One central thing uniting the major Sophists – Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Antiphon, and Thrasymachus – is an interest in methods of effective public speaking and the teaching of rhetoric, and the title “Sophist” is often extended to other, lesser-known figures, some of them anonymous, on this basis. But they also had numerous theoretical interests. These were quite various, and included topics in what we would now call the natural sciences. But among the most significant is a distinction between physis, “nature,” and nomos, “norm”;Footnote ¹ almost all these thinkers – I find only one exception – drew this distinction implicitly or explicitly. They are not the only ones, or even perhaps the first, to do so. But they stand out for the manner in which they develop this distinction, laying out a number of novel views about the nature of human society and the way individuals should regard themselves in relation to it; these views seem to have a broader cultural influence, but the Sophists seem to be their core proponents. We can think of the Sophists as early social scientists,Footnote ² and their treatment of the nomos-physis distinction is a key aspect of this. We can perhaps go even further and see them as raising for the first time some central philosophical questions in what we would now call meta-ethics.

While it is important to clarify the specific views involved, and the differences between them,Footnote ³ this chapter will also address the issue at a more general level. I aim to consider the origin of the physis-nomos contrast itself, and what is distinctive about the way the Sophists exploit it. This, of course, will require some examination of non-Sophistic authors and texts.

Physis and Nomos: Basic Meanings and Early Usage

Both terms go back to the earliest phase of Greek literature – physis appears in Homer and nomos in Hesiod – but they were not originally seen as a contrasting pair. A few general points concerning their meaning and usage will be helpful background.Footnote ⁴

Physis is related to the verb phyô, the basic meaning of which is “grow” or “be born”; and physis itself can sometimes be used in the sense “birth” or “origin.”Footnote ⁵ But the perfect tense of the verb, pephyka, expressing the state that has resulted from such growth or birth, can often simply mean “be” – with a strong suggestion, however, that this “being” is due to a process in the world independent of any human intervention.Footnote ⁶ And this makes sense of the more common uses of the noun physis, where “nature” is usually the best one-word translation. At the beginning of the second book of his Physics, Aristotle says that things that exist “by nature” (physei) (by contrast with artifacts) are those with their own source of motion (192b13–15); and this is complemented in his so-called philosophical lexicon (Metaphysics Δ), where he gives the primary meaning of physis as “the being of those things that have a source of motion in themselves, as themselves” (Δ.4 1015a14–15). Moving specifically to the human sphere, he says at the beginning of the Politics that “what each thing is like when its coming-into-being is completed we call the physis of each thing” (1252b32–3), and on this basis he famously declares that “the human being is by nature (physei) a political animal” (1253a2–3). Some reference to a process is present in all these general statements, but it is a process inherent in the things themselves, not one that we humans might have a role in shaping. And that also applies to the statement about human nature as political; we are political animals anyway, whatever we might try to do about it. Aristotle lives several generations later than the figures usually classified as Sophists. But the central point – the independence of physis from human influence – is already explicit in Gorgias: “The things we see have not the nature we want, but the one that each happens to have” (Helen 15). The same point is clearly presupposed in the Hippocratic medical treatises; for example, On the Nature [Physios] of Human Beings is interested in what human beings are made of and how they function, physiologically speaking, and in On Ancient Medicine, physis frequently refers to an individual’s physical constitution – an unalterable state that the doctor has to take into account in devising treatments (e.g., 3, 20). Physis, then, is what things are like as a result of processes in the world over which we have no control. “What things are like” can, of course, be understood in various different ways – certainly not only in terms of their physical constitution – and it has recently been said with some justice that “phusis manifests exceptional semantic stretch.”Footnote ⁷ But this central point should be sufficient for our purposes.

As for nomos, there is somewhat more to say about its pre-Sophistic conception. Nomos can refer to written law, but also to customs or conventions not spelled out in any explicit prescription. However, prescriptiveness of some kind is central to the notion of nomos.Footnote ⁸ Most generally, a nomos specifies something that is supposed to be done – and, in a more or less functional society, actually is done most of the time. But the source of these prescriptions is not necessarily society itself, and in the pre-Sophistic period nomos frequently refers to some kind of suprahuman law. In Hesiod it originates from Zeus; it applies to humans, and governs how humans should administer justice, but its source is divine (Works and Days 274–80). Heraclitus does speak of human law, but insists that “all the human laws are fed by the one divine law” (D105/B114). A much-cited fragment of Pindar speaks of “nomos king of all, mortal and immortal” (fr. 169a Snell-Maehler); what exactly Pindar was talking about is highly debatable, but here nomos seems to be superior even to the gods. And the idea of an unwritten divine law that transcends merely human edicts is central to the plot of Sophocles’ Antigone – which is usually dated in the 440s, around the time the first Sophists were starting to be active.Footnote ⁹

This understanding of nomos does not lend itself to a contrast with physis – at least in the human realm, which is our concern here; both are thought of as unalterable by human decision or action and instead as exerting constraints on them. In order for nomos to be contrasted with physis, it needs to be regarded as purely a product of human society. Nevertheless, some of the texts just mentioned suggest how that shift might have become possible. By distinguishing between divine law and human law, even while stressing that the former provides necessary support for the latter, Heraclitus opens the possibility that the two might diverge. And in Sophocles’ Antigone – or rather, according to the character Antigone – this possibility becomes actual. The ruler Creon’s edict, that the traitor Polyneices’ body should not be buried – which Antigone ignores in favor of the divine law – is also called nomos, both by Creon himself and by Antigone (449, 452). If you think that there is a suprahuman divine law, obviously you will think that human laws ought to conform to it. But if it is acknowledged that the two can diverge, that points toward a notion of nomos as merely human or merely social. To get there, of course, one would have to shed the notion of divine law.

I doubt we can give a full and precise account of how that happened. But two related intellectual developments appear to be instrumental in that transition, and these I address in the next section. One is a growing interest in, and awareness of, differences in the nomoi of different societies. The other is a proliferation of accounts of the origins and development of human civilization.Footnote ¹⁰ Both come in different flavors, and neither forces one to regard nomos and society as purely a human construct, with physis, nature, as something altogether different. But that thought becomes considerably easier in the atmosphere produced by these two intellectual trends.

Nomos as Contrasted with Physis

Clear evidence for the first trend is hard to find much before the Sophistic period. Xenophanes (ca. 560–465 BCE) emphasizes that different peoples depict gods in their own image and speculates that if animals had gods, they would do the same (D13/B16, D14/B15). One could well imagine this being combined with broader observations about different customs in different societies. But there is no evidence of that, and Xenophanes’ interest seems rather in showing the errors in conventional anthropomorphic thinking about the divine by contrast with his own conception of god. Often invoked in this connection is Hecataeus of Miletus (active around 500 BCE), who wrote a work of geography centered on the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The fragments show that he referred to a great many cities; but how far he elaborated on the varying customs in those cities is impossible to say from the meager remains of his work.Footnote ¹¹ Where we do find this kind of information (true or false) is much later, in Herodotus, generally counted as the first Greek historian and roughly contemporary with the earliest Sophist Protagoras – thus active early in the second half of the fifth century BCE. Though introduced as concerning the war between the Greeks and the Persians, much of his rambling Histories consists of accounts of the customs of various non-Greek peoples. A similar interest is apparent in the collection of works ascribed to Hippocrates, the earliest of which are probably from the same period. In particular, the treatise Airs, Waters, Places compares numerous European and Asian peoples with respect to their physical characteristics and also to their nomoi (14, 16, 19). A recurring interest in the diversity of nomoi, then, can be traced back at least to the beginning of the Sophistic period, and is very possibly older than that.

Something similar can be said about the second trend, the interest in the development of human civilization. Some have attempted to trace it well before the Sophistic period.Footnote ¹² Again Xenophanes is sometimes invoked, in virtue of the following two lines: “The gods did not reveal all things to mortals from the beginning, but in time by searching they discover better” (D53/B18). This is often read as a salute to human progress through the generations. But the point may just be that we do better by patiently searching for ourselves than by waiting for divine revelations – in which case it has nothing to do with human progress over time.Footnote ¹³ Another candidate is Anaxagoras (probably 500–428 BCE), who says that there must be other worlds besides our own and in which (like here) there are humans living in cities and cultivating the earth (D13/B4). But I see no reference here to the development of human institutions and expertise. Where we do find clear evidence of this is in tragedy of the mid-fifth century – which no doubt reflects broader discussions of the subject at the time. Prometheus Bound includes a long speech describing an original, pre-civilized “state of nature” for humans, followed by the development of many forms of expertise, among them arithmetic, writing, agriculture, and seafaring (lines 436–506). The speaker is Prometheus, who takes sole credit for all this, but the topic does not require a mythological framework.Footnote ¹⁴ Prometheus Bound is ascribed to Aeschylus, who died in 456 BCE. But his authorship has been widely doubted,Footnote ¹⁵ and the play may be a little later. Another such case is, again, Sophocles’ Antigone, in the famous choral ode describing the wonders of humanity (332–75), which speaks of similar technical achievements – this time due to humans themselves rather than a god – but also political ones, including nomos (355, 368).Footnote ¹⁶ The Hippocratic corpus is relevant here, too; the treatise On Ancient Medicine speculates about early humanity and its gradual discovery of medicine (3).

To repeat, these kinds of accounts alone do not yet take us to a clear physis-nomos distinction. A famous story in Herodotus, illustrating the diversity of nomoi, has the Persian king Darius asking Greeks and Indians how much money it would take for them each to adopt the burial practices of the others; the answer is that no amount would be enough (3.38). The moral is that each culture considers its own nomoi the best. But instead of this leading to reflections on the culturally restricted character of nomos, by contrast with a physis over which we have no control, it instead leads Herodotus to quote Pindar’s saying that “nomos is king of all” and to declare that making fun of religious practices sanctioned by nomos is insane. As we saw, Pindar’s own point is obscure, and so is the precise lesson Herodotus takes from his words. However, it is clear that Herodotus is not trying to flag nomos as a product of human society; he is simply not thinking along those lines at all.Footnote ¹⁷ As for the stories of early human development, we saw that some of these do not even mention nomos, or social and political institutions; they are instead wholly preoccupied with various forms of practical expertise (technê). Another example of this is the prehistorical opening of the History of Diodorus Siculus (first century BCE), which is generally thought to be based on a fifth-century source or sources.Footnote ¹⁸ After discussing the origin of the world, including living things, it talks of the first humans and their discovery of various technai (1.8). One of these is language, which of course can be used for social and political, or more generally normative, ends. But although the resulting linguistic groups are called “communities” (systêmata), and though the need for safety is said to bring people into groups in the first place, that theme receives no elaboration whatever.Footnote ¹⁹

To dwell on these topics, then, does not automatically bring about a contrast between physis and nomos. Nevertheless, it is in the same loosely defined period of most of the texts just considered – early in the second half of the fifth century – that we first find a thinker to whom a physis-nomos distinction is explicitly attributed. This is Archelaus, cited by several sources as a teacher of Socrates and pupil of Anaxagoras.Footnote ²⁰ We do not know his dates, but these associations suggest he was active around 450 BCE or a little later. Little evidence for his thought survives, but he seems to have concerned himself primarily with physical questions, following Anaxagoras on several points. However, we are told that he was also interested in ethics – as one would certainly expect given the link with Socrates. Diogenes Laertius says that, in addition to physical topics, “he philosophized about laws (nomôn) and what is fine and just,” and held “that the just and the shameful are not by physis but by nomos” (D22/A1, cf. D21/A6); the Suda repeats the last point.Footnote ²¹ The Refutation of All Heresies, generally attributed to the early Christian Hippolytus,Footnote ²² gives a little more detail; after some information on the origins of the cosmos, including that humans and other animals first came from and were nourished by mud (a detail also in Diogenes), he adds, “And the humans were separated from the others and established leaders and laws (nomous) and skills and cities and the rest” (1.9 = D2/A4). There is no hint here of any role for the divine in ethics or politics; a god appears in the testimonies only as a purely physical principle (D9–11/A11, 12, 14), and it is humans themselves who create these various institutions. We have a clear distinction between what is natural and immune to human manipulation (including the origin of the human species itself) and what is due to human activity or decision, with ethics and politics on the latter side. While we cannot be absolutely sure that the pair of terms itself goes back to Archelaus, this is, at least in effect, the fully developed physis-nomos contrast.

What inferences, if any, Archelaus may have drawn from his contrast we cannot say. A very interesting case has been made for Archelaus as the thinker primarily under attack in Aristophanes’ Clouds (first produced in 423, although the version we have has been revised).Footnote ²³ The play casts a sharp eye at various ideas in vogue among intellectuals at the time. A major facet of this attack is that if one thinks of society’s rules as mere nomoi – that is, as human prescriptions not anchored in anything outside themselves – there is no reason to obey them if it suits one not to do so; the end point of this is that it is fine for a son to beat his father – or even his mother. Aristophanes draws attention to a potentially dangerous implication of the nomos-physis contrast. But even if Archelaus is the target, that does not show that Archelaus himself endorsed this implication.

As this case shows, the nomos-physis contrast is not limited to those usually called Sophists. Nor is it universally employed by those who are; I see no use of it, for example, in the surviving testimony on Gorgias.Footnote ²⁴ Perhaps the absence of such a contrast supports Meno’s claim, in Plato’s Meno (95c), that unlike other Sophists Gorgias limited himself to teaching rhetoric and did not involve himself with ethical questions (though Plato clearly thinks this is not the whole story – more on this later). A number of scholars have questioned the traditional use of the term “Sophist,” arguing that it is too beholden to Plato’s jaundiced views, and fails to take into account both the variety of ideas held by those usually called Sophists and the many connections between these ideas and the broader intellectual culture.Footnote ²⁵ What I have just said about who adopts the physis-nomos distinction may seem to give further support to this. However, with the notable exception of Gorgias, it is those traditionally called Sophists who seem to go furthest in drawing out implications from the physis-nomos contrast; rather than merely alluding to the contrast, they develop it. While our evidence for this is often Plato, there are other sources as well. So perhaps there is more to the notion of the Sophists as a distinct intellectual movement than its recent detractors have allowed.

We can find the nomos-physis distinction in both Herodotus and the Hippocratic corpus. But the distinction is typically just mentioned and then dropped; it does not get developed into any kind of substantive thesis. A few examples must suffice. In Herodotus, certain points about the extent of the continents (4.39, 4.45) or about where Egypt begins and ends (2.16–17) are said to be established only by nomos, where this indicates that it is in some way arbitrary. One might expect him to contrast this with how things really are (perhaps signaled with the term physis). But regarding the continents this does not happen; Herodotus is happy to follow the nomos in question. In the case of Egypt, the Greeks’ nomos is contrasted with what he calls the “correct account” (orthos logos); but he simply mentions the Greeks’ erroneous belief and moves on.Footnote ²⁶ Again, at one point in Airs, Waters, Places, nomos is juxtaposed with physis (14). The Macrocephaloi (Long-Heads) are said to live up to their name. This effect was originally produced by a kind of binding process that squeezed their heads out of the natural round shape – this was nomos. But eventually this nomos-induced lengthening became the physis of these people; they are now just naturally long-headed – nomos is no longer needed. However, the author appears not entirely convinced of this; he adds that long-headed children are not being born from these people as frequently as before, and explains it as a result of a weakened observation of the head-binding nomos. One could easily imagine this becoming the occasion for more general reflections about nature versus nurture, but that is not what happens; these brief and confusing remarks about the relative influence of nomos and physis are all we get.Footnote ²⁷

One might say that we would not expect a historian, or a medical writer, to expound on the physis-nomos contrast in detail; they have other concerns. But this just confirms my point that, while the contrast itself may be widely familiar, the Sophists are distinctive in what they do with it. Their interest in the contrast is (as we would now say) sociological or philosophical; while they exploit it in several different ways, they are concerned, broadly, with the nature of human society and, even more broadly, with the nature of value. The remainder of the chapter attempts to document this.

The Sophists’ Developments of the Contrast

I begin with the first Sophist, Protagoras. Our evidence for Protagoras’ concern with physis and nomos consists almost entirely in the long speech given to him by Plato in the Protagoras. Obviously we cannot tell how precisely Plato is reproducing the ideas of the historical Protagoras. But Plato himself provides evidence elsewhere (in his Meno) that the topic of this speech – whether virtue can be taught – was of concern to the Sophists. Besides, the ideas expressed in the speech are quite atypical within the totality of Plato’s writings; and it is hard to see why he would misrepresent the thinking of someone well known and (at the time of composition) relatively recent. All this suggests that in composing this speech for Protagoras he is drawing on the writings of Protagoras himself.Footnote ²⁸

Like the author of Prometheus Bound, Protagoras tells a story of the origins of human society featuring Prometheus. However, Protagoras offers his audience the choice of a story or an argument (logos, 320c). The implication is that he could have conveyed the same ideas without reference to Prometheus. Since we know from a fragment of his own words that the historical Protagoras was an agnostic (D10/B4), and since Plato’s Protagoras says that a story would be “more pleasant (chariesteron, 320c6–7), it looks as if the mythical framework (which he eventually abandons, 324d) is for entertainment, along with a certain nod to tradition; what he is really talking about is the development of human society by humans themselves. Again we are told of the invention (or, in the mythical telling, the bestowal) of various forms of expertise (technai). But a crucial technê, on which he dwells at length, is the technê of politics. The first attempts at human communities failed because people did not yet have this technê and so could not get along; this inability to live together is remedied only once they are given “justice and shame” (dikên … kai aidô, 322c7). It is stressed that, unlike other human abilities, these must be given to everyone; otherwise communities cannot survive. Thus the Athenians, in their democracy, are right to give everyone a say in general political matters; as Protagoras puts it, one must have some trace of justice (and thus the ability to make judgments and speak on it) or not be human (323c1–2). But Protagoras goes on to argue that this does not show, as Socrates had earlier suggested (319b–e), that virtue cannot be taught. On the contrary, he says that people know very well that virtue (including justice, 323e3) does not belong to them by nature (physei), but by teaching and practice (323c5–6). This point is developed in some detail. The institution of punishment is cited as key evidence in its favor; but this in turn is connected with the existence of laws, nomoi, which are described as the “findings of good and ancient lawgivers” (326d6).

The resulting picture is of some subtlety. The capacity to develop the social attitudes needed for a community to function is presented as universal among humans and hence presumably as natural. But the actual development of these attitudes requires growing up in a community and being molded by the pressures of what we could call socialization. Nomoi are not particularly highlighted among these pressures and, when he does mention them, Protagoras seems to have in mind written laws in particular (326d). But if we think of nomos more broadly as the norms embedded in a society’s habitual practices, it seems clear that the role of nomos in the development of the required attitudes is absolutely central. Nomos, then, is required for humans to become social beings, even though this process rests on a basis of physis; the account is not so different from what Aristotle says about the comparative roles of nature and habit in the development of virtue of character (Nicomachean Ethics II.1 1103a23–26). Protagoras does not explicitly observe that nomoi may differ from one society to another. But that is obviously compatible with this account, so long as these nomoi play their civilizing role. It is also possible that a society might find it necessary to revise existing nomoi, if this was needed to improve – or to prevent a decline in – the conditions of that society; Protagoras does not have to be seen as a defender of the status quo.Footnote ²⁹

Nonetheless, there is no suggestion in this account of an antipathy between nomos and physis; on the contrary, the former builds on the latter. And to that extent it is not unreasonable to classify Protagoras as a “supporter of nomos” – alongside Herodotus, among others.Footnote ³⁰ But there is an essential difference between the two, seeing that in Protagoras we find sophisticated reflection about the relation between nomos and physis and about the contribution of each to the life of humans as social beings; as we saw, Herodotus shows nothing of the kind. This is what I meant by the Sophists’ distinctive contribution concerning the physis-nomos contrast.

Other Sophists took their reflections on the subject in a different direction. For them, there was an opposition between physis and nomos; nomos imposed artificial barriers to what were conceived as naturally preferable states of affairs. Two different views along these lines are apparent from the period. One held that divisions, including comparative rankings, among people were due to nomos and that these divisions masked a fundamental, or natural, human equality. Another held that nomos restrained the natural pursuit of self-interest and that the sensible way to behave was to satisfy one’s natural drives and ignore nomos – as long as one could get away with it. While we might see these as very different in political flavor, the first sounding traditionally leftist and the second radically anarchist, there is in fact no necessary conflict between them; interestingly, both are to be found in the papyrus fragments of the same work, Truth, by the Sophist Antiphon.

On the first point, Antiphon argues that by nature (physis) any of us is fitted to be either Greek or barbarian – that is, non-Greek – since we all have the same basic natural endowment of senses, hands, feet, and emotions (D38b/B44B). That we are estranged from the people of other nations is therefore a departure from nature, which Antiphon expresses by saying that “we have become ‘barbarianized’ (bebarbarômetha) toward each other.” This trades on the connotation “barbarous” that the word barbaros had already acquired by the fifth century; we treat each other and are each viewed by the other not just as foreign but as savage or uncivilized. But since he regards this as a mistake, there is an irony in using the word with the latter implication; he is decrying this usage even while exploiting it.Footnote ³¹ There is no explicit mention of nomos here, but this divergence from physis, as Antiphon sees it, is in context easily viewed as a product of nomos. Besides, immediately following the legible portion of the fragment are some very patchy remains that probably include the words “they agreed” and “laws.”Footnote ³² It seems likely that Antiphon continued with an account of the origins of human society similar to those we saw earlier; if so, the juxtaposition of the natural condition of human equality with the invention of laws – these producing an outcome in which this natural equality is not respected – will surely have put the focus on nomos as the culprit.Footnote ³³

Plato gives the Sophist Hippias a speech of similar character (Protagoras 337c–d) and, as with Protagoras in the same dialogue, it is natural to see this as acknowledging a view he actually held. Pleading with the company to settle their differences over the rules for their discussion, Hippias says that all those present are kinsmen and fellow citizens – by physis, not by nomos; “by nature like is akin to like, but nomos, being a tyrant over humans, forces many things on us against nature” (337d1–3).Footnote ³⁴ It is not clear how far we are to take this; it is a kinship of wise men, and of Greeks only, albeit from different city-states. However, the notion of nomos as creating artificial and regrettable barriers to a naturally equal condition is common to Hippias and Antiphon.Footnote ³⁵ We also know that some people prior to Aristotle argued that slavery is against nature, because he explicitly argues against this in the first book of his Politics; he does not name its proponents, but it is easy enough to connect it with this line of thought promoted by some Sophists. The same can perhaps be said about the suggestion in some of Euripides’ plays (especially Medea and Hippolytus) that the position of women in society is not what it should be.

I return now to the other way of driving a wedge between physis and nomos, also to be found in Antiphon (D38a/B44A). Antiphon begins by saying that justice consists in following the laws of the city of which one happens to be a member. He continues: “A person would therefore use justice most advantageously for himself if he treated the laws (nomous) as important when there are witnesses, but matters of nature (ta tês physeôs) when left alone without witnesses.” The text then expands on the advantages of following nature – that is, the dictates of one’s own natural desires – and the disadvantages of treating law as more important than nature: “most of those things that are just according to law are laid down in a way that is at war with nature” and “the advantages laid down by the laws are shackles on nature, but those laid down by nature are free.”Footnote ³⁶ This is a very different take on the relation between physis and nomos from what we found in Protagoras; nomos is an unwelcome obstacle to the expression of one’s true nature.Footnote ³⁷

Similar positions are rather better known from Plato. The Sophist Thrasymachus, as portrayed by Plato near the beginning of his Republic, agrees implicitly with Antiphon in identifying justice, in any given city, with the prevailing laws. This leads him to declare that justice is “nothing but the interest of the stronger” (1.338c1–2), since the faction in power will always create laws to benefit itself. It also leads him, later in the discussion, to claim that injustice is one’s own interest (1.344c8) – it will suit those outside the ruling faction better to ignore the prevailing laws than to follow them. Thrasymachus does not use the language of physis to set against this cynical view of nomos, but the position is otherwise close to Antiphon’s. Whether all this can be attributed to the historical figure Thrasymachus is hard to say; unlike the set-piece speeches that Plato puts in the mouths of Protagoras and Hippias, Thrasymachus’ position develops in the course of debate with Socrates, and we know very little about Thrasymachus independently of Plato.Footnote ³⁸ However, it is clear that Plato thinks a dismissive attitude toward nomos can result only in a recommendation to ignore it in favor of narrowly selfish concerns – much as Aristophanes, in the Clouds, seems to have sensed danger in the physis-nomos distinction itself. Plato takes this line of thinking still further in the character of Callicles in his Gorgias. Callicles is certainly not a Sophist in the traditional sense; he is presented not as teaching rhetoric for a living but rather as seeking the political life (in some unspecified form). But he takes the rejection of conventional nomos to an extreme, arguing instead for a “law of nature” (nomos physeôs, 483e3 – a paradoxical formulation, surely intended to provoke) that dictates the pursuit of one’s own interest, including the trampling of the strong on the weak when convenient. Since he is never mentioned outside of Plato’s Gorgias, Callicles may not have existed; he may simply be Plato’s fiction, a nightmare vision of where sophistic thinking and practice (embodied in the seemingly benign figure of Gorgias earlier in the dialogue) might lead. However, the example of Antiphon shows that Plato is not just inventing this position.

The anti-nomos position, especially in this second version, received some pushback. Some pages from the Protrepticus of the late Platonist Iamblichus seem to be lifted from a text of the fifth or fourth century BCE, which is responding to those who would reject nomos. The Anonymous of Iamblichus, as this unknown author of the Anonymus Iamblichi is referred to (LM 40/DK 89), argues for the importance of eunomia, “lawfulness” (6.4, 7.1, etc.). The insistence on this, and on the inability of human beings to live together without it, has much in common with the position expounded in Protagoras’ speech. But Anonymous is aware of views that advocate rejection of nomos (anomia), and replies, “One should not rush to grab more than one’s fair share, nor think that the power that results from grabbing more than one’s fair share is virtue, and that obeying the nomoi is cowardice” (6.1). Like Protagoras he does not wholly separate nomos from physis, stating that “these [i.e., law and justice] are strongly bound in nature,” where the context makes clear that this is human nature (6.1);Footnote ³⁹ and he makes what looks like yet another reference to Pindar’s saying “nomos is king of all” (6.1) – but this time at face value, as Herodotus did, not critically like Hippias. Some have attempted to identify the author as one of the known Sophists, but lack of evidence means that we simply cannot tell. What we can say is that Anonymous provides a clear indication of the reach of Sophistic reflections on physis, nomos, and the relations between them.

Another indication of this reach is a fragment of drama quoted by Sextus Empiricus (Adversus Mathematicos 9.54 = T63); the play was probably a satyr play called Sisyphus, though Sextus does not specify this.Footnote ⁴⁰ Sextus does say that the author was Critias, a cousin of Plato’s mother – although a few of the same lines are quoted elsewhere (Aëtius 1.7.2) and Euripides is given as the author. Either way, the author is not a Sophist; yet the fragment is so clearly connected with the ideas we have been discussing that it is regularly included (under the name of Critias) in collections of materials from the Sophists. The lines begin by describing an original violent state of nature that is overcome by the creation of nomos. However, this proved not to be enough; people followed nomos in public but ignored it when no one was watching. The solution to this problem was the invention by a “wise and clever man” of the idea of god. According to the story put about by this shrewd character, there never is a situation when no one is watching you; even if no humans are around, a god is watching you, who could punish you for any transgressions. Thus religion is conceived as a device to instill compliance with nomos. This device is clearly portrayed as beneficial – respect for nomos is essential for the survival of society, and this ensures it – and to that extent the view expressed by the speaker seems akin to that of Protagoras and the Anonymus Iamblichi. The catch is that the fragment very explicitly presents this idea of a divine overseer as a fiction. And this seems to push the thought more toward the antinomian views of Antiphon, Thrasymachus, and Callicles; nomos is imposed on us as something obligatory, but there is actually no reason to follow it except when you risk being found out. I do not think there is any solution to this conundrum; the fragment pushes in two conflicting directions, each of which we have seen in other thinkers. But since it is a speech given in a play rather than part of a philosophical treatise, the author no doubt has other aims than consistency of doctrine; with no other lines of the play surviving, we are not likely to discover what these were.

The idea of god as a backup for human authorities is not attested in any of the Sophists, though Aristotle later gave it partial endorsement (Metaphysics Λ.8 1074b3–8). However, we do find a slightly different version of the idea that god is a human invention. This brings us to Prodicus, the major Sophist I have not yet mentioned. Numerous texts present Prodicus as holding that aspects of the natural world that particularly benefit human life, as well as humans who made particularly beneficial inventions or discoveries, came to be revered as gods;Footnote ⁴¹ belief in gods is thus the product of a kind of confused gratitude. On this view we could think of religion itself as a nomos, a set of practices and norms that are purely a product of human society; and, indeed, in this context Sextus appears to quote a sentence of Prodicus using the verb corresponding to nomos. Ancient humans, Prodicus says, “considered as (enomisan) gods everything that benefits our life” (9.18); while the verb can simply mean “think,” it often has the connotation “treat as a nomos.” This could, of course, easily have been combined with the idea that belief in god has socially beneficial effects; but we have no evidence of this in the testimonies on Prodicus. It is, however, tempting to suppose that Protagoras may have pursued some such line of thinking. As I mentioned earlier, Protagoras is known to have been an agnostic. And we are told that the sentence declaring his agnosticism (cited by several authors) came at the beginning of a book of his called On the Gods (Eusebius Praeparatio evangelica 14.3.7). If that was how it started, what else could the book have contained? A plausible answer is that it addressed the social functions belief in god can have, whether or not gods actually exist.

