers and maintained that he could prot
of his talent only in a democracy and therefore had no incentive in overthrow-
ing the regime. In fact, the entire event of 411 can be construed as an attempt
at reversing the drift towards radicalism of Athenian democracy and at restor-
ing a milder version in which the aristocrats could engage in public life again:
the ideal captured by the expression πάτριο πολιτεία which vaguely referred
to a previous Solonian-Cleisthenic-style democratic regime. Thucydides’ judg-
ment is, again, very clear: “And now for the rst time, at least in my lifetime,
the Athenians enjoyed a political system of substantial and obvious merit,
which blended the interests of the few and the many without extremes, and
began to restore the city from the wretched situation into which it had fallen.”
Antiphon thus appears to have been a moderate oligarch, or even a moderate
See Gagarin 2002; Antiphon the Sophist 2002.
[Plutarch], Lives of the ten orators 10 = DK87A3.
Thucydides , 97.
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democrat, who eschewed extremes and loved his country more than partisan
politics (which was not the rule in those dire days).
As in the case of Protagoras and Gorgias, we may construe Antiphon’s
political views as a consequence of his reections on the nature of things, and
especially on the relationship between nature and culture. One of the longest
surviving fragments of his work On Truth begins by exposing an apparently
traditional notion of justice: “Justice consists in not transgressing the laws and
customs that the city where one happens to live has established.” From this
premise, however, Antiphon draws a very subversive consequence:
Therefore a man would employ justice best for his own interests if he
were to regard the laws as important, when witnesses were present, but,
when no witnesses are present, he were to regard the demands of nature
as important. [...] And the demands of the laws are the result not of nat-
ural disposition but of agreement, but the demands of nature are exactly
the opposite.
By transgressing the demands of nature a person sufers a real damage, one
that “is not in appearance but in truth.” Antiphon concludes that his argument
aimed at showing that “many of the things which are just according to the law
are at variance with nature.” Another staple of Greek culture after the Persian
Wars—the opposition between Greeks and barbarians—is questioned by
Antiphon’s matter-of-fact arguments:
In this behaviour we have become like barbarians one to another, when
in fact by nature we all have the same nature in all particulars, barbarians
and Greeks. We have only to consider the things which are natural and
necessary to all mankind. These are open to all [to get] in the same way,
and in [all] these there is no distinction of barbarian or Greek. For we all
breathe out into the air by the mouth and the nose, and we [all eat with
our hands].
In the same work On Truth Antiphon argued that testifying in court against
someone, even if telling the truth, wrongs that person and therefore is
The epitome of partisan politics can be found in Thucydides’ depiction of factional strife
in Corcyra ( , 80–82) but many other events show that party allegiance was by many
deemed more important than any other kind of tie.
DK87B44 = POxy , 1364A.
DK87B44 = POxy , 1364B.
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against the norm of justice that one should not wrong anyone. He then con-
cludes that “the administration of law and justice and arbitration with a view
to a nal settlement are all contrary to justice”. With the usual proviso that
it is both dicult and dangerous to extract a theory from such fragmentary
evidence, we may rst observe that Antiphon was a legal professional and
his examples from the practice of law are telling: he developed his general
opinions—his theory of justice—in the concrete circumstances of legal prac-
tice, noticing that what the laws ask us to do contrasts with the injunctions
we may derive from observing nature. Now, nature is both a descriptive and a
prescriptive notion (since we derive what we ought to do from the observation
of how things work in nature) and Antiphon attacks νόµοι and νόµιµα both for
their lack of universality and for being disadvantageous to those who abide
by them: if we look with candid eyes, ‘the just’ and ‘the useful’ (what is advan-
tageous to us) are opposed. The only sensible conclusion is that the truth is
that all human beings share a nature and they should follow its intimations.
Antiphon’s views open the way to cosmopolitanism and to utilitarianism, two
disruptive elements in the contemporary polis-centred Greek morality. The
Athenians described by Thucydides show they have been avid learners of these
theories and exhibit the practical consequences. Finally, we may notice that
the polemical force of Antiphon’s arguments makes his choice of title very apt:
Truth has a great force, an enlightening power we may say.
Theory and practice were intertwined but sometimes at variance in
Antiphon (how could a ‘lawyer’ who believed that legal justice was against
nature continue to practice?). Then, it is perhaps fair to conclude the exami-
nation of his theories by mentioning that he wrote also a work on µόνοια, on
concord, in the heated climate of the year 411, when the oligarchs in power
had to negotiate with the democratic hoplites in the Piraeus in order to face
the Spartan threat. Since we possess only fragments of this work I venture to
make only two observations. First, it is very telling about Antiphon’s moderate
political attitude that he wrote on such a subject. In it we read that “there is
DK87B44 = POxy , 1797.
