the dialogues; but the most extended and vivid characterizations of them are in the Protagoras, the Hippias Major and Hippias Minor, the Gorgias, and the Euthydemus. Plato constantly contrasts them with the ironical Socrates. Socrates affects a great humility, the sophists are conceited and self-confident; Socrates is skilled in closely reasoned argument, the sophists are helpless in his hands; Socrates defines his terms, but the sophists, accustomed to haranguing uncritical audiences, use their terms with all the looseness and inaccuracy of common conversation.

Protagoras is pictured at the head of a group of admiring listeners, pleased at an opportunity to lecture in the presence of rival sophists. Although the reader feels that in the discussion with Socrates common sense is with Protagoras, he cannot but be amused at the spectacle of the eloquent, deep-voiced orator unable to defend even a sound argument against the dialectical attack of Socrates. Protagoras, with his popular lectures and his conventional morality, was too powerful a figure to please Plato, who was somewhat neglected in the Academy.

Hippias seems to have incurred the most vigorous enmity of Plato.2 In the Hippias Minor Socrates exposes the fallacies in the popular lecture on Homer that Hippias was accustomed to give before approving audiences. In the picture of Hippias at the Olympic games in garments, rings, and accoutrements of his own make, there is no suggestion that he was attempting to reënforce his favorite doctrine of self-sufficiency; the Platonic view is that Hippias was insufferably conceited over his versatility.

The references to Prodicus are scattered and incidental. He is described as a "taker to pieces of words," as "drawing useless distinctions about names," and as beginning his instruction with "initiation into the correct use of terms." 5 In the Cratylus there is a satirical reference to the relationship between the fees of Prodicus and the amount of knowledge imparted."

'For the Platonic treatment of Protagoras, see the dialogue of that name, and also Cratylus, 386; Euthydemus, 286; Theætetus, 152-78; Meno, 91; Republic, 600; Phædrus, 267.

See Hippias Major and Hippias Minor. Only Hippias Minor is admitted into the Platonic canon by Jowett. Grote held to the genuineness of the Hippias Major, and gives an exposition of it in his Plato.

Laches, 197.

4 Charmides, 163. Euthydemus, 277. • Cratylus, 384.

1

Gorgias is portrayed in the dialogue bearing his name 1 as professing to be able to answer any questions which may be asked him, and as being so familiar with all possible subjects of discussion that for many years he has heard no new question. He indulges in oratorical praise of the art of rhetoric, and is shown to be quite incapable of dialectical argument.

2

Polus, a young pupil of Gorgias, Callicles,3 a practical politician rather than a professional rhetorician, and Thrasymachus, the spokesman for doctrines that Plato wished to discredit, are described as being much like the better-known sophists.

Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who belong to a later group of sophists, are caricatured in the Euthydemus with a dramatic vivacity and comic force which almost equals the Clouds of Aristophanes. They are characterized as "a new importation of sophists," who "will give lessons in speaking and pleading, and in writing speeches." This occupation is new to them, for they were previously teachers of the art of fighting in armor. They also profess to be teachers of virtue.

Although there are no formal charges made against any individual sophists in any of the dialogues, Plato has used all his literary resources to add to the effectiveness of his philosophical attack upon them.

VI

There is in the Gorgias a deeper purpose than an exhibition of the deficiencies of the predominant rhetorical technique. Plato here gives us a contrast between the true and the false life. The philosophic import of the dialogue has led some commentators to believe that the treatment of rhetoric is only incidental, or that rhetoric is used merely as introductory to the higher themes of philosophy. But Plato, for all his idealism, took as the point of departure for his reforms the weaknesses which he thought he saw in Athens, and rhetoric is, after all, a chief subject of the dialogue. Rhetoric, as philosophy, was a way of life. Rhetoric dealt not only with form

1Other characterizations of Gorgias are found in Meno, 70; Phædrus, 267; and Symposium, 198.

Gorgias, 466 ff. 'Gorgias, 481 ff. Republic, I.

Euthydemus, 272.

and style; it also treated the matter and policy of public speaking. It offered something of a philosophy to the orator. It was almost indistinguishable from political science, and to the general public the orator was the statesman.

If there was anything which could pretend to dispute with philosophy the position of a master knowledge, or put forward a rival claim for the guidance of life and affairs, it was this art of rhetoric, which professed to train men for politics, and to make them able to act as well as speak efficiently. The teacher of philosophy had thus to be vindicated against the teacher of rhetoric; the philosophical statesman had also to be vindicated against the orator-statesman of actual Athenian politics.1

In contrasting the philosopher and the rhetorician, Plato at times gives the impression of being on the defensive. This is not merely because rhetoric is more popular, but also because he had felt the reproaches of his friends for his inactivity in Athenian affairs. He was keenly conscious of the criticism of the philosopher which he put into the mouth of Callicles:

He [the philosopher] creeps into the corner for the rest of his life, and talks in a whisper with three or four admiring youths, but never speaks out like a freeman in a satisfactory manner.'