Conclusion

I close with a few more general reflections. First, this sociological approach to religion, as we may call it, which is attested in at least one Sophist, and which the Critias fragment shows must have been circulating at the time, may be more important than has generally been realized for the growth of the cluster of views about nomos and its relation to physis that we have examined here. We saw that the earliest references to nomos treated it as something divine and hence as not clearly differentiable from physis. We also saw that two developments that might seem to have encouraged the drawing of this distinction – emphasis on the diversity of nomoi and interest in the development of human civilization – did not by themselves necessarily lead to nomos being set in contrast to physis. What will definitely get one to that distinction is to shift from a traditional religious conception of the gods to a focus on the human phenomenon of belief in the divine. If religion itself is a nomos, a human product, then laws and all the other institutions that allow society to function are hard not to regard as human products as well; and this in turn makes one wonder which features of human existence are due not simply to the influence of society but in fact belong to our nature.Footnote ⁴² If there is anything to this line of interpretation, then the harsh ending of Aristophanes’ Clouds – where the divine Clouds call out Strepsiades for failing to respect them and the other gods, and he then burns down the school that has led him and his son astray – perhaps shows more insight into the heart of Sophistic thinking than it has been given credit for.

At any rate, that thinking may be seen as raising for the first time, even if not in a fully explicit way, the question of the objectivity (or otherwise) of values, as well as the question of our reasons for behaving ethically. To treat nomos as a product of human decision is not necessarily to conclude that values are not objective; for, as we have seen, some views of this kind nonetheless retain some link between nomos and physis. But it does at least force the issue of the status of ethical values and the nature of their hold on us (if any); and this is still more obvious when it comes to views that portray nomos as in some way in conflict with physis. Plato’s Republic answers the question “why be just?” Since he features Thrasymachus in the first book, and since Glaucon’s crucial challenge at the beginning of the second book is explicitly presented as a reformulation of Thrasymachus’ position (2.358b–c), it is pretty clear that Plato has Sophistic treatments of nomos and physis in mind as the primary target. If the question “why should I be moral?” is still important for us today, and if we can see this question as recognizably related to the Republic’s question, the Sophists’ reflections on this topic can be regarded as having an abiding significance.

Finally, to the extent that reflections on this topic can be seen as characteristic of the Sophists – and I have tried to argue that there is some truth to this – this seems to put them sharply at odds with Socrates (despite his apparent link with Archelaus, who was our earliest evidence for the physis-nomos distinction). Some scholars are inclined to count Socrates as part of the Sophistic movement.Footnote ⁴³ But neither Plato’s nor Xenophon’s Socrates shows the slightest tendency to regard values as a matter of human decision; the nature of the virtues, and, more generally, how one should live – the central question for Socrates – is always treated as something we need to find out. (A satisfactory answer may depend on something about human beings, but that too will be something that obtains independently of our decisions.) Nor, for that matter, does Socrates show any interest in the diversity of nomoi or in the origins of human civilization,Footnote ⁴⁴ the two intellectual trends that, I suggested, pointed in the direction of a nomos-physis contrast. Nietzsche’s call for philosophers to “create values” (Beyond Good and Evil 211) would have been anathema to Socrates. But I think the Sophists would have been at least to some extent on Nietzsche’s wavelength. Moreover, since we have seen many signs that the Sophists’ interest in the nomos-physis contrast is continuous with the wider intellectual culture, it is Socrates and Plato, and not the Sophists, who (at least on this score) come across as the outliers – a point that Nietzsche would certainly have appreciated.Footnote ⁴⁵

Introduction

An interest in and an admiration for those capable of speaking well was a recurrent feature of the Greek world from its most Archaic period, and became especially important in the fifth century BCE. It does not come as a surprise, then, that much of the Sophists’ controversial fame depended on their ability to speak, and that a prominent part of their teaching was devoted to making their students “clever at speaking” (deinos legein), as the young Hippocrates remarks in Plato’s Protagoras (312d). Speeches, logoi, are the Sophists’ specialty. At stake, however, was not only the practical issue of how to use words successfully in public debates and private meetings. As George Kerferd, among others, has remarked, logos in Greek refers to speeches, words, and arguments, but also to mental processes, and it can even indicate structural principles or natural laws.Footnote ¹ The Sophists explored these problems from all angles, with a truly remarkable breadth of perspective and competence. The aim of the present chapter is to offer an overview of their investigations. It will trace three specific areas on which the Sophists brought to bear their interest in logos: grammar and the issue of the correct names; the criticism of and engagement with poetry; and rhetoric and the effectiveness of argumentative techniques.

As it will turn out, these explorations cannot be said to be part of, or to aim at, a systematic theory. But they nonetheless helped to inaugurate the study of language for its own sake, a topic that would play an important role in the philosophical debates of the following centuries.Footnote ² For the Sophists, the interest in logos aims not only at mobilizing means of persuasion to affect their (or their clients and students’) success; it emerges also as a way of stimulating critical reflection on the values of the society and of investigating the human condition in all its complexity and richness. This richness is evidenced by the broad importance of the notion of “correctness” (orthotês), which occurs regularly throughout their testimonies and fragments. Certain of the Sophists’ approaches are based on the contention that logos is our only means of developing a relationship with reality – or, an even stronger thesis associated with Gorgias, that logos constitutes and creates its own reality. Whereas for many previous thinkers (e.g., Parmenides or Heraclitus) logos enables us to get in touch with an objective and well-ordered reality, for the Sophists it is a tool that a human can – and must – use to give meaning to things, a meaning that things do not necessarily possess in themselves. The Sophists’ claim to be able to define or create such meaning is at the heart of the education they offered.

Correcting Words

Many sources bear witness to the Sophists’ interest in grammar. This applies especially to Protagoras, who focused on morphological and syntactic issues; apparently, he was the first to distinguish the gender of nouns (male, female, and neuter, D23/A27), while also proposing several corrections for names in use in his day. Thus, he suggested that the female nouns mênis (“wrath,” “frenzy”) and pêlêx (“helmet”), two terms familiar to Homer’s audience, should be regarded as masculine – either on the basis of morphological criteria (because names ending in sigma (ς) or xi (ξ) are usually masculine) or because of their meaning (insofar as war is an eminently masculine pursuit; see D24/A28).Footnote ³ Protagoras also distinguished four verbal modes (indicative, subjunctive, optative, and imperative), which he linked to four types of speech (request, question, reply, and command), once again taking the occasion to criticize Homer, who had addressed the goddess with a command (“Sing, Goddess, the wrath”) rather than a prayer (D25/A29). Finally, Diogenes Laertius (9.52) seems to inform us, more controversially, of his interest in the tenses of the verbs.Footnote ⁴

Protagoras was not the only Sophist to deal with these problems. Prodicus too was famous for his linguistic classifications, as we will soon see; Hippias investigated rhythms, harmonies, and correctness of letters (D15/A12); and Alcidamas of Elaea, a pupil of Gorgias’ active early in the fourth century BCE, proposed an alternative to Protagoras’ speech-type division (affirmation, negation, question, and address; fr. 24 Patillon). The coining of neologisms can probably be traced back to the same context as well. Among the others, Antiphon and Critias appear to have been particularly keen on inventing new terms, a remarkable number of which survive.Footnote ⁵

“First, as Prodicus says, you must learn about the correctness of words (peri onomatôn orthotêtos),” Socrates tells the young Clinias in Plato’s Euthydemus, confirming the Sophist’s authority on linguistic analysis (A16/D5a). If language was a major topic of investigation for the Sophists, the issue of correctness of names (orthotês onomatôn, orthoepeia), a notion with a wide range of applications, seems to be one of the headings under which the problem was discussed.Footnote ⁶ In the case of Prodicus, correctness has to do with detailed analysis of synonyms, which apparently earned him great repute among the men of his day (D5c/A17, P4/A3, P5/A11). By first grouping synonyms together and then distinguishing (diairein) them, Prodicus sought to connect each name to its concrete reality.Footnote ⁷ It is difficult to determine on what basis Prodicus drew his distinctions; in some cases, he would appear to rely on the traditional use of terms (e.g., A18, partially reproduced in D24), while elsewhere he seems to suggest radical innovations based on their etymology (D9/B4).Footnote ⁸ In any case, his theory presupposes a one-to-one relation between words and their referents, such that the phenomenon of synonymity is only apparent. Whereas Socrates seems to have asked about individual concepts, “what is x?,” Prodicus appears to proceed by asking “how does x differ from y?”Footnote ⁹

Given the scarcity of testimonies, it is also difficult to understand the role and scope of these distinctions precisely. As has been repeatedly remarked, such distinctions did not only aim at grammatical analysis, but played a major role in the training of the pupils.Footnote ¹⁰ Indeed, these explorations aimed concretely at teaching pupils to exploit language to advance their goals. It is by mastering language that one can use it more effectively, which is to say more persuasively, as Aristophanes’ Socrates explains to Strepsiades in the Clouds when teaching grammatical gender in a way that recalls Protagoras’ distinctions (Clouds 658–93; see Reference Classen and ClassenClassen 1976: 221). Mastering words was one of the tools that would help students to be successfully persuasive.Footnote ¹¹

But there is also more at stake, as Prodicus’ case shows. In most cases (but not all; see D9/B4), his distinctions refer to terms and concepts pertaining to the field of ethics or moral psychology.Footnote ¹² This has led some scholars to set Prodicus in contrast “to people the likes of Callicles and Thrasymachus,” as an opponent of the relativism and immoralism typical of those thinkers and the upholder of a certain foundation for the moral principles that are to govern people’s lives.Footnote ¹³ As a matter of fact, it is debatable that we can label the Sophists as relativist, and the notion of immoralism is highly controversial.Footnote ¹⁴ That said, it is tempting to suggest that Prodicus’ distinctions and classifications, and more generally the debates on the “correctness of names,” were not driven by erudite interests only, but also had more concrete aims, both in the sense of practically training the pupils and stimulating them to reflect on the values of their society.Footnote ¹⁵ As we will shortly see, this attitude holds as much for many other Sophists as it does for Prodicus.

Correcting Poets

The notion of orthotês is also important for Protagoras, one of whose works, Plato reports in the Phaedrus, was entitled Orthoepeia (“The Correctness of Language”; Phaedrus 267c). Regrettably, the content of this book is unknown, but it is a reasonable assumption that the issue of correctness played a role in his above-mentioned grammatical interests.Footnote ¹⁶ Most interestingly, correctness emerges again in relation to the study of poetry, as Protagoras explains in the eponymous Platonic dialogue, when he illustrates the aims of his teaching: “I think … that for a man the most important part of education consists in being expert concerning poems; and this means to be able to understand what is said correctly (orthôs) by the poets and what is not” (Plato Protagoras 338e–9a).

In the dialogue, this claim is followed by the reading of a poem by Simonides, one of the great lyric poets of the Greek world, with the declared aim of highlighting its incongruities and contradictions with respect to questions of virtue and the good. It is not easy to assess the historical reliability of this specific discussion, but Plato’s dialogue offers an insightful description of the way this kind of investigation and debate might have looked.Footnote ¹⁷ Protagoras follows a method of literal interpretation, which unfolds in three successive stages: understanding (synienai), analyzing (diairein), and giving account (logon dounai).Footnote ¹⁸ Protagoras’ above-mentioned linguistic observations on Homer probably also belong to this context and show how he confronted the poets. As many scholars have recently made clear, Protagoras developed a linguistic apparatus to critique Homer, rather than using Homeric verses to explain his linguistic theories.Footnote ¹⁹ Thus, the notion of “correctness” serves as a tool to explore the use of words, whether they properly describe their referent (as in the case of Protagoras’ criticism of the feminine pêlêx and mênis referring to masculine things, D24–5, 30/A28–30), but also, more generally, to investigate the relation between different parts of a phrase or of a given text.Footnote ²⁰

Finally, in the case of a reasoning or arguments, correctness refers to soundness, as I discuss below. All this has to be taken into account when reading a poem.Footnote ²¹

Clearly, it is not only a matter of exegesis. More importantly, the goal is to discuss a text critically and thereby fulfill an educational goal. The study of poetical texts was an important part of traditional Greek education. As Xenophanes famously said, “from the beginning everyone learned from Homer” (B10). Pupils were expected to assimilate the moral values of their community by learning by heart epic and didactic poems. Hence, Protagoras’ interest in poetical texts seems a natural extension of traditional education. In his case, however, innovations are more important, because the wisdom of the poets is no longer taken for granted.Footnote ²² Literary criticism is a useful intellectual exercise that enables the individual to grow familiar with the works of the poets and hence with traditional values. But, in addition, as the confrontation with Socrates in Plato’s Protagoras shows (where the example of incorrect poetic composition involves two apparently contradictory ethical generalizations), scrutinizing the consistency of poetical texts will also put pupils in the position of engaging with these traditional values, either approving or rejecting them.Footnote ²³

If this is correct, two further points are worth observing. First of all, it is now clear how the study of poetry becomes part of Protagoras’ teaching. Clearly, analysis and criticism serve also to teach pupils to discuss issues of right and wrong; as a consequence, they also train them to hone their own ideas and to discuss and challenge their interlocutors’ views more generally.Footnote ²⁴ We need not repeat how important this was in the competitive world of the fifth- and fourth-century cities.

As for the teacher Protagoras, the confrontation with poets gave him a unique opportunity for self-promotion. As already mentioned, poets were traditionally regarded as the educators and as the custodians of the most genuine Greek tradition; poetry was a treasure trove of useful knowledge, an encyclopedia of ethics, politics, and history that every good citizen was expected to assimilate as the core of his education. The poet’s task was to preserve and transmit the system of values on which the life of his community was founded. To engage with poetry, therefore, was to engage with the tradition. By showing his ability to discuss such great authorities as Homer or Simonides, while at the same time taking the liberty of criticizing them, Protagoras reinforced his claim to be the new teacher, the educator capable of imparting teachings suited to the needs of the new world of the polis.Footnote ²⁵

For this reason it is interesting to observe that Protagoras’ most famous claim, that “man is the measure” (D1/B1), seems to target, among others, the poets. Several poets had already drawn upon the idea of “measure” to assert their importance; a poet – to quote Solon and Theognis – is someone who, by grace of the Muses, knows the “measure” of loving wisdom (Solon fr. 1.51–2 Gentili-Prato) and possesses the “measure” of wisdom (Theognis 873–6).Footnote ²⁶ A poet, in other words, is someone who, by virtue of the divine protection he enjoys, is capable of speaking the truth and distinguishing it from falsehood; he is the custodian of the order of reality and this justifies his prominent role in society.Footnote ²⁷ Opposing this tradition, Protagoras argues that the truth is no longer guaranteed by gods and inspired poets, since humans are now the measure of all things, each according to their own perspective.Footnote ²⁸ And Protagoras can present himself as the teacher who can help others find their bearings in the ambiguous world that surrounds them, in which contrasting opinions take the place of absolute truth and falsehood. Again, we see that the Sophist’s strategy is one of appropriation, in which an engagement with traditional knowledge represents the starting point of his attempt to acquire a dominant position in the Athenian and, more generally, Greek cultural scene. The character Protagoras claims as much at the beginning of Plato’s Protagoras when he proclaims himself as the heir of a centuries-old tradition of sophistry going back to Homer and Hesiod (316d–e). This claim is designed not merely to place Protagoras under the aegis of a well-rooted tradition; it contributes to a more complex strategy of appropriation, which, through an apparently faithful adherence, brings about a reversal.Footnote ²⁹

Protagoras was not the only Sophist to have an interest in poetry in relation to traditional education.Footnote ³⁰ The names of Critias and Hippias can be mentioned, and the case of Gorgias deserves special attention, as we will see in the next section.Footnote ³¹ As already remarked, we know that Hippias dealt with the division and length of syllables, probably in relation to metrical and rhythmic issues (see D14b/A2, D15/A12). He was also interested in Homer (D25/A10, D26/B9, D24/B18). Moreover, he was well known in antiquity for his “antiquarian” interests, that is, for having gathered and catalogued quotes from the great masters of past centuries – most notably poets such as Orpheus, Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, among others (D22/B6).Footnote ³² It is not entirely clear what the use of these collections was; concretely, they provided a series of quotes that could be used in speeches and discussions. More generally, however, this work of selection and collection may also be seen to promote a more detached approach to the tradition, which is no longer viewed as the depository of unquestionable truths, but rather from a historical perspective as a pool from which to draw in order to produce new ideas.Footnote ³³ Within this context, the testimony informing us that he presented himself in the garb of a rhapsode need not be taken as the sign of eccentricity but as another concrete proof of the Sophists’ attempts to challenge educational authorities by appropriating their role (P18/A9).

The case of Critias is more problematic. Probably following Philostratus’ lead, Diels reckoned him among the Sophists. Certainly, Critias’ interest in antiquarian traditions and poetry finds a parallel in the work of other Sophists.Footnote ³⁴ However, his ideology seems to follow a radically different direction, insofar as he apparently upholds a return to tradition and poetry (a genre he practiced extensively) against the threats posed by the new rhetorical education.Footnote ³⁵ If his knowledge of and engagement with many of the issues discussed in fifth-century Greece is unquestionable, his overall production seems to express more a reaction than an adherence to the new ideas introduced by the Sophists.

Gorgias on Language

Gorgias deserves special attention among the Sophists for the breadth of his investigations into the problem of logos. While Protagoras seems to focus entirely on the rational and rationally analyzable aspects of (poetic) language, Gorgias shows an interest in its psychagogic and creative aspects as well – without, however, overlooking the importance of rational arguments. The assumptions and aims, however, are the same: to assert the centrality of logos, around which most of Gorgias’ speculation and activity revolves, and to establish one’s own credentials as the most successful teacher (D47/A21).Footnote ³⁶

A major difficulty in the case of Gorgias is how to reconcile the two apparently incompatible claims that we find in two of his texts, the treatise On Not-Being and the declamation Encomium of Helen. Whereas the former ends with an acknowledgment of the failure of words, the latter assigns words a sort of divine omnipotence. Upon closer scrutiny, however, it might be argued that these two texts explore two different conceptions of language, with the conclusion reached in the former text paving the way to the alternative conception of the latter.Footnote ³⁷

Of the three theses explored in the On Not-Being – “nothing is; and if it is, it is unknowable; and if it both is and is knowable, it cannot be indicated to other people” – the first thesis has attracted much of the scholarly interest, with many interpretations.Footnote ³⁸ Much less attention has been dedicated to the third one. Yet it might be argued that the most interesting one, and perhaps even the most important for Gorgias, was this third thesis, for which, unlike the first two, no alternative is given. The progression of the arguments suggests that the problem at stake in the text is not only the denial of reality, which has been the object of many discussions about Gorgias’ nihilism, but also the problem of language, the acknowledgment that an unbridgeable gulf separates things from words. Unfortunately, the corrupt state of Gorgias’ text prevents an exact reconstruction of the specific arguments. But the general claim is clear. Just as sight does not see sound, so logos does not speak things, but merely words. We can grant that reality exists and that we know it, but we cannot communicate our knowledge; logos is always heterogeneous with respect to reality. Logos (words, speech) is a failed translation of reality because it is incapable of taking the place of things.Footnote ³⁹

This conclusion seems to be very different from what we find in the Helen, which was apparently composed to defend the memory of Homer’s famous heroine, guilty of having fled with Paris and bringing about the Trojan War. As often happens in this period, a mythological theme, one of the most conspicuous in the Greek tradition, is used to convey new and provocative ideas.Footnote ⁴⁰ Among the various reasons that may have led Helen to flee to Troy, Gorgias considers the arguments by which Paris might have persuaded her, and this allows him to embark on a famous digression on the power of logos and what constitutes it, namely words: “Speech (logos) is a great potentate that by means of an extremely tiny and entirely invisible body performs the most divine deeds. For it is able to stop fear, to remove grief, to instill joy, and to increase pity (Helen 8).”

Indeed, the acknowledgment of this power of words, a power that is also magical and divine,Footnote ⁴¹ seems to be at odds with the conclusion of the treatise On Not-Being about the weakness of logos. To be sure, maybe one need not reconcile such different texts of an author who was clearly not interested in articulating a systematic thought. An alternative reading, also appropriate to his style of thinking, however, is that these two texts were exploring different functions of language. What is under attack in the On Not-Being is the view that the task of language is to provide an objective and faithful description of reality, as if reality were something that could accurately be represented. But can we really speak of an isolated and stable reality, removed from the contingencies of human culture and language? As a matter of fact, Gorgias argues, the true nature of things is always beyond our reach (see also D25.35/B11a35 and D34/B26) and resists any unitary reconstruction. What remains, then, is a world of seeming and opinions. Human logos is always subjective or relative. By expressing one specific perspective on this elusive reality, it always reflects a given point of view or opinion, and not absolute truth. Interestingly, the Helen complements this view by underlining the autonomy of logos. Language is not a reflection of things or the natural means by which to objectively describe reality. Logos is its own “master” (dynastês), it is autonomous; its function is not of stating the truth or describing reality, but of creating emotions and opinions which are our ways of giving meaning to reality, of turning the multiplicity of our experiences into some kind of order – a provisional order, yet one still capable of orienting human actions. Logos is the creator of its own reality and can prove successful because – as we have seen – despite its apparent nonreferentiality, it is actually very powerful.Footnote ⁴² Paradoxically, Gorgias’ emphasis on the limits of human experience ultimately leads to a celebration of the creative power of logos.Footnote ⁴³

Gorgias’ emphasis on logos as a creative power finds another interesting confirmation in a testimony on deception (apatê), which provides us with some information about his aesthetic views.Footnote ⁴⁴ According to Plutarch, Gorgias described tragedy as “a deception, in which the one who deceives is more just than the one who does not deceive, and the one who is deceived is more intelligent than the one who is not deceived” (D35/B23).Footnote ⁴⁵

The notion of deceit can probably be traced back to Parmenides and to the poetic tradition of earlier centuries. In Gorgias, however, it lacks the negative valence that it possesses in Parmenides and the poets. When Parmenides describes his cosmology as deceptive, he is not saying that it is false or fallacious but is warning his audience that what they are dealing with is still the world of appearances and not that of true reality.Footnote ⁴⁶ Much the same holds true for the poets.Footnote ⁴⁷ In Gorgias, by contrast, there is no longer any room for a “true divine reality” beyond the changing world of appearances; all that remains is phenomena and the uncertain opinions of men (see Helen 11). The importance of deception stems from this precarious situation. But it is evident that in this context deception loses all negative connotations, for such is the human condition. Logoi are intrinsically deceitful, to the extent that they cannot faithfully represent a reality that cannot be faithfully represented.Footnote ⁴⁸

It is from this situation that poetry can set out to achieve its goals, proving its “justice and wisdom.” The aim of the “deception” embodied by a poetic composition such as a tragedy is to charm the soul by rousing feelings of pleasure, joy, or pain.Footnote ⁴⁹ And the triggering of an emotional response is also a way to know oneself better and building a relationship with reality, which, according to Gorgias, is always “other” with respect to us – a way of making sense of ourselves and the things around us. Paradoxically, it is therefore more just to deceive and wiser to be deceived than the contrary.Footnote ⁵⁰ Deception, in other words, is to be fostered because it allows us to build a relationship with the reality of things and the reality of our very own being.

In conclusion, it might be observed that Gorgias, not unlike Protagoras, implements a subtle strategy by appropriating traditional poetic lore, as poetry is nothing but “a speech (logos) that possesses meter” (Helen 9). What matters, then, is logos and the ability to make suitable use of it. After all, as in the case of On Not-Being, the real object of the speech is not Helen but logos; so much was at stake in Gorgias’ challenge to the poet who mistreated and misrepresented the heroine (Helen 2).Footnote ⁵¹ This justifies the subsuming of poetry under the broader genre of rhetoric, the art of logos which is the object of Gorgias’ teaching; like Protagoras, Gorgias plays with tradition in order to appropriate it.Footnote ⁵² The lore safeguarded by the poet has now been integrated into the wisdom of the Sophists.

Correcting Speeches, Exploring Reality

As should be clear by now, an interest in logos is central to the Sophists’ thinking. In the previous section, we examined how the Sophists used their technical skills and ideas in relation to – and in competition with – the traditional knowledge embodied by poetry. We can now move on to analyze how this interest in logos relates to rhetoric, which developed as an independent form of knowledge in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE.

The extent of the Sophists’ contribution to rhetoric has been at the center of a lively debate in scholarship. The traditional view argues that rhetoric was first developed in Sicily by two almost unknown figures, Tisias and Corax. From Sicily, rhetoric would then have reached Athens thanks to Gorgias (who famously visited Athens as an ambassador in 427, P13b/A4); and Gorgias would have influenced other Sophists such as Antiphon (assuming, of course, that the rhetor and the Sophist of this name are one and the same person) and Thrasymachus.Footnote ⁵³ In this context, it is also important to remark that several Sophists were credited with the authorship of textbooks (the so-called logôn technai).Footnote ⁵⁴ Some modern scholars, however, have noted that the surviving testimonies seem to suggest that the development of rhetoric as an independent literary genre occurred later.Footnote ⁵⁵ It is difficult to take a side in the debate, given that the sources at our disposal do not allow us to determine clearly the extent to which the Sophists may have developed theoretical or technical problems (for example, the classification of different rhetorical genres, such as the deliberative, epideictic, and judicial) or stylistics (for instance, the distinction between high and low style). What is certain is that although the Sophists were not the “official” founders of rhetoric, they showed an interest in logos and what is related to it, bringing to the fore a series of questions that later became the focus of the discipline.

Contrary to the Platonic prejudice that Sophists and rhetors employed deceptive means of persuasion, we find cogent and rigorous argumentation in many early rhetorical texts.Footnote ⁵⁶ To be sure, there were Sophists like Thrasymachus who were famous for the ability to play with the audience’s feelings,Footnote ⁵⁷ and we already remarked that Gorgias in his Helen attributed a sort of magical power to words. But if we consider Gorgias and Antiphon, the two Sophists from whom full speeches survive, several types of argument may be found: arguments from probability (or likelihood: eikos),Footnote ⁵⁸ antinomy, induction from exemplary cases, reductio ad absurdum, and the so-called apagôgê (where the speaker explains all possibilities in order then to criticize each of them; this appears to be Gorgias’ favorite strategy).Footnote ⁵⁹ We can see considerable effort expended in developing many different types of argument – this is one object of the Sophists’ teaching, which found concrete applications in model speeches handed down for students to memorize.Footnote ⁶⁰ The appeal to feelings is certainly present, but rational analysis is equally important. By appealing to reason as well as emotion, the Sophists developed means of carrying out investigations and discussions in contexts where the truth is not self-evident. Their frequent resort to arguments from probability or induction from exemplary cases does not reflect their opposition to factual argumentation, as later authors such as Plato and Aristotle presented it, but the simple reality that truth is in many cases unclear.Footnote ⁶¹

This explains once again the importance of “correctness,” as in the following testimony on Protagoras.

This testimony is a fine example of the Sophists’ way of reasoning, and it is not a coincidence that Antiphon, in the second Tetralogy, discussed the same issue.Footnote ⁶² The facts are indisputable: a man has unintentionally killed another man. However, much remains to be said with regard to the issues of moral responsibility, legal guilt, and judgment of the whole incident. The same fact may be viewed from many different perspectives; for the physician, the javelin is the cause of the man’s death; for the judge, the javelin thrower is responsible; for the person who has organized the competition, it is the judge. This contrast gives the Sophist some room for action and argument; he will attempt to lend meaning and order to the event. The notion of correctness is the criterion that enables him to confront the validity and shortcomings of each of the different points of view.

From the testimony it is not clear what Protagoras’ final verdict was (and Antiphon’s Tetralogy likewise does not end with a judgment).Footnote ⁶³ Indeed, the comparison with other Protagorean testimonies suggests that arriving at a single answer was not the real point. The anecdote seems rather a confirmation of Protagoras’ claim that “concerning every question one can argue equally well in one direction or the other” (D27/A20; see also D26/B6a).Footnote ⁶⁴ Apparently weaker or counterintuitive views can be defended too, as is also implied by Protagoras’ (in)famous claim “to make the weaker argument the stronger one” (D28/A21).Footnote ⁶⁵ Given that there is some truth and validity in all points of view, the problem is not so much to extract the only possible solution as to find the one most suited to the situation, while foregoing any claim to come up with a single valid answer.Footnote ⁶⁶ The best speech is not the one that is true but that is best suited to the situation at hand and most capable of outdoing others from a formal and logical perspective.Footnote ⁶⁷ The importance of correctness, therefore, plays a decisive role in Protagoras’ thought at various and mutually related levels, both conceptual and linguistic; correct reasoning, which expresses the best possible solution, must find a counterpart in formal correctness, which makes one’s speech persuasive and hence allows one to gain the upper hand in each particular situation.Footnote ⁶⁸

The focus on argumentative strategies makes it possible to rectify the common scholarly view that the Sophists’ teaching was a simple transmission of practical advice designed to ensure victory in an argument – as though achieving successful persuasion and winning contests were the only things that mattered. If we consider the surviving texts by the Sophists, we soon realize that it was not only a matter of persuading the listener. The concrete need to win discussions and debates does not preclude a more profound reflection on the human world and the importance of logos, understood as the capacity to reason and to express oneself.

