Page:The Termination -κός, as used by Aristophanes for Comic Effect.djvu/2



After the Persian wars Athens abandoned her former isolation and sought a wider acquaintance with the outside world, having been roused to vigorous thought and action by her encounter with the Mede. This contact with foreigners, her intercourse later with the other members of the Delian Confederacy, and in particular her widely extended commercial relations enlarged her intellectual horizon and quickened her intellectual life. The result was the so-called "New Culture" of the latter half of the fifth century. Of the influences from without the most potent for the stimulation of thought was the Ionic and Italic philosophy that was imported from across the seas. Moreover, Anaxagoras, Parmenides, and Zeno visited Athens in person, and left the impress of their doctrines upon the city. Following close upon these theorists and speculative philosophers came the sophists, the practical teachers of education, Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, Gorgias, and others, who in response to a demand of the times for a higher mental culture than that given in the schools professed to furnish practical instruction of a kind that would fit men for every sphere of life, but especially for public life. Because of the sovereign power of speech in the law-courts, senate, and popular assembly, and the supreme value of the gift of eloquence as a means to success, this training consisted largely in teaching the art of public speaking. With ultimate triumph as an inducement, the higher education became a craze, particularly among the young men of means who flocked to the new teachers: witness the youthful company gathered around the sophists at the house of Callias in Plato's Protagoras, and the eagerness of the high-born Hippocrates to meet Protagoras, as