One way to establish the supremacy of philosophy was to show that the claims of rhetoric as "the art of becoming great in the city," s were not to be taken seriously. There must be an appeal to higher values. The belief that might makes right, the trust in things that are seen, must be replaced with a desire for the goods of the soul. The ignorance, prejudice, and selfishness of the rhetorician must be exposed; the most popular of arts must be shown to be no art at all when subjected to the scrutiny of a philosophical mind. The Gorgias, then, undertakes to refute the claims made for rhetoric by Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles. Socrates defeats each one in turn, so that we really have three dialogues in one, each antagonist advancing a somewhat different claim for rhetoric.

Gorgias, in the beginning, praises rhetoric for the power and influence it confers. He also defends it from the oft-repeated charge that it is frequently used wrongfully and works mischief in the state. But the definition of rhetoric is what Socrates seeks, and Gorgias

'E. Barker, op. cit., p. 133.

'Gorgias, 485. Gorgias, 513.

appears to be as devoid of abstract ideas with which to frame a definition as the other rhetoricians. The art of formal logic did not yet exist, and Socrates presses Gorgias with various analogies and ambiguities which both appear to mistake for valid arguments. Logic and rhetoric have not yet been clearly conceived as universal arts or sciences which admit of application to any subject matter; and it is not strange that Gorgias was unable to furnish the clear conception that Socrates sought. Socrates, then, had no great difficulty in establishing his own definition, that rhetoric is the art of persuading an ignorant multitude about the justice or injustice of a matter, without imparting any real instruction. Rhetoric is most powerful with the ignorant many, because the rhetorician, as rhetorician, does not really know what he is talking about, he only appears to know; and the appearance is persuasive only with the ignorant. Plato here limits rhetoric to the discussion of matters concerning justice. He probably chose to discuss the forensic rather than the deliberative or epideictic rhetoric because the contemporary rhetoricians devoted most of their attention to it.

Socrates also compels Gorgias to admit that rhetoricians do not really know their business, for they do not teach their pupils about justice and injustice (an essential part of rhetoric, by the definition previously established). The actions of the pupils show that they have never learned to know justice—any rhetorician must admit that his pupils often act unjustly. Two things are to be noted about this argument. Gorgias and Socrates have different ideas of what it means to know justice. Gorgias means by it a sufficient practical knowledge of men and affairs to know what is conventionally moral in any given case. Socrates, on the other hand, means abstract, philosophical knowledge of the nature of justice. There is also underlying the argument the "vicious intellectualism" of Socrates. The Platonic Gorgias fails to object to the Socratic thesis that if students of rhetoric knew the nature of justice, they would never commit an injustice. To Gorgias the teaching of justice was not a heavy responsibility, because the just or unjust actions of his pupils did not depend upon any ethical theories taught by him. The just! rhetorician was just because he sought to live in a manner which his common sense told him would win the approval of his fellow men, and not because he had been taught to be virtuous. It is difficult to

1 1 See Meno, 95.

believe that the real Gorgias would have been so easily entrapped by the argument that the injustices committed by pupils of the rhetoricians proved the ignorance of the teachers.

Polus indignantly attempts to rescue his master, but he also falls an easy victim to the Socratic dialectic. Since both Gorgias and Polus have been more apt at praising rhetoric than at defining it, Socrates proceeds to attack their claims and to establish the point that rhetoric is not of much use in the world. There are four arguments to substantiate this: (1) Rhetoric is not an art; (2) Rhetoric does not confer power; (3) Rhetoric as a protection against suffering wrong is of little importance; and (4) Rhetoric as a means of escaping a deserved punishment is not to be commended. The philosophy developed in support of these points loses little of its significance when separated from its immediate purpose of refuting the claims of rhetoric; but the unity of the dialogue is not perceived until it is understood that the philosophical theses are part of a consistent argumentative plan.

Rhetoric was not an art, Plato believed, because it did not rest on universal principles. It was really only a knack, a routine, or experience. Aiming at persuasion, it cared only for appearance. It did not aim at justice, but only at a semblance of justice. By an art, Plato meant more nearly what we should call a science, that is, a body of knowledge organized on universally valid principles. The dispute as to whether or not rhetoric was an art was of great practical significance to the rhetoricians. If it was not an art, and rested upon no principles, then the attempt to teach it must be futile. There has always been considerable scepticism as to the possibility of teaching rhetoric profitably. Its rules have often been multiplied in order to have something more to teach. Plato, in common with other writers of genius, was fond of minimizing the importance of technique, just as teachers as a class are fond of overemphasizing it.

Aside from the immediately practical effect upon the teaching of the subject, it was injurious to the prestige of rhetoric to deny it a scientific character. As Gomperz observes of the age:

All the business of mankind, from cooking a dinner to painting a picture, from going a walk to waging a war, was guided by rules and, wherever possible, reduced to principles.'