Likewise, it would be too simplistic to think that the aim of declamations such as the Encomium of Helen or the Defense of Palamedes was simply to convince the audience of the innocence of two mythological figures by developing sound arguments. Let us take, for instance, the aforementioned case of the Encomium of Helen, which Gorgias composed allegedly to defend the memory of Homer’s celebrated heroine, guilty of fleeing with Paris and causing the Trojan War. To absolve Helen, Gorgias lists the four possible reasons for her ending up in Paris’ arms, and shows that none make her responsible; the responsibility would lie with the gods, or with Paris’ force, or with the power of words, or with an impersonal force such as desire.Footnote ⁶⁹ Now, the attempt to cover all possibilities – this text is based on the method of apagôgê – clearly goes beyond the obligation to persuade someone of Helen’s innocence. Sure, this logos offers a brilliant model of a defense speech. But it is more than that. For in order to better understand the phenomenon of communication, Gorgias investigates human physiology, emotional dynamics, and the power of mechanisms of persuasion.Footnote ⁷⁰ Besides, he also raises interesting problems with regard to responsibility (as Protagoras and Antiphon did). Through his arguments, Gorgias raised thorny problems that call for a more in-depth reflection on the concept (and existence) of responsibility. Indeed, while in this text Gorgias states his intention of persuading the public, his intention to elicit intellectual pleasure by exploring the intricacies of our condition – like Helen, we are also subject to the power of logoi – is just as important.Footnote ⁷¹ There is pleasure derived from Gorgias’ display of intelligence, from his capacity to provoke and to investigate the potential of language and human thought, and from his bold attempt to revisit – and at times to criticize – traditional knowledge.Footnote ⁷²

From Protagoras onwards, sophistic logoi were developed as a tool to examine a question in its complexity and ambiguity. When properly employed, such methods and argumentative strategies could be used to win arguments; yet they were just as significantly a means of discussing problematic cases, investigating different types of arguments, entertaining the public, and showcasing one’s skills.Footnote ⁷³ Moreover, they helped to examine values and ideas, and explore human experience in general (anticipating Aristotle’s investigation in the Rhetoric).Footnote ⁷⁴ To be sure, the Sophists were not concerned with developing an exhaustive philosophical system. Yet this does not mean that the problems raised by their reflections on logos and its centrality are unimportant. It is in precisely this capacity – to make crucial problems the focus of the debate, bringing out many previously undetected tensions – that the interest of the Sophists lies, in fifth-century Greece no less than today.

Early Greek intellectuals explained being by offering broad accounts of what there is, from the gods and cosmological phenomena to the most fundamental elements of reality. Yet fifth-century thinkers, including the Sophists, found that a complete account of what there is needed to address the most general categories of being and not-being themselves. Their discussions even led to worries about the very possibility of discussing being and not-being in the first place. The focus of this chapter is ontology in this restricted sense, the study of being itself (in Greek, to on) and its attendant problems, as discussed by the Greek Sophists.

Some have doubted whether the canonical Sophists played any role in discussions of ontology in this sense. Sophists are better known today for their concerns about the nature of language, politics, and other human constructions and are often portrayed as opposed to the rest of the early Greek tradition.Footnote ¹ It is the Eleatic philosophers Parmenides, Melissus, and Zeno who are more often associated with discussions of ontology. But Sophists such as Gorgias and Protagoras were indeed engaged in this broader discussion about to on. In fact, the history of this distinction between Sophist and philosopher is more fluid than one might expect.

In Antidosis 268, Isocrates mentions Parmenides, Gorgias, and Melissus all in the same breath as “Sophists” (sophistai) who discussed “the number of the things that are.”Footnote ² He uses the same “Sophist” label for Zeno, along with Gorgias and Melissus, in Helen 3. Isocrates’ grave depicted Gorgias holding an astronomical sphere, an emblem associated with natural philosophy.Footnote ³ As a witness much closer to these figures than we are today, we should take seriously the idea that Isocrates’ “Sophists” were engaged in similar projects and perhaps even took similar approaches to the study of being. Isocrates distances himself from this type of study, portraying it as concerned with mere tricks and trivial puzzles. Yet, while the Sophists’ writing on this topic was indeed more dialectical than dogmatic, we will see that this is consistent with them engaging in serious discussion about problems of being.

This chapter will focus on Gorgias’ On Not-Being, a sophistic contribution to ontology and the one for which we have the most surviving evidence. On Not-Being engages with Eleatic discussions of being and not-being and also highlights problems that arise concerning their knowability and communicability. To situate Gorgias’ direct engagement with the broader Eleatic context, we will begin with a discussion of Parmenides, the first of the Eleatics, who set much of the agenda for later ontological discussion.Footnote ⁴ After looking at Gorgias’ work we will then turn to the Eleatics Zeno and Melissus to see how they too discussed ontology in a similar puzzle-raising and puzzle-solving mode. The next section, on Protagoras, Xeniades, and Lycophron, will focus on the more limited evidence that survives about these Sophists’ contributions to ontology, evidence that nonetheless speaks to the broader conversation on this topic.

Thus, while contemporary scholarship has tended to focus on the differences between those figures that Isocrates and others grouped together, I will suggest that seeing them as part of a broader discussion of ontology reveals important commonalities in both content and approach. The Sophists shared a deep and serious interest in the problems of being that was foundational for later ontological theorizing in the Greek tradition.

Parmenides

Parmenides’ poem – he appears to have written just one – is the locus classicus for ancient Greek discussions of ontology in the sense outlined above. Written in verse, it begins with an elaborate proem where the narrator describes being taken along a cosmic path to meet an unnamed goddess. The goddess then begins her speech as follows, offering to give the narrator a comprehensive account of all things.

The last three lines above may come as a bit of a surprise; the goddess promises to tell the truth, as one might expect, but then goes on to promise an account of the false opinions of mortals as well. She makes good on her promises in two further sections, traditionally labeled “the way of truth” and “the way of opinion.” But equally striking is the approach that the goddess takes in both of these sections.

The goddess begins the way of truth by describing two “roads of inquiry” with bare forms of the verb “to be” (einai in Greek). The description no doubt sounded as odd to ancient readers as it still does today.

Many have rightly puzzled over this odd use of “is” and “is not.”Footnote ⁶ It is complicated by the fact that, just as interpreters today disagree about how to translate and understand these lines, Parmenides’ contemporaries may have had various interpretations as well. Yet, on any interpretation, this beginning suggests that reflecting on “is” and “is not” themselves plays an important role in giving a comprehensive account of all things. Parmenides gives a clear injunction against the being, knowability, and communicability of “is not,” leaving us only with “is” for a true account of reality.

We do get more information about this first road, “is,” a little later in the poem. There the goddess specifies that what-is “is ungenerated, indestructible, / complete, single-born, untrembling, and unending / … together, whole / one, continuous.”Footnote ⁷ In addition to ascribing these positive and negative attributes, Parmenides goes on to pick out the subject at hand more clearly by using the substantive phrase “being” or “what-is” (to on), a phrase that becomes standard in later discussions of ontology.Footnote ⁸

These lines have inspired a monist interpretation of the poem where only one thing, being, exists.Footnote ⁹ On a strict monist interpretation, however, the poem undermines itself; if monism is true, then the whole setup with the goddess addressing the narrator (not to mention the various other beings mentioned or distinctions between author, poem, and audience) would be impossible. And while the goddess does suggest that the way of mortals is mistaken, more than half of the poem (nine-tenths on some estimates) is dedicated to the way of opinion, including elaborate contributions to psychology, physiology, and cosmology.Footnote ¹⁰ This may give us some pause in straightforwardly accepting any single part of the poem as the author’s ultimate view.Footnote ¹¹ Parmenides’ poem presages how Zeno, Gorgias, and Protagoras give opposed arguments with similar effect.

Zeno and Melissus are both traditionally associated with Parmenides as fellow “Eleatics” (Zeno and Parmenides were both from Elea, though Melissus was from Samos and only an “Eleatic” in the sense of defending a Parmenidean position). The two seem to have taken Parmenides’ project in very different directions. Melissus picks up on Parmenides’ description of what-is; he defends a strict form of monism on which only one thing exists and then emphasizes the different predicates that are best used to describe the one being. Zeno did not explicitly defend monism, nor did he straightforwardly defend any single view; instead, he challenged common notions about what there is and what it is like, including the notions of place, motion, and plurality. Plato allows that these arguments could be taken to defend Parmenides’ position;Footnote ¹² but, regardless of Zeno’s intent, his arguments address ontological concerns about the nature and extent of what-is at the most general level.Footnote ¹³ We will return to both figures and their relation to Parmenides and the Sophists below.

Gorgias

The final member of this group of “Sophists” singled out by Isocrates is Gorgias. Gorgias, too, takes up the project of discussing what-is at the most general level, in his On Not-Being or On Nature (ONB).Footnote ¹⁴ Yet he takes Parmenides and Melissus’ already counterintuitive monism and does it one better – he goes beyond rejecting pluralism to rejecting even the Eleatic “one,” suggesting that nothing at all is. He also flouts Parmenides’ injunction against speaking about “is not” by treating it on par with what-is, examining each equally as the subject for his negative arguments. And while Parmenides asserted that what-is-not cannot be, be known, or be communicated, Gorgias argues that even what-is cannot be, be known, or be communicated. Thus, Gorgias ends up with an injunction even against Parmenides’ “is.”

In part due to historical accident, Gorgias’ ONB also does Parmenides’ poem one better in the difficulties of reconstructing the heart of the text. The text itself no longer exists, at least not in any surviving version that we are aware of. Only two summaries survive, one in the pseudo-Aristotelian On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias (the author is hereafter referred to as “Anonymous”) and the other in Sextus Empiricus’ Against the Logicians.Footnote ¹⁵ As a result, we have to triangulate between these two divergent summaries to glimpse the missing original and, as with many early Greek texts, relinquish any certainty about its content. But the summaries do agree in many details, including the tripartite structure of Gorgias’ argument: Nothing is; even if anything is it cannot be known; and even if it could be known it cannot be communicated. Despite the incompleteness of our evidence, this is the most extensive surviving contribution to ontology from the canonical Sophists. Close attention to each section helps us better understand Gorgias’ arguments, his conversation with the Eleatics, and his interest in the problems that arise when discussing being.

Anonymous’ summary of the first part in particular points to how Gorgias compiled a systematic and structured series of arguments on the topic from other thinkers. Many of the individual arguments in ONB are not original to Gorgias, and Anonymous is careful to distinguish those that are borrowed from those that are new. Gorgias’ strategy involves identifying pairs of opposites (for instance, eternal/generated, one/many) and collecting arguments against anything having those properties. If, in order to be, something has to be either one or many but, whatever it is, it can be neither one nor many, then we can reject the claim that it is in the first place. In other words, if we have a simple case where there are only two options (for example, what-is is either one or many), and we have an argument from author A ruling out the first (presumably to accept the second, for example, a pluralist arguing against monism) and one from author B ruling out the second (presumably to accept the first, for example, a monist arguing against pluralism), then Gorgias can combine the two arguments to challenge the underlying presupposition (in this case, the presupposition that something is). One obvious borrowing comes in the argument against the eternality of what-is; we know that Melissus too derives its being unlimited from its being eternal, that is, ungenerated.Footnote ¹⁶ In this way, ONB is an early example of what is now known as doxography, collecting the views of various thinkers – in this case, on the topic of ontology – and putting them in conversation with one another.Footnote ¹⁷

Sextus’ summary of this first part highlights an important feature of Gorgias’ setup that parallels the methodology Gorgias uses elsewhere. Gorgias often surveys an exhaustive – or what are at least taken to be exhaustive – set of hypotheses (that is, hypotheses that cover all possible scenarios conditional on any underlying assumptions). He then shows that the same result follows from each, in which case we can be confident of that result no matter what. This formal structure is sometimes called “argument by cases” in a mathematical context.Footnote ¹⁸ Time and again in his Helen and Palamedes, the only two speeches of his that survive in full, Gorgias uses this structure to prove some conclusion without taking a stance on the truth of any of the hypothetical scenarios involved. In the Helen, for example, Gorgias can prove that Helen was not to blame for the Trojan war without discussing or even knowing what actually happened.Footnote ¹⁹ This is the structure we see in the argument for the first thesis of On Not-Being.Footnote ²⁰ According to Sextus, Gorgias begins with a unique division of the possibilities at hand; if anything is, then either being is, or not-being is, or both being and not-being are.Footnote ²¹ He then examines each in turn, concluding that it is not the case that any of these proposed entities is. This way he can show that, no matter what you take to be, an argument is available to deny that that thing is. If this is right, then nothing is.

Next, Gorgias sets aside the argument of the first part in order to consider potential attributes of being (as his Eleatic contemporaries did). He considers, granting that something is, whether it can be known or communicated. He once again comes to a negative conclusion and thereby challenges Parmenides’ claim that at least being can be thought of and known.Footnote ²² Parmenides’ two roads of investigation are roads for thoughtFootnote ²³ and he implies that what-is can be thought of in his claim that “it is the same, to think and also to be.”Footnote ²⁴ Both summaries of the second section of ONB involve a direct response to this thought, concluding that nothing can be grasped or known.Footnote ²⁵

Sextus begins with the following general framework. If things that are thought of are not things that are, then what-is cannot be thought of.Footnote ²⁶ Parmenides, by contrast, had claimed that what can genuinely be thought is; Gorgias’ burden is to deny this, which he does with two arguments, from which he can conclude that what-is cannot be thought of.Footnote ²⁷ Since Gorgias argues that nothing can be thought of, the weaker thesis, that nothing can be known, follows (though Sextus does not cite it). Even if something is, then, it cannot be thought of or known.

Anonymous reports a different strategy for concluding that what-is cannot be known.Footnote ²⁸ This version has Gorgias accept the Parmenidean claim that what is thought is and derive from it the claim that falsehood is impossible. After all, if all objects of thought are and what-is-not cannot be an object of thought, how could there be false thoughts?Footnote ²⁹ Apparently Gorgias would have argued that knowledge requires the ability to distinguish between true and false; without falsehoods, then, there is no knowledge (though, as in Sextus, Anonymous does not cite this final argument).Footnote ³⁰

The third section of ONB goes on to argue that even if what-is can be known, it cannot be communicated to others. The two summaries differ in their formulations, but both use the verb dêloun, often translated as “make clear,” “show,” or “indicate.” Both summaries also base their argument on the claim that speech has as its content simply speech, not things themselves. As Sextus puts it: “what we indicate by is speech (logos), but the things that underlie it (ta hypokeimena) and that are are not speech.”Footnote ³¹ Anonymous reports a similar line of reasoning: “someone who speaks utters a speech, but not a color or a thing.”Footnote ³² Both suggest that the content of speech and that of reality are entirely different in kind. Anonymous suggests that Gorgias added an additional argument that focuses on the inability of the hearer to understand what the speaker says in precisely the same way that the speaker does.Footnote ³³

Thus, in addition to a clever engagement with Parmenides and his attempt to describe being at the most general level, the final two parts of ONB are an early contribution to what philosophers today would call skepticism about knowledge and the philosophy of language. But why add these two parts in the first place? After all, if nothing is, as argued in the first part, it seems to follow directly that nothing can be known or communicated. Why concede, if only for the sake of argument, that anything is? Gorgias appears to have been interested in the problems that arise when trying to give a general account of being and, more specifically, problems that arise not just from describing what-is but from understanding our relationship to it as human beings. And, as Isocrates recognized, he certainly was not the only one.

Zeno and Melissus

We have already seen how both Parmenides and Gorgias offered surprising arguments for counterintuitive, even self-undermining conclusions. It was common practice for early Greek thinkers to raise philosophical puzzles or “sophisms” and to respond to the puzzles of others. Zeno and Melissus are prominent examples of this trend, too; a survey of their contributions highlights how Gorgias’ On Not-Being is at home in this broader puzzle-raising and puzzle-solving context.

Zeno’s arguments all raise puzzles without giving any immediate indication for how to resolve them. While Gorgias focuses on epistemological problems that arise in giving an account of being, Zeno raises metaphysical problems with our ordinary notions about the things around us in general. More specifically, Zeno challenges our notions of everyday things as extended, moving, plural entities composed of different parts. Zeno frequently used an argument form where contradictory statements are derived from some hypothesis. He derived from the hypothesis that many things exist, for example, that they are both so small as to have no size and so large as to be unlimited.Footnote ³⁴ The same may be said for Zeno’s other arguments against plurality and the argument against place.Footnote ³⁵ He received the reputation for offering antilogiai or “opposed arguments,” a term often associated with the Sophists; Zeno’s arguments aim to refute an opposed view and, more specifically, do so by deriving opposed statements from that view.Footnote ³⁶ Gorgias uses this same form of argument in the first part of ONB in addition to the broader structure of considering each of a set of opposed hypotheses described above. Some have speculated that Zeno’s arguments, too, may have been paired as part of a broader structure, though no direct evidence of this survives.Footnote ³⁷

Other arguments survive in a slightly different form. The arguments against motion do not derive contradictory statements from a single hypothesis but set up a seemingly ordinary situation and use it to derive a counterintuitive result. Aristotle reports four of them, all meant to show that motion is impossible.Footnote ³⁸ Each argument makes this salient with concrete examples, whether it be the impossibility of traversing some distance, Achilles overtaking a tortoise, or an arrow flying through the air.Footnote ³⁹ The millet paradox stands out in that it is reported as a dialectical conversation between Zeno and Protagoras. In this case, Zeno asks Protagoras a series of questions, first getting him to admit that a single grain of millet does not make a sound when it falls and then that a whole load of millet does make a sound when it falls. Zeno then derives from the second claim the denial of the first.Footnote ⁴⁰

At least some of Zeno’s arguments were collected into a single work, later described as a book of forty arguments.Footnote ⁴¹ But while we have some idea of the form and content of individual arguments, it is difficult to pin down Zeno’s intent. This was as true in ancient times as it is today. Timon, for example, called Zeno “two-tongued” and said that he “catches everyone by surprise.”Footnote ⁴² Some see him as a defender of Parmenidean monism, others as a dialectician ready to refute any view put forward, still others as a nihilist, arguing along with Gorgias that nothing exists at all. Of course, his intent may also have changed in the course of his lifetime.Footnote ⁴³ But, either way, the arguments’ effect of provoking further reflection on being and its most basic attributes is clear.

Returning to Isocrates’ list of “Sophists,” Melissus stands out for more straightforwardly defending a monistic view. Again, the subject matter is clear; Melissus titled his work On Nature or On Being and follows Parmenides in the discussion of being in general along with its most fundamental attributes.Footnote ⁴⁴ Unlike Parmenides, Melissus organizes those attributes in a specific explanatory order, deriving one from the next: from ungenerated to everlasting, from everlasting to unlimited, from unlimited to one, and so on. But Melissus was also engaged in raising and responding to problems that arise from a general discussion of being. He addresses head-on the tension between our everyday experience of a world of multiplicity and his monistic conclusions derived from abstract reasoning about what-is.

We cannot help but perceive many different things around us, so to defend his monism Melissus questions the accuracy of our perceptions. He argues that our impressions must be false given that we perceive things as having contradictory properties (iron, for example, we perceive as hard but is then rubbed away by a finger). Those false impressions include things seeming to us to be many.Footnote ⁴⁵ He also responds to the sort of nihilism defended by Gorgias (and perhaps Zeno?) by reflecting on the very fact of our communication about it: “If nothing is, what could one say about it, as if it were something?”Footnote ⁴⁶ Finally, he continues the tradition of thinking about both being and not-being by arguing for the impossibility of void. He then uses the impossibility of void to argue for the impossibility of motion.Footnote ⁴⁷

As David Reference Sedley and LongSedley (1999) points out, Melissus bases his arguments on physical principles, beginning with the impossibility of something coming to be out of nothing, that would have been shared by contemporary cosmologists. This is in contrast to Parmenides’ focus on the logical operations of “is” and “is not” and to Zeno’s emphasis on ordinary assumptions about space and time. As we have seen, Gorgias borrows liberally from earlier traditions but comes to a distinctive focus on how we think about and communicate what-is. While each thinker has his own emphasis, their concerns all share an underlying interest in what can be said about what-is and what-is-not and the problems that arise when discussing being at such a general level. Thus, even if Isocrates was overly dismissive of these works, he had good reason to group them together.

Protagoras, Xeniades, and Lycophron

There is good reason to think that other canonical Sophists discussed being in this general sense as well. We are unfortunate to have lost almost all of Protagoras’ writing, but even the scant evidence we do have suggests that he too was engaging with Parmenides and this broader conversation about being. We can see this from testimony we have about the titles of his works, especially in conjunction with his interest in opposed arguments, antilogiai, and from one of the few fragments that does survive from his writings.

We need to be cautious when it comes to the evidence we have about the titles of Protagoras’ works, especially since the different lists that survive vary significantly. But what is clear, no matter which individual titles are accurate, is that Protagoras wrote on a variety of topics that very likely included ontological discussions. Surviving titles range from On Truth and On the Original Settled Order to On the Gods and On What Is in Hades.Footnote ⁴⁸ Cicero claims that Protagoras (along with Prodicus and Thrasymachus) spoke and wrote “even about nature,”Footnote ⁴⁹ and Aristotle reports his “refuting the geometers.”Footnote ⁵⁰ This breadth is not surprising given his interest in antilogiai.Footnote ⁵¹ But one title in particular sticks out for present purposes; Porphyry reports that Protagoras argued against monism in a work titled “On Being.”Footnote ⁵²

This title is not attested elsewhere, and it could be that it was just one piece of a larger work. The testimony that he argued against monism is consistent with the possibility that he offered arguments both against monism and against pluralism as paired antilogiai. But, either way, Porphyry’s testimony suggests that Protagoras did indeed write on the topic of being. We also have some corroboration of this idea in Plato’s Sophist. Plato highlights the connection between a Sophist being an expert at giving antilogiai and their speaking on a wide variety of topics.Footnote ⁵³ His list includes topics one might expect for the Sophists (law, politics, and the gods) and topics one might not expect (crafts or skills, earth and the heavens). Among the list of those one might not expect are general statements about being and becoming.Footnote ⁵⁴ Plato then has his character Theaetetus make the connection to Protagoras specifically.Footnote ⁵⁵

In this light, we can also see Protagoras’ famous measure thesis as engaging with contemporary discussions about being. We are told that the following appeared at the beginning of one of his works (variously reported as “On Truth” or “Knockdown Arguments”).

Interpreting the text is controversial. In fact, there has been controversy over just about every word. But it is undeniable that this thesis picks up our theme of discussing both what-is and what-is-not. Like Gorgias, Protagoras also shows a peculiar interest in our relationship with what-is, literally putting “man” at the center of his account.Footnote ⁵⁸ Without the full text (which, once again, may have included statements opposed to this initial thesis), we will inevitably have to resort to some level of speculation in understanding its significance. But by calling us a “measure” he suggests that we have within us a standard for determining what-is and what-is-not, even at the most general level. At least on the face of it, this sounds much more optimistic than Parmenides on mortal opinions, Zeno on everyday notions, Melissus on perception, or Gorgias on our ability to even grasp what-is in the first place. Granted, this depends on the sense in which we are a measure, and Protagoras does not specify in this opening line whether we are the correct measure of all things.

Readers may be familiar with the tradition, going back to ancient times, of interpreting Protagoras as a relativist in one sense or another based primarily on this fragment. One common interpretation is that Protagoras is relativizing truth, or even reality, to the individual perceiver; as something appears to that perceiver, so it is for them.Footnote ⁵⁹ But this is by no means the only interpretation of the above line. There is a question, for example, about both the range of the subject “man” (anthrôpos) and of the object “all things.” Is Protagoras referring to individual human beings or to human beings in general (as opposed to, say, gods or other animals)? Furthermore, some have speculated that the word for “things” (chrêmata) implies a domain that is restricted to things used by us humans, while others restrict the domain to what we directly perceive. When it comes to the second half of the thesis, the word translated “that” (ôs) in the phrases “that they are” and “that they are not” could also be translated “how,” perhaps implying that we are the measure not of what exists but rather what qualities it has.Footnote ⁶⁰ And finally, does calling us “the measure” (or “a measure” as the Greek metron without the article could also be translated) mean that we are measurers, measuring instruments, standards of measurement, or units of measurement? And does it imply that we are the only or the best measures?Footnote ⁶¹

While Protagoras is frustratingly difficult to pin down on this score, it is also worth remembering that he is not the only one. Parmenides, Zeno, and Gorgias offer similar difficulties despite more evidence surviving about the nature of their texts. It may not simply be a feature of our limited evidence, then, but rather of the provocative, puzzle-raising style of argumentation shared by all of these thinkers. Despite the underlying differences in their strategies for doing so, each has the effect of eliciting a similar type of puzzlement about how we might understand the way things are at the most general level. Of course, this is precisely the kind of puzzlement that later philosophers become famous for inducing as a crucial step in inspiring further philosophical inquiry. While Protagoras’ measure thesis, read in isolation, raises more questions than it gives answers, this may very well have been part of its design.

Xeniades and Lycophron, two lesser-known SophistsFootnote ⁶² likely a generation younger than Gorgias and Protagoras, were also part of the conversation about being and not-being and the puzzle-setting and puzzle-solving tradition that surrounded it. They were apparently part of a continuous tradition of discussing these topics that lasted through the time of Plato and Aristotle and beyond. Little survives about Xeniades’ life or his exact dates, but what does survive is the following description of a peculiar combination of Eleatic and anti-Eleatic views.

The author of the report, once again Sextus Empiricus, contrasts Xeniades’ assertion that every representation (in Greek: phantasia) is false with an interpretation of Protagoras on which every representation is true.Footnote ⁶³ There is a close connection here to the arguments in the second part of Gorgias’ On Not-Being (in fact, Sextus goes on to report that Xeniades inferred that all things are unknowable from their being false). As in Gorgias’ case, this appears to take the Eleatic skepticism about one domain (the domain of perception and mortal opinions) and expand it. Unlike Gorgias’, Xeniades’ position may have been grounded in a positive metaphysical thesis; his anti-Eleatic metaphysical position that everything comes to be out of and perishes into what-is-not may have motivated his epistemological claim that all things are false.Footnote ⁶⁴ While many thinkers around this time appear more comfortable discussing not-being than Parmenides might have liked, Xeniades is unique among them for directly contradicting the Parmenidean injunction against generation from what-is-not, central also to Melissus’ arguments and widely accepted by contemporary cosmologists. Xeniades not only embraces thought about not-being, he makes it the fundamental starting point, above and beyond being, for all generation.Footnote ⁶⁵ In doing so he must also embrace the attendant problems of discussing what-is-not, and seems to have done so in part by accepting Parmenides’ position that there is no accurate perception or true judgment on a theory that embraces not-being. Of course, as in the case of Gorgias’ ONB, this raises its own puzzle about the way Xeniades’ own statements could be accurately known or communicated.

What we know of Lycophron presents a picture of someone who wanted to resolve some of these puzzles about the contradictions involved in giving an accurate account of what-is. There are several affinities between Lycophron and Gorgias: his interest in rhetorical style, his composition of praise speeches and, most importantly for us, his concern with problems of being and knowledge.Footnote ⁶⁶ According to Aristotle, Lycophron was concerned about how, when something is correctly described as having multiple properties, it might thereby also be described as having the contradictory properties of being both one and many. Lycophron responded by simply suppressing the word “is,” presumably replacing statements of the form “Socrates is white” with simply “Socrates white.”Footnote ⁶⁷ This suggests an attempt to preserve our everyday understanding of individual objects as unified despite simultaneously displaying different properties.

Lycophron also posited an underlying unity involved in knowing. In a different context, Aristotle reports as follows.

We can speculate that Lycophron may have been worried about the kind of puzzles about knowledge and communication raised in Gorgias’ ONB, especially given the other affinities with Gorgias mentioned above. Those puzzles relied in part on a separation between the objects of thought and things themselves, as well as a separation between thought and perception. Lycophron’s definition may have been an attempt at unifying the psychological processes involved in knowing in order to respond to these problems.

Conclusion

From the above survey it is clear that Sophists and Eleatic philosophers alike discussed being and not-being at the most general level, engaged in similar puzzles, and even did so in a similar way. Despite the Isocratean charge of triviality, our evidence also suggests that they shared a serious commitment to the investigation even when their methods were indirect.

Gorgias, for example, leaves room for the pursuit of truth even when discussing our limited and imprecise understanding of the world around us. The Palamedes, a fictional court speech where Palamedes defends himself against Odysseus’ accusation of treason, draws a distinction between two bases for the accusation: knowledge and mere opinion. Gorgias has Palamedes go as far as to call opinion “the most untrustworthy of things” and contrast it with knowing the truth.Footnote ⁶⁸ On its own, this is compatible with thinking that either (a) knowledge is impossible and therefore we are left with mere opinion, however unreliable it may be, or (b) because of the unreliability of mere opinion, we should seek knowledge wherever possible. The Helen reflects on the effects of speech (logos) in general and especially on its power to mislead. Most famously, the narrator says that “whoever has persuaded, and also persuades, whomever about whatever [does so] by fabricating a false discourse (logos).”Footnote ⁶⁹ Thus, we might be tempted to think that (a) is Gorgias’ preferred position. But it would be a mistake to see this as an interest in the effects of logos to the exclusion of the truth of the underlying content. Both speeches do in fact suggest that speech has a normative dimension that includes an accurate representation of the truth.Footnote ⁷⁰

Proclus confirms that Gorgias’ view was more along the lines of (b). According to Proclus, Gorgias said: “Being is without evidence if it does not encounter appearing, and appearing is without force if it does not encounter being.”Footnote ⁷¹ Here the word translated as “appearing” (to dokein) is related to the word translated as “opinion” (doxa) elsewhere in this chapter. The first clause can be read as a criticism of Eleatic monism, which conflicts with the way things appear. Yet the second clause suggests that appearances alone are not enough either. This leaves room for an evidence-based understanding of being that fits with our appearances; in fact, it suggests an attempt by Gorgias not only to lay out the problems – as he does in ONB – but also to suggest a way that being and appearing can be reconciled.Footnote ⁷²

Returning to ONB, then, there is no good reason based on his other works to assume that it was dismissive of the shared project of seeking truth through discourse and reasoning. The level of detail and sophistication that can be gleaned from the summaries, incomplete though they are, gives the impression that Gorgias took the theorizing of his contemporaries seriously enough to be worth engaging. Like the contributions of the Eleatics, ONB serves as a goad to further thinking in response to Parmenides and to ontological theorizing more broadly. Gorgias’ conclusions, especially for the first thesis that nothing is, are highly dependent on the success of individual arguments, not all of which are compelling; a follower of Parmenides would only need to respond to a few choice points. In other words, just as Gorgias has taken an Eleatic framework and tweaked a few arguments to get a radically different result, others can tweak Gorgias’ framework to change the overall result once again.