And, in fact, Antiphon’s fragments have been interpreted in very diferent ways. For a
rapid summary with an interesting interpretation (which I do not share) see Furley 1981,
81–91.
This was a hot topic of the age because of the confrontation between democrats and oli-
garchs in Greek cities and many authors wrote on it: see for instance Antiphon (F44a–71);
Gorgias (B8a); Thrasymachus (B1, 31); Democritus (B250); see also Protagoras in Plato,
Prot., 322c.
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no worse evil for human beings than ναρχία:” ναρχία is what happened in
Athens at the height of the civil wars following Solon’s reforms, and it paved
the way to Pisistratus’ tyranny. Antiphon then shows moderation and patri-
otism in his views although we cannot say much more. Second, the fragments
give the impression of a very elaborate work, full of existential observations as
well as moral and educational recommendations, and not just of a piece com-
posed for the occasion. Antiphon’s approach to the subject is complex and it
is likely that education and the discoveries of the new medicine played some
part in his advocacy of political reconciliation.
5 The Most Evil Man of His Time: Critias
There are many exceedingly interesting features in the biography of Critias
(460–403), which make him almost unique among the sophists. It is not only
that he was an accomplished dramatist and philosopher before briey becom-
ing one of the most important men in Athens in one of her darkest moments;
the scale of his theoretical and political daring was unsurpassed and we can
blame the damnatio memoriae which followed his violent demise for not hav-
ing more information about this intriguing gure. Even before his participa-
tion in the infamous oligarchic regime of the “thirty tyrants”, Critias was
involved in the afair of the mutilation of the Hermae (415) and, when exiled in
Thessaly, allegedly consorted with the basest elements there, either intrigu-
ing with the oligarchs to make their regime harsher or, conversely, setting up
DK87B61. In the Anonymus Iamblichi we nd a similar statement: “ενοµία ριστον εη κα
κοιν κα δί, νοµία δ κάκιστον”, for νοµία generates tyranny: DK89A7, 7 and 12.
See Develin 1989, 39–40 and 183. Very interestingly Xenophon, Hell. , 3, 1 reports that
the Athenians refer to the year 404, when the archon eponymous was elected under the
oligarchy, as the year of ναρχία.
It is tempting to think that Antiphon shared the view on concord of Xenophon, an author
with a similar mind and political ideas. Xenophon wrote that µόνοια is the greatest asset
for a city: it does not consist in sharing the same taste about poetry or theatre but rather
in obeying the same laws: Memorabilia , 4, 16.
An interesting label which emphasized more the moral than the political connotations
of this government, since the actual historical tyrant is one by denition and the regime
set up in Athens by the Spartans was in fact, and acted as, a strict oligarchy. Xenophon
portrays Critias as very well aware that the Thirty’s regime should take measures σπερ
τυραννίδο: Hell. , 3, 16.
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a democracy by arming the serfs against their overlords. The image that
emerges from our sources is that of a resourceful man without scruples, capa-
ble of anything in order to achieve his intended goals. Although our judgment
must necessarily be speculative, we may venture to say that his alleged impli-
cation in the mutilation of the statues of Hermes, which caused such uproar
and fear in Athens, may have been dictated by his will to damage Alcibiades
and eventually sap Athenian democracy; for Alcibiades was one of the fore-
most democratic leaders in Athens at the time and the staunchest supporter of
the expedition to Sicily. It is clear that the perpetrators of the fact, if they had a
political motive, were not deterred by religious scruples; this fact has inclined
interpreters to put the blame on some men of the elite, more susceptible to
entertain irreligious ideas.
Critias ts well the identity of the culprit, especially if we attribute to him
the fragment of the play Sisyphus. This contains a speech in which many
themes dear to contemporary sophists and philosophers—such as the pro-
gress of mankind from its original condition to present civilisation, the dif-
ference and contrast between norm and nature, the nature and role of the
gods—are weaved together but with a new twist: not only are the gods absent
from the picture but in addition the author posits that “the divine” (τ θεον)
was the invention of a shrewd man to supplement the function of the laws.
