Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/297

Rh GORGIAS. GORGE (Topyrj), a daughter of Oeneus and Althaea, and the wife of Andraemon. When Ar- temis metamorphosed her sisters into birds, on account of their unceasing lamentations about their brother Meleager, Gorge and Deianeira alone were spared. (Anton, lib. 2 ; Ov. Met. viii. 532 ; ApoUod. i. 8. §§ 3, 5.) According to ApoUodorus, she became the mother of Tydeus by her own father. Her son Thoas led the Aetolians against Troy. One of the Danaides likewise bore the name of Gorge. (ApoUod. ii. 1. § 5.) [L. S.] GO'RGIAS (Topyias), one of Alexander's offi- cers, was among those who were brought reluct- antly from Macedonia by Amyntas, son of Andro- raenes, when he was sent home to collect levies in B. c. 332. (Curt. vii. 1, ad fin. ; see Vol. I. p, 155, b.) Gorgias was one of the commanders left by Alexander in Bactria to complete the reduction of the Bactrian insurgents, and to check further re- bellion, while the king himself marched to quell the revolt in Sogdiana, B. c. 328. (Arrian, Anab. iv. 16.) He accompanied Alexander in his Indian expedition, and, together with Attains and Me- leager, commanded the mercenaries at the passage of the Hydaspes against Porus in B.C. 326. (Arrian, Anab. v. 12 ; comp. Curt. viii. 13 ; Plut. Alex. 60 ; Diod. xvii. 87, &c.) This is perhaps the same Gorgias whose name occurs in Justin (xii. 12) among the veterans whom Alexander sent home under Craterus in B. c. 324 ; and, in that case, he must be distinguished from the Gorgias who is mentioned by Piutarch {Eum. 7) as one of the officers of Eumenes in his battle against Craterus and Neoptolemus in Cappadocia, in B.C. 321. [E.E.] GO'RGIAS (Topyias), of Leontini, a Chalci- dian colony in Sicily, was somewhat older than the orator Antiphon (born in B. c. 480 or 479), and lived to such an advanced age (seme say 1 05, and others 109 years), that he survived Socrates, though probably only a short time. (Quintil. iii. 1 . § 9; comp. Xenoph. Anab. ii. 6. § 16; H. Ed. Foss, de Gorgia Leontino, Halle, 1828, p. 6, &c. ; J. Geel, Hisior. Crit. SopMstarum, in the Nova Acta Literaria SodetatisRheno-Trajectinae, ii. p. 14.) The accounts which we have of personal collisions between Gorgias and Plato, and of the opinion which Gorgias is said to have expressed respecting Plato's dialogue Gorgias (Athen. xi. p. 505), are doubtful. We have no particular information re- specting the early life and circumstances of Gorgias, but we are told that at an advanced age, in B. c. 427, he was sent by his fellow-citizens as ambas- sador to Athens, for the purpose of soliciting its pro- tection against the threatening power of Syracuse. (Diod. xii. 53 ; Plat. Hipp. Maj. p. 282 ; Timaeus, ap. Dionys. Hal. Jvd. Lys. 3.) He seems to have returned to Leontini only for a short time, and to have spent the remaining years of his vigorous old age in the towns of Greece Proper, especially at Athens and the Thessalian Larissa, enjoying honour everywhere as an orator and teacher of rhetoric. (Diod. I. c. ; Plut. de Socrat. Daem. 8 ; Dionys. I. c. ; Plut. Hipp. Maj. p. 282, b., Gorg. p. 449, b., Meno, p. 71, Protag. pp.309, 315; comp. Foss, p. 23, &c.) Siivem (Lfeber Aristoph. Vogel, p. 26, in the Memoirs of the Royal Acad, of Berlin) endeavoured to prove that Gorgias and his brother Herodicus, a physician of some note, settled at Athens, but there is not sufficient evidence for this opinion. As Gorgias did not go as ambassador to Athens till after the death of Pericles, and as we GORGIAS. 283 have no trace of an earlier journey, we must reject the statement that the great Athenian statesman and the historian Thucydides were among his dis- ciples. (Philostr. Vit. Soph. p. 493, Epist. 13, p. 919 ; comp. Dionys. Hal. Epist. ad Pomp. 2, Jud. de Thucyd. 24.) But his Sicilian oratory, in which he is said to have excelled Tisias, who was at Athens at the same time with him, perhaps as am- bassador from Syracuse (Paus. vi. 7. § 8 ; Plat. Phaedr. p. 267), must have exercised a consider- able influence even upon eminent men of the time, such as Agathon, the tragic poet, and the rhetori- cian Isocrates. (Plat. Symp. p. 198 ; Dionys. Hal. de Isocrat. 1, de Compos. Verb. 23; I socrat. Panath. i. p. 334, ed. Lange.) Besides Polus, who is described in such lively colours in the Gorgias of Plato, Alcibiades, Critias, Alcidamas, Aeschines, and Antisthenes, are called either pupils or imi- tators of Gorgias. (Philostr. p. 493, &c., comp. p. 919; Dionys. de Tsaeo, 19; Diog. Laert. ii. 63, vi. 1.) In his earlier years Gorgias was attracted, though not convinced, by the conclusions to which the Eleatics had come : but he neither attempted to refute them, nor did he endeavour to reconcile the reality of the various and varying phaenomena of the world with the supposition of a simple, eternal, and unchangeable existence, as Empedo- cles, Anaxagoras, and the atomists had done. On the contrary, he made use of the conclusions of the Eleatics, for the purpose of proving that there was nothing which had any existence or reality ; and in doing this he paid so much attention to externals, and kept so evidently appearance alone in view,, instead of truth, that he was justly reckoned among the sophists. His work, On Nature, or On that which is not, in which he developed his views, and which is said to have been written in B. c. 444 (Olympiod. in Plat. Gorg. p. 567, ed. Routh.), seems to have been lost at an early time (it is doubtful whether Galen, who quotes it, Opera,yo. i. p. bQ, ed. Gesner, actually read it) ; but we possess sufficient extracts from it, to form a definite idea of its nature. The work de Xenoph. Gorgia et Melisso, ascribed to Aristotle or Theophrastus, contains a faithful and accurate account of it, though the text is unfortunately very corrupt : Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. vii. 65, Slc.) is more super- ficial, but clearer. The book of Gorgias was divided into three sections : in the first he endea- voured to show that nothing had any real exist- ence ; in the second, that if there was a real existence, it was beyond man's power to ascertain it ; and in the third, that existence could not be communicated, even supposing that it was real and ascertainable. The first section, of which we have a much more precise and accurate account in the Aristotelian work than in Sextus Empiricus, shows on the one hand that things neither are nor are not, because otherwise being and not being would be identical ; and on the other hand, that if there were existence, it could neither have com^ to be nor not come to be, and neither be one nor many. The first of these inferences arises from an ambi- guity in the use of the term of existence; the second from the fact of Gorgias adopting the con- clusion of Melissus, which is manifestly wrong, and according to which existence not having come to be is infinite, and — applying Zeno's argument against the reality of space — as an infinite has no exist- ence. Gorgias further makes bad use of another