In this way, there is a parallelism between the structure of the work, an elaborate sequence of negative arguments that sets itself up for similar treatment in kind, and its content, a claim about nonexistence, unknowability, and incommunicability that, if it is right, cannot itself exist, be known, or be communicated. What may at first seem like an exaggerated exercise given its defense of an extreme or insupportable view is instead a serious challenge; negative arguments are easy to come by, so it is on his interlocutors (or on the reader) to figure out where these arguments might have gone wrong. As in the case of the Eleatics, puzzles can be an effective tool for provoking further inquiry.

Protagoras, too, is sometimes thought to have a cavalier attitude toward the truth. But not only is this nowhere directly evident in the early and most reliable testimony about Protagoras – as we saw, it is by no means a straightforward consequence of the measure thesis – it is also not obvious that Protagoras was even interested in presenting his own doctrines. We have some evidence that Protagoras stressed the importance of being able to think for oneself in his teaching rather than expecting his audience to accept some view on his authority. Plato portrays Protagoras as advertising good judgment (euboulia),Footnote ⁷³ which may very well be the kind of human ability needed to adjudicate the path forward when presented with opposed arguments.Footnote ⁷⁴ In this way, he need not have presented himself as an expert with a distinctive theory in order to impress his audience or attract new students. Instead, the practice of antilogia could serve to undermine rival claims to authority and provide an alternative ideal for his students to strive for. Even if this was not as explicit as Plato makes it out to be, we can see the practice of antilogia as speaking for itself, challenging the audience to make sense of its background and implications on their own.

The commonalities between the dialectic of Parmenides and Protagoras or the puzzles of Zeno and Gorgias suggest a shared conversation about the nature of reality and our access to it, as well as a shared approach that encourages the reader or listener to think for themselves rather than simply deciding on a most trusted authority. This is not to say that they agreed on everything, but it is to say that their disagreements, rather than indicating a wholesale rejection of the others’ projects, arose out of a serious interest in and commitment to ontological inquiry.Footnote ⁷⁵ For Gorgias and Protagoras, that interest suggests that they were as “philosophical” as their Eleatic counterparts. For the Eleatics, the fact that they engaged in this discussion in an often indirect and self-undermining way suggests that they were equally “sophistic.” Though all of these figures highlighted the various barriers that we face when seeking to understand reality, they opened up a conversation about being at the most general level that was as serious as it was provocative.

In the concluding chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that the Sophists profess to teach politics despite themselves never practicing it.Footnote ¹ Writing several decades after the time in which the so-called “Great Sophists” appeared on the scene of Periclean Athens, and reflecting the educational rivalry that Plato initiated, Aristotle focuses on a presumably established professional activity of tutors who offered their services to those who could afford their fees and wished to follow a technical training that would help them to succeed in public life.Footnote ² But Aristotle leaves out an aspect of the activity of the fifth-century Sophists, who often assumed the role of political advisors or ambassadors, and whose number includes major figures of both democratic and oligarchic politics in Athens. Aristotle was of course aware that Protagoras and Damon were associates of Pericles, who could have sought their advice on a number of practical issues.Footnote ³ According to a later source, Protagoras was one of the legislators of Thurii, a panhellenic colony that was founded by the Athenians around 444 BCE.Footnote ⁴ In his Constitution of the Athenians, Aristotle suggests that Damon “was the proposer of most of Pericles’ measures,” including payment for the dicasts.Footnote ⁵ Hippias, Gorgias, Prodicus, and possibly also Thrasymachus, all non-Athenian citizens, served as ambassadors of their home city-states.Footnote ⁶ Antiphon, the only canonical Sophist who was an Athenian citizen, and who could thus participate in Athenian politics, played a leading role in the oligarchic coup of 411; Critias, another Athenian, tangentially related to the more familiar Sophists, became a leader of the oligarchic coup of 404/3.Footnote ⁷ Why is it then that Aristotle fails to acknowledge that at least the earlier Sophists did contribute to practical politics? Any answer to this question will have to take into account a wedge between “academic” training and political participation that Aristotle, following Plato, projects on the class of people he describes as sophists. Submitting to that wedge, Aristotle would probably treat the earlier Sophists’ interest to practical politics as incidental to their main professional identity, which focused on their interest in the formal aspects of argumentation and speechmaking. Resisting Aristotle’s narrow understanding of the scope of sophistic thinking as a fourth-century anachronism, I would like to explore the idea that the combination of practical involvement and theoretical interest in political questions marked the Sophists’ double role as pedagogues and intellectuals with original and often implementable political ideas.

In the chapter’s first section we will see how a practice of evaluative comparisons between forms of government led to the invention of a theoretical discourse on constitutions. We will discuss the role that the methodology of antilogia, “debate,” played in early theorizing on constitutions and trace its impact in the work of the two major philosophers of the next generation, Plato and Aristotle. In the second section we will examine the evidence concerning the Sophists’ criticism of the concept of law (νόμος), arguably their most important contribution to political theory. Instead of seeing the Sophists as forerunners of the egoistic views that Plato associates with the education they profess to offer – and thus despite what continues to be a dominant interpretation in the study of Sophistic thinking – I propose to argue that their criticism of law should not be understood as a threat to morality but rather as an early theoretical reflection on the nature and the limits of legislation.

Opposing Arguments, Comparing Constitutions

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle suggests that, because the Sophists lack the perspective of practice in political affairs, they cannot be considered experts in matters of legislation. He seeks to underscore the originality of his own approach, which combines a theoretical account of the best politeia with an interest in the empirical study of constitutions, relying on the compilation of 158 case studies of Greek city-states by his students and himself. The comprehensive scale of Aristotle’s project and its aim, namely the theoretical understanding of politics, mark the originality of his contribution. But the seeds of an interest in the variety of the constitutions and a commitment to empirical observation of their various practices and values can be seen to originate in the thinking and activities of fifth-century Sophists. As we shall see, the advantages and disadvantages of different constitutions were major subjects in fifth-century political discourse, which relied on a variety of empirical perspectives. In the sophistic tradition, discussion of these questions could take the form of an antilogia or debate. Evidence for this comes from Protagoras’ Opposing Arguments, a text that Aristotle’s student Aristoxenus says Plato copied in his Republic.Footnote ⁸

Protagoras’ text has not survived; we may assume, however, that it contained opposed speeches in favor and against a variety of theses, possibly in the spirit of argumentative exercises. And we may assume that identifying the pros and cons of democracy – a topic that likely dominated political discussions in the time of Pericles – was part of the training of any citizen who wished to participate in political affairs. The closest example of such an exercise that has survived in our texts is Herodotus’ so-called Constitutional Debate, an account of the three types of constitution (democracy, oligarchy, monarchy) presented in the form of opposed speeches.Footnote ⁹

The speeches are delivered in the aftermath of a rebellion against the Magi that will lead to the accession of Darius in 522. The three Persian noblemen who initiated the rebellion exchange views, deliberating on the situation. Their speeches provide a comparative analysis of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each constitution, a deliberation that eventually justifies the choice of monarchy. Each speaker presents his point of view (γνώμη), and provides arguments in support of his preference and against those proposed by the others. Otanes, speaking in favor of popular government (though not using the term δημοκρατία), focuses on legal equality (ἰσονομίη), election by lot (πάλος), and accountability for those in office. His criticism of monarchy focuses on the lack of accountability that a single ruler enjoys, and on the behavior the monarch is likely to develop because of the insolence and jealousy his privileges may instill in him. Megabyzus, who speaks in favor of oligarchy, shares Otanes’ criticism of monarchy (indeed, describing it as tyranny), but expresses his concerns about entrusting power to the “many” (πλῆθος), since “nothing is more foolish and violent than a useless mob.” Megabyzus thus opts for oligarchy, understood as the power of a company of the best men, the aristoi, and, hence, an aristocracy. In view of the criticisms of both democracy and oligarchy raised by the previous speakers, however, Darius ends up praising monarchy, the rule of the one best man, which he sees as a “synthesis” of the positive aspects of the two previous suggestions.

The conclusion of Herodotus’ story is hardly surprising, since his narrative needs to match history, in which Darius in fact rose to monarchical power. But the sophistication of his overall treatment of the subject betrays reflection on the comparative merits of the different constitutions. The most conspicuous mark of Herodotus’ having theorized constitutions is Darius’ proviso that each constitution discussed will be the best of its kind.Footnote ¹⁰ Darius’ suggestion is realized in the careful use of political nomenclature by Herodotus’ characters. We have already noticed that in his speech in favor of popular government Otanes does not use the term dêmokratia, which could bear negative connotations, opting instead for the term isonomia, which he describes as “the fairest of words.”Footnote ¹¹ Likewise, the term oligarchia, literally “rule of the few,” is not used by Megabyzus, who speaks in its favor, but rather by Darius, who speaks against it. Far from himself arguing in favor of monarchy, Herodotus offers his audience the opportunity to reflect on the qualities of each constitution. The style of the discussion seems to be in line with a spirit of open-endedness that is often associated with sophistic practice.

It is tempting to think that in writing his text Herodotus had access to an inventory of arguments in favor of and against each constitution of the kind we might suppose Protagoras provided in his Opposing Arguments. Though it is also likely that Herodotus is merely reflecting and further contributing to a practice of deliberation that was current in his (as well as in Protagoras’) intellectual milieu, a practice that professional teachers of argumentation turned into a more or less systematic subject of instruction. It is possible that Protagoras’ handbook included specific examples of constitutions, modeled on the basis of the practices and values each implemented. Given its political importance, we may further speculate that the question of constitutions was treated in a separate section of Protagoras’ book.Footnote ¹² Going back to Aristoxenus, we can see why he could think of Protagoras’ practice (and book) as the model on which Plato developed his juxtaposition between the perfectly just and the perfectly unjust city, which forms the backbone of the Republic, but also the account of the different constitutions he uses to explain the degeneration of states.

There is no need to assume that Protagoras was the inventor of civic-political antilogia nor that he was the only teacher who combined its practice with a comparative treatment of constitutions. Citizens who could not afford or did not happen to become Protagoras’ students would have encountered sophistic reasoning about politics in other spheres. They would have found themselves attending assemblies where skilled speakers implemented the techniques the Sophists taught. Or they could have read or heard the handbooks of other Sophists. We may further assume that Athenians who attended theater in the 420s would be exposed to, but also recognize, the sophistic techniques in the debate between Theseus and the Theban herald, arguing for and against democracy, in Euripides’ Suppliants.Footnote ¹³

It is likely that Protagoras’ Opposing Arguments was confined to a series of set-pieces, on which students were expected to model their compositions, adjusting them to the needs of the occasion.Footnote ¹⁴ Whether Protagoras’ teaching further included a theoretical treatment concerning the method or the general conceptual categories that he expected his students to reflect on when considering possible forms of government is not a question that we can answer with any certainty. On the basis of the extant evidence, however, we may assume that the composition of a technical treatise had to wait until Aristotle’s Rhetoric, a work that purports to record and systematize earlier practice.Footnote ¹⁵ Aristotle suggests that a good knowledge of the different forms of government is “most important and decisive for the ability to persuade and to provide good counsel (καλῶς συμβουλεύειν).” The ability “to distinguish the customs, institutions, and interests (συμφέροντα) of each” would presumably allow the speaker to show how a certain course of action will preserve, and thus benefit, a particular constitution. To do so, the speaker must identify the end at which each form of government aims. According to Aristotle, for democracy this end is liberty, for oligarchy wealth, for aristocracy matters of education and the legal institutions, for tyranny self-protection.Footnote ¹⁶ Aristotle’s systematization of these ends of government reflects his original contribution to the field. This is especially clear in the language of teleology as well as in seeming allusions to his own “database” of constitutions. But it is undeniable that Aristotle’s collection of the constitutions and his systematization of the aims of different types of government owes a significant debt to an earlier though presumably less systematic tradition of empirical study reflected in Herodotus’ Constitutional Debate.

Compared to Herodotus, Aristotle’s account seems to involve a more explicit interest in the mechanics of the various constitutions, focusing on the ways in which different customs and institutions become tools that preserve their various ends. This teleological model ties in with Aristotle’s biology, but can already be traced in the language of “preservation” (σωτηρία) that some of the sophistic sources implement in the context of states or organisms. We can think of the account Plato attributes to Protagoras regarding the distribution of powers to animals in order to secure the preservation of the species.Footnote ¹⁷ Closer to our topic is the argument provided in the pseudo-Xenophontic Constitution of the Athenians, a short pamphlet written perhaps in the 420s, which, because of its polemic against democracy, acquired the nickname “Old Oligarch” in English-language scholarship after 1900. Anticipating Aristotle’s account in the Rhetoric, the author aims to identify the practices and institutions that allowed the Athenians to “preserve their constitution and accomplish those other things for which the rest of the Greeks criticize them.”Footnote ¹⁸ With this framing, the author of the Constitution of the Athenians can demonstrate that democracy’s disregard for the putative authority of the elite does not prevent it from being the most durable of constitutions; although “everywhere on earth the best element is opposed to democracy,”Footnote ¹⁹ nevertheless it is a survivor.

A similar interest in the self-preservation of institutions of government can be traced in the statement Plato attributes to Thrasymachus in the first book of the Republic.

Thrasymachus is here interrupting Socrates, and Plato goes out of his way to mark the epideictic nature of his intervention; the Sophist (although not named as such) is presented as a professional master of argumentation, whose aim is to confront Socrates for a fee.Footnote ²⁰ We can perhaps best treat Thrasymachus’ statement that justice is the advantage of the stronger as a provocative claim, a challenge with which he aims to counter Socrates’ quest for a definition of justice.Footnote ²¹ The spirit of his statement may be similar to that of the Old Oligarch’s censure of the Athenian democracy; what is described as just within different frameworks and forms of government varies according to the respective values and priorities of the regime. The observation of those values and priorities is what secures the preservation of the specific form of government. Unlike Socrates, Thrasymachus is not interested in criticizing or correcting a constitution that is considered unjust on the basis of some independent standard of justice. His aim is rather to understand the values and language of each state. By pointing to the range of practices that conduce to the preservation of the ruling regime, Thrasymachus tries to derail Socrates’ quest for a single conception of justice that is applicable to all governments.

Instead of thinking of Thrasymachus as a serious – and possibly the first – proponent of Realpolitik, we can think of him as a professional teacher of argumentation who may have been known for his expertise in settling disputes over questions pertaining to government. This idea draws support from a fragment of a speech delivered to Athenians that is preserved by Dionysius of Halicarnassus.Footnote ²² The speaker there professes competence in remedying the discord between opposed factions by proposing a basis for a consensus, considering “what both sides are looking for.” He argues that discord generally results from the fact that people “contend for victory without judgment” and from their failure to realize the common ground that is present in what they wrongly understand as contrary. In his effort to remedy this discord, the speaker points to the fact that both sides share a commitment to the ancestral constitution (πάτριος πολιτεία). He points out that the widespread notion of an earlier golden age causes people trouble (ταραχή) – presumably because they are unable to recover and agree on what it amounts to; but he suggests that things could be otherwise, given that the ancestral constitution is not only the easiest thing to know (ῥᾴστη γνωσθῆναι) but is also – and here lies his hope for achieving concord among the rival parties – a vision shared most (κοινοτάτη) by all the citizens. We can imagine that, in the ensuing part of the speech, the speaker would go beyond conflicting judgments (ἐπέκεινα τῆς ἡμετέρας γνώμης) and establish, on the basis of evidence provided by “the older men,” the envisaged common ground, namely, the features of the ancestral constitution on which both sides would agree.

Whatever the occasion for which it was composed,Footnote ²³ Thrasymachus’ speech shows how expertise in arguments concerning the different constitutions could be a useful tool for the orator. On the basis of this study, the trained speaker would be able to pinpoint inconsistencies between the principles of a given constitution and judgments made or decisions taken by the citizens in their polis; he could also construct counterexamples on the basis of concrete cases and conduct diplomatic negotiations between factions. The specific case in this speech shows how Thrasymachus thought an apparent discord could be remedied once the basis of some deeper concord was discovered through the study of constitutions.

It is tempting to compare Thrasymachus’ speech with the practice Plato attributes to Protagoras in the Theaetetus. According to the latter, the role of an expert in wisdom is to “transform things, make them appear to be good and be good for someone to whom they appeared to be bad and were bad.” So just as in the context of physical health the doctor will use the appropriate drugs to restore the healthy condition of a particular organism (later Protagoras adds the examples of a farmer and a doctor), in the context of education the Sophist will use discourses (λόγοι) to restore the individual’s disposition to a better condition. And insofar as “what seems just and fine to each city also is that for it, so long as it thinks that it is,” the expert’s role will be to adjust the public’s ideas, exchanging the ones that may be harmful for those that are beneficial.Footnote ²⁴ Going back to Thrasymachus’ speech, we can imagine the following rhetorical situation. The orator tries to lead different factions to understand how what they regard as opposed views on the constitution presupposes some common ground. To do so he can point out what appear to be different presuppositions and trace the common ideas that these may disclose in a way that will allow opposed factions to find common ground and hence to remove discord. As a mediator between the two factions, the speaker aims for harmony, an equilibrium among opposed powers that operate within a single body. Inspired by the analogies of medicine and farming, Plato in the Theaetetus draws the comparison between the Sophist and the farmer or the doctor. Just as in medicine, so also in the art of effective argumentation, a body of accumulated experience can help the skilled speaker to deal with the contingencies of a given situation. But instead of consulting case studies or nosological texts, the Sophist who wishes to compose a deliberative speech will rely on his observations of the various constitutions.

Like the farmer and the doctor, so too the Sophist or wise man needs to adjust his art to the contingencies of a given situation. Familiarity with a variety of cases, which could be regarded as showy or ignorant of philosophical abstraction,Footnote ²⁵ becomes an essential tool of such an enterprise. Yet unlike the doctor or the farmer, who can intuitively rely on some accepted standard of health in a human body or in a farmed field, the Sophist has to create the standards for his art. On the basis of Plato’s testimony, we may assume that Protagoras would agree with – even if he hadn’t formulated – the view that human logos (in the sense both of argumentation and of reason) allowed people, presumably guided by the wise, to decide what not only seemed but also was just and fine in any given situation.Footnote ²⁶ Striving toward the just and the fine was essential to the political nature of human beings, as they were equipped with – and thus also oriented toward – social values like justice and shame.Footnote ²⁷ The description of the Sophist that Plato attributes to Protagoras in the Theaetetus assumes the ability of the speaker to instill in his audience ideas that will promote the values of the polis. But to do so, the sophist will need to take into consideration the perspective of the audience he is addressing, and to adjust his language to the corresponding conceptual framework. Thus, in the case of discord regarding the constitution, which is the problem Thrasymachus addresses in his fragment, the Sophist would need to reflect on the different perspectives that correspond to different constitutions. Such reflection could be part of the experience a citizen gained as he attended the Assembly or a theater performance. But it could also take a more sophisticated and systematic form, which is presumably part of the training that Sophists like Protagoras and Thrasymachus professed to offer. That training, in turn, could focus entirely on practice in constitutional debating, or it could also involve the study of a text, that would consist in, or at least include, the kind of set-pieces on constitutions included in Protagoras’ Opposing Arguments.

On the basis of the preceding discussion, we can think that Plato’s choice of Thrasymachus as Socrates’ interlocutor in the Republic was dictated by the Sophist’s interest in technical argumentation on the constitutions. But it is also possible that Plato further thought that Thrasymachus’ interest in the question of the constitutions was merely instrumental, confined to the needs of technical argumentation – as opposed to the more serious engagement in the question of the best constitution that marked Plato’s theoretical agenda. Thus by choosing Thrasymachus as Socrates’ interlocutor, Plato in the Republic was putting his finger on the potential perils of sophistic practice, if reliance on a pool of information about different constitutions and conflicting values were coupled with a lack of a moral vision for education.Footnote ²⁸

But how about Protagoras? Does his commitment to the cultivation of euboulia or good judgmentFootnote ²⁹ imply a further interest in the question of the best constitution? A positive answer to the latter question brings Protagoras closer to Plato’s interests (and thus possibly provides further basis for Aristoxenus’ vitriolic accusation on Plato’s plagiarism). Assuming, however, that the training he professed to give was of a more concrete and pragmatic (rather than abstract and theoretical) nature, it is possible that he never addressed the question of the best constitution in an explicit way. In fact, an abstract account of the best constitution seems rather foreign for practicing thinkers who (unlike Plato, with whom the tradition of pure theorizing on the question officially begins) were more concerned with, and tended to adjust their judgment to, the contingencies of existing situations.Footnote ³⁰

On the other hand, it would be misleading to suggest that before Plato initiated a tradition of pure, academic theorizing, all we had was rhetorical exercises or concrete applications of sophisticated arguments that, depending on the contingencies of a given situation, could be developed in favor of or against different constitutions. A critical step toward the direction of theorizing was the growing reaction against Athenian democracy that marked political discussions during the last decades of the fifth century. In the next section, we will see how the constitutional crisis that marked that period gave rise to some original ideas regarding the value of law and its connection to justice. It is conceivable that the same crisis led to a polarization and hence to an opposition between arguments in favor of and against the democracy, which went beyond the technical, instrumental practice of antilogia and led a sophist like Protagoras to develop and endorse a theoretical argument in favor of democracy.Footnote ³¹ Protagoras’ association with Pericles and the possibility that his career reached its peak during the golden age of fifth-century Athens, coupled with his optimistic account of human beings, may suggest that he was a supporter of democracy, and that as a legislator of Thurii he had the opportunity to experiment with and promote the values of the particular constitution. But such a de facto commitment to democracy is still a far cry from the development of a political theory in favor of democracy. And so, on the basis of the extant evidence, and regardless of the different political views that the various Sophists may have held, what allows us to devote to them a chapter on the “theory” of constitutions is not some positive defense of a single constitution but a quasi-theoretical interest in the relative merits and vices of the different constitutions and on the function of the institutions that furthered their respective ends. By turning such interest into a proper subject of training, the Sophists could prepare their students to develop suitable arguments and to exercise good judgment.

On Law and Justice

In his speech in favor of democracy, Otanes described isonomia, equality before the law, as the finest of words, yet neither Megabyzus nor Darius make any reference to the value of law in their discussion of constitutions. Plato’s Protagoras compares the laws of the city to the lines teachers rule on children’s copy books to help them learn to write (Protagoras 326d). But instead of saying that the city or its sovereign body (in a democracy, its male citizens) legislates according to what seems just and fine to itself (a suggestion that would tie in with Plato’s portrayal of Protagoras in the Theaetetus), Plato has Protagoras describe these laws as inventions of good and old lawgivers.Footnote ³² In spite of his commitment to the “man is the measure” thesis, Protagoras thus recognizes the indispensable role that wise individuals continued to play in the polis. Many of his contemporaries, however, would object that, far from appointing wise lawgivers, people passed laws with a view to their own advantage. As we have seen, that idea led Thrasymachus to the provocative conclusion that justice is the advantage of the stronger.

With his generalizing definition, Thrasymachus can make the further claim that justice is the same everywhere. Thrasymachus is here expanding and thus applying to all constitutions an objection that critics of democracy, disenchanted with Athenian politics during the last decades of the fifth century, had developed.Footnote ³³ Such critics clearly felt that democracy’s practices and institutions – the same practices that the Old Oligarch described as kakonomia – led to Athens’ fall in 404.Footnote ³⁴ Traditionally seen as a social value, law (nomos) could now be viewed with suspicion, as a tool for greedy citizens who used legislation to promote their own interests. But if people by nature were driven by greed, pleonexia, then law was at the same time one thing that could keep them from destroying one another. In Plato’s Republic, Glaucon asserts that the idea of law as an artificial constraint on natural injustice is widespread, expressing at the same time his unwillingness to endorse such a view, presumably since it implies that human beings have a natural tendency to injustice.Footnote ³⁵ The question of the relation between human nature (φύσις) and the law (νόμος, also translated “custom”) is of course widely discussed in the sophistic period; for political thought, it raises the question of how the individual, subject to the tendencies and desires of nature, relates to the collective norms embodied in the law.

The closest we ever get to the idea that law should be subordinated to individual desire comes in the speech Plato attributes to Callicles in the Gorgias. Callicles, the Athenian who is hosting Gorgias during his visit, is presented as a champion of what he describes as justice according to nature (φύσις), which he juxtaposes to justice according to nomos, a social construction that protects those who are weak by limiting the desires of those who are strong to exercise their greed and power.Footnote ³⁶ We can imagine that individuals who held such ideas may have been unwilling to express them openly; Callicles raises this point when he suggests that shame had dictated Polus’ endorsement of conventional morality under questioning by Socrates.Footnote ³⁷ It is possible that Plato used the example of Callicles’ amorality to show the dangers of training in argumentative techniques (of the kind Gorgias professed to give).Footnote ³⁸ But besides exposing the perils of sophistic teaching, Callicles’ argument is a foil to Socrates’ argument in favor of justice. In this regard, we may trace an interesting continuity between Plato’s dialogue, which portrays the arguments of different characters in favor of and against the just life, and the earlier tradition of Protagorean antilogia.

The idea that Plato includes (or even invents) Callicles as an educational tool, a challenge that a serious moral thinker needs to address, becomes more compelling in light of another account that occurs in the treatise preserved by the Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus, known as Anonymus Iamblichi and generally thought to date to the sophistic era.Footnote ³⁹ Its author advances the hypothesis that “people by nature (ἔφυσαν) have been born unable to live alone, and came together with one another yielding to constraint,” but also reasons that “it is not possible for them to live with one another and to spend their lives without laws (for a greater tribulation happens to them in this way than from living alone).”Footnote ⁴⁰ If the text does indeed come from the fifth century, Anonymus would provide our earliest evidence for the idea that law is a device that societies introduce to prevent people from exercising their (natural?) tendency to greed. As we have seen, this idea forms the basis of the argument that Plato attributes to Callicles (who defends it) and to Glaucon (who wishes to resist it). But whereas Plato’s characters draw the conclusion that conventional morality is a bad bargain for anyone who is able to transgress the laws, Anonymus presents an anthropology of greed in order tο establish the value of law and justice. The text entertains a version of the Calliclean thesis in the following thought experiment.

Such a figure, though, would ultimately not be successful in his flaunting of law and justice, since he would be opposed by the greater number of those who are committed to these values. Just as Plato uses the speeches of Callicles and Glaucon as challenges to Socrates’ moral reasoning, so also Anonymous concludes his thought experiment with the optimistic belief that “law and justice rule over people and could not be altered in any way. For these are bound together by a strong nature.”Footnote ⁴¹ The similarity between the imaginary character that Anonymous envisages and Plato’s character Callicles may suggest the currency of the mentality they both express.

As I said above, Anonymous introduces the idea that “people by nature (ἔφυσαν) have been born unable to live alone” as a hypothesis. There is an interesting similarity between this hypothesis and the Great Speech that Plato attributes to Protagoras, which uses myth to illustrate how human beings were led to form political societies in order to protect themselves from being preyed on by animals. Once formed, though, the cohesion of these societies was immediately threatened, as “they committed injustice against one another, since they did not possess the art of politics, so that they scattered once again and were destroyed.”Footnote ⁴² One might think that this idea implies that by nature human beings are not political, but the myth goes on to describe how Zeus’s gift of shame (αἰδώς) and justice (δίκη) to all humans allowed them finally to live in society. Human nature thus appears to be composite, tempering fundamental tendencies to injustice with social qualities implanted by the gods. Politics, according to the myth, is premised on the suppression – via morality and law – of natural tendencies to vice. There are thus significant similarities to the argument that Callicles endorses and that Glaucon attributes to thousands of people. On the other hand, neither Anonymous nor Plato’s Protagoras deploys, at least explicitly, the contrast between nomos and physis. We may think that the hypothetical syntax of Anonymous and Protagoras’ mythical narrative are means through which these authors seek to explain to their audiences, in a counterfactual and possibly pre-theoretical way, what would happen if humans lived without moral values.

The earliest surviving application of the nomos-physis contrast to ethics is found in the corpus of Antiphon, whose work On Truth is the most important theoretical contribution on the topic. In a famous fragment of On Truth, surviving only in papyrus fragments, Antiphon appears to downgrade justice to a behavior that individuals should practice only when witnesses are present: “justice is not to <trans> gress against the legal institutions (nomima) <of whatever> city one happens to be a citizen of. So a man would make use of justice in the way that would be most advantageous for himself if, in the presence of witnesses, he considered that it is the laws that are great, but, alone and without witnesses, that it is what belongs to nature” (D38/B44a, tr. Laks and Most).

There is a clear parallel between the idea Antiphon expresses in this fragment and the story of Gyges’ ring, the thought experiment that Glaucon uses in Republic to show that no human being is naturally just and that fear of sanctions is the only reason that people obey social norms or the laws of the city. One might think that, unlike Plato, who takes such ideas as a challenge that triggers the kind of argument in favor of justice that Socrates is about to deliver, Antiphon either seriously endorses the Calliclean idea of a law of nature or uses it to expose the limits of the concept of law. Given the fragmentary nature of Antiphon’s text, any interpretation we propose is bound to be speculative.Footnote ⁴³ From all this testimony, though, we can be certain that critical views of nomos circulated already in the late fifth century and served as an important stimulus for early theorizing on law and justice.

We may assume that Antiphon proposes the identification between justice and lawfulness as an endoxon, an idea that many of his respectable contemporaries – especially those who treated law not only as an important social value but also as a pillar of constitutions – would happily endorse. Socrates in Xenophon’s Memorabilia proposes this same identification of the lawful and the just in a conversation with Hippias, where the Sophist, though initially skeptical of the claim, lacks any objection to it.Footnote ⁴⁴ Hippias’ skepticism, though, reflects the way that some contemporary thinkers pointed to the possibility that law and justice may not always align. A similar move may be at play in Antiphon’s text, which brings up the contrast between nomos and physis in order to expose the limits of identifying the just with the rules, nomima, of one’s city. The contrast between nomos and physis allows the author to stress the conventional character of law, but also its failure to prevent those who choose to follow their natural drives from transgression. Taken in isolation, Antiphon’s claim that “a person would best use justice to his own advantage if he considered the laws important when witnesses are present, but the requirements of nature important in the absence of witnesses” may be taken as a precursor of a Calliclean anthropology of greed. Nothing in the surviving fragments, however, suggests that Antiphon endorses such an anthropology in the normative way that Callicles’ does. Antiphon’s suggestion that human beings have the tendency to follow their natural drives seems rather to tie in with his broader interest in the concept of nature. But it also allows him to expose the limits of the efficacy of nomos (and hence to challenge its identification with justice) insofar as it cannot prevent people from transgressing it if they can avoid its sanctions.

