Plato provides us with a picture of Socrates in his early career, entering the lion’s den of sophists, challenging their champion and leader to a game of wits, and coming out victorious. When he says, “we left,” he shows us that Hippocrates did not stay to enroll.
Socrates has come with a reputation as an up-and-coming intellectual, but nothing to compare with the great sophist, Protagoras. He doesn’t even get an invitation to the party, but has to crash it, with a starry-eyed young fan of the sophists in tow, one who is hoping for an introduction to an illustrious foreigner. The story is set in a time before Plato was born and cannot be an eyewitness account. It’s a piece of fiction, a historical recreation by a master storyteller. And philosopher. But it gives us a vignette of what things were like in the heyday of sophistry, when rich patrons could bring in the legendary names of the sophistic movement and see them interact. And it lets us see how Socrates’ was different from the sophists in his methods and his beliefs.
We also see how the sophists teach. Sometimes a teacher walks up and down with his students in his train. Sometimes he lectures, or tells stories, like the Great Speech Protagoras gives about Prometheus. Sometimes he enters into a question-and-answer dialogue. Some sophists teach a wide range of topics, from cosmology and mathematics to music, like Hippias; some specialize in correct diction and verbal nuances, like Prodicus; some stick to the practical subjects such as political science and household management (oikonomia, the forerunner of economics), like Protagoras. Presumably for all of them, public speaking is a critical subject, because that is the key to political advancement in this age of burgeoning democracy.
In the distant past, as represented in the Homeric poems, Greek city states were ruled by kings. Gradually kings were replaced by feudal aristocracies. Then the common people began to band together to assert their power, in large part because evolving military technology gave power to the armed infantryman, who constituted the middle class. For a time the political evolution was sidetracked by tyrants — popular leaders who claimed to champion the people but who made themselves strongmen and usurped power for themselves, like Peisistratus in Athens. But in time the tyrants were overthrown in most cities and the people in some of them learned to build strong democratic institutions that would neutralize strongmen, such as elections by lot and ostracism. But there was an important piece of unfinished business in the democratic agenda.
While any citizen could stand up in the assembly and have his say, few citizens could command respect. In the rough-and-tumble sessions of the assembly an inexperienced speaker could be shouted down by his enemies, or even by the crowd who found him boring. Having the right to speak did not by itself give the citizen the power to contribute to the political process. Here the old aristocratic families had a secret weapon. They had their old-boy network of political influence. One family could apprentice their son to a politically influential friend or relative, who would become a mentor to the protégé. Indeed, Pericles, the great champion of democracy, was himself an aristocrat who had chosen to support popular causes. But for the aspiring middle-class politician there was no royal road to leadership. The middle class had money and numbers, but lacked experience and the skill that comes from experience.
Enter the sophists. Whatever else the sophists taught, whatever their educational agendas, they all taught public speaking. Public speaking was the expertise that made a citizen a leader in a democracy. To be able to stand up with confidence before the crowd, to analyze the political situation deftly, to identify the objectives of the city, to recognize the obstacles, to argue cogently for a course of action, to propose practicable solutions, this made you a leader. Better yet, to be able to make the crowd laugh at your political opponents in derision, to make them weep at harms, rage against injustices, demand reforms, to hold them in the palm of your hand—this made you a force to be reckoned with. Even those young men who didn’t have a rich uncle with years of experience in the magistracies of the state to mentor them now had a short-cut to political success: the art of public speaking, taught by a master.
When Protagoras announced his ability to teach young men how to manage a household, rule a city, and speak with power, he found a ready audience of ardent young men. He first gave free public lectures to advertise his curriculum and to show off his speaking abilities. He then named the tuition and enrolled young men. Yet there was a danger in his program. In each city-state there were the aristocratic power brokers who pulled the strings of democracy, subverting popular processes with money and influence. To educate a generation of idealistic young men, many of whom had democratic aims, was to upset a delicate status quo. A sophist had to be on his guard against making powerful enemies by simply practicing his profession. (On the other hand, even young aristocrats might be attracted by the sophist’s claims, as are Critias and Charmides to Callias’ house.)
