Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/386

 864 HISTORY OF GREECE. in their true point of view, as being " the stock reproaches againsl ill who pursue philosophy." They are indeed only one of the manifestations, ever varying in form though the same in spirit, of the antipathy of ignorance against dissenting innovation or superior mental accomplishments ; which antipathy, intellectual men themselves, when it happens to make on their side in a controversy, are but too ready to invoke. Considering that we have here the materials of defence, as well as of attack, supplied by Sokrates and Plato, it might have been expected that modern Writers would have refrained from employing such an argument to discredit Gorgias or Protagoras ; the rather, as they have before their eyes, in all the countries of modern Europe, the profession of lawyers and advocates, who lend their powerful eloquence without distinction to the cause of justice or injustice, and who, far from being regarded as the corrupters of society, are usually looked upon, for that very reason among others, as indis pensable auxiliaries to a just administration of law. Though writing was less the business of these sophists than personal teaching, several of them published treatises. Thrasy- machus and Theodorus both set forth written precepts on the art of rhetoric ; T precepts which have not descended to us, but which appear to have been narrow and special, bearing directly upon practice, and relating chiefly to the proper component parts of an oration. To Aristotle, who had attained that large and compre- hensive view of the theory of rhetoric which still remains to instruct us in his splendid treatise, the views of Thrasymachus appeared unimportant, serving to him only as hints and mate- rials. But their effect must have been very different when they first appeared, and when young men were first enabled to analyze the parts of an harangue, to understand the dependence of one upon the other, and call them by their appropriate names ; all illustrated, let us recollect, by oral exposition on the part of the master, which was the most impressive portion of the whole. Prodikus, again, published one or more treatises intended to 1 See the last chapter of Aristotle De Sophisticis Elenchis. He notice these early rhetorical teachers, also, in various parts of the treatise on rhetoric. Qnintilian, however, still thought the precepts of Theodoras and Thrasy machus worthy of his attention (Inst. Orat.iii, 3).