Antiphon’s idea has a parallel in the so-called Sisyphus fragment, a dramatic fragment attributed alternately to Critias and Euripides. The speaker Sisyphus describes how the failure of law to prevent people from committing violence in secret led to the invention of the idea of a divinity “who will hear everything that is said among mortals and will be able to see everything that is done.”Footnote ⁴⁵ Like Sisyphus, Antiphon puts his finger on the limited power law has to ensure justice, and sees this problem as one that undermines the identification between the lawful and the just. But Antiphon would probably doubt that invoking a divinity would solve the problem. For, unlike Sisyphus, Antiphon suggests that the requirements of law are ultimately less binding than the requirements of nature. The papyrus fragments contain one example in which the contrast between nomos and physis shows how conventional ideas may impose and cultivate artificial and incorrect distinctions.

Antiphon’s criticism of “xenophobia,” which he describes as a consequence of the unnatural division between Greeks and barbarians, does not necessarily mean that he thought nature was always a better guide than convention. But his discussion in On Truth points continually to places where there is a conflict between physis and nomos, and addresses the consequences of such conflict for views of political and social life.

Like Antiphon, Hippias also appears to have turned to the nomos-physis antithesis as a tool that could allow people to replace ill-founded, conventional assumptions.Footnote ⁴⁶ In the Protagoras he exploits this contrast to urge those present – mostly Sophists visiting Athens from their home city-states, hosted by the Athenian Callias, and of course Socrates accompanied by the young Hippocrates – to think of themselves as members of the same family, household, and city, on account of their shared identity as “the wisest” (σοφώτατοι: Plato Protagoras 337c–338b = D17/C1).

Hippias’ interest in law and justice is prominent in his portrayal in Xenophon’s Memorabilia. At first, Xenophon introduces Hippias as an interlocutor of Socrates because of Hippias’ polymathy and interest in novelty. Hippias alludes to a new argument of his, about justice, one that “neither [Socrates] nor someone else would be able to contradict.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Instead of spelling out his own argument, however, Hippias challenges Socrates’ identification of the lawful (τὸ νόμιμον) and the just (δίκαιον).Footnote ⁴⁸ As we have seen, there is an interesting parallel between Antiphon’s and Xenophon’s texts; in both cases, the Sophists (Antiphon and Hippias, respectively) set out to refute or at least expose the limits of the identification between lawfulness and justice. What is striking, however, is that the nomos-physis contrast is not explicitly mentioned in Xenophon, though it may be seen as implicit in the distinction between written and unwritten laws, which shapes Socrates’ conversation with Hippias. In the first part of the conversation, Hippias suggests that the laws of the city are “what the citizens … have written down after having made an agreement (συνθέμενοι) about what people must do and what they must refrain from.”Footnote ⁴⁹ It is on the basis of this definition that he is then able to challenge Socrates’ identification of the lawful with the just: “how could someone consider either the laws or obedience to them to be something worth taking seriously, given that the very people who establish them often reject and change them?”Footnote ⁵⁰ While Xenophon’s Socrates ultimately convinces Hippias to see law and justice as aligned, it seems that the Sophist’s skepticism concerning this identification was well known (and presumably would have constituted the content of his speech on justice).

We are prevented from assessing Hippias’ views on law with any certainty because, unlike in the case of Antiphon, where fragments of his own work have survived, we know Hippias’ arguments only through their presentation by Plato and Xenophon, who present a Hippias colored by an agenda of Socratic apologetics. Still, both authors attribute to Hippias an interest in the criticism of law that seems in line with the general spirit of Antiphon’s On Truth. So we may assume that both Sophists belonged to a broader group of people who were suspicious of the role of law in ensuring righteous action. But neither their reluctance to accept the equation of the lawful with the just nor the contrast between nomos and physis that they relied on led them to challenge justice in the way that characterizes Callicles or Thrasymachus. At least Hippias seems to leave space for a better law, of the kind that Protagoras describes when he talks about the “old and good lawgivers.”

Conclusions

Writing in the fourth century, Plato gives to his two major political works titles that correspond to those of the two sections of the present chapter: Republic (Politeia, the word that we have been translating as “constitution” or “government”) and Laws (Nomoi). Plato thinks of himself as a philosopher, and, in another series of dialogues, attempts to show how this identity differs from those of a Sophist or a statesman. In many ways, the preceding discussion allows us to revisit these distinctions and to appreciate the debt that philosophy has to the tradition that its historiography has marked off as “sophistic.” At the beginning of this chapter I suggested that Aristotle’s commitment to empirical research, expressed in the project of collecting constitutions, may have built on the sophistic practice of “constitutional debate.” Furthermore, in spite of the polemical spirit in which it is cast, Aristoxenus’ claim regarding Plato’s plagiarism of Protagoras may contain some truth, as it reveals the philosopher’s debt to the sophistic practice of antilogia involving a comparative treatment of different constitutions. Rather than thinking of Plato as a plagiarist, then, we can use Aristoxenus’ criticism as a sign of the important role that sophistic practice played in the development of political ideas on constitutions. Criticism of the concept of law and its juxtaposition with nature triggers Socrates’ argument in the Gorgias and the Republic and motivates a number of ideas in the Laws. In the latter, we might think of the preambles to the laws and the theodicy of Book 10 as answers to Antiphon’s criticism of law, which turn on Plato’s idea that persuasion, rather than the fear of punishment, is the most effective way to ensure that citizens obey the law. There are thus numerous threads running from “sophistic” to “philosophical” political thought, and indeed we find that Plato’s writings are continually in dialogue with sophistic ideas.

Yet sophistic thought on politics does differ in some important ways from the philosophical tradition that responds to it. The most important, found already in the verb from which the name “Sophist” is formed, sophizein, is the sheer inventiveness in argumentation that characterizes the writings of the Sophists. We have seen how such inventiveness is displayed in the practice of antilogia, and how this practice presupposed and invited reflection on different types of constitution. Inventiveness in argumentation and experimentation with fresh and provocative ideas also provided the framework within which Hippias and Antiphon challenged the idea of law, as well as that in which the Old Oligarch challenged the Athenian constitution. Related to inventiveness in argumentation is a second characteristic that distinguishes the intellectuals we describe as Sophists, namely their interest in applying their skills in practice, and hence their ability to adjust theory to the contingencies of different situations. Through both oral epideixeis and written texts, they would have provided their audiences and readers with model speeches, allowing them to produce their own arguments, to formulate and support their ideas in the assembly.

A further distinctive mark that is shared among the fifth-century Sophists is their relation to democracy.Footnote ⁵¹ Absence of direct evidence concerning Protagoras’ own views should probably prevent us from describing him as “the first democratic political theorist in the history of the world.” But even if we assume – as it is likely to be the case – that Protagoras was de facto committed to Periclean democracy, we will have to admit that other Sophists opposed democracy. The most instructive case is Antiphon, leader of the oligarchic coup of 411, who was convicted for treason against the constitution (and Critias too acted as an oligarchic leader, which is relevant if we consider him a Sophist). And yet democracy was the canvas on which the Sophists were able to develop their practices and ideas. Scholars often note that Periclean Athens provided the catalyst that gave rise to the Sophistic movement; we should also take into account the substantial role that democracy in their home city-states played in shaping their professional identities.Footnote ⁵² Despite the absence of a unanimous attitude toward democracy, then, we can see how the question of the constitution not only played a major role in sophistic thinking but was also a driving force in the earliest sustained theorizing of politics. Likewise, reflection on the positive value but also on the constraints of nomos, often cast in the language of the nomos-physis antithesis, gave rise to original arguments on the relation between law and justice. The heuristic value of those arguments can hardly be overstated; adjusted to, and possibly also transformed by, the needs of Plato’s art, they trigger some of the most famous pages in the history of philosophy. The distinctive role that the fifth-century canonical Sophists played in the invention and development of political theory and practice, and occasionally also in bridging the gap between the two, justifies their place in the history of political thought.

Introduction

The Sophists’ views on the gods and religion are among their most radical and provocative. It was their new ideas about the gods that evoked immediate and severe counterreactions among their contemporaries. We have ancient reports of trials, some more trustworthy than others, that were held in late-fifth- and early-fourth-century-BCE democratic Athens against philosophers and other intellectuals on account of their views on religious matters.Footnote ¹ The trial of Socrates is the most famous of these. What were these new ideas and in what sense were they radical? Although ancient Greek religion was generally undogmatic, regionally diverse, and open to incorporating new ideas and even new gods, thinkers in fifth-century Athens put this flexibility to the test.Footnote ² They not only proposed new views on the gods, but also questioned the very foundation of traditional religious views. Anaxagoras and Socrates, in different ways, offer novel perspectives on what the divine is and is not; Prodicus, Democritus, and the so-called Sisyphus fragment provide psychological and/or sociological explanations of religious beliefs; and characters in plays by Euripides and Aristophanes deny outright the existence of the gods and, with that, the existence of traditional moral values.

To see this in a more detailed way, let us review the religious environment of ancient Greece generally and fifth-century Athens more specifically. Ancient Greek religion was fundamentally different from many modern religions. Greek religion was polytheistic and without dogma. The ancient Greeks worshiped many different gods, and they told many different and contradictory stories about them. To be sure, certain gods were often said to hold dominion over or represent this or that part of the world. For instance, Zeus, who is the traditional king of the gods, makes it rain, among other things. Yet Aphrodite, while the goddess of sexual desire, was here and there said to share dominion over the sea and the sky. Poets from Homer to Euripides could depict her as a caring mother or a vengeful intriguer. There did not exist a single authoritative account of the gods, but many ever-changing reinterpretations. Still, all gods share a series of basic features. They are immortal, although their characters are generally humanlike. They oversee human affairs, although without omniscience.Footnote ³ They regularly intervene into human lives, for better or worse, and often represent justice and in some way or other protect law and morality.Footnote ⁴ They are powerful, if with limits. And rather than being the creators of the world, they are themselves created. Still, they are the object of human worship and the receivers of their sacrifices.

Even if this outlines some aspects of the general attitude toward the gods of the Greek tradition, the attribute “divine” could be ascribed to many other entities as well. Hesiod, for instance, includes in his account of the gods parts of the physical cosmos, such as the surface of the earth or the sky, as well as personifications of actions and experiences, such as Battle or Lawfulness. In short, already in the earliest presentations of the gods in literature, we see a great variety of what could be regarded as gods.

This open theorization about the gods likely allowed philosophical and scientific attitudes to develop freely in Asia Minor in the sixth century. Anaximander of Miletus (first half of the sixth century) is said to have regarded the “boundless” or “unlimited” (τὸ ἄπειρον) as a divine (τὸ θεῖον) first principle from which everything comes to be.Footnote ⁵ The Ionian philosopher and rhapsode Xenophanes of Colophon (late sixth to early fifth century) criticizes the traditional depiction of the gods present in Homer and Hesiod, and he asks how such anthropomorphic and immoral gods can be gods at all (D8–10, 12–14, 16/B10–12, 14–16, 23). He proposed that god was an abstract entity, (almost) completely devoid of any humanlike characteristics.Footnote ⁶ As far as we know, these new accounts of the gods and such outspoken criticism of commonly accepted depictions of them were not regarded as a threat to the religious tradition.

It is important to note that ancient Greek religion had a crucial and inherently practical side to it. Life in ancient Greece was permeated by religious activities. Prayers, sacrifices, and the performance of rites occupied considerable space in both the public and private sphere. Generally speaking, every aspect of an individual’s life was marked by religious practice, whether as a libation performed before a meal, the duties at the household shrine to Hestia, or the rituals at important stages in life. As for the city, its life was regulated by religious festivals and communal worship, be it in the form of processions, sacrifices, or artistic performances. To keep the patron gods happy for the sake of the city’s well-being was a constant concern that required continually active worship. In fact, we know of about a hundred Attic festivals, and the Athenian civic calendar marked 144 days of festivals.Footnote ⁷

These aspects of religious life and the standard practices of worship remained mostly untouched by the philosophical ideas about religion that developed throughout Greece in the course of the sixth and early fifth centuries. At the same time, the emerging scientific and intellectual engagement with the world, later termed “philosophy,” developed in a constructive dialogue with theological questions. From its early beginnings and through most of antiquity, philosophy remained closely entangled with religion.Footnote ⁸ Indeed in Plato, for instance, philosophy and theology are inextricably linked. Generally, we may say that, in antiquity, private and civic religious practices and philosophical theology coexisted peacefully over long stretches of time. The time period covered in this chapter, however, is an exception to this rule.

It appears that in later fifth-century Athens, the independence of religious practices and critical religious thought reached a limit and their peaceful coexistence was disturbed. It is crucial to see that, despite the general latitude in the way that individual Greeks thought about the gods, there was considerable peer pressure within the polis to perform religious practices according to specific rules and ordinances and not to offend the gods with illegitimate behavior. If someone transgressed these crucial limitations, they would be accused of asebeia (impiety).”Footnote ⁹ In Athens of the fifth century, thinkers like Anaxagoras and Socrates were not only branded as impious but even prosecuted on account of it.

Four factors seem relevant for understanding how the perception of critical religious thought changed in the second half of the fifth century. First and foremost, the views on religion and the divine that intellectuals developed were different from and more radical than previous criticisms. Second, it seems that an accumulation of challenges to tradition in this time period accelerated hostile counterreactions, such as those that became manifest in the trial against Socrates. Third, a new medium – the book – facilitated the dissemination and wide reception of the new thoughts about the gods. One reason for the peaceful coexistence of earlier critical views and traditional religious practice seems to have been that these ideas were accessible to only very few. However, this situation changed with the technology of the book.Footnote ¹⁰ As Socrates says in Plato’s Apology (26d–e), a copy of Anaxagoras’ book was easily available on the marketplace; Socrates and Theaetetus in Plato’s Theaetetus repeatedly mention that they have read Protagoras’ “Man the Measure” dictum (151e, 161c, 166d). Last, late-fifth-century Athens witnessed some extraordinary historical circumstances – a devastating plague (430–426), sacrilegious attacks on religious objects (415), and a lost war and empire (404) – that likely added to the pressures on religious institutions and traditions to hold their ground and defend their status.Footnote ¹¹

The following survey of the religious thought in the later fifth century is grouped by a series of questions that the Sophists and their intellectual contemporaries addressed. This organization should not be taken to imply that a systematic theology of these thinkers may be constructed, nor even that this set of questions exhausts their interest in the divine. Far from it; the evidence we have is scattered and often meager. However, these questions and the fact that they were addressed can illustrate the innovative and often daring character of sophistic approaches to religion. By calling into question any knowledge about the gods or even their existence, late fifth-century thinkers undermined traditional certainties about the nature and status of the divine and divinely sanctioned moral rules.

What Power Do the Gods Have?

Anaxagoras may not typically be regarded as a Sophist, but with Anaxagoras philosophy moves to Athens (A7/P13), and the seed of conflict seems to be sown. He lived in Athens for roughly thirty years,Footnote ¹² was a close friend of the leading politician Pericles, and evidently acquired some public attention. Yet he departed Athens in exile, after having been accused and tried for impiety.Footnote ¹³ Anaxagoras was distinguished by his materialism. The sun was a red-hot metal ball, not Helios the god. Eclipses had a naturalistic explanation, as did meteorites.Footnote ¹⁴ Everything in his world consists of matter and changes due to material processes except for nous (mind). Nous, separated from everything else, triggers the rotation that starts the cosmogonic process that enables our world to come into existence.Footnote ¹⁵ Hence nous appears to be a divinity of sorts, although we have no evidence that Anaxagoras actually called it such. As Plato’s Socrates (see pp. 274–5) and Aristotle would later point out, nous served only a small function in explaining the world. What Anaxagoras brought to Athens with his physical theory was a radical reduction in the scope of divine powers.

The naturalistic stance on the gods was regarded as one of the main novelties of the new intellectuals as well as one of the most dangerous of their views. Aristophanes’ Clouds (first performed in 423) provides the most important testimony to this. Here, Socrates is presented as a model of the new intellectuals. He exhibits methods and attitudes of thinkers such as Protagoras and Prodicus,Footnote ¹⁶ Anaxagoras and Diogenes of Apollonia,Footnote ¹⁷ Archelaus,Footnote ¹⁸ and, as far as we can tell, Socrates himself.Footnote ¹⁹ In the play, Strepsiades, an old Athenian who joins the Thinkery, the school run by Socrates, identifies in the final words of the play the attitude toward the gods as the most outrageous aspect of these new intellectuals: “Pursue them, hit them, stone them for many crimes, but most of all for injustice toward the gods!” (1513–14).Footnote ²⁰ In this portrayal, a naturalistic and ostensibly atheistic stance on the gods is given center stage. One of the first lessons that Strepsiades receives in the Thinkery is that there are no gods. Socrates: “What do you mean, ‘the gods’? In the first place, gods aren’t legal tender here. … You want to know the truth about the gods, what they really are? … And to enter into communion with the Clouds, who are our deities?” (247–8, 250–3). After the Chorus of Clouds introduce themselves as the new object of reverence, Socrates concludes in interchange with Strepsiades:

The drive for naturalistic accounts of various phenomena runs throughout the sophistic engagement with religion but is not confined to it. Medical texts of the later fifth century also provide evidence of contemporary efforts in accounting for illness and health by physical factors rather than the esteem or displeasure of divine beings. In the late fifth century, medical experts rejected the view of a divine cause behind diseases and other health conditions. The writings of these thinkers are preserved in the Hippocratic corpus. The author of the treatise On the Sacred Disease, a work on epilepsy, strongly distinguishes his medical work from those of the traditional religious healers, whom he calls “charlatans.”Footnote ²¹ He offers a clear statement of the naturalism of the new medical science: “It seems to me that this disease is not in any regard more divine than the others, but just as the other diseases have a nature from which each one arises, this one has a nature and a cause.”Footnote ²² The author of On Regimen shows a similar approach, this time to dreams. Dreams, he argues, should not all be taken as messages from gods, as some dreams have their origin in the dreamer’s body (Hippocrates De victu 4.87). When correctly understood, these dreams can provide information about the condition of the dreamer or even indicate impending diseases.Footnote ²³

Just as the gods do not govern the health of individuals, they do not govern the health of communities. For example, in one of the few preserved fragments of Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, who was active in Athens likely in the last third of the fifth century and an expert in rhetoric, we read: “The gods do not notice human affairs: for otherwise they would not disregard the greatest good for humans, justice. For we see that humans do not practice this” (D17/B8).Footnote ²⁴ Similarly, in Euripides’ Bellerophon the gods’ apparent disregard for human crimes or unjust suffering counts as evidence for their irrelevance and even nonexistence (see pp. 270–2). This leads us back once more to Aristophanes’ Clouds where the new intellectual downsizing of the gods is inextricably linked to immorality. Yet, Aristophanes’ critical perspective shifts the focus slightly. His point is not so much that Socrates’ diagnosis of injustice in the world leads to his disbelief in Zeus (although this argument is made in 395–402), but more that his and his students’ outright disbelief in the gods leads to a complete loss of their morality.Footnote ²⁵ In any case, the message that these testimonies share is clear: the gods have lost their status as guardians of justice in human society. Calling into question the gods’ standing as divine stewards of morality becomes one of the hallmarks of fifth-century intellectuals.

Can the Gods Be Known?

Protagoras, like Anaxagoras, was not a native Athenian, but a repeat visitor to Athens, where he enjoyed, according to Plato (Meno 91e), unblemished social esteem. He wrote a treatise on the divine (On the Gods), of which only the opening sentence remains: “About the gods I am able to know neither that they exist nor that they do not exist nor of what kind they are in form: for many things prevent me from knowing this, its obscurity and the brevity of man’s life” (D10/B4).

Already in antiquity opinions differed as to what Protagoras’ statement entails. Several took it to be a declaration of atheism (on which see pp. 268–72). This seems off the mark.Footnote ²⁶ He may well have affirmed belief in the gods after he denied knowledge of them, although that also seems unlikely. Was his agnosticism an expression of piety and reverence in the face of the unknowable nature of the gods?Footnote ²⁷ This seems unlikely as well. It is possible that Protagoras, like his younger contemporaries Prodicus and Democritus, wrote about the gods as an object of human belief and/or about religion as a social phenomenon.Footnote ²⁸ But certainty is out of reach.

Protagoras’ agnostic stance is distinguished by an emphasis on the limitations of human understanding. Two things prevent knowledge of the gods: its difficulty and human mortality. The matter is obscure to us because we are human. The stress on human nature as a determining factor points to a connection with the famous opening statement of another of Protagoras’ books, this one called Truth. There he says, “Of all things the measure is man: of those that are, that they are; and of those that are not, that they are not” (D9/B1).Footnote ²⁹ The interpretation of this sentence is long debated; often, it is read, together with Plato (and Aristotle), as a statement of individual relativism and “man” is understood as “a man,” “each individual man.”Footnote ³⁰ In light of Protagoras’ agnostic stance on the gods and its brief justification, one may want to understand “man” primarily in the generic sense of “mankind.”Footnote ³¹ On this reading, the point of the sentence is not the relativity of judgments or tastes among human beings, but that human understanding is limited by human nature and that nothing can be determined outside of our restrictedly human capacity. Although this is not how Protagoras’ ancient readers (most of all Plato) took it,Footnote ³² it would allow for a smooth connection with Protagoras’ agnosticism concerning the gods. For here, the formulation “the brevity of man’s life” points to the generic sense of “man.”

According to Protagoras, knowledge of the existence of gods lies beyond human reach. The divine is not something that can be grasped by a human mind. Taken in this way, the sentence is no more atheistic than it is theistic – it states only that human capacity is in principle insufficient to answer the question.

Protagoras’ statement is certainly radical.Footnote ³³ All religious beliefs and practices are based on the assumptions that we can at least make fair guesses about the gods and that we as human beings can reach them somehow and within limits. Protagoras tells his contemporaries that the veracity of their guesses is impossible to evaluate. Incidentally, the historian Herodotus, who lived at about the same time as Protagoras, seems to share this agnosticism, or at least to lean toward it. For instance, he expresses reluctance to write about Egyptian religion on the grounds that he did “not think that any one nation knows more about such things than any other.”Footnote ³⁴ This could be understood as saying that no one knows anything certain about the gods. And as far as the Greeks are concerned, he maintains, Homer and Hesiod invented their gods.Footnote ³⁵

One other consequence of Protagoras’ agnosticism is that religious experts – priests, diviners, and poets – are confused at best and deceiving pretenders at worst. The unknown author of the Derveni Papyrus, a fragmentarily preserved text composed probably at the end of the fifth century,Footnote ³⁶ proposes a view that has similar consequences for the traditional religious expert. The Derveni author, however, is far from agnostic about divine things. His message (as much as it can be reconstructed) is not that we cannot know whether or what the gods are. Knowledge of the divine is attainable, but only if one knows how to interpret divine signs. These divine signs include dreams and oracles but also texts, such as the Orphic hymn on which the Derveni author focuses in the best-preserved part of his treatise. For this author the correct interpretation entails peeling away the literal or “surface” meaning of names and words in order to demonstrate that the real god is very different from Zeus as he is traditionally depicted.Footnote ³⁷ Those who take myths literally and think that there is a Zeus and other gods are misguided and do not really know the divine.Footnote ³⁸

In his treatise, the Derveni author exemplifies his method of interpretation by analyzing an Orphic theogonic poem. He extracts from this story about Zeus’s ascent to power a theory of how the cosmos came into being.Footnote ³⁹ In this cosmology, nous (mind), is the only god that truly exists, and is identical with the element air.Footnote ⁴⁰ Zeus and all the other traditional gods (Kronos, Aphrodite, etc.) are poetic guises for nous, with each god revealing a different aspect of nous’s (air’s) nature. For instance, Kronos reveals the god’s action on material particles – he makes them collide with each other. The Derveni author justifies this explanation by showing that “Kronos” in truth means Kro-nous, nous insofar as he makes things collide (κρούειν). Or, the god Oceanus reveals the power and influence of nous over other material things, because in the Orphic text it is said to be “wide-flowing,” to be influential.Footnote ⁴¹ And so forth.Footnote ⁴²

Importantly, the interpretative method that the Derveni author uses to decipher the hidden meaning behind the gods’ names appears not to be some idiosyncratic method that is confined merely to the Derveni text. For instance, Socrates in Plato’s Gorgias (493a1–c3) reports the interpretation of a “wise man” that is strikingly similar in its approach.Footnote ⁴³ Etymological explication of the names of the gods, which is one of the interpretative strategies that the Derveni author uses, can also be found in a passage in Euripides’ Bacchae, where Teiresias takes the goddesses Demeter to be nurturing Earth (based on an implied etymology Gê-mêtêr, Earth-mother) and Dionysus as wine.Footnote ⁴⁴ Furthermore, Prodicus is said to “emend by change of letters the names of the gods.”Footnote ⁴⁵ This may be connected with an interest in etymology, which is attested elsewhere for Prodicus,Footnote ⁴⁶ and which may have played a role in his engagement with religious beliefs (on which, see the following section).

Whence the Beliefs about the Gods?

If the gods are not in charge of heavenly or earthly affairs, or if it is not even possible to know about the gods, then a further question arises: How and why do humans form beliefs about the gods?Footnote ⁴⁷ In the later fifth century, we have evidence that at least three (and possibly four) thinkers addressed this question: Prodicus, Democritus, the author of the Sisyphus fragment, and perhaps Protagoras, depending on what we can make of the story found in Plato’s Protagoras. Owing to the nature of the available evidence, one can only speculate about what in particular motivated these thinkers to raise this question. An interest in the psychological and sociological aspects of human communities runs through their answers.Footnote ⁴⁸

Prodicus hailed from the island of Ceos and was a famous public figure in Athens roughly at the time of Socrates. Our most important source for Prodicus’ views on religion and the gods are papyrus fragments of the work On Piety by the first-century Epicurean philosopher Philodemus.Footnote ⁴⁹ We also have later reports from Sextus Empiricus (second or third century CE). Their testimony differs in some small details. According to Philodemus (his evidence coming from the third-century-BCE Stoic Persaeus), Prodicus postulated a two-stage development of human beliefs in the gods.Footnote ⁵⁰ In a first stage, the earliest humans interpreted “things that provided nourishment and help” as objects of worship and so took them to be gods.Footnote ⁵¹ Then, in a second stage, these humans took as gods “those [people] who had discovered means of nourishment, protection, or the other arts.”Footnote ⁵² Demeter and Dionysus (bread and wine) are given as examples. Philodemus’ account distinguishes between the deification of natural phenomena and the deification of products, such as bread and wine, that result from invented techniques such as agriculture and viniculture.Footnote ⁵³ The evidence from Sextus Empiricus on the whole confirms this view of Prodicus’ position, yet the two stages are here conflated into a single-tier theory of the deification of benefits from the natural world; celestial bodies, natural products, and foods were all deified in the same way.Footnote ⁵⁴ In any case, the main point of Prodicus’ theory seems to be that traditional gods, such as Demeter and Dionysus, are personified projections of human feelings of awe and gratitude toward elements that are beneficial in their lives. Prodicus’ views on the gods thus involve a psychological analysis of human behavior and an understanding of religious beliefs as the result of historical and technological change that can be tracked, at least in its main stages.Footnote ⁵⁵

Democritus came from Protagoras’ hometown of Abdera in Thrace (northern Greece). He is famous for his view that the cosmos and everything in it consists of (nothing other than) atoms and void. Yet he also speculated on the origins of religious belief and practice, though, as in other cases, our evidence is sparse. According to Sextus Empiricus, Democritus spoke to the effect that “when ancient men saw what happens in the sky, like thunder, lightning, lightning bolts … they became frightened and thought that gods were the causes of these things” (D207/A75). According to Clement of Alexandria, Democritus held that “a few learned men (logioi), lifting their hands toward that place we Greeks now call the air, <said>, ‘Zeus meditates on all things, and he knows all things, gives them, and takes them away, and he is the king of all things.’”Footnote ⁵⁶ Like Prodicus, Democritus advances a psychological account of religious beliefs. But unlike Prodicus, he sees their origins in feelings of fear rather than gratitude. Furthermore, Democritus, according to Clement’s testimony, made a “few learned men” responsible for the widespread belief in Zeus’s power and divine kingship. We do not know whether Democritus held these men to be charlatans, only that he saw traditional religious beliefs as having a distinctly human origin.

We turn now to the Sisyphus fragment. This passage, from a play by Critias or Euripides,Footnote ⁵⁷ offers a story about the early days of humankind and how humans turned from a wild, animal-like state into law-abiding citizens. The story is most likely told by Sisyphus, who, according to traditional stories, was a clever mortal who attempted to cheat the gods and was in turn eternally punished by them.Footnote ⁵⁸

The speech preserved in the fragment begins with a description of the beginning of human life as wild and without order. With the invention of law came order. Yet law was effective only against publicly committed crimes. Law was powerless over evils committed in secret. At that point, the speech explains as follows.