Furthermore, the whole notion of being taught for money seemed corrupt. In the first place, the economic ideology of Greece had not changed along with political attitudes. To earn a living by making money seemed crass and decadent. That is why Hippocrates blushed when Socrates asked him if he wanted to learn to be a sophist. The only respectable way to prosper financially was to be a landowner, receiving rents and the increase of agriculture and animal husbandry (while slaves did all the manual labor). And why did the people of Athens need to listen to a foreigner teach them how to run their own government? Who did he think he was?
As a visiting foreigner, Protagoras is sensitive to unspoken accusations. “A man has to be careful,” he says to Socrates at the beginning of his interview, “when he visits powerful cities as a foreigner, and induces the most promising young men to forsake the company of others, and relatives and acquaintances, older and younger, and consort with him on the grounds that his conversation will improve them. For his action arouses jealousies and engenders hostility and plots. Personally I hold that the sophistic art is an ancient one, but those who practiced it formerly, fearing the reproach it might bring, concealed their art behind a facade, some that of poetry, such as Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides; some that of rites and oracles, such as the school of Orpheus and Musaeus. … For my part, however, I don’t agree with their tactics. I don’t think they accomplished their aims, for they didn’t fool any of the powerful men in their cities with these disguises. … Consequently I pursue the exact opposite course from them. I profess openly to be a sophist and to educate men, and I think it’s a better policy to advertise than to conceal my vocation. And I have taken other precautions as well, so as not, God willing, to suffer any harm as a result of my profession. And indeed I have been practicing my profession for many years.”[19]
Protagoras manages at once to identify himself with the great poets, prophets, and intellectuals of previous ages and to claim the high moral ground as being sincere and transparent in his professional disclosure. To introduce a new kind of learning stirs up suspicions with conservatives; the sophistic art, however, is not new, but has only, with Protagoras, been revealed for what it really is, an age-old art of education and self-improvement that can be conveyed independently of poetry, religion, music, and the like. Protagoras deserves our admiration, he implies, for telling it like it is, and making sophistry acceptable for what it is, a powerful form of political education. A master of public relations, Protagoras has packaged and branded his art as something all should desire, a distillation of age-old wisdom suitable for citizens of the modern state.
The closest modern parallel to the itinerant Greek sophists is the success seminar taught by distinguished leaders from education, government, and business. They offer instruction in leadership skills for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to discover the secrets of success. In fifth-century BC Athens there were no universities, no law schools, business colleges or MBA programs, in short, no competition. The only game in town was the visiting sophist, or, in the case at hand, a meeting of leading sophists. On the rare occasions when professional teachers came to a city like Athens, they found an enthusiastic audience.
But the sophists’ success seminar raises its own problems. Just what is success? If success consists in the ability to win all arguments, then one who learns the art of argument from a sophist will have an invaluable power. But what if he meets another graduate of sophistry? Who will win? According to an ancient story, the first sophist was Corax of Sicily. He taught his student Tisias his art of argument, with a money-back guarantee: if he didn’t win his first case, he didn’t have to pay. Tisias received his master’s instruction and then refused to pay. Corax sued him in court. Tisias defended himself by saying that if he lost the case he would not have to pay, according to his agreement; but if he won, he would not have to pay, according to the judgment of the court. Corax reversed the conditions and said that if Tisias lost, he would have to pay, according to the judgment; but if he won, he would then have to pay in accordance with the agreement. The judge listened to the case bemused, and then playing on the name Corax, which means ‘crow,’ he said the litigants were birds of a feather and threw the case out of court.[20]
Socrates has engaged in a cockfight with Protagoras. But in the end he doesn’t crow over his victory. He presents himself as no less confused than his rival. More important than the victory was the quest for understanding, and ultimately, for virtue. Socrates’ discussions typically end with a puzzle and an invitation to another discussion, to pursue the problem at hand further. For Socrates, philosophical discussion is not about winning, it’s about learning. And the subject-matter is always virtue in general or some particular virtue. Behind the desire for clarification there is a deeper motive: self-improvement—precisely what the sophists claimed to be teaching. You pay them money and they make you better.
If only they could.
[19].Plato Protagoras 316c-317c.
[20].H. Rabe, ed. Prolegomenon Sylloge, v. 14, #4 (p. viii) (Leipzig: Tuebner, 1931).*