For, as Antiphon had noted, the laws work only to prevent crimes in the pub-
lic, but people may secretly try to break them when they believe they will not
be caught. A shrewd man then “invented for mortals fear of the gods” so that,
believing the gods see and hear everything, they refrain from wrong-doing in
any circumstance. Man, or better a shrewd and wise man, “concealing the truth
with a lying speech” (24–6), created gods for the well-being of mankind. The
cleverness of the shrewd man is matched only by the cleverness of Sisyphus/,
The rst piece of news comes from Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists , 16; the second from
Theramenes’ discourse in Xenophon, Hell. , 3, 36, which admittedly could be libellous.
On this see Usher 1968, 128–135.
See for instance Guthrie’s opinion: “Such irreligion must have been common among the
intelligentsia of the time. The profanation of the mysteries and the mutilation of the
Hermae were not the work of believers”: Guthrie 1977, 245.
DK88B25. Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. , 54, attributes it to Critias while Aetius, Plac. ,
7, 2, attributes it to Euripides. I am inclined to attribute it to Critias; for a diferent opinion
see Dihle 1977, 28–42. For an excellent status quaestionis and an ingenious interpreta-
tion see Whitmarsh 2014, 109–126. My bottom line is that someone at the end of the fth
century was bold enough to dare to present such a view on the origin of “the divine”,
even if it was only the discourse of a character in a play: plays were performed before the
entire city.
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that is, the author who discloses the truth—λήθεια with its enlightening and
disruptive power. But this truth should be kept hidden from the common
people because the ction of the gods is required for the sustenance of society.
We should note the originality of the view put forth in this fragment: the initial
condition of mankind is not depicted as a Golden Age; rather, it was “unor-
dered, bestial and subservient to violence” (1–2). The introduction of laws
arguably improved men’s situation although “justice is a tyrant” (δίκη τύραννο:
6) of human beings because it constrains their nature and society is therefore
a necessary evil; in the end the introduction of the divine, albeit deceptive,
has a positive efect on human life. Though problematic, Critias’ solution of the
question of justice and law-abidingness in an age of uncertainty is original and
efective. For a diferent, somewhat more palatable solution one needs to wait
for Plato’s Socrates and his view that the just man never commits injustice,
because his reason enables him to grasp the idea of justice. Jaeger was right
in remarking that when Plato in the Republic invented the tale of Gyges’ ring
which made its wearer invisible he “was trying to solve the problem raised by
Antiphon and Critias”.
6 The Sophists’ Inuence on Greek Culture
The sophists had an extraordinary impact on Greek thought as well as on polit-
ical practices. They shook traditional values, questioned customary practices
and, in general, forced contemporary thinkers, politicians and common people
to consider their ideas, weigh them and then take a stand. One needs only look
at Plato’s Republic to fully appreciate this fact. The traditional views on justice
embodied by Cephalus and Polemarchus cannot withstand Thrasymachus’
powerful criticism and appear hopelessly unable to guide the young genera-
tions. Plato’s brothers too expound a sophistic, contractarian view of the origin
of justice, although they do not believe in it and ask Socrates for help in cor-
roborating their belief. Plato perfectly depicts the dismay of the young genera-
tions who desperately look for new, objective values. Plato, however, was an
Scodel 1980, 124–128 notes the correspondence between the “shrewd man’s” ingenious-
ness and Sisyphus’ own. O’Sullivan 2012, 167–185 maintains that the author had in fact a
positive view of the role of religion.
Jaeger 1945, , 330. In his classical treatment, full of insights, Jaeger considered the soph-
ists the inventors of humanism and of the theory of education. On the meaning of Gyges’
tale see Danzig 2008, 169–192, who interprets the gift of invisibility as a Platonic allegory
of rhetorical practices.
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intellectual enemy of the sophists and we should bear this in mind when we
evaluate his depiction of “the spirit of the age.”
It is perhaps better, then, to look elsewhere in order to appreciate the per-
vasiveness of the sophists’ teaching. A promising perspective consists in look-
ing at the works of Aristophanes and Thucydides: the former, a comedian,
had to mirror and caricature something actually existing in contemporary
society in order to make his audience laugh; the latter, an historian, made the
search for ‘truth’ the purpose of his account of the war that brought about
“the greatest upheaval” of his time. Aristophanes often lampooned the subtle
verbal tricks that characterized the new ‘masters of truth’ so popular in Athens,
labelled with humorous terms such as “word-spinners” and “space-thinkers”
(µετεωροσοφισται). He also mocked the gullible rich Athenians who hosted
them and who sent their children to attend their expensive classes. In his plays,
not only do patent or undercover sophists abound, but we get the impression
from many verbal exchanges that the entire population of Athens had become
fond of discourses and are masters at arguing. Having a knack for identify-
ing the tics of his fellow-countrymen and caricaturing their mannerisms,
Aristophanes conated the ‘essence of a sophist’ in one eccentric Athenian:
Socrates, the protagonist of the Clouds (staged in 423). This play not only had
great popular success, but also reinforced Athenian anti-intellectualism and
contributed to Socrates’ ill-reputation and, ultimately, death.
