Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/427

 CHANGES AT ATHENS tJNDfiK PERIKLES. 403 etc.l Antiplio of the deme Rhamnus in Attica, Thrasymachua of Chalkedon, Tisias, of Syracuse, Gorgias of Leontini, Pro- tagoras of Abdera, Prodikus of Keos, Theodorus of Byzantium, Hippias of Elis, Zeno of Elea, were among the first who distin- guished themselves in these departments of teaching. Antipho was the author of the earliest composed speech really spoken in a dikastery, and preserved down to the later critics.2 These men were mostly not citizens of Athens, though many of them be- longed to towns comprehended in the Athenian empire, at a time when important judicial causes belonging to these towns were often carried up to be tried at Athens, — while all of them looked to that city as a central point of action and distinction. The term sophist, which Herodotus 3 applies with sincere respect to men of distinguished wisdom, such as Solon, Anacharsis, Pythag- oras, etc., now came to be applied to these teachers of virtue, rhetoric, conversation, and disputation ; many of whom professed ' See the first book of Aiistotle's Rhetoric — alluded to in a former note — for his remarks on the technical teachers of rhetoric before his time. He remarks — and Plato remarked before him (i, 1 and 2) — that their teaching was for the most part thoroughly narrow and practical, bearing exclusively on what was required for the practice of the dikastery (nepl tov iiKai^ecr&ac ttuvtec: rretpuvrai rex'^'0?^0Y£(v) : see also a remarkable passage in his Treatise de Sopliisticis Elenchis, c. 32, ad finem. And though he him- self lays doi^-n a far more profound and comprehensive theory of rhetoric, and all matters appertaining to it, — in a treatise which has rarely been sur- passed in power of philosophical analysis, — yet when he is recommending his speculations to notice, he appeals to the great practical value of rhetor- ical teaching, as enabling a man to " help himself," and fight his own bat- tles, in case of need — 'Ato-ov el tu> au/iari /xev alaxpov /j,}/ 6vvaa-&ai (ioTjSelv iavTu, ?.6y(j 6e ovk alaxpov (i, 1, 3: compare iii, 1, 2; Plato Gor- gias, c, 41-55; Protagoras, c. 9; Phasdrus, c. 43-50; Euthydem. c. 1-31 and Xenophon, Memorab. iii, 12, 2, 3). See also the character of Proxenus in the Anabasis of Xenophon, ii, 6, 16; Plutarch, Vit. x, Orator, p. 307; Aristoph. Nubes, 1108; Xenophon, Memorab. i, 2, 48 ; Plato, Alkibiades, i, c. 31, p. 119; and a striking pas- sage in Plutarch's Life of Cato the elder, ,c. 1. - Plutarch, Vit. x, Orator, p. 832 ; Quintilian, iii, I, 10. Compare Vau Spaan, or Ruhnkcn, Disscrtatio de Antiphonte Oratorc Attico, pp. 8, 9, prefixed to Dobson's edition of Antipho and Andokides. Antipho is said to have been the teacher of the historian Thucydides. The statement ol Plutarch, that the fiither of Antipho was also a sophist, can hardly be true.
 * Heiodot. i, 29 ; iv, 95.