Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/382

352 most prominent subject of their teaching, some of them professed to give instruction in ethics and politics also, and they were known generally by the name of Sophists, or Professors of Wisdom. In a certain sense Socrates may be looked upon as the most eminent Sophist at Athens, though he dis- claimed the title, and would not give formal lectures, or receive fees. Still, some of the ablest young men frequented his company with the view of getting from his conversation and arguments something of the same instruction as that offered by the formal discourses of other Sophists. Of these travelling professors who became known at Athens the most prominent were: (1) Protagoras of Abdera, born about B.C. 480, who was in Athens about B.C. 411, from which city he was banished for the supposed atheistical tendency of his teaching. (2) Gorgias of Leontini, in Sicily, who, born about the same time as Protagoras, is said to have lived more than a hundred years. He visited Athens in B.C. 427 as an ambassador from his native town. He was a rhetorician rather than a Sophist or philosopher, and it is as such that Plato treats him. (3) Polus of Agrigentum, who was also a professional rhetorician, and seems to have been at Athens about the same time as Gorgias. (4) Hippias of Elis, about the same time, was a man of many accomplishments and seems to have lectured on many subjects—rhetoric, politics, ethics, mathematics, and art. He, too, served his country as an ambassador to Sparta. A man who professed such encyclopaedic knowledge was pretty certain not to have gone very deeply into any. Yet