If Aristophanes enables us to have a glimpse of the popular view of the
sophists and of the pervasiveness of their ideas, it is in Thucydides that we
arguably nd the best representation of the sophists’ inuence in Athens. First
of all because Thucydides himself is a pupil of the sophists: his world-view is
impregnated with sophistic elements as is his way of approaching his subject
and his style. Thucydides believes in the existence of an eternal, unchangeable
human nature which will always prompt men to act in a certain way: human
beings are characterized by the desire to have more (πλεονεξία) and this will
always cause conicts and wars. Laws—human and divine—morality, and
religion are just poor restraining factors, and in times of dire emergency (such
as plagues, civil strife and war) the reality of human nature fully appears. This
bleak world of ours seems to be abandoned by the gods, who play no role in
Thucydides’ narrative. His History of the Peloponnesian War is in fact a great
philosophical work because in it Thucydides maintains to have discovered a
universal lesson in an historical, limited (in time and place) event: war is inev-
itable because human nature prompts men and cities to aggrandize up to the
point when fear and πλεονεξία will collide. This is why he may boast that his
Aristophanes, Clouds, 360; see Birds, 692 and Tagenistae fr. 490 Kock.
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history is “a possession for all time” (, 22, 4). In addition, power (δύναµι) is the
standard by which one should evaluate political entities. In the ‘Archaeology’
(, 1–19) he accordingly reads Greek history before the Peloponnesian War
as evidence of the σθένεια, weakness, of past political entities and as proof
that the current war has been the “greatest upheaval” (µεγίστη κίνησι) of all
times for the entire mankind and is therefore “most worthy to be narrated”
(ξιολογώτατον): the proof is in the power displayed by Athens and Sparta and
their systems of alliances in the war which had no comparison in the past.
The same persuasion underpins Pericles’ famous Funeral Oration (, 38–46),
where we read that the greatness of Athens consists in her laws and customs
which educate citizens to achieve superb virtue; this virtue, in turn, is displayed
in the marvellous Athenian achievements in all elds, public and private; and
the supporting evidence resides in the power of the city itself, which is man-
ifest to all and renders unnecessary the fake eulogies of the poets. In another
famous passage depicting the slaughters and evils caused by civil strives in
Corcyra, Thucydides speaks of the “revolution” (στάσι) underwent by words
in war: words changed their meaning, showing that value judgements are not
eternal and objective but rather relative to an epoch. A very Protagorean con-
sideration, nely picked up by Plato.
Finally, two passages perfectly catch the sophistic inuence and the “spirit
of the age” in Thucydides’ Athens. One is very famous, the dialogue between
the Athenian envoys and the Melian commissioners (, 85–109). In this dra-
matic confrontation between what is ‘useful’ and what is ‘just,’ the Athenians
remind their interlocutors that justice can be brought up in discussions only by
equals in power; otherwise, when what is at stake is the very survival (σωτηρία)
of the weaker entity, “the strong do what they can and the weak sufer what
they must” (, 89). Human history is determined π φύσεω ναγκαία,
which determines that might is right. The other passage is less famous but
equally telling: it describes a small confrontation in Boeotia during which the
Athenians occupied the temple of Delium and used the sacred source inside it
for their needs (, 97–98). When accused of impiety and asked to immediately
leave, the Athenians reply that they are not doing anything impious because
they are necessitated by the circumstances and anything done in a situation
of necessity is excused also by the gods. They then add that the temple does
not belong to the Boeotians anymore but rather to the Athenians themselves,
who conquered it and are defending it with their swords. What is striking in
both episodes (and in others similar) is the fact that all Athenians, generals
In Republic , 560c–e. The Republic as a whole seems to be strongly inuenced by
Thucydides, whose ideas continuously resurface.
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as well as common rank, seem to be able to produce a rened sophistic(ated)
argument in defence of their behaviour—a sign of the widespread inuence
of these ideas.