The text provides an aetiological explanation of humans’ beliefs in the traditional gods. It offers an explanation about the way humans came to believe in gods that governed, invisibly and from afar, heavenly, earthly, and, most importantly, human affairs. It also offers an explanation about the way humans came to believe specifically in the Olympian gods of Greek tradition. The Olympians lived in the sky with Zeus as their leader. Zeus was a weather god who sent rain, “lightning flashes, and terrifying crashes of thunder.”Footnote ⁵⁹ A wise man recognized the inborn human fear of heavenly phenomena and the total helplessness of humans against things falling from the sky, and leveraged it for useful social purposes. This wise man taught that “the gods” were responsible for everything that comes from above, “the gods” hear and know everything, even when done in secret, and “the gods” can issue inescapable punishment. The gods are an invention by a cunning man who knew how to channel human fears to keep people from committing crimes.

As with Prodicus and Democritus, the Sisyphus fragment analyzes religious belief from a psychological perspective. While the fragment mentions the benefits that the heavens bestow (in a way that stands in line with Prodicus’ analysis), the emphasis of the account falls on the fears and dangers that the gods instill. The text, moreover, attributes much to the action of a wise man, who discerned something of the heavens, something of human psychology, and discovered how the one could be used to manipulate the other. In this respect the Sisyphus fragment is quite close to Democritus; indeed, it presents in a unified fashion the two aspects of Democritean theory testified by Sextus Empiricus and Clement of Alexandria. The Sisyphus fragment further adds a sociological perspective – religious beliefs, even if they are grounded in nothing but human invention, serve a social purpose. They effectively “extinguish lawlessness.”Footnote ⁶⁰

Among the texts that look at religious beliefs with a view to their role in society and especially the formation of society, a passage in Plato’s Protagoras (320c–322d) needs to be mentioned.Footnote ⁶¹ Here, Protagoras shares a “story” (μῦθος) about the origin of human society. At an early stage of human development from primitive creatures to socialized citizens, Prometheus steals “cleverness in the practical arts” and “fire” from Athena and Hephaestus and therewith provides humans with the know-how that is necessary for survival and conducive to their life (περὶ τὸν βίον σοφίαν, 321d–e). Since this gift, so the tale alleges, makes humans partake of a divine share (θείας μετέσχε μοίρας), they begin to worship the gods (322a3–5). Protagoras’ myth does not go into much detail, but we may perhaps say that, as in Prodicus’ account, here too humans start to worship gods after (or because?) they acquired (or recognized as such) basic benefits in their lives. In stark contrast to the Sisyphus fragment, Protagoras in his myth makes the belief in gods explicitly not the cause of law and order in society.Footnote ⁶²

Do the Gods Exist?

Some of the texts we have seen so far seem to cast doubt on the existence of the traditional gods. Yet did they go so far as to deny the existence of anything divine? How far did the critique of religious beliefs and practices in fifth-century Athens go? We will see presently that, despite a common skepticism about the traditional gods and their powers, explicit atheism was rare.Footnote ⁶³

I begin with some qualifications. Treating atheism in the fifth century generally has certain difficulties. The first concerns terminology. What we mean by atheism today is not the same as what the label atheos meant in the fifth century. Before Plato’s use of the word in the Apology (26c3), the term atheos simply meant “godless” in the sense of “immoral” or “impious,” without implying one’s denial of the existence of gods.Footnote ⁶⁴ To speak as clearly as possible, when I speak of atheism in the following, I mean “the negation of any type of deity or supernatural forces.”Footnote ⁶⁵ The second difficulty is a scarcity of textual evidence.Footnote ⁶⁶

These qualifications in place, we can begin with Protagoras, whose case is fairly straightforward. The charge of atheism was leveled against him at different times throughout antiquity. The Epicurean philosopher Diogenes of Oenoanda (second century CE) understood Protagoras’ agnosticism to amount to atheism (R24/A23).Footnote ⁶⁷ There are also reports that Protagoras’ books were burned in the marketplace (P19/A1) and that he was tried and sentenced to death because of atheism. However, these reports are unlikely to be true.Footnote ⁶⁸ If what has survived of his work provides an accurate picture, it is inappropriate to label Protagoras as an atheist. The denial of the knowability of the divine does not entail atheism; indeed, it actually excludes it.

Somewhat less straightforward is the case of Diagoras of Melos, a poet who already in antiquity acquired the sobriquet “the atheist” (ὁ ἄθεος). His “atheism,” however, is not necessarily the atheism of our working definition given above. Diagoras became famous (and apparently was outlawed) for mocking the Eleusinian Mysteries, and in this regard certainly qualified for the label “impious.”Footnote ⁶⁹ Yet, as Winiarczyk has shown, the view that Diagoras denied the existence of the gods is based on a Hellenistic construction.Footnote ⁷⁰

The cases of Prodicus and the Sisyphus fragment are more intricate. Both attempt to explain how belief in the gods arises from gratitude or fear, and that consequently religion is a human invention. To begin with the Sisyphus fragment, it has been described as the “most outspoken example of fifth-century atheism.”Footnote ⁷¹ It can be granted that the speech rejects the traditional gods of fifth-century Greece.Footnote ⁷² Yet it would be misguided to regard it as a statement of atheism tout court. Whether anything divine exists is not the issue at stake. The aetiological account pertains to the human invention of traditional religious concepts and beliefs.Footnote ⁷³

As for Prodicus, two texts of Philodemus are especially relevant. In the first, Philodemus reports that Epicurus declares as utterly insane Prodicus, Diagoras, and Critias for abolishing the divine from the things that are in existence.Footnote ⁷⁴ Epicurus’ list of atheists is probably the earliest of its kind, and later such lists of atheists became popular in antiquity.Footnote ⁷⁵ Prodicus’ inclusion in this list shows nothing more (but also nothing less) than that, about a century after his time, he was regarded as an atheist who denied the existence of anything divine.Footnote ⁷⁶ In the second fragment, Philodemus ascribes to Prodicus the view “that the gods that humans believe in neither exist nor know.”Footnote ⁷⁷ Together with the account of the origin of religious beliefs, this passage has been taken as proof of Prodicus’ atheism.Footnote ⁷⁸ The crux of this interpretation is that Prodicus dismantles the belief in the traditional deities without instituting an alternative deity in its place.Footnote ⁷⁹ But does this silence, even if not just the result of the scarcity of evidence, suffice for calling him an atheist? An alternative view would be that the possibility of divine existence was not, perhaps in adaptation of a Protagorean agnosticism, among Prodicus’ primary concerns. Whether Prodicus was an atheist might simply be the wrong question to ask.

A plain statement of atheism does exist in the sophistic period. We find it in a fragment of Euripides’ play Bellerophon.

In this passage, the question of the gods’ existence is confronted directly and denied explicitly. Even more remarkably, this declamation takes into view not just the gods of tradition, but any divine power. The existence of the gods is refuted with an argument that holds for any divine being. Moreover, the argument does not require sophisticated science or psychological insight. It appeals directly to human intuitions in its instruction to “consider for yourselves”: How can there be gods, purported keepers of justice, when wicked and criminal men live happier lives than pious and peaceful ones?Footnote ⁸¹ Since this situation is unjust and gods are supposed to be guarantors of justice, they do not exist.

The vigor of this argument comes to the fore when compared with another one that long served to question the traditional portrayal of the gods as humanlike and plainly immoral beings. This is expressed in another verse by Euripides: “If the gods do a shameful thing, they are not gods.”Footnote ⁸² Surely, if the gods are acting unjustly, they themselves cannot be gods. This critique of traditional religion is implied already in Xenophanes and it will become crucial for Socrates and Plato. This criticism might be strong enough to deny the existence of the gods as traditionally depicted; however, it leaves room for the objection that there may still exist a different kind of divine being that is inherently good. The argument offered in the Bellerophon passage, by contrast, is immune to this objection. The evident existence of injustice in the world is inconsistent with the existence of the divine, granted the premise that the divine is good and powerful. Atheism was thus publicly uttered during the later fifth century.Footnote ⁸³

What Could the Gods Be?

To conclude the discussion of religious thought in the later fifth century, we need to take a look at Socrates and how his theology compares with the ideas discussed so far. The Socrates of Plato’s Apology, other Socratic dialogues, and Xenophon’s Socratic works shares with many of his contemporaries discussed above an innovative and in some sense radical approach to the divine – so radical that his fellow citizens charged and condemned him to death as a religious agitator.Footnote ⁸⁴ However, what Socrates proposes is also markedly different from his contemporaries. Instead of focusing on abolishing established views about the gods, Socrates embraces many aspects of traditional religion,Footnote ⁸⁵ while at the same time transforming traditional views into a profoundly different characterization of the divine. This transformation results in a more clearly defined picture of what the divine in fact is – wise and good and the cause of goodness in the worldFootnote ⁸⁶ – and thus deviates from his contemporaries’ focus on pointing out what the gods are not.

Plato’s presentation of his teacher’s stance on the gods differs in many crucial respects from the Socrates we saw in Aristophanes’ Clouds. In the Clouds, Socrates, in line with other fifth-century intellectuals, downgrades the traditional gods to purely physical phenomena and does away with moral rules grounded in fear of the gods. In Plato’s Apology, when defending himself against the charges of “not recognizing the gods whom the city recognizes” and “introducing other, new divinities (daimonia),” Socrates underlines his own conformity with traditional religious beliefs. Nevertheless, much of his theology is new. An interplay of conventional beliefs and an unconventional approach to the divine permeates both the way in which Socrates conducts philosophy and what he says about the divine.

Socrates’ philosophical conduct is presented as rooted in religious experience. For instance, Socrates holds in conformity with tradition that Apollo speaks through the oracle in Delphi (Apology 21a–b) and that he sends messages through dreams (Apology 33c4–7; Crito 43d–44b).Footnote ⁸⁷ Trusting that the god (Apollo) does not lie (21b6–7),Footnote ⁸⁸ he seeks to understand what the god means when he announces through the Delphic oracle that no one is wiser than Socrates (Apology 21a–3c).Footnote ⁸⁹ In trying to understand the god, Socrates interrogates others and their claims to possess wisdom. His life devoted to philosophy is thus a god’s calling and a divine mission (Apology 28e4–6, 29d3–6, 30a5–b4).Footnote ⁹⁰

Turning now to the assertions about the divine, we again see traditional elements turned into something new. Let us first look at the assertion that god is wise. According to Socrates, only god has true wisdom, whereas humans can be wise only in a limited way.Footnote ⁹¹ Socrates is wisest insofar as he is aware of the restricted scope of his human knowledge (Apology 21d2–7, 29b4–6). He knows that he knows nothing valuable (οὐδὲν καλὸν κἀγαθόν, 21d4).Footnote ⁹² This strict distinction between divine knowledge and human ignorance has traditional roots and is expressed by previous thinkers.Footnote ⁹³ That the gods know more than humans, especially about the future, was a widespread belief and underlies, for instance, the idea of prophecy. Yet, Socrates’ ascription of wisdom to the divine implies a more specific, albeit abstract, claim. Wisdom here means to know things of the highest ethical importance, such as the good (cf. Apology 21d4).Footnote ⁹⁴ Apart from its traditional background, Socrates’ attitude to human understanding bears some resemblance to Protagoras’ agnosticism about the gods. Both find humans inherently incapable of attaining knowledge about highest things, and both profess themselves to be aware of the limits of their knowledge. In contrast to Protagoras, however, Socrates does know something about the divine, namely that it is wise and good.Footnote ⁹⁵ This leads us to Socrates’ second assertion, that god is good.

In the Republic, Plato has Socrates argue extensively that god is good and the cause of good things (Republic 2 379c2–7).Footnote ⁹⁶ In the Apology and Euthyphro, we do not find the view expressed in such explicit terms, but an understanding of god as good and the cause of good things in the world underlies Socrates’ statements here as well. In Euthyphro 5e–6c, Socrates rejects the idea that the gods quarrel or disagree with one anotherFootnote ⁹⁷ and in 15a he asserts that whatever good humans receive comes from the gods.Footnote ⁹⁸ In the Apology, Socrates describes himself as guided by a divine voice or sign, the daimonion,Footnote ⁹⁹ that prevents him from doing what is wrong (Apology 31c–d, 40a–c). By obeying the god, he cares most about the truth and ensures that his soul is in the best possible state (Apology 29c–30b). Moreover, following god’s command, Socrates endows goodness to the world, as he encourages and helps others to become virtuous by caring about their soul rather than wealth and reputation (Apology 30a–b, 36c5–d1). These testaments speak of divine goodness in a moral or ethical sense. However, there is evidence in Xenophon (Memorabilia 1.4 and 4.3), corroborated by Plato’s Phaedo (97b8–9d2), that Socrates saw divine goodness manifest on the cosmic scale as well. Here, Socrates points to the universe as designed by an intelligent godFootnote ¹⁰⁰ who created everything with a view to what is best.Footnote ¹⁰¹ We can see then that Socrates combines his accounts of divine goodness and wisdom into a view of god as cosmic intelligence that causes good for and among individual human beings and in the universe at large. This position stands in opposition not only to a materialistic view of creation by accident that we saw in the theories of the Atomists and also Anaxagoras, but also the traditional understanding of the gods as being themselves created by, rather than creators of, the universe (cf. Hesiod’s Theogony). With the explicit statement that the divine is the cause only of good things, Socrates furthermore rewrites the traditional view that the gods bring good and bad things to humans.Footnote ¹⁰² At the same time, he seems to counter those fifth-century voices that proclaim the gods’ neglect of human beings, for example, those we saw expressed in different ways by Thrasymachus and Euripides. In making the divine omnipresent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, Socrates opposes at once traditional religion and contemporary Athenian thinkers.Footnote ¹⁰³

Reading Socrates as a foil to his contemporaries on the question of the gods thus sharpens our understanding of their religious innovations. What made the ideas of Protagoras, Prodicus, and Euripides’ characters so radical is not a new concept of the gods,Footnote ¹⁰⁴ but a change of perspective on the divine and on religion as a whole. Rather than proposing new kinds of gods, these thinkers argue that we cannot know anything about them, that they do not even exist, or that they are invented by human psychology. More than previous criticisms of religion, these thinkers’ views were perceived as having grave moral consequences. Contemporaries such as Aristophanes found these alarming, as did perhaps Plato’s Socrates, who nevertheless ended up paying the price for them. Although Socrates in some sense shared with his contemporaries an innovative stance on the traditional gods, he opposed their radical downsizing of the divine as the cause of goodness in the world.

Introduction

For historians of philosophy, one of the central developments in the intellectual landscape of late-fifth-century-BCE Greece is the increasingly sophisticated teaching and practice of what we might call skill in argumentation. In the remaining evidence for this period, this is manifested most prominently in the use of an antilogical pattern consisting of paired arguments on both sides of a question, along with various techniques for refutation, and the use of the question-answer mode of discussion. As I will try to show, these types of arguments are deployed for two purposes, logical and rhetorical. The contrast of opposite opinions and development of rigorous modes of critique and refutation support inquiry and exploration on topics ranging from legal, political, and moral questions to metaphysics, medicine, science, and beyond. Antilogical argumentation, moreover, is used to demonstrate and teach technê logôn, the art of speaking.

Understanding the intellectual culture of the late fifth century is difficult because the textual remains are fragmentary; moreover, much of that culture was oral to begin with, and we do not know exactly how the written texts that survive were used for instruction.Footnote ¹ Yet we do know that the late fifth century in Greece was a period of enormously stimulating intellectual activity and discoveries, one of which was the collective discovery of the subject of argumentation: what “arguments” (logoi) are, how to craft them skillfully, and how to teach skill in argument. Friedrich Solmsen calls these “intellectual experiments,” motivated by the search for novelty in the spirit of intellectual competition.Footnote ² G. E. R. Lloyd too has emphasized the restless, critical, and competitive character of the period; we see thinkers raising hard questions about the natures of the disciplines themselves (for example, about knowledge, science, and philosophy), challenging basic assumptions, demanding justification and evidence, and engaging in highly adversarial and combative forms of debate.Footnote ³ Lloyd and others have explained these features by appealing to the social and political background – Greek city-states of this period were self-governing, autonomous communities in which free speech (isêgoria) was prized and protected (particularly in democratic city-states like Athens), and debate thrived in political and legal institutions such as assemblies and courts. These are the settings from which emerged important words and concepts relating to justification and proof, including martyrion (evidence) which derives from the Greek word martys (witness); the terms elenchus and elenchein, which have as their primary senses the cross-examining of witnesses and refutation of an opposing speaker’s argument; and the idea of testing an idea or hypothesis by giving an account (logon didonai), which originates from the practice of rendering a financial account in the public auditing of officials in Athens (euthyna).Footnote ⁴ Those who were speakers and audiences in assemblies or participants and jurors in legal cases brought the same expectations for debate, proof, and argument to the rest of the public intellectual sphere, in which people would debate each other in a “marketplace of ideas.”

Aristotle contends that, before him, the teaching of argument proceeded largely by offering students sample wares, much like a shoemaker teaching shoemaking simply by displaying sample shoes he has made.Footnote ⁵ Aristotle’s claim is borne out by the evidence; in the late fifth century, there is no theoretical taxonomy for talking about types of argument (e.g., rhetorical, dialectical, demonstrative), no concept of valid deductive argument, no methods of discovery for “first principles” of proofs. What was taught in the late fifth century was a less differentiated technê logôn that, because of the multiple meanings of logos, can be translated as “art of speeches” or “skill at argumentation.” This technê encompasses what would later be called “rhetoric,” “dialectic,” and “demonstrative science” (to use Aristotle’s terms); its teachers and practitioners (such as Protagoras and Socrates)Footnote ⁶ span the fourth-century disciplinary boundaries between “philosopher,” “rhetorician,” and “dialectician.”

I begin in the next section by examining the evidence for the fifth-century teaching and practice of skill in argumentation, including, in subsequent sections, the ability to argue on both sides of any question, to refute any thesis, to question anyone holding any thesis, and to apply this skill in a subject-neutral way, that is, universally. As will become clear, the practitioners of antilogy use it as a means of philosophical inquiry but are also interested in the forms of argument for their own sake, as well as in their value for rhetorical display, entertainment, and edification. In the final section, we turn to some of the reactions that these texts and practices provoked in their contemporaries, those who characterized such practices as “making the worse argument better” and eristic, motivated purely by the pursuit of victory in argument. We also look at some of the philosophical issues and problems that fifth-century technê logôn prompts and gives rise to in the fourth century concerning philosophy of language, epistemology, and method in philosophy. In doing so, we emphasize that technê logôn belongs squarely in the history of philosophy.

Practices of Argument in the Fifth Century

The Greeks have a long history of legal, political, and civic institutions – courts, assemblies, civic councils, gymnasia, and religious festivals – in which argument, debate, and speeches take place. Cicero accordingly dates the beginnings of rhetoric to the early fifth century with the Sicilians Corax and Tisias, but this is probably both too early and too late.Footnote ⁷ The philosophical tradition of this time is marked by oral and written argumentation; indeed, vigorous debate is the defining characteristic of much Presocratic science, philosophy, and medicine.Footnote ⁸ Even so, before the late fifth century, the Greeks do not mark off skill in argument as a formal and distinct discipline, much less an object of theoretical study. Of course, they do have terms for speaking or arguing well, such as deinos legein, “good at speaking/talking/arguing” (which is sometimes conjoined with sophos),Footnote ⁹ and euglôssos, “eloquent” (or sometimes “glib”).Footnote ¹⁰ The word euglôssia, “eloquence” or “effective speaking,”Footnote ¹¹ is the name for an admired capacity, not a specialized expertise. This is the language used to denote skill at speaking, which often includes skill at advising, teaching, and reasoning in general.

In the late fifth century, a group of intellectuals, teachers, and writers began to cultivate and teach skill at argumentation, consisting of an all-purpose ability to argue for or against any thesis in any subject.Footnote ¹² The teaching of this skill is associated above all with Protagoras, who is described as being the preeminent master of argument, the first to teach this skill and the first to introduce the logôn agôn, “contest of words,” which may have been public debating contests.Footnote ¹³ What he taught was probably called technê logôn, the art of arguments, speeches, or words. Similarly, Socrates seems to have been targeted for teaching technê logôn by Critias, who inserted a clause into a law that made it illegal “to teach the art of words (logôn technên didaskein).”Footnote ¹⁴

To know what this art included, we must go by reports of the activities of the Sophists. Many of them gave live performances or demonstrations (epideixeis) whose purpose was evidently entertainment, advertisement, and instruction. There were epideixeis at festivals such as the Olympics and the Panathenaic Festival, which could involve performances of persuasive speeches, poetry, philosophy, and history, as well as multiparticipant debates. Hippias gave performances at the panhellenic games at Olympia, offering to speak extemporaneously on any topic (including Homer and the poets) and answer any questions (D8/A8), as did Gorgias at the theater in Athens (D11a/A1a), as well as at the Olympian games and the Pythian games at Delphi (D31–2/B7–9). Such epideixeis were evidently a regular feature of the games.Footnote ¹⁵ Epideixeis were given at the Lyceum and at private houses.Footnote ¹⁶ For example, Prodicus is reported to “have made an incredible amount of money by making private performances (idiai epideixeis) and teaching the young” (Plato Hippias Major 282c).Footnote ¹⁷ Epideixeis can consist of not only long speeches but also question-answer-style refutations, as we see in Plato’s Euthydemus, Protagoras, and Gorgias.

After an epideixis, or perhaps alongside it, a written text might be circulated, as we see in the opening of Plato’s Phaedrus, when Phaedrus has acquired a copy of a speech of Lysias, which he reads out loud, studies, and memorizes (Phaedrus 228a–c).Footnote ¹⁸ But some written texts may not have originated in epideixeis – for example, Zeno’s book, which, according to Plato’s Parmenides, was originally circulated without the author’s consent (Parmenides 127a–e). In the dialogue, Zeno is asked to read to his audience, after which the listeners, including Socrates, Parmenides, and Aristotle, ask him to reread parts and pose questions concerning what he has read. Thucydides attests that Antiphon avoided giving public readings or speeches – which was perhaps unusual enough to warrant comment – and suggests that his writings did not originate in epideixeis but were always intended for a reading audience or were speeches written for others to deliver.Footnote ¹⁹ Later in the fourth century most philosophical texts would fall into this category of “reading texts,” including Plato’s and Aristotle’s dialogues and Isocrates’ speeches. But in the late fifth century, most written texts probably originated in epideixeis – which is perhaps why Socrates remarks that some might be “ashamed to write logoi and leave writings (συγγράμματα) behind out of fear that in later times they will be called ‘Sophists’” (Plato Phaedrus 257d).

Apparently, some texts functioned as aide-mémoires, not intended to be read straight, but used as a consultation text. This is the category to which the so-called technê logôn of the late fifth century likely belonged. For technê logôn can refer not only to skill in argumentation, but also to the genre of written texts called technaiFootnote ²⁰ (think of Bach’s “Art of the Fugue,” whose title refers both to the written compositions and to the art of fugue composition which the compositions are evidently intended to demonstrate or teach).Footnote ²¹ In the late fifth century, technai logôn (sometimes referred to by the later term technai rhêtorikai) were written by Antiphon,Footnote ²² Gorgias,Footnote ²³ Protagoras,Footnote ²⁴ Lysias,Footnote ²⁵ Theramenes,Footnote ²⁶ Alcidamas,Footnote ²⁷ and (in the early fourth century) Isocrates.Footnote ²⁸ References by ancient authors to these mostly lost works are extremely important for establishing that there was in the fifth century a genre of work devoted to teaching the art of argument. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle refers to early technai logôn, which he apparently studied and collected in a “Collection (Synagôgê) of Technai [Logôn]”; though it is now lost, Cicero uses this as the basis for his remarks about the early handbooks of Protagoras, Gorgias, and Antiphon. Most such technai are lost, but according to Thomas Reference ColeCole (1991), we may still have some – only they do not look like technical instruction manuals, but rather consist of sample speeches. That this is what technai logôn consisted of is strongly suggested by Aristotle, who highlights in the extraordinary concluding chapter of his Sophistical Refutations the primitive state of instruction in dialectic and theory of argument before his time; according to Aristotle his predecessors did not have a systematic approach but taught by example. If Socrates was a teacher of technê logôn, as Critias accused him of being, he certainly taught by example and demonstration, not by offering a systematic theory of dialectic or argument. As we shall see, the evidence supports Aristotle’s hints that the late-fifth-century genre of technê logôn adopted a demonstration-based approach to teaching the art of argument.

In the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the technê logôn developed into the technê rhêtorikê (ars rhetorica in Latin),Footnote ²⁹ which offered precepts for public speaking, with examples and analyses, mostly focusing on judicial rhetoric, along with some treatment of epideictic and deliberative speeches. But fifth-century technai logôn were not like these at all, as Aristotle indicates. “To write an art,” graphein technên, is not to write about the art or technique, but to write a sample exhibit of one’s skill in logos and to legein.Footnote ³⁰ A written technê logôn here is a practice-and-demonstration text, possibly a sample speech or one composed of shorter speech components that could be elaborated, embellished, and expanded in oral presentation, and later memorized and mined for examples, figures, and arguments.Footnote ³¹ It will be useful to keep this in mind as we go through the surviving texts and consider how they were used for instruction in the art of argument.

Antilogiai

Protagoras wrote a book referred to as Antilogiai α and β in Diogenes Laertius’ catalog of his books.Footnote ³² The book is lost, but the title hints at its contents.Footnote ³³ The verb antilegein means “contradict,” “gainsay,” or “reply in opposition”; the noun antilogia means “controversy” or “a pair of opposed arguments”; and the adjective antilogikon means “having to do with contradiction or refutation.” Hence, Protagoras’ book title is, roughly, Opposing Arguments (in Two Books). It presumably does not here have the negative valence that the adjective antilogikos comes to have, when it is used disparagingly of a person to mean “contradiction monger” or “disputatious” in Aristophanes’ Clouds (1173) and in fourth-century authors.Footnote ³⁴ The term antilogikê technê, “art of refutation,” like the other -ikos terms usually found qualifying technê, such as rhêtorikê and dialektikê, is first attested in Plato (Phaedrus 261d–e, Republic 5.454a), and is Plato’s term for the genus to which sophistry belongs (Sophist 232b–233b).Footnote ³⁵ Though Plato does not have the character Gorgias use the term “antilogic” and does not apply the term antilogikos to him, he describes Gorgias as having “the ability to speak against everyone on every subject, so as in gatherings to be more persuasive, in short, about anything he likes” (Gorgias 457a–b, tr. Zeyl), which is a good description of antilogikê in Plato’s other uses of the term.

In Plato’s dialogue, the character Gorgias says that the ability to argue on any subject is “like any competitive skill (ὥσπερ καὶ τῇ ἀγωνίᾳ)” (Gorgias 457b). In classical tragedy, history, and comedy, there are numerous representations of agônes or “contests” with opposing speeches for and against; for example, in Sophocles’ plays (Teucer against Menelaus and Agamemnon in Ajax, Haemon against Creon in Antigone); in Euripides’ plays (Admetus against Pheres in Alcestis, Medea against Jason in Medea); in Thucydides’ History (the Mytilenean debate, the Corinthians’ speech concerning Athens in 1.71 in opposition to the speech by Pericles at 2.36–46); and in Aristophanes’ plays (the comic agôn between the “Weaker Logos” and the “Stronger Logos” in the Clouds).Footnote ³⁶ In these works, staging a competition between two opposing speakers is a way of representing two sides of a story, problem, or dispute.

We can guess, then, that Protagoras’ Antilogiai contained pairs of opposed speeches or arguments, and was probably intended, among other things, to teach students how to argue on both sides of a question. When Protagoras says that “for every argument there is an opposing argument (παντὶ λόγῳ λόγος ἀντίκειται),”Footnote ³⁷ he is presumably pointing out that for every proposition, there is an agôn between two opponents who take opposing sides on that question. Though the logical point may be obvious, that for every proposition p one can negate it and get its contradictory ¬p, it is far less obvious that one can always give arguments for both sides of any question. Suppose, for instance, that Ben is obviously guilty, because there are eyewitnesses. How could someone give an argument in his defense? Well, one might raise questions about the reliability of testimony and evidence, or concede that he did it but cast doubts about his intention and responsibility.Footnote ³⁸ What about mathematical propositions – how would one argue against the thesis that a square is not a circle, or against the very proposition that there are two sides to every question? In fact, Protagoras is known to have given arguments challenging both claims, evidently demonstrating his skill in argument.Footnote ³⁹

Protagoras’ Antilogiai is lost, but many of the book titles ascribed to Protagoras – on anthropology, political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, natural science, mathematics, and epistemology – may well have been titles of sections of the Antilogiai.Footnote ⁴⁰ This suggests that Protagoras used the method of conflicting arguments as a way of exploring philosophical and scientific issues and topics, much as, for example, Socrates is represented as using the adversarial mode of elenchus to explore ethical questions. Furthermore, it is possible that Antilogiai was an alternative title for Protagoras’ Alêtheia, which was also known as the Kataballontes (Knockdown Arguments).Footnote ⁴¹ This would mean that Protagoras’ famous book, which began with the words “Man is the measure of all things, of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not,” may essentially have been a book of opposed arguments, prefaced by an ambitious programmatic statement about the power of humans to discern the truth.Footnote ⁴² In support of this hypothesis, we have the intriguing report, on the authority of Aristoxenus and Favorinus, that “practically the whole” of Plato’s Republic is to be found in the Opposing Arguments (ἐν τοῖς Ἀντιλογικοῖς) of Protagoras (Protagoras R1a–b/B5 = Diogenes Laertius 3.37, 57). What the parallel is must be a matter of speculation, but since one can read Plato’s Republic as a series of antilogies, with arguments against and for justice (Thrasymachus versus Socrates in Republic 1, Glaucon in Republic 2 versus Socrates in the remainder of Republic 2–10), this report, if it is correct about Protagoras, implies that Protagoras’ book too contained arguments for and against justice.Footnote ⁴³ Even if Protagoras’ Opposing Arguments was intended to teach the art of argument, it must not have been confined to that goal.

