Sophists Flashcards
Non-platonic Sources x6
Xenophon Memorabilia 1.6
Plutarch Pericles 4-5, 36
Aristotle Rhetoric 1402a
Thucydides 3.37-8
Gorgias Enconium of Helen
Aristophanes Clouds 1036-45
Plato sources x4
Hippias Major 282b-e
Plato Gorgias 459b-c
Gorgias 11a.35
Protagoras 316d
Hippias Major x3(money, speech)
Gorgias and Prodikos ‘spoke very well in the assembly’ - Hippias Major 282b
No ‘sage of old ever expected to be paid’ 282c
282e - Protagoras earning 150 minas(15000 drachmae) ‘I have made more than any other two sophists’
Gorgias x3 (rhetoric)
459 b-c ‘ignorant’ more persuasive than the ‘expert before an ignorant audience’
Expertise no longer valued ‘he doesn’t need to know the facts but have the trick of persuasion’
Gorgias 11a.35 - defence of rhetoric, necessary to persuade an audience
Protagoras x1 (not novel)
‘Sophistic art is really an old one…used cover names, calling it poetry in the case of Homer….used these arts as disguises in their fear of unpopularity’
Xenophon x1 (paid work)
Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.6
‘those who sell wisdom for money to anyone who wants are called ‘sophists’ - prostitutes’ - money the issue
Plutarch x4 (1) ( influence and expertise)
Pericles 4-5
Plutarch 5 - ‘unbounded admiration for Anaxagoras’
Anxagoras clothed him with a ‘majestic bearing more potent than any demagogue’ (5)
Taught technai - acc. Plutarch 4 - Damon teaching music to Pericles
Zeno ‘argued on either side with an irresistible fury’ ‘double-edged weapon’ of a tongue (4)
Aristotle x2 (wrong, sophistic)
Aristotle, Rhetoric 1402a
Protagoras teaching ‘making the worse appear the better argument’
“based not on genuine art (skill) but on rhetoric and [arguing for argument’s sake]”
Thucydides x2 (influence, fickle demos)
3.37-8 (Cleon’s points about the influence of the sophists (implied) on the assembly)
3.38
You are simply victims of your own pleasure in listening
Gorgias (himself) x3 (sophistry, for fun)
Enconium of Helen
‘I have through speech removed ill fame’
But composing a speech ‘an amusement for myself’
Use of opposites – liars and truth, ill omen and reasoning
Repetition – pausai tês aitias, pausai tês amathias
Aristophanes (x1 +4)(wrong)
Clouds 1036-1045
‘isn’t that worth millions…to be able to have a really bad case and yet win’
Wallace - ‘few if any intellectuals after 450 were relativist or amoral
Even clouds (mockingly)accepts sophists taught the sciences
Aristophanes writing Clouds as comedy on sophists and it surviving probably shows sophists’ popularity
Because this comedy didn’t do well - sign that Sophists weren’t as important
Periclesx3 (2)(new vs old)
Pericles 36
Xanthippus, son, spending excessively, took out loan in Pericles’ name
‘brought an action against him’,
then Xanthippus ‘telling stories to raise a laugh against him about….his conversations with sophists’
