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Updated: May 16, 2025
When I read the lives of the philosophers in Diogenes Laertius, I arrive at the conclusion that Epicurus, Zeno, Diogenes, Protagoras and the others were nothing more than men who had common sense. Clearly, as a corollary, I am obliged to conclude that the people we meet nowadays upon the street, whether they wear gowns, uniforms or blouses, are mere animals masquerading in human shape.
For confidence may be given to men by art, and also, like ability, by madness and rage; but courage comes to them from nature and the healthy state of the soul. I said: You would admit, Protagoras, that some men live well and others ill? He assented. And do you think that a man lives well who lives in pain and grief? He does not.
The master silenced with his outstretched hand the murmur of disapproval which arose, and said: "It must first be proved that Phidias' statue must borrow gold from the sun, but since that is unproved, it is absurd to talk of a deficit. Moreover, gold cannot be borrowed from the sun. Therefore what Protagoras says is mere babble, and deserves no answer.
Would not knowledge? a knowledge of measuring, when the question is one of excess and defect, and a knowledge of number, when the question is of odd and even? The world will acknowledge that, will they not? Protagoras admitted that they would.
Meanwhile Callias and Alcibiades got Prodicus out of bed and brought in him and his companions. When we were all seated, Protagoras said: Now that the company are assembled, Socrates, tell me about the young man of whom you were just now speaking.
"We were discussing," said I, "that very thing for which we found you praying-namely, truth, and what it might be." "Perhaps you went a worse way toward discovering it than I did. But let us hear. Whence did the discussion arise?" "From something," said Alcibiades, "which Protagoras said in his lecture yesterday-How truth was what each man troweth, or believeth, to be true.
The closest analogy to this development of thought is not offered by the Renaissance, to which the description HUMANISTIC has been conventionally appropriated, but rather by the age of illumination in Greece in the latter half of the fifth century B.C., represented by Protagoras, Socrates, and others who turned from the ultimate problems of the cosmos, hitherto the main study of philosophers, to man, his nature and his works.
Pleasure is, by its nature, a change or transition, and cannot be a supreme end. The mixture of Pleasure and Intelligence is to be adjusted by the all-important principle of Measure or Proportion, which connects the Good with the Beautiful. A decided asceticism is the ethical tendency of this dialogue. It is markedly opposed to the view of the Protagoras.
He jestingly said, that he would make the same bargain with me that was made by the famous sophist Protagoras of old with his pupil, that he should have the profits of the first cause I should win certain that I would not, like his treacherous pupil Evathlus, employ the rhetorician's arms against himself, to cheat him out of his promised reward.
"The wise man does not willingly speak of his wife," Protagoras struck in: "nor of his weakness." "You have said it. One sacrifices to the earth, but unwillingly; one binds oneself, but without pleasure; one endures, but loves not; one does one's duty to the State, but with difficulty. There is only one Aspasia, and she belongs to Pericles the greatest woman to the greatest man.
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