Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/418

 396 HISTORY OF GREECE. supposition, in a remarkable passage of the " Republic." It is. he says, the whole people, or the society, with its established morality, intelligence, and tone of sentiment, which is intrinsically vicious ; the teachers of such a society must be vicious also, otherwise their teaching would not be received ; and even if their private teaching were ever so good, its effect would be washed away, except in some few privileged natures, by the overwhelm- ing deluge of pernicious social influences. 1 Nor let any oi>:- imagine, as modern readers are but too ready to understand it, that this poignant censure is intended for Athens so far forth as a democracy. Plato was not the man to preach king-worship, or wealth-worship, as social or political remedies : he declares emphatically that not one of the societies then existing was such that a truly philosophical nature - could be engaged in active functions under it. 2 These passages would be alone sufficient to repel the assertions of those who denounce the sophists as pois- oners of Athenian morality, on the alleged authority of Plato. Nor is it at all more true that they were men of mere words, and made their pupils no better, a charge just as vehemently pressed against Sokrates as against the sophists, and by the same class of enemies, such as Anytus, 3 Aristophanes, Eupolis, etc. It was mainly from sophists like Hippias that the Athenian youth learned what they knew of geometry, astronomy, and passage (which is too long to be cited, but which richly deserves to be read, entire) in the translation given by Stallbaum in his note. Sokrates says to Adeimantus : " An tu quoque putas esse quidem sophistas, homines privates, qui corrumpunt juventutem in qu&cunque re mcntione digna ; nee illud tamen animadvertlsti et tibi persuasisti, quod multo magis debebas, ipsos Athenienses turpissimos esse aliornm corrup- tores ? " Yet the commentator who translates this passage, does not scruple (in his Prolegomena to the Eepublic, pp. xliv, xlv, as well as to the Dialogues) to heap upon the sophists aggravated charges, as the actual corruptors of Athenian morality. Compare Plato, Epistol. vii, p. 325, A. icer in Plato. Mano. p. 91, C.
 * This passage is in Eepubl. vi, 6, p. 492, seq. I put the first words of the
 * Plato, Repub. vi, 11, p. 497, B. fjtrjdeuiav u^iav slvai TUV vvv Karaarufft*
 * /f (ptAoffo^oti iiaeuf, etc.
 * Anytus was the accuser of Sokrates : his enmity to the sophists may b