Four texts survive from the late fifth century that appear to teach the art of argument via opposed arguments. All of them exhibit the features I suggested belonged to Protagoras’ Opposing Arguments; they teach by means of opposing arguments that explore ethical, political, and other topics and are themselves of independent interest. Antiphon’s Tetralogies consist of three sets of arguments, each set containing two pairs of speeches, two from the prosecution and two from the defense.Footnote ⁴⁴ Each deals with a different kind of homicide: the first with a case of premeditated murder; the second with unintentional homicide; and the third with justified homicide in self-defense. The first Tetralogy concerns a case with some evidence for the defendant’s guilt but no conclusive proof; the prosecutor’s argument depends on inferences from likelihood (eikos). These include the so-called reverse-probability argument – the stronger man is not likely to have been the attacker since he would be the first one suspected of the crime. The second Tetralogy discusses a case in which the facts are not in dispute; the defendant threw a javelin during practice, which hit and killed another contestant who had run into its path. Is the defendant guilty of unintentional homicide? The case raises interesting questions about responsibility and causation.Footnote ⁴⁵ The third Tetralogy deals with a case of someone who drunkenly beat an irascible elderly man, who eventually died; the charge is that of hybris and lack of self-control (akolasia), while the defense claims self-defense; this case too raises interesting questions about intentionality and responsibility. The three Tetralogies therefore conform to Aristotle’s description of how the art of argument was taught; they teach by giving sample speeches or arguments on both sides of three different questions. Yet they are not systematic or technical discussions of rhetorical argument; they do not themselves enumerate aspects of speech and argument, and indeed seem more focused on exploring questions of proof, cause, responsibility, and other legal and philosophical issues.

A pair of opposing speeches, the so-called “Judgment of Arms,” survives by the Socratic philosopher Antisthenes representing a contest of speeches between Ajax and Odysseus for the armor of Achilles.Footnote ⁴⁶ The Speech of Ajax is in the style of a forensic speech, giving reasons why the “judges and jurors who know nothing” (7) should give the armor to him rather than to Odysseus; The Speech of Odysseus by contrast argues by posing rhetorical questions to his opponent Ajax, and then refuting Ajax’s putative answers. Like Antiphon’s Tetralogies, Antisthenes’ pair of opposed speeches seem intended to teach one how to argue,Footnote ⁴⁷ though not by systematically discussing how to develop that skill, much less by giving a theoretical definition of that skill and its requirements, but rather by offering sample lines of argument that one could use to defend or attack someone in debate. At the same time, The Speech of Ajax and The Speech of Odysseus may have a further agenda if, as Susan Prince argues, this pair of speeches are “intended to be advertisements for Antisthenes’ teaching program concerning the correctness of names, including how such correctness is achieved (in education, especially through critical reading of the poets) and deployed (in action).”Footnote ⁴⁸

The two remaining pairs of opposed speeches leave the forensic context altogether. Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles features speeches for and against the life of virtue.Footnote ⁴⁹ The Dissoi Logoi contains another collection of opposed arguments (sections 1–4) that deal with ethical themes, such as “Good and bad are (and are not) the same thing,” each followed by a pair of arguments, for and against the thesis.Footnote ⁵⁰ But there are no complete speeches here, only compressed arguments or speech components, without instructions for their use. We get an idea about such exercises from the Protagoras, where Protagoras says that some things are disadvantageous to some but not to others, in order to parry Socrates in his line of questioning (334a–c; see also Theaetetus 166e–167b). This suggests that the Dissoi Logoi may have been intended as a collection of sample premises and lines of argument to memorize and use as the occasion demanded. Recently, however, a case has been made for the unity of the Dissoi Logoi as (also) a demonstration and defense of the “master art” that the author possesses.Footnote ⁵¹

Some confirmation that the written technai logôn of the fifth century were intended to be used as consultation texts with sample lines of argument to imitate and adapt comes from the reports that Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Lysias, and others wrote technai logôn. Cicero reports, on the authority of Aristotle’s now lost Synagôgê technôn (Compendium of Handbooks), that Protagoras and Gorgias both wrote handbooks that were collections of “disputations on well-known subjects (rerum illustrium disputationes), which are now called communes,” “communes” being Cicero’s translation of the Greek topoi.Footnote ⁵² Cicero adds, “Gorgias did the same thing [as Protagoras did concerning topoi]: he wrote down expressions of praise and blame on particular subjects, since he believed that it above all belonged to the orator to be able to magnify a thing by praise and inversely to diminish it by blame.”Footnote ⁵³ We can infer, from Cicero’s brief summary, that Protagoras and Gorgias’ technai logôn contained collections of “topics” that were, in Cicero’s words, sample “disputations on well-known subjects,” that is, they taught the art of argument by supplying general lines of argument that could be imitated and adapted by others. We can guess, on the basis of the extant fragments of technai logôn, that Cicero has in mind “topics” such as the reverse-probability argument or arguments praising Helen or defending Palamedes. As for the way the topoi were to be used, we can perhaps appeal to Gorgias’ well-known ability to improvise and his emphasis on the importance of the “right moment” (kairos) in oratory and argument.Footnote ⁵⁴ Students were perhaps meant to memorize “topics” or lines of argument, and then customize them, possibly through improvisation, in their own speeches.

So far, we have looked at extant evidence for the teaching of technê logôn via antilogical speeches and texts. But one reason why this teaching is not yet systematic or purely “rhetorical” is that, as we have seen, those argument patterns are being used to explore ideas of independent philosophical interest. Protagoras, Antiphon, Antisthenes, Prodicus, and even the author of the Dissoi Logoi do not seem to have been “arguing for argument’s sake” or writing for the sake of rhetorical display; in these texts they raise questions about justice (Protagoras); intention, pollution, and responsibility (Antiphon); the nature of language (Antisthenes); the relation between virtue and overall happiness (Prodicus); and the existence of a master art that enables one to answer all questions and supply arguments for any topic (Dissoi Logoi).

Refutation

Antilegein can mean “to reply” or “to counterargue,” but it can also mean “to refute,” as when one cross-examines a witness or attempts to discredit or undermine one’s opponent’s arguments or position. Protagoras is said to have been the “first person to show how to attack (epicheirein) theses.”Footnote ⁵⁵ Diogenes Laertius gives us an example of a Protagorean double refutation that is a garbled version of an anecdote elsewhere told about Corax.Footnote ⁵⁶ According to Sextus, Tisias was Corax’s pupil, but after his lessons were over, Tisias refused to pay. Corax then took him to court, where Tisias argued that if he won the case, then according to the verdict he would not have to pay, but if he lost, he should not have to pay either because it would then be clear that Corax’s teaching was worthless. Corax replied with the opposite logos; if he won, then Tisias should pay according to the verdict, and if he lost and Tisias won, then Tisias should pay because the lessons worked. Dialectically, both arguments share the same form: either P or ¬P; but both from P and from ¬P it follows that ¬Q; therefore ¬Q. They also both exhibit the table-turning feature that many of the arguments Aristotle calls “sophistical refutations” have, which purport to show that the opposite conclusion follows from premises to which one’s opponent agrees.

For Gorgias, we have two complete speeches – the Encomium of Helen and Defense of Palamedes – as well as a work that exists in two paraphrases, On Not-Being, all of which exhibit this table-turning feature. They are almost certainly epideictic, and may have been intended, among other purposes, to serve as practice-and-demonstration texts for technê logôn. All three works are of considerable philosophical interest, especially the Helen and On Not-Being. The Encomium of Helen contains a tightly argued refutation of the thesis that Helen went to Troy willingly. While poets like Stesichorus and Euripides maintained that Helen never went to Troy at all (following Herodotus Histories 2.120), Gorgias assumes that the Homeric story is true, and argues that even if Helen did leave her husband, Menelaus, and went with Paris to Troy, she did not go willingly and so should not be blamed. Gorgias’ Helen demonstrates how to defend someone where the facts are not in question, by focusing instead on the possible causes of her action. Given four possible causes of her action A, B, C, or D (and assuming they are jointly exhaustive or at least the only plausible causes), he argues from each one of the four disjuncts that Helen did not go willingly.Footnote ⁵⁷ “Either she did what she did because of the will of fortune and the plan of the gods and the decree of necessity, or she was seized by force, or persuaded by words, or captured by love,” and in each of these cases she is not to be blamed for her action (D24/B11 = Helen 6). Gorgias’ Palamedes, by contrast, defends a client who stands accused of treason, where the facts are in question.Footnote ⁵⁸ Like Antiphon’s first Tetralogy, it makes use of various arguments about motive and ability. It proceeds by eliminating possibilities, in two sets of arguments. The crime of which Palamedes has been accused would have been impossible for him to commit – to do A, he would have had to do B, which is impossible; but even if he had done B, he would have had to do C, which is impossible; but even granting that he did C, he would have had to do D, and so on. Next, Palamedes gives a set of six arguments focusing on possible motives he could have had, again eliminating each one as implausible: not A, but even if A, not B, but even if not B, not C, and so on.

If Gorgias’ extant speeches were supposed to function as technai logôn or handbooks of argument, they, like our earlier examples of antilogiai, leave open many questions about how students were supposed to learn from these texts. The Helen shows how to argue for an outrageous thesis, and Gorgias famously confounds our sense of his intentions when he concludes the Helen by saying that “I wished to write a speech that would be an encomium for Helen and an amusement (παίγνιον) for me” (21). But were students meant to deploy the exhaustion of possibilities or rather to select the one or two lines of arguments appropriate for their occasions?Footnote ⁵⁹ One problem with the former is that Gorgias does not argue for the crucial premise that the disjuncts are jointly exhaustive. In the Helen, he argues that either Helen went to Troy because of the gods and out of necessity, because she was seized by force, because she was persuaded by words, or because she was overcome by love (6) – but he never argues that these exhaust all possibilities, without which the argument is invalid. If the Helen was supposed to be an instruction manual for the art of argument, it was only so by being a demonstration of technê logôn, with sample lines of argument to imitate, as Aristotle suggested.

Gorgias’ On Not-Being makes use of the same type of exhaustion of possibilities that we see in the Palamedes, and applies it to the Parmenidean thesis about being.Footnote ⁶⁰ Like the Helen, it argues for an outrageous thesis – that nothing is, but even if something exists or is, it could not be known or thought, but even if it could be known or thought, it could not be communicated to anyone else. It proceeds by means of an ingenious series of arguments – very similar to the Palamedes’ argument structure “not A; but even if A, not B; but even if B, not C” – which has the neat effect of turning the tables on Parmenides.Footnote ⁶¹ Within this larger structure, there are numerous sub-arguments that exhibit interesting argument patterns, including, for example, the so-called argument in utramque partem disputare, which can be found in the argument that something infinite would be nowhere – if it were somewhere, it would be either in another entity or in itself, but neither is possible, and hence it must be nowhere. For these reasons, the On Not-Being too can be read as a technê logôn, though it also stands on its own as a fascinating piece of philosophical reasoning, raising complex issues about language and metaphysics.

Gorgias is usually classified as a “Sophist” and Zeno of Elea as a “Presocratic” philosopher, which has the effect of obscuring the significant parallels between the argumentation of Gorgias’ On Not-Being and Zeno’s paradoxes. Nonetheless, the ancient tradition concerning Zeno’s writing and activities suggests that he was regarded as a teacher of the art of argument. In the Platonic Alcibiades, two prominent politicians, Pythodorus and Callias, are said to have “become wise through their association with Zeno; they paid him a hundred minas each and became both wise and famous (σοφός τε καὶ ἐλλόγιμος).”Footnote ⁶² In the Phaedrus, Zeno is evidently referred to as “the Eleatic Palamedes,” who “is such an artful speaker (legonta technêi) that his listeners will perceive the same things to be both similar and dissimilar, both one and many, both at rest and also in motion” (261d6–8 = R3/A13). Socrates continues, still thinking of Zeno: “We can therefore find the practice of speaking on opposite sides not only in the law courts and in the Assembly. Rather, it seems that a single art – if of course it is an art in the first place – governs all speaking” (261d10–e2). This description of Zeno as possessing the art of antilogic, capable of making the same thing seem to possess contradictory properties by means of argument, may be the source of a later tradition that describes him as “two-tongued” (ἀμφοτερογλώσσος).Footnote ⁶³ In his lost Sophist, Aristotle apparently identified Zeno as the inventor of dialectic (Zeno R4/A10 = Diogenes Laertius 8.57), which suggests that Zeno was regarded as a teacher of technê logôn.Footnote ⁶⁴

Some might object to the idea of Zeno as an antilogikos and insist that in his book he was simply intent on refuting critics of Parmenides, and not also interested in teaching technê logôn.Footnote ⁶⁵ Zeno’s book – which is lost but some of whose arguments are preserved in testimonies by later philosophers – was intended to refute critics of Parmenides, according to Plato, and rightly belongs to the history of metaphysics.Footnote ⁶⁶ But Plato himself stresses that it was also a model of antilogikê. Parmenides’ logos had been the subject of debate already (Plato Parmenides 127e–8e), in response to which Zeno wrote his book to argue against (ἀντιλέγει) those critics, in defense of Parmenides, written “in a competitive spirit (διὰ τοιαύτην φιλονικίαν)” (Parmenides 128d = R2/A12).Footnote ⁶⁷ Some of Zeno’s arguments are intended to refute the thesis that motion exists; others are intended to refute the thesis that there exists a plurality of things. In the arguments against motion preserved in Aristotle’s Physics, Zeno argues that motion is impossible or incoherent, and that our ordinary intuitions about the existence of motion can be shown to lead to results even more paradoxical than Parmenides’ (239b5–240a18 = D14–19/A25–8). According to Proclus, Zeno gave over forty arguments against the thesis of plurality.Footnote ⁶⁸ All of this suggests that Zeno’s book was a masterful demonstration of antilogic.

In sum, antilogy can take the form of refutation, and fifth-century practitioners raised it to an art form. They quickly left the original sphere – that of forensic and deliberative debate – and developed techniques for refuting an opponent on a wide variety of topics. Many of these arguments work by means of turning the tables on an opponent (arguing that whether one’s opponent holds A or its opposite ¬A, it follows that p), or by reductio ad absurdum, or argument from exhaustion. As with the examples of opposing arguments we have already seen, these arguments were models of argumentation that students could learn from but also had independent philosophical interest as well.

Question and Answer

In the previous section we discussed speeches or texts intended to refute some thesis. There is another application of the art of refutation, consisting of the ability to question, cross-examine, and thereby refute one’s opponent. An expert in refutation needs to know how to formulate questions to put to one’s opponent, who is maintaining p, so as to get him to contradict himself and admit ¬p. The questioner must ask the opponent a series of questions, q? r? s? t?, the answers to which imply that ¬p. According to Aristotle, the goal of those who argue “as competitors and rivals” (οἱ ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ἀγωνιζόμενοι καὶ διαφιλονεικοῦντες) is to defeat the opponent by “refutation, falsity, paradox, solecism, and fifthly, by reducing the opponent in the discussion to babbling repetition” (Sophistical Refutations 3 165b13–15). Likewise, when questioned, one will want to answer those questions while avoiding those outcomes. Logically, there is no big difference between a speech that proves that, given q, r, s, and t, ¬p follows, and questioning an opponent to elicit the argument that, given q, r, s, and t, ¬p follows. But since it is unpredictable how one’s opponent will answer, there is considerable skill in being able to choose the questions that will ultimately lead to his downfall.Footnote ⁶⁹

Diogenes Laertius credits Protagoras again as being the first to “introduce the Socratic form of argument (τὸ Σωκρατικὸν τῶν λόγων).”Footnote ⁷⁰ Diogenes is referring to the “Socratic” or elenctic method of questioning, familiar from the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon.Footnote ⁷¹ Plato and Xenophon nowhere suggest that Socrates invented the elenchus, and, indeed, Diogenes’ report is not inconsistent with Plato’s portrayal of Socrates and Protagoras in the Protagoras, in which Socrates points out that Protagoras knows how to conduct a discussion both by giving “lengthy and beautiful speeches” as well as by answering questions briefly (ἀποκρίνασθαι κατὰ βραχύ) and posing questions to his interlocutor.Footnote ⁷² Throughout the discussion, Socrates and Protagoras argue about which of two methods of discussion they will adopt: makrologein (speaking at length) or brachylogein (speaking briefly) (Protagoras 335b–c). The character Socrates insists here and in other dialogues on his preference for brachylogia over makrologia.Footnote ⁷³ Though Protagoras is reluctant to switch from makrologia to brachylogia, this is because he senses that it would be to his disadvantage at the moment to consent to be questioned by Socrates.Footnote ⁷⁴ Indeed, soon after Protagoras agrees to the question-answer format, we see him performing an elenchus on Socrates with a poem of Simonides; when Socrates is made to contradict himself, he says, “I felt as if I had been hit by a good boxer” (Protagoras 339e). Plato portrays Protagoras as the master to beat and Socrates as the hometown favorite.

Protagoras’ book titles Kataballontes (Down-Throwing Arguments), Peri palês (On Wrestling), and Technê eristikôn (The Art of Eristic) indicate his embrace of the art of argument as a competitive skill.Footnote ⁷⁵ We can only wonder how he taught the question-answer format of discussion, given its highly improvisational nature. Most likely, Protagoras taught principally by demonstration, a method we see in Plato’s Protagoras as well as the Euthydemus, where the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus are portrayed as not only expert at physical fighting but also “at contesting legal battles and at teaching others to compose and deliver speeches suitable for the law courts,” and, on top of that, expert at “verbal battle – specifically, the refutation (ἐξελέγχειν) of any statement, no matter whether it be true or false” (Euthydemus 272a–b, tr. Dillon and Gergel). They are wise in “the art of disputation” (ἐριστική, 272b) and evidently teach by offering exhibitions (epideixeis) of this skill (275a, 278c–d). We might guess that Protagoras too might have blended demonstration – performing an elenchus on willing subjects – together with a postmortem discussion of the refutation, to discuss who got the better of whom and whose performance was more impressive and why.

If Protagoras was the original master of cross-examination, however, Plato and Xenophon represent Socrates as bringing it to an even higher level of practice. Here too one can see a blend of instruction in the art of argument and the use of argument to pursue ethical inquiry. Though Socrates in Plato’s Apology denies that he is a teacher, he states that people come to him to learn the art of disputation, saying “the young men who follow me around of their own free will, those who have most leisure, the sons of the very rich, take pleasure in hearing people questioned; they themselves often imitate me and try to question others” (Apology 23c–d; see also 21b–e). Those around Socrates evidently found it stimulating and entertaining to watch him examine and refute others in argument and learned from him the art of argument. The Platonic dialogues are a veritable playbook of ingenious techniques of argumentation, and it was presumably both from the written dialogues and the debate games in the Academy that Aristotle culled the argument types that he collects and discusses in the Topics.

A Subject-Neutral Skill

The teachers of technê logôn are reported to have claimed to be able to argue on any topic whatsoever. If skill in argument and debate is a distinct form of specialized knowledge, then it ought to be a skill that one can exercise on different topics and in different contexts. Fifth-century thinkers and writers were eager to demonstrate such a skill – and either they or their detractors found it easy to infer that such a skill constitutes a kind of omniscience. For example, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus are described as “totally wise (πάσσοφοι)” and “true all-round athletes (οἱ παγκρατιασταί)” (Plato Euthydemus 271c) on the basis of their claim that they are able to refute anyone and everyone. That this is part of what it means to be an antilogikos is also implied in Plato’s Sophist when the “sophist” is said to have “a single sort of expertise” but “appears to have expert knowledge of lots of things” (Sophist 232a). That one of Protagoras’ goals was to demonstrate his ability to take on any expert in any area is implied in the Sophist.

Protagoras, then, is an antilogikos par excellence, a master of competitive debate who can refute experts on any topic and teach others to do the same. The Visitor gives as an example the fact that the Sophist “make[s] people competent to dispute about issues about the gods, which are non-evident (ἀφανῆ) to most people” (232c).Footnote ⁷⁷ The Sophist also teaches one to dispute about “things that are observable (phanera), on the earth and in the sky, and things of that sort” (232c).Footnote ⁷⁸ The Sophist is clever at contradicting those who make “general statements about being and coming-to-be” (232c).Footnote ⁷⁹ The Sophist makes people “capable of engaging in controversies about [laws and all kinds of political issues]” (232d).Footnote ⁸⁰ These appear to be allusions to Protagoras’ writings known to us from his book titles, which would then confirm the wide range of topics Protagoras was willing to debate about.

Protagoras and other practitioners of the art of argument seem to have claimed that their expertise allowed them to produce arguments on any subject whatsoever. This is an important part of what it is to have an art of argument; Aristotle defines rhetoric and dialectic as being topic-neutral (Rhetoric 1.1 1355a29–b9, 1.2 1355b26–35). Plato represents Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, as well as Protagoras, as flirting with and possibly laying claim to a kind of omniscience on the basis of this ability. As Rachel Barney has suggested, Protagoras may have taught sound deliberation (euboulia) and the art of politics (politikê technê) (Plato Protagoras 318e–319a = D37/A5) as part of a master science that gives one the basis for good judgment about all matters, as well as the ability to refute competing views. The author of the Dissoi Logoi explicitly says that his art will give one a kind of omniscience (8.1). Hippias seems to have claimed expertise in multiple specialized subjects,Footnote ⁸¹ a polymathy that Plato has Protagoras criticize (Protagoras 318d8–9). The expert in verbal combat, who demonstrates his competence by showing that he can refute any expert on any topic, including, say, mathematics, can easily be confused with the polymath, someone who is trying to demonstrate or teach a polymathic competence in multiple domains of specialty.Footnote ⁸²

Reaction

The novelty of technê logôn and antilogikê seems to have provoked anxiety in the late fifth century. While it is possible that ordinary citizens distrusted the Sophists as teachers of the elites of the city or that aristocratic elites were suspicious of the Sophists’ claims of giving anyone the tools to become preeminent in the city, the most interesting reactions came from rival intellectuals who were eager to clarify their goals and distance themselves from the Sophists – and to forestall some of the objections that had been raised concerning this art.

One form this reaction took was to characterize antilogic as the ability to make the weaker argument stronger. Protagoras was said to “make the weaker logos stronger (ton hêttô logon kreittô poiein)” (D28, R18/A21), and the same charge is leveled against Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds,Footnote ⁸³ – a charge that Socrates responds to and denies in Plato’s Apology (19b2–c1, 23d5–7). The charge of making the weak argument stronger is multiply ambiguous: “weaker” (hêttôn) is ambiguous between “less just” or “wrong” and “less plausible”; similarly, there is a difference between taking the slogan to mean “making the weaker argument stronger,” that is, giving a better argument for some case than it initially seemed to admit of, or “making the weaker argument the stronger (argument),” that is, making a false argument the winning argument in a debate.Footnote ⁸⁴ If Protagoras actually claimed to be able to “make the weaker argument stronger” (and not the report of a hostile detractor), he might simply have meant that he is able to strengthen any argument, even initially implausible ones, for example, by casting apparently negative factors about a person’s case in a more favorable light. This approach is particularly needed when, in the absence of witnesses, the facts are in dispute, and the case hangs on what is likely or probable, as Aristotle notes.Footnote ⁸⁵ Of course, these arguments about probability and likelihood are open to criticism – as Aristotle points out. But they need not be cases of making the false or unjust argument persuasive, as Aristophanes represents them as being. After all, being able to select the strongest possible case for initially implausible theses is clearly the goal of learning argumentation (cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1.2. 1355b26–35), and Aristotle claims to be the first to offer a dialectical method for this in the Topics and Sophistical Refutations: a systematic art enabling its possessor to construct the most effective argument for any given conclusion. A position might initially seem weak and implausible, but with sustained argument one might be inclined to give it a higher credence, and it might turn out to be correct; conversely, an initially plausible claim can turn out to be wrong or be made to seem paradoxical – as Zeno was able to do with his paradoxes of motion.

By the late fifth century, the term “Sophist” becomes a byword for an “eristic,” someone whose goal is simply to win arguments by any means necessary, even at the expense of the truth.Footnote ⁸⁶ Those who try to make their opponents contradict themselves or reduce their positions to absurdity seem to have no other goal than that of displaying intellectual virtuosity and dominating others. This critique is stated most powerfully by Plato, who recognizes that dialectic – and more specifically Socratic elenchus – can have intellectually disastrous effects when used incorrectly (Republic 7.539b, cf. Philebus 15d–e, Phaedo 90b, 101e). It is striking that he assigns elenchus to antilogic and eristic, where antilogic is the art of contradicting or refuting another and eristic is the art of winning arguments.Footnote ⁸⁷

For Plato, the question is urgent because of his desire to distinguish Socrates from the so-called Sophists. Even so, in the Sophist, Plato has the Eleatic Visitor offer a definition of sophistry as the art of “clearing the soul of beliefs that stand in the way of learning” (Sophist 231e). So defined, sophistry would seem to be nothing other than the art of Socratic elenchus, which the Visitor calls “our noble sophistry” (ἡ γένει γενναία σοφιστική, 231b; cf. Aristotle Topics 1.2. 101a35–b3, Sophistical Refutations 2 165b5–7). This appears to be Plato’s acknowledgment that Socrates was an antilogikos and that antilogic has an important part to play in the methods of philosophical argument; what makes the elenchus a part of dialectic, as opposed to eristic, is the use to which it is put, not anything intrinsic to the method of refutation itself.Footnote ⁸⁸ As we have seen, the two aspects of technê logôn – its attention to methods of argument and its use in exploring interesting philosophical topics – come together in Socrates’ elenctic method. He uses the elenchus to test ordinary ideas; when they do not survive scrutiny, aporia or puzzlement ensues. This kind of ground-clearing is central not only to Plato’s method but also to Aristotle, when he employs aporiai or puzzles about endoxa, “reputable opinions,” as a means to develop his own theories, as in the Nicomachean Ethics 1.8–12, Metaphysics B, or De Anima 1.

There are three further areas of Greek philosophical inquiry that were particularly stimulated by questions and worries about antilogic and the fifth-century art of argument. One has to do with normativity and correctness in argument. When one produces arguments on both sides of a question, can they both be equally “good”? What is it for an argument to be “good” or for a weaker argument to be made “stronger” or “better”? Is it for it to be persuasive? More deserving of credence? More truth-preserving? These questions are posed and answered by philosophers in the fourth century when, for example, Plato tries to distinguish between persuasion and truth, and when Aristotle distinguishes between the logical form and content of an argument in his Prior Analytics, and proposes a definition of validity (Prior Analytics 1.1 24b18–20; Topics 1.1 100a25–7; Sophistical Refutations 1 164b27–5a2, Rhetoric 1.2 1356b16–18). From neutrality comes universality; Aristotle declares, at the beginning of the Rhetoric, that dialectic is the art of constructing and using argument, and does not belong to any single science, since it is used by all the other sciences and in everyday life as well (Rhetoric 1.1 1354a3).Footnote ⁸⁹

The practice of antilogikê also prompts technical questions. What exactly are contradictory pairs, and must exactly one of them be false? Protagoras seems to have been inclined to dispute this assumption, on one understanding of his claim that it is not possible to contradict (ouk esti antilegein).Footnote ⁹⁰ Aristotle’s De interpretatione is devoted to answering these questions.Footnote ⁹¹ We have arrived at issues at the heart of the philosophy of language and logic: the principle of noncontradiction, the principle of bivalence, and the principle of excluded middle (topics that he also discusses in Metaphysics Γ. 3–8).

Finally, the practice of antilogikê leads directly to questions in epistemology concerning the “conflicting appearances” to which opposing arguments lead us; if things can be made to seem one way as well as the opposite – if we come to have conflicting beliefs, perceptions, and appearances about the same matter – how can we adjudicate these conflicts? On what basis can we tell who is right and who is wrong? Or should we consider the possibility that both parties might be right – or both wrong? Many of the arguments concerning conflicting appearances that are discussed by Plato in the Theaetetus and that eventually enter the canon of skeptical arguments may have had their origins in the antilogiai that were collected in technai logôn like Protagoras’ Antilogiai and the Dissoi Logoi.Footnote ⁹²

These connections show how significant the fifth-century art of argument was to the development of logic, dialectic, epistemology, and the philosophy of language in the fourth century; these philosophical questions were not invented out of whole cloth, but have their origins in the remarkable teachings and writings of the so-called Sophists of the fifth century. And, as we have seen, the goals of fifth-century teachers of technê logôn cannot be described as being narrowly confined to the teaching of argument or speeches for their own sake, since the practice of antilogikê was used for a wide variety of purposes, including the exploration of philosophical topics.

The Pursuit of Aretê among the Sophists

A number of sophistic ethical works endorsed the pursuit of aretê.Footnote ¹ The Dissoi Logoi provides the clearest evidence for this.Footnote ² Section 6 of this text is devoted to the question whether aretê and wisdom (sophia) can be taught and learned. One reason they cannot be taught, the text notes, is that there are no demonstrated teachers of these things. The author then criticizes this position.

One sophistic text that explicitly endorses the pursuit of aretê is Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles.Footnote ⁴ The original does not survive, but on the basis of Xenophon’s paraphrase of the work as well as testimonial evidence we can infer that Prodicus represented the hero Heracles at a crossroads poised to choose between two courses of life. These two courses were represented by two figures; in Xenophon, they are named Aretê and Kakia. Compare the following testimony from a scholiast to Aristophanes’ Clouds.

The scholiast’s reference to a book of Prodicus rather than to Xenophon’s paraphrase of it encourages the view that the scholiast’s description, which is in fact consistent with Xenophon’s paraphrase, accurately describes general features of Prodicus’ work.Footnote ⁵

There is good reason to believe that in presenting a choice between the paths of life of Aretê and Kakia, Prodicus was adapting the theme of two paths of life in Hesiod’s Works and Days.

In fact, Xenophon cites these verses in the context of his paraphrase of Prodicus.Footnote ⁸ Hesiod himself uses the term kakotês, a variant of kakia, for “badness.” Moreover, the contrast between aretê and kakia or kakotês occurs in several other texts of the late fifth century, for example, as follows.

