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Updated: June 16, 2025
That was the Sophist, Protagoras, the reasoner for hire, who for a few figs or a pair of obols, could make black seem white, but was tolerated in this brilliant society, because he could carry on a dialogue. They used him to enliven their meetings, and pitted him in argument against Socrates, who, however, always entangled him in the meshes of his dialectic. At last came the one they expected.
For these are his words: I produce this because it is really his meaning, not because I want other testimonies, for Plato hath store of learned and sufficient men to join with him. For not to mention Eupolis, who in his play called the "Flatterers" says, Protagoras bids us drink a lusty bowl, That when the Dog appears our lungs may still be moist; or elegant Eratosthenes, who says,
Then Socrates, laughing: "My fine fellow, you will have made more than one oration in the Pnyx to-day. And indeed, I myself felt quite exalted, and rapt aloft, like Bellerophon on Pegasus, upon the eloquence of Protagoras and you. But yet forgive me this one thing; for my mother bare me, as you know, a man-midwife, after her own trade, and not a sage." ALCIBIADES. "What then?"
They were paid teachers, and sought pupils from the sons of the rich, the more eminent of them being Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus; men who travelled from city to city, exciting great admiration for their rhetorical skill, and really improving the public speaking of popular orators.
But Aspasia can also cause wise men to speak wisely by listening to them; for she helps them to produce thoughts, not like Socrates' midwife, who only brings corporeal births to pass, but she incarnates their souls." Protagoras continued: "Aspasia is like the Mother Cybele of us all; she bears us in her bosom." "Aspasia is the scale of the zither, without whom our strings would not sound."
"Yes, my teacher Protagoras taught me once, that everything is born from its opposite; therefore you see my heart can embrace all opposites. Sparta and Athens are both dear to me; that is to say, both hateful the state gods of the one, and the virtues of the other." "You have a great heart, stranger! Is there room in it for Persia?" "For the whole world." "What do you think of our chief city?"
Thinkers who trace back all simple ideas to outer and inner perception we expect to reject every attempt to extend knowledge beyond the sphere of experience, to declare the combinations of ideas which have their origin in sensation trustworthy, and those which are formed without regard to perception, illusory; or else, with Protagoras, to limit knowledge to the individual perceiving subject, with a consequent complete denial of its general validity.
I replied: I will begin again at the same point, Protagoras, and tell you once more the purport of my visit: this is my friend Hippocrates, who is desirous of making your acquaintance; he would like to know what will happen to him if he associates with you. I have no more to say.
When we say to them: Friends, you are mistaken, and are saying what is not true, they would probably reply: Socrates and Protagoras, if this affection of the soul is not to be called 'being overcome by pleasure, pray, what is it, and by what name would you describe it?
This, they say, was in fact the practice of Protagoras: when he taught a man anything he would bid the learner estimate the worth of the knowledge gained by his own private opinion; and then he used to take so much from him. In such cases some people adopt the rule, "With specified reward a friend should be content."
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