As we have previously noted, the inuence of the sophists was conspicu-
ous on medicine, theatre, history and other arts. It has long been argued that
Herodotus’ famous logos tripolitikos (, 80–82) shows sophistic inuences. I
would not go so far as to maintain that Herodotus was reporting the ideas of an
actual sophistic text in that celebrated passage; my impression is that he knew
enough of Athenian political debates to be able to create the ctional discus-
sion that allegedly took place in Persia: as if to say that the birth of Darius’
empire lay in the Athenian practice of evaluating the pros and cons of every
regime. Another interesting feature of the debate of the three grandees is the
absence of any reference to the gods: the merits and justice of a form of govern-
ment are evaluated on purely human standards. In another famous passage
about the diverse customs of diferent civilisations, Herodotus’ conclusion,
quoting Pindarus, that νόµο—interpreted as ‘custom’—is king of everything,
is in line with the sophists’ teaching and with their practice of inferring relativ-
istic conclusions from their observation of cultures.
The emphasis on man and his achievements, typical with diferent nuances
to all the sophists, is the foundation of a central idea of this age: the narra-
tion of man’s origin and progress towards civilization, sometimes assisted
by the gods. This idea played an important part in Protagoras’ thought and
it is reected in his “Great Speech.” Plato’s myth of the Politicus, which places
human happiness in the age of Zeus and in the hands of philosophy, may be
construed as a response to Protagoras. The dramatists too show they are aware
of the new ideas imported by the sophists and of their novel use of reason
to examine previously untouched matters. For instance, the theme of men’s
progress and relationship to the gods plays a prominent part in Aeschylus’
Prometheus Bound (456), where Prometheus is the bearer of civilization to
mankind in a time of struggle between gods. In Sophocles’ Antigone (442), the
so-called “Ode to man” has its theoretical underpinning in Protagoras’ thought:
in it we nd the human being placed at the centre of all things, a clear notion
of human progress and an emphasis on the importance of political skill.
Prodicus’ fragmentary evidence allows us only to say that he also dealt with
this subject and gave an interesting interpretation of the origins of the gods:
Perhaps Herodotus’ account of ‘divine providence’ in creating the animals with features
compatible with their survival is inspired by Protagoras’ “Great Speech”. This fact was rst
noticed by Nestle 1908, 531–581.
See Crane 1989, 103–116.
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he maintained that the gods are personications of elements which proved
benecial to human beings; so agriculture was identied with Demeter, wine
with Dionysus and so forth. This belief in ‘progress’ was shared by the author
of De antiqua medicina, who maintained that there will be future discoveries
in medicine based on the investigations and discoveries of the past. He adds
that “the present articles of diet had been discovered and invented only after a
long lapse of time;” necessity prompted human beings to discover medicine.
An account of the sophists’ inuence on Greek culture cannot be com-
plete without a treatment of the author who arguably learnt most from them:
Plato. His thought developed in a continuous confrontation with the sophists,
from whom he took many of the subjects he would examine: this is clearly
acknowledged in the title of many of his dialogues. Plato used certain sophis-
tic argumentative strategies, as in the refutation of Callicles in the Gorgias or
of Thrasymachus in Republic ; learnt from them the importance of persua-
sion, which enabled him to go beyond Socrates’ ethical intellectualism; and
borrowed from them many stylistic elements. For instance, the existence of
verbal parallels as well as rhetorical topoi in Gorgias’ Defence of Palamedes and
Plato’s Apology of Socrates have long been noted. In both works, also, there
is a clear awareness that the requirement of telling the truth is accompanied
by the necessity of persuading the jury: truth itself is useless if the words that
convey it are unpersuasive. To quote Gorgias himself:
If it were possible by way of words that the truth of the facts was revealed
pure and manifest to the listeners, the judgment on the things already
said would be easy.
Plato showed he had learnt this lesson well in the transition from the Gorgias
to the Republic, as we remarked before. Finally, in his last work, the Laws, we
read: “God is for us the best measure of all things” (, 716c). The phrasing is
designed to immediately evoke Protagoras’ ghost. This is Plato’s nal answer
to the great sophist, an answer which admittedly gives Protagoras his due. By
underlining “for us,” Plato admits that it is necessary to be a believer in order to
be convinced of god’s supremacy; therefore citizens must be persuaded of the
See Henrichs 1975, 93–123 and Henrichs 1976, 15–21. For a positive appreciation of Prodicus
see Corey 2008, 1–26.
[Hippocrates] De antiqua medicina 2–5. The wording may reect the inuence of
Protagoras and Gorgias.
See Calogero, 1957, 12–17; Coulter 1964, 269–303.
Gorgias, Defence of Palamedes 35 = DK 82B11a.
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existence of the gods if they want to live in Magnesia; there is no alternative
but prison (a special one though, euphemistically called σωφρονιστήριον—“the
place that makes you wise”) and death. With Plato, the divine, discarded and
chased away by the sophists, reclaims its place in the city.
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