In sum, there is good reason to believe that in his original text Prodicus championed aretê and used that term. So, we can conclude that Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles was an educational exhortation to aretê.Footnote ¹⁰

Granted this, what exactly did it mean for the Sophists to teach and pursue aretê?

The Meaning of aretÊ

From the first half of the fourth century BCE through late antiquity, Greek ethical philosophy is prevailingly eudaemonistic in the following strict semantic sense: the majority of late-Classical philosophers and their successors maintain that what they call eudaimonia (personal well-being/flourishing/a person’s life going well for them) is the goal of human life. Accordingly, their aims are to clarify what eudaimonia is and how to achieve it. Furthermore, the majority maintain that possession of what they call aretê, which they use to refer to an excellent condition of the psychê (soul), is crucial for the achievement of eudaimonia. For example, salient constituents of aretê, so conceived, include psychological states such as justness and self-control. So, here again, the philosophers’ aims are to clarify what aretê is and how possession of it contributes to the realization of eudaimonia.

With one possible exception, there is no evidence that the Sophists conceived the goal of human life explicitly in terms of eudaimonia.Footnote ¹¹ Granted this, since they did endorse the pursuit of aretê, it may be questioned whether they employed the term aretê as Plato and his heirs did. I suggest that they did not.

In the late-fifth-century sophistic and, more generally, ethical philosophical contexts, the pursuit of aretê is not conceived as the pursuit of an excellent condition of the psychê. It is conceived as the pursuit of an excellent form of life. Consequently, in a number of sophistic ethical works, aretê plays a role akin to that of eudaimonia in philosophical ethics of the second half of the fourth century and thereafter.

To clarify and advance this thesis, it will be helpful to elaborate on the meaning of the term aretê. Aretê is often translated as “excellence,” and this is the rendition that I will employ throughout this discussion.Footnote ¹² But two semantic properties of “excellence” or aretê should be recognized. One will be crucial to the ensuing discussion. The other, which I note in passing, has to do with the fact that terms such as aretê, “excellence,” and “goodness” are evaluative terms. Their meanings entail value in various ways. The various ways owe to the fact that value is a gradable property. That is, things that have value can in principle have more or less value. “Excellence” denotes a degree of value greater than that of “goodness” but lesser than that of “optimality” (what “best-ness” would mean if it existed). For example, compare the corresponding adjectives in the following sentences.

Consequently, in adhering to the common translation of aretê as “excellence,” we also commit ourselves to the view that aretê denotes a very high, but not superlative, degree of value. In fact, this commitment and so the translation itself are questionable. The Greeks sometimes appear to treat aretê as denoting a supreme degree of value. And if indeed aretê does denote a supreme degree of value, then “optimality” or the like is a more faithful translation. I note this point but will not dwell on it.

The second semantic property of aretê, which, as I say, is crucial to the ensuing discussion, is the following: “optimality,” “excellence,” “goodness,” and likewise aretê may be attributed to most any kind of thing. This includes nonpeople as well as people. For example, the author of the Hippocratic Regimen in Acute Diseases says that one aretê of gruel is its lubricant nature and that boiled hydromel has the same aretê as unboiled hydromel.Footnote ¹³ Herodotus speaks of the aretê of Darius’ horse, and Thucydides speaks of the aretê of land, referring to its fertility.Footnote ¹⁴

In the case of people, aretê may be attributed to ethical psychological states. But it may also be attributed to nonethical psychological states. And it may be attributed to actions, ethical and nonethical, as well as to people in ways that are not wholly reducible to psychological attributes or actions. For example, in the following verses from the Theognidea, aretê is used to denote excellence of character.

In contrast, in the following verses from Solon, aretê is used to denote a property of actions, speechmaking and the exercise of wisdom, presumably in contexts of political leadership.

Compare now the following verses from the Theognidea.

In this case, the bearer of the desired aretê is a person. Presumably, this aretê depends on the character and way of life of the person. But, strictly speaking, since the aretê is simply a condition of being favored by and dear to the divine, it is an extrinsic property of the person.

Two semantic features of evaluative terms such as “optimality,” “excellence,” “goodness,” and aretê explain why these terms can be attributed to various kinds of things. One is that an entity may bear value in various ways, for instance, instrumentally or constitutively. Accordingly, one entity may have instrumental value, another noninstrumental value. Another semantic feature of “value” is that value is specifiable by kind; for instance, there are ethical and nonethical kinds of value. This latter feature will be central to the following account.

In felicitous instances of the evaluative term, context – be it linguistic or otherwise – typically clarifies the kind of value. (It may also clarify the way in which value is borne.) For example, on a battlefield, the claim that some soldier is agathos or aristos or exhibits aretê is naturally understood to mean that he is good or best or exhibits excellence in battle. But it is important here to appreciate that the meaning of the evaluative term, say, “excellence” or aretê, does not thereby shift from context to context. Rather, supplementary content is implicitly or explicitly provided to specify the kind of value in question. “Excellence (in battle),” whether “in battle” is explicit or implicit, is a case in point.Footnote ¹⁵

For example, Tyrtaeus begins an elegy in praise of martial aretê with the following words.

In this case, the accompanying genitives podôn and palaimosynês specify the type of value. Compare Homer’s description of the son of Eurystheus.

Here, “every sort of aretê” ranges over the domain of highly valued activities performed by men.

Turning now to the Sophists, the following text from Gorgias’ Olympic Oration contains a clear example of aretê, in this case in the plural, used to refer to psychological traits.

The infinitival phrases following “boldness” and “wisdom,” namely “to face the risk” and “to understand the riddle,” clearly indicate that boldness and wisdom are here conceived as psychological traits.

This is in fact the only clear case of aretê used to refer to a psychological condition among texts authored by philosophers and therefore Sophists of the fifth century.

In Gorgias’ Helen, aretê is used to refer to the exemplary distinguishing attribute of action, not of the body or of the soul.

Compare the following fragment from Democritus, where again aretê is used to refer a property of action.

In light of these linguistic remarks, recall now the path of Aretê to which Heracles is exhorted in Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles. Surely, Heracles’ pursuit of aretê is not to be understood as the pursuit of a certain psychological state or trait, even though the sort of excellent life that he is to pursue requires cultivation of excellent psychological capacities. Rather, the bearer of aretê that Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles is concerned with is a human life and a person as responsible for that life.

Aretê and Civic Excellence

More precisely, the sort of excellent life devoted to the pursuit of aretê endorsed in sophistic texts is a life of civic excellence. By “civic excellence” I mean success as a citizen. This saliently includes success in public affairs, but it may also include success in private affairs.Footnote ¹⁷ Moreover, such success is understood in commonly accepted terms. For instance, success in private affairs involves effective estate management and a flourishing family; success in public affairs saliently involves the agent making significant positive contributions to his fellow citizens and polis.

In the following, my principal focus will be on success as a citizen in the public sphere. The exhortation of the figure of Aretê in Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles is a case in point. She says that that “no admirable action (ergon kalon)” can be performed without her, and that if Heracles follows her path, he will become good at performing “admirable and noble (kalôn kai semnôn) actions.”Footnote ¹⁸ Heracles’ aretê will then be constituted by the performance of admirable actions, among which Aretê includes conferring benefits on one’s friends, aiding the polis, and doing good to all of Greece.Footnote ¹⁹

Another sophistic text that concerns the pursuit of aretê and that conceives this as the pursuit of civic aretê is the Anonymus Iamblichi. According to standard editions, seven sizable fragments of the original work survive.Footnote ²⁰ Seemingly consisting of sequential and continuous argumentation, they derive from the twentieth chapter of Iamblichus’ late-third-century-CE Exhortation to Philosophy (Protrepticus). Since Friedrich Blass recognized them as fragments of a sophistic work of the late fifth century BCE, various attempts have been made to identify the author.Footnote ²¹ But since no consensus has been reached, the work is standardly referred to as the Anonymus Iamblichi, which is to say the “Anonymous (Text) from Iamblichus.”Footnote ²²

The leading topic of the Anonymus Iamblichi is how a young man can bring aretê “to the best completion.” Fragment 1 begins as follows.

One question regarding the disjunction of wisdom, manliness, eloquence, and aretê here is whether the first three items are being conceived as parts of aretê. The paratactic syntax (“whether … whether …”) does not require this, and the secondary disjunction following aretê (“either in its entirety or in some part”) also makes such a reading odd.Footnote ²⁴

Assume that aretê is not in apposition to wisdom, courage, and eloquence. Still, if wisdom, manliness, and eloquence are conceived as psychological states or possessions, then aretê would also seem to be so. But there are strong reasons to resist the latter inference. In fragment 2 the author says the following.

So, the author appears to view aretê as composed of actions. Still, one might wonder whether the author’s view here is actually proto-Aristotelian, that is, whether the author is suggesting that in order to acquire aretê qua excellent psychological trait one must repeatedly do the sort of things that those who have the trait do. That this is not the author’s point is corroborated in fragment 3. First, the author says the following.

And the author responds here: by “being beneficial to the most people” (pleistois ôphelimos ôn).Footnote ²⁵ The implication then is that achieving a part of aretê consists in benefiting a smaller number of people. Accordingly, the distinction between achieving aretê in part versus achieving aretê in its entirety is not the distinction that occurs in Protagoras between acquiring one excellent psychological trait, say self-control, in contrast to all of them.

Also in fragment 3, the author speaks of aretê in terms of the use (katachrêsthai) of different types of possessions for good ends (eis ta agatha).Footnote ²⁶ The possessions in question themselves correlate with the three other items enumerated in fragment 1: wisdom, strength (“manliness” in fragment 1), and eloquence. Conversely, the author says that if one uses these possessions for base ends (eis ta ponêra), the opposite of aretê will result and the agent will be an utterly bad (pankakos) person.Footnote ²⁷ From this, it appears that in fact wisdom, manliness, and eloquence are conceived as belonging to the ontological category of possession and that aretê is conceived as belonging to the ontological category of exercise of possession, which is to say action. Further, given the stated requirement on its completion, complete aretê is not the mere exercise of a possession in a single instance, that is, a single action, but rather a pattern of activity over a significant span of life.

The account of complete aretê as a pattern of activity in the Anonymus Iamblichi is additionally notable in that the excellence of such activity is taken to depend on public approbation of that activity. Given the importance of this point, it is worth elaborating in general terms. Broadly speaking, the aretê or excellence of a thing might be regarded as owing solely to intrinsic features of that thing; however, it need not. Certain actions and events are a case in point. Hippocleas of Thessaly may be an outstanding runner, and his excellence in running may then owe to his speed compared to that of his peers. But if Hippocleas wins the boys’ double-stade footrace, the value of his victory may owe, among other things, to the prestige of the event.Footnote ²⁸ Consequently, the value of the victory may, among other things, owe to the acclaim that the victor and his victory receives. Likewise, the value of a political career may owe to the civic benefits that the politician provides, but it may also owe to the appreciation that the politician receives from the citizens for those benefits. Note further that a politician’s ability to remain in office and thereby continue his political career may depend precisely on the citizens’ recognition of the civic benefits of his contribution.

The preceding considerations are important for understanding the use of aretê in various texts because often the Greeks, as we do, regard the value of achievements such as actions or patterns of activity as at least partly dependent on public esteem of those achievements. Accordingly, the relation between aretê and honor (timê), glory (kleos), or renown (doxa) is in fact intimate in many contexts.Footnote ²⁹ The account of aretê in the Anonymus Iamblichi is a case in point.

Fragment 2 of the text begins with the following line.

Here, the term doxa occupies the position that aretê does in the opening line of fragment 1, and the remainder of the fragment focuses on how best to achieve doxa. The conditions for the achievement of doxa, at least doxa of the kind the author advocates,Footnote ³² are precisely those required for the achievement of aretê.

As the author proceeds to explain, considerable care is required if one is to succeed in gaining public esteem for one’s actions and contributions to society. Crucial to achieving this, one must gain the trust (pistis) of one’s fellow citizens, and this is hard to do. The following passage encapsulates the problem and the author’s response to it.

In sum, in the Anonymus Iamblichi aretê is used to refer to a property of a pattern of action, in fact of a form of civic life. Moreover, the value of such a life is understood not merely in terms of properties intrinsic to the person whose life it is nor even properties intrinsic to the actions constitutive of that life; it includes public esteem of that person and his actions.

Generalizing, I suggest that within the sophistic milieu the pursuit of aretê was not viewed as the pursuit of certain psychological traits, let alone the pursuit of such traits as crucial for the achievement of eudaimonia. Rather, the pursuit of aretê was conceived as the pursuit of an excellent life. Moreover, an excellent life was viewed in terms of civic success, understood in commonly accepted terms. With respect to activity in the public sphere in particular, this saliently included beneficence to one’s fellow citizens and polis as well as the esteem that the agent received therefrom.Footnote ³³

In short, I am suggesting that a significant body of sophistic works was devoted to what I call civic ethics. By “civic ethics” I mean ethics that advocates the agent’s pursuit of hisFootnote ³⁴ success as a citizen saliently through making significant positive contributions to his fellow citizens and polis.

Following Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles and the Anonymus Iamblichi, a third example of civic ethics in a sophistic text is Hippias’ Trojan Dialogue. Unfortunately, no fragments of this work survive. What remain are two testimonies. One comes from Philostratus, who, in the life of Hippias in his third-century-CE Lives of the Sophists, explicitly refers to the work as a “dialogue” (dialogos) and “not an oration or monologue (logos).”Footnote ³⁵ As such, Hippias’ work is akin to Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles.Footnote ³⁶ Also like Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles, the dramatic personae of Hippias’ work are drawn from the Greek mythological tradition. In the following passage of Plato’s Hippias Major, the character Hippias describes the content of the Trojan Dialogue as follows.

To be sure, the heavy emphasis on the admirable (to kalon) here is ridiculous and owes to the governing question of the dialogue: What is to kalon?Footnote ³⁸ Nonetheless, according to Hippias’ description, Nestor attempted to educate Neoptolemus in how to achieve the best reputation by undertaking admirable pursuits. This appears to be equivalent to an education in the pursuit of aretê, understood as civic aretê, in Prodicus’ Choice and the Anonymus Iamblichi.Footnote ³⁹

So much for civic ethics among philosophical works of the Sophists. I now want to briefly remark on sophistic texts in which civic aretê is praised or memorialized but which are not philosophical texts.Footnote ⁴⁰ One example is Gorgias’ Funeral Oration, from which the following passage derives.

Evidently, the aretê here praised relates to the ultimate personal sacrifice that deceased soldiers made on behalf of their polis. By “divine” aretê, I take it Gorgias means a contribution of civic excellence whose significance perdures.Footnote ⁴¹

Note that Gorgias’ Funeral Oration was most likely a model speech, not actually performed on an occasion of burial, since Athenian practice expected, if not required, a citizen to deliver the eulogy. Granted this, there is evidence that some of the Sophists delivered public orations (for example, at festivals),Footnote ⁴² and certainly some of these speeches praised civic aretê.

One other nonphilosophical sophistic work that memorializes civic aretê belongs to a different genre entirely. Among his many and varied achievements, Hippias was the first to compile and publish an Olympic victor list (Olympionikai, also known as Olympionikôn anagraphê).Footnote ⁴³ The context in which Hippias produced this work is relatively well understood. Elis, the polis of which Hippias was a citizen, had controlled Olympia and so administered the games from about 570 BCE.Footnote ⁴⁴ Before that, games had been held at Olympia intermittently from as early as the tenth century BCE; but it was the Olympic truce, established between the Spartan king Lycurgus and the Elean king Iphitus in 776, that initiated an “unbroken series of Olympiads” down to Hippias’ day.Footnote ⁴⁵ Hippias produced his list at about 400.Footnote ⁴⁶ At that time, Sparta and Elis were on the verge of – or in fact at – war. The Spartan–Elean conflict (400–398 BCE) and the Olympic truce provide the basic motivations for Hippias’ enterprise, which Paul Christensen summarizes as follows.

Such contributions are illustrative of civic roles that a number of prominent Sophists occupied. As leading sophoi, and, in some cases, political or ambassadorial figures, these men were tasked with and often invited to make important contributions on behalf of their poleis. These achievements of course contributed to their authors’ own civic aretê. But, as I have emphasized, some of them lauded or memorialized the civic aretê of others.

Anti-Civic Ethics among the Sophists

That the Sophists used aretê as I have described should be news. But that they prominently contributed to civic ethics should not be. Consider John Dillon and Tanya Gergel’s remark on the Anonymus Iamblichi: “The topic appears to be, broadly speaking, ‘How to Succeed in Life’ – a subject central to the projects of all of the figures (at least the professional ones) dealt with in this volume [The Greek Sophists]” (Reference Dillon and GergelDillon and Gergel 2003: 310).

What may be surprising is the relative dearth of sophistic contributions to what I will call anti-civic ethics. By this, I mean ethics that advocates that the agent pursue his self-interest, disregarding and even at the expense of the well-being of his fellow citizens and polis.

Familiar treatments and criticisms of the Sophists, especially by Plato, encourage such an idea of their ethical commitments and contributions. Plato suggests that the Sophists were intellectual mercenaries, indiscriminate in disposing their intellectual wares, and primarily motivated to enrich themselves. The official Academic definition of the Sophist is “a paid hunter of rich and distinguished young men” (neôn plousiôn endoxôn emmisthos thêreutês).Footnote ⁴⁹ In one of Plato’s most extreme treatments, Thrasymachus is likened to a selfish and violent animal.Footnote ⁵⁰

Yet it is in fact difficult to find anti-civic ethical contributions among the Sophists. For instance, the only fragment of Thrasymachus’ that mentions justice describes it as “the greatest of goods (to megiston tôn … agathôn) among human beings.”Footnote ⁵¹ And it is noteworthy that Callicles – the other extreme representative of immorality among figures who appear in Platonic dialogues focused on Sophists – is an Athenian citizen and not a Sophist. Ironically, the most plausible cases of anti-civic sophistic ethics derive from the Socratic philosopher Aristippus of Cyrene and the Athenian Antiphon. I will discuss each of these in turn.

Today, Aristippus is primarily identified as a Socratic, not a Sophist. He is certainly not standardly included within treatments of the Sophists. However, among the Socratics, Aristippus was notorious for teaching for payFootnote ⁵² – a principal, if not sufficient, condition for being a Sophist – and he was explicitly described as a Sophist by as early a figure as Aristotle.Footnote ⁵³ Granted then that Aristippus was a Sophist, Xenophon attributes anti-civic views to him in the Memorabilia.

The relevant portion of Xenophon’s work (2.1) consists of a dialogue between Socrates and Aristippus.Footnote ⁵⁴ Xenophon’s expressed purpose in presenting the exchange is to show how “Socrates encouraged his companions to practice self-control (enkrateia)” specifically in various circumstances pertaining to their bodily needs and desires.Footnote ⁵⁵ Note that Aristippus was a hedonist and in antiquity was widely criticized for his high evaluation of sensual or bodily pleasures.Footnote ⁵⁶ Socrates begins the dialogue by arguing that the capacity for self-control equips one to rule over others. He concludes as follows.

To this, Aristippus agrees. But while Socrates assumes that being a ruler is more desirable than being ruled, Aristippus states, contrary to common aristocratic values, that he has no desire to rule.Footnote ⁵⁷ Rather, he maintains that rulers, insofar as they are responsible for providing for the well-being of their citizens, are effectively enslaved by their subjects and above all disabled from pursuing and satisfying their own desires. In contrast, as he says: “I classify myself with those who wish for a life of the greatest ease and pleasure (rhaista te kai hêdista bioteuein).”Footnote ⁵⁸

Given this commitment, Socrates now questions whether ruling communities or subject communities live more pleasant lives. It may appear that in posing this question, Socrates has illicitly shifted away from the question whether a ruler or subject leads a more pleasant life. But, as I take it, Socrates’ aim here is to clarify the civic conditions conducive to a pleasant life.

Aristippus concedes that it is more pleasant to live in a ruling rather than a subject community. However, this concession is irrelevant, since he claims that there is an alternative to both.

Still concerned with the civic conditions of life, Socrates objects that anyone in a society who does not achieve a position of rulership will ultimately be subject to the will of those in charge. But, as Aristippus explains, his pursuit of freedom entails that he does not “confine himself within a political constitution, but is a stranger everywhere (oud’ eis politeian emauton katakleiô, alla xenos pantaxou eimi).”Footnote ⁵⁹

In short, Aristippus expresses a commitment to the idea that by renouncing civic allegiance and responsibilities altogether, he can achieve the best life for himself.

Here then is a curious case of anti-civic sophistic ethics. And the fact that we have good independent evidence for Aristippus’ hedonism provides some support for the view that the anti-civic position Xenophon attributes to Aristippus is accurate.

A second plausible case of sophistic anti-civic ethics is found in Antiphon’s On Truth.Footnote ⁶⁰ This work originally consisted of two books, that is, two papyrus scrolls. Until recently, modern knowledge of the text was limited to a number of ancient testimonies and very brief fragments, often just single words, quoted by other authors of surviving, mainly grammatical and rhetorical, works. But in the late nineteenth century, British excavations at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt unearthed several papyrus fragments whose attribution to On Truth was supported by the identification of a line in one of the papyrus fragments with one of the already known non-papyrus fragments.Footnote ⁶¹

There are three principal papyrus fragments.Footnote ⁶² These are standardly referred to as F44(a), (b), and (c).Footnote ⁶³ Their contents largely differ from the ancient testimonies and non-papyrus fragments. The ancient testimonies and non-papyrus fragments mainly address cosmological, physiological, and medical topics, whereas the papyrus fragments present criticisms of justice according to a definition of it in terms of convention (nomos).Footnote ⁶⁴

The definition of justice in conventional terms, which appears to be the critical target of the fragments, is introduced in the first legible line of F44(a).

Compare the following phrases that occur elsewhere among the papyrus fragments: “[such-and-such] is just according to/from convention(s) (kata nomon/ek nomôn dikaion)” and “[such-and-such] is conceived as being just (dikaion nomizetai).”Footnote ⁶⁶ In view of this, we do not have warrant to claim that the papyrus fragments simply criticize justice.Footnote ⁶⁷ For example, it would be compatible with the criticisms of conventional justice for Antiphon to endorse some modified conventional account of justice or some nonconventional account.

Granted this, one of the criticisms of conventional justice – which occupies most of F44(c) – is that some of its principles are contradictory.Footnote ⁶⁸ Another criticism – which occurs in F44(a) and which seems to be Antiphon’s principal concern – is that conventional justice is “hostile” to nature.

The way in which Antiphon views conventional justice as hostile to nature is made most explicit in the following passage, also from F44(a).Footnote ⁷⁰

So, conventional justice is hostile to nature insofar as it enjoins conduct that is more harmful to the agent or at least less beneficial than what the agent, unconstrained by convention, could achieve.

Accordingly – in lines that immediately follow the definition of conventional justice at the beginning of F44(a) – Antiphon notoriously claims the following.

In light of Antiphon’s view of the hostility of conventional justice to nature, I take it that “use justice most advantageously for himself” entails selectively conforming to conventional justice insofar as this is less harmful or more beneficial to the agent. Note also that, although the following is not made explicit anywhere in the fragments, Antiphon appears to assume that one should always act to one’s advantage and that human beings are naturally so motivated.

In short, the focus in the papyrus fragments is a criticism of certain conventions regulating interpersonal conduct in civic life. It is clearly not an account of how one may thrive by making significant positive contributions to one’s fellow citizens and polis in accordance with these conventions. So, the ethical contents in the papyrus fragments of On Truth are anti-civic.

Ethics and Sophistic Ethics

How ought one to conduct one’s life? This question, which is foundational to modern and contemporary ethics, asks one to consider a course of action or – more broadly – a form of life that is within one’s power to pursue. Since one ought not to do something if there is no reason to do it, and there is no reason to do something if it has no value, any rational answer to the question also entails a commitment to the value of the course of action or form of life.Footnote ⁷¹ Moreover, between two courses of action or forms of life that are in one’s power to pursue and where the former has more value than the latter, there is more reason to pursue the former.

The sophistic texts, fragments, and testimonies considered in this chapter might be construed as responses to the foundational question of modern and contemporary ethics – some responses being civically minded, others anti-civically minded. But it is doubtful that the Sophists’ works do in fact constitute responses to precisely such a question. Consider the abstractness of the question, specifically its inclusion of the impersonal pronoun “one.” The question is addressed to any person.Footnote ⁷² Such universality is not a part of the Sophists’ ethical agenda. The intended audiences for the Sophists’ works were more restricted – to males, as mentioned above, but more precisely young male citizens of the particular Greek poleis in which the Sophists were active. The Sophists’ civic ethical contributions should then be understood as responding to the question how a young Greek male citizen ought to conduct his life. These responses assume the supreme value of civic aretê.

Regarding Aristippus’ and Antiphon’s contributions, their purposes – I do not assume that they had a common purpose – are much more debatable. In Aristippus’ case, it is unclear what the source of Xenophon’s claims is. It could have been personal acquaintance or testimony as well as one or more of Aristippus’ writings.Footnote ⁷³ In Antiphon’s case, On Truth seems to belong to the Presocratic genre of the treatise On Nature. If so, then its intended audience would have been philosophoi, not prospective clients.

In both cases, if we accept that the anti-civic commitments are genuine, then we face the following problem of normativity. Aristippus’ endorsement of the anti-civic attitude that Xenophon attributes to him, even if Aristippus were only advocating that attitude among the upper classes, would yield political chaos. So, perhaps Aristippus was not in fact committed to that attitude.Footnote ⁷⁴ Or perhaps Aristippus was not encouraging others to adopt that attitude.

Likewise, it seems dubious that Antiphon would have endorsed, if only to philosophoi, selective conformity to conventional justice. In this case, crucially, it is unclear whether Antiphon believes that the relevant conventions could be altered and improved to better accord with nature or whether he holds the – to my mind absurd – view that any form of human society or sustained coexistence and collaboration is fundamentally and irredeemably at odds with nature. Regarding the former possibility, it is also unclear whether Antiphon is principally concerned with the local legal and social conditions of Athens.Footnote ⁷⁵

Note that the extant fragments of On Truth – papyrus and non-papyrus collectively – constitute only about 10 percent of Antiphon’s original work. Consider also that a stichometrical sign in the margin of one of the columns of fragment F44(a) indicates that the criticism of conventional justice here occurs at about the middle of the original papyrus scroll.Footnote ⁷⁶ Curiously, the scroll in question most likely belongs to Book One of On Truth,Footnote ⁷⁷ while the cosmological, physiological, and medical contents derived from the non-papyri fragments and testimonies belong to Book Two. One might otherwise assume that a work devoted to cosmology, physiology, and medicine, as well as to conventional justice, would begin with cosmology and physiology and then lead to anthropology and sociology.Footnote ⁷⁸ Strangely, Antiphon’s discussion appears to proceed in reverse order.

A few of the non-papyrus fragments have critical epistemological contents.Footnote ⁷⁹ Moreover, these are attributed to Book One. Conceivably, On Truth began with some epistemological criticism, which was then applied to a conventional conception of justice, among other aspects of society, and these criticisms prepared the ground for some sort of return to nature, to which Book Two was devoted. Generally speaking, on this – admittedly highly speculative – way of interpreting the work as a whole, at least part of the ultimate aim of the work would then have been legal and political reform. Such reform would somehow better align with the nature of things and so with truth (alêtheia), correctly understood.Footnote ⁸⁰

Eudaimonism and Sophistic Ethics

Early in the chapter I suggested that in a significant body of sophistic ethics aretê plays a role akin to that of eudaimonia in ethics of the second half of the fourth century and thereafter. “Akin to” but not “identical to.” I have suggested that aretê was used to refer to civic aretê. But eudaimonia is a broader term, which I have translated as “personal well-being/flourishing” and which I understand as a life going well for the person living it. The achievement of civic aretê may be a form of eudaimonia.

Aretê in the sophistic context and eudaimonia in later philosophical contexts were used to refer to the goal of human life. Why eudaimonia replaced aretê in this respect and why aretê came to be psychologized – in other words, used to refer to an excellent condition of the psychê – are subjects for another occasion.Footnote ⁸¹ Still, if we consider the Sophists’ civic and anti-civic ethical contributions in eudaemonistic terms, then we can appreciate them as sharing a commitment to the primacy of the value of personal well-being.

Given this, the sophistic contributions differ in what they take personal well-being to consist in. The civically minded ethicists hold that personal well-being consists in flourishing as a citizen and that this requires success in private and public affairs, saliently including significant political beneficence and public esteem for that. The anti-civic ethicists maintain a much narrower conception according to which the only thing good for a person is fulfillment of his selfish desires.

Note that both anti-civically minded contributions appear to be committed to a hedonistic conception of personal well-being. Aristippus’ hedonism was mentioned above.Footnote ⁸² For hedonism in the papyrus fragments of Antiphon’s On Truth, recall the following passage from F44(a).

In view of this, it is interesting to observe that the civic ethical position of Prodicus’ Choice of Heracles is also cast in hedonistic terms. Central to Aretê’s exhortation is a description of the pleasures that her path offers.

Elsewhere, I have described these as “civic pleasures.”Footnote ⁸⁴ In fact, we have testimonies from Plato and Aristotle that Prodicus distinguished different kinds of pleasure,Footnote ⁸⁵ and it is highly likely that he did so precisely in the context of distinguishing the pleasures of Aretê from those of Kakia.Footnote ⁸⁶

In contrast, the Anonymus Iamblichi seems committed to a more pluralistic view of personal well-being. The value of pleasure is clearly noted.Footnote ⁸⁷ But the author recognizes other entities as valuable. And, crucially, the value of aretê does not seem reducible to any one of them.

In adjudicating between the sophistic contributions, what we and the disputants would need is a theory of value and of personal well-being. My hunch is that both civic and anti-civic ethicists are, at least implicitly, committed to a conception of value and so of personal well-being in terms of motivation, precisely desire. Accordingly, what ultimately distinguishes the two parties is their views of human motivation: one evidently pro-social, the other selfish.Footnote ⁸⁸