Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/374

 352 HISTORY OF GREECE. In tLiS large and comprehensive sense the word was originally used, and always continued to be so understood among the general public. But along with this idea, the title sophist also carried with it or connoted a certain invidious feeling. The nat ural temper of a people generally ignorant towards superior in- tellect, the same temper which led to those charges of magic so frequent in the Middle Ages, appears to be a union of admiration with something of an unfavorable sentiment ; ' dislike, or apprehension, as the case may be, unless where the latter element has become neutralized by habitual respect for an estab- lished profession or station : at any rate, the unfriendly sentiment is so often intended, that a substantive word, in which it is implied without the necessity of any annexed predicate, is soon found convenient. Timon, who hated the philosophers, thus found the word sophist exactly suitable, in sentiment as well as meaning, to his purpose in addressing them. Now when (in the period succeeding 450 B.C.) the rhetorical and musical teachers came to stand before the public at Athens in such increased eminence, they of course, as well as other men intellectually celebrated, became designated by the appropriate name of sophists. But there was one characteristic peculiar to themselves, whereby they drew upon themselves a double meas- ure of that invidious sentiment which lay wrapped up in the name. They taught for pay : of course, therefore, the most eminent among them taught only the rich, and earned large sums ; a fact naturally provocative of envy, to some extent, among the many who benefited nothing by them, but still more among the inferior members of their own profession. But even great minds, like Sokrates and Plato, though much superior to any such envy, cherished in that age a genuine and vehement repugnance against receiving pay for teaching. We read in Xen- ' Enrip. Med. 289 : Xpr) ovf. Xuplf yap u^rjf, fa e%ovaiv, up-yiof, Q&ovov irpbf uaruv utyavovai tivcfievij. The words 6 nepiaauf aoybf seem to convey the same unfriendly cnt i ment as the word aoinTn<:.