Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/168

 158 Journal of Philology. Ritter and Preller, H. Ph. 1. c, refer the word to Critias, who wrote poems in which he maintained that the Gods are nothing but the figments of legislators, invented for the purpose of giving a divine sanction to their own enactments, and inspiring the vulgar with a salutary awe and reverence for their rulers. I have no better suggestion to offer, unless an allusion be intended to the poetical style affected by Gorgias, of which Dionysius of Halicarnassus says that some of his phrases were not far removed from dithyrambics, ov irSppto hiOvpaufSav Wa <j)deyy6(icvor, comp. Xen. Symp. n. 26 : but I confess I do not think this pro- bable. However though the Sophists are principally aimed at in the passage of the Laws, others may be included with them in the censure. To return to Plato himself. It seems to me that it neither has been nor can be made out that he has misrepresented these men or exaggerated their personal peculiarities : he had no personal motive for disliking them 8 : his bad opinion of their principles and qualifications as teachers is expressed seriously as well as playfully, dramatically and didactically : he had the best possible information : and was a perfectly competent judge of the ques- tions under discussion. Why should we refuse to believe him ? I think that all that Mr Grote advances from Plato himself to show that his ill opinion of the Sophists has been misunderstood and exaggerated is outweighed by the positive and direct state- ments of the passage of the Laws above quoted. What Plato imputes to the Sophists in the dialogues in which they are introduced as dramatis personse and the charge is fully confirmed by other writers is usually, not this or that pernicious and scandalous doctrine, but a want of serious pur- pose, an unscientific and unphilosophical habit which utterly disqualified them for the office they had undertaken, or even for understanding the true nature of what they professed to teach. They are able by their cleverness and dexterity to impose upon their young pupils and the public in general, and to mystify them with long set speeches; which, as they have an equal 8 Even the absurd and self -refuting charge : and there is no reason why charge of malignity brought against him Plato should have indulged it against by Hegesander, ap.Athen. XI. p. 507. a. the Sophists more than against any sq., were it in itself credible, would not other class of persons, apply to this case, for it is a general