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 THE SOPHISTS IN PLATO 16 1 The Sophists were great by their Hves and influence, more than by their writings, and even what they did write has ahnost completely perished (see p. 334). We hear of them now only through their opponents : from Aristophanes and the party of ignorance on one side, on the other from the tradition of the fourth century, opposed both in politics and in philosophy to the spirit of the fifth. If we had any definite statement of Plato's opinion of the great Periclean Sophists, it would probably be like Mr. Ruskin's opinion of Mill and Cobden. But we have no such statement. Plato does not write his- tory ; he writes a peculiar form of dramatic fiction, in which the actors have all to be, first, historical person- ages, and, secondly, contemporaries of the protagonist Socrates. When he really wishes to describe the men of that time, as in the Protagoras, he gives us the most delicate and realistic satire ; but very often his thoughts are not with that generation at all. Some orator of 370-360 displeases him ; he expresses himself in the form of a criticism by Socrates on Lysias. He proposes to confute his own philosophical opponents ; and down go all Antisthenes's paradox-mongering and Aristippus's new-fangled anarchism of thought to the credit of the ancient Protagoras. In these cases we can discover the real author of the doctrine attacked. Sometimes the doctrine itself seems to be Plato's invention. Suppose, for instance, Plato seeks to show that morality has a basis in reason or that the wicked are always unhappy, he is bound to make some one uphold the opposite view. And suppose he thinks — controversialists often do — that the opposite view would be more logical if held in an extreme and shame-