Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/164

 154 Journal of Philology. pardonable inconsistency proceeds to argue that Plato does not represent them in so bad a light as has been supposed. There is not the smallest reason to suppose that personal ill feeling led him to revenge himself by exposing them to ridi- cule. Not to mention that his uncle Charmides appears in Pro- tagoras' train in the dialogue of that name, the elder Sophists, Gorgias, Protagoras, Prodicus, &c. could only have been known to him as a mere boy ; and from the distinguished position which they had then attained, could hardly have given him offence; nor have we any notice of their having done so. Of course it may be said that Plato indulged a propensity and a talent for satire at the expence of these pompous and empty pretenders, who offered such a convenient foil to his principal i character, and butt for his ironical wit. But mere satirists, ancient as well as modern, prose-writers and poets, Aristophanes and Horace, Pope and Voltaire, do not single out one particular class of persons as the object of attack, and confine themselves to it, as Plato must have done by the hypothesis. This kind of satire which consists in caricature and misrepresentation, even when the object is merely to display the writer's own wit and raise a laugh, implies so much recklessness and unscrupulousness in the satirist as could not fail to carry him on to an indiscrimi- nate exercise of his powers upon all convenient objects of ridi- cule : and further, to attribute to a set of men, some of whom were still living, erroneous opinions and immoral doctrines which they never held, seems so far to transcend the allowed limits of satire that it passes into the region of calumny and libel, of which it would require the very strongest reasons to convince me that Plato could have been designedly guilty. We are told, to be sure, that Gorgias said after reading the dialogue which bears his name, ' I did not recognise myself. The young man however has great talent for satire/ Of course no one recognises himself when he is faithfully represented ; or why should the poet exclaim, To see ourselves as others soe us?" And besides, Mr Grote himself allows that Gorgias is treated in that work * with a respect that surprises the Commentators' (p. 527). Whatever satire there may be in it is not levelled at Gorgias. He is made to return very short answers to Socrates' questions, and to contradict himself, and that is all.
 * O wad some power tho giftio gio us,