Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/55

37 THE SUrlttS'IS AT ATHENS. 37 mental accomplishments as well cs political success. it enlarged the range of their understandings, and opened to them as ample a vein of literature and criticism as the age afforded : it accus- tomed them to canvass human conduct, with the causes and obstructions of human well-being, both public and private: iJ even suggested to them indirectly lessons of duty and prudence, from which their social position tended to estrange them, and which they would hardly have submitted to hear except from the lips of one whom they intellectually admired. In learning to talk, they were forced to learn more or less to think, and fami- liarized with the difference between truth and error : nor would an eloquent lecturer fail to enlist their feelings in the great topics of morals and politics. Their thirst for mental stimulus and rhetorical accomplishments had thus, as far a= it went, a moralizing effect, though this was rarely their pur^u^e in the pursuit. 1 1 1 dissent entirely from the judgment of Dr. Thirlwall, who repeats what is the usual representation of Sokrates and the Sophists, depicting Alkibi- ades as " ensnared by the Sophists," while Sokrates is described as a good genius preserving him from their corruptions (Hist, of Greece, vcl. iii, ch, xxiv, pp. 312, 313, 314). I think him also mistaken when he distinguishes so pointedly Sokrates from the Sophists ; when he describes the Sophists as " pretenders to wisdom ;" as " a new school;" as " teaching that there was no real difference between truth and falsehood, right and wrong," etc. All the plausibility that there is in this representation, arises from a confusion between the original sense and the modern sense of the word Sophist ; the latter seemingly first bestowed upon the word by Plato and Aristotle. In the common ancient acceptation of the word at Athens, it meant not a school of persons professing common doctrines, but a class of men bearing the same name, because they derived their celebrity from anal- ogous objects of study and common intellectual occupation. The Sophists were men of similar calling and pursuits, partly speculative, partly profes- sional ; but they differed widely from each other, both in method and doc- trine. (See for example Isokrates, cont. Sophistas, Orat. xiii; 1'lato, Mcno. p. 87 B.) Whoever made himself eminent in speculative pursuits, and communicated his opinions by public lecture, discussion, or conversation, was called a Sophist, whatever might be the conclusions which he so ight to expound or defend. The difference between taking money, and expou^d-
 * n :r p-atnitously, on which Sokrates himself was so fond of dwelling (Xen-

eph. Mcmor. i, 6, 12), lias plainly no essential bearing on the case. When xEscliiiies the orator reminds tru % . dikasts, " Recollect that you Athenians cnt to death the Soohlst Sokrates* U-rausc he was sh "^n to have been Jhfi