The disbelief in objective truth makes the majority, for practical purposes, the arbiters as to what to believe. Hence Protagoras was led to a defence of law and convention and traditional morality. While, as we saw, he did not know whether the gods existed, he was sure they ought to be worshipped. This point of view is obviously the right one for a man whose theoretical scepticism is thoroughgoing and logical.
Protagoras spent his adult life in a sort of perpetual lecture tour through the cities of Greece, teaching, for a fee, «any one who desired practical efficiency and higher mental culture» ( Zeller, p. 1299). Plato objects—somewhat snobbishly, according to modern notions-to the Sophists’ practice of charging money for instruction. Plato himself had adequate private means, and was unable, apparently, to realize the necessities of those who had not his good fortune. It is odd that
-77-
modern professors, who see no reason to refuse a salary, have so frequently repeated Plato’s strictures.
There was, however, another point in which the Sophists differed from most contemporary philosophers. It was usual, except among the Sophists, for a teacher to found a school, which had some of the properties of a brotherhood; there was a greater or smaller amount of common life, there was often something analogous to a monastic rule, and there was usually an esoteric doctrine not proclaimed to the public. All this was natural wherever philosophy had arisen out of Orphism. Among the Sophists there was none of this. What they had to teach was not, in their minds, connected with religion or virtue. They taught the art of arguing, and as much knowledge as would help in this art. Broadly speaking, they were prepared, like modern lawyers, to show how to argue for or against any opinion, and were not concerned to advocate conclusions of their own. Those to whom philosophy was a way of life, closely bound up with religion, were naturally shocked; to them, the Sophists appeared frivolous and immoral.
To some extent—though it is impossible to say how far—the odium which the Sophists incurred, not only with the general public, but with Plato and subsequent philosophers, was due to their intellectual merit. The pursuit of truth, when it is whole-hearted, must ignore moral considerations; we cannot know in advance that the truth will turn out to be what is thought edifying in a given society. The Sophists were prepared to follow an argument wherever it might lead them. Often it led them to scepticism. One of them, Gorgias, maintained that nothing exists; that if anything exists, it is unknowable; and granting it even to exist and to be knowable by any one man, he could never communicate it to others. We do not know what his arguments were, but I can well imagine that they had a logical force which compelled his opponents to take refuge in edification. Plato is always concerned to advocate views that will make people what he thinks virtuous; he is hardly ever intellectually honest, because he allows himself to judge doctrines by their social consequences. Even about this, he is not honest; he pretends to follow the argument and to be judging by purely theoretical standards, when in fact he is twisting the discussion so as to lead to a virtuous result. He introduced this vice into philosophy, where it has persisted ever since. It was prob-
-78-
ably largely hostility to the Sophists that gave this character to his dialogues. One of the defects of all philosophers since Plato is that their inquiries into ethics proceed on the assumption that they already know the conclusions to be reached.
It seems that there were men, in the Athens of the late fifth century, who taught political doctrines which seemed immoral to their contemporaries, and seem so to the democratic nations of the present day. Thrasymachus, in the first book of the Republic, argues that there is no justice except the interest of the stronger; that laws are made by governments for their own advantage; and that there is no impersonal standard to which to appeal in contests for power. Callicles, according to Plato (in the Gorgias), maintained a similar doctrine. The law of nature, he said, is the law of the stronger; but for convenience men have established institutions and moral precepts to restrain the strong. Such doctrines have won much wider assent in our day than they did in antiquity. And whatever may be thought of them, they are not characteristic of the Sophists.
During the fifth century—whatever part the Sophists may have had in the change—there was in Athens a transformation from a certain stiff Puritan simplicity to a quick-witted and rather cruel cynicism in conflict with a slow-witted and equally cruel defence of crumbling orthodoxy. At the beginning of the century comes the Athenian championship of the cities of Ionia against the Persians, and the victory of Marathon in 490 B.C. At the end comes the defeat of Athens by Sparta in 404 B.C., and the execution of Socrates in 399 B.C. After this time Athens ceased to be politically important, but acquired undoubted cultural supremacy, which it retained until the victory of Christianity.
Something of the history of fifth-century Athens is essential to the understanding of Plato and of all subsequent Greek thought. In the first Persian war, the chief glory went to the Athenians, owing to the decisive victory at Marathon. In the second war, ten years later, the Athenians still were the best of the Greeks at sea, but on land victory was mainly due to the Spartans, who were the acknowledged leaders of the Hellenic world. The Spartans, however, were narrowly provincial in their outlook, and ceased to oppose the Persians when they had been chased out of European Greece. The championship of the Asiatic Greeks, and the liberation of the islands that had been con-
-79-
quered by the Persians, was undertaken, with great success, by Athens. Athens became the leading sea power, and acquired a considerable imperialist control over the Ionian islands. Under the leadership of Pericles, who was a moderate democrat and a moderate imperialist, Athens prospered. The great temples, whose ruins are still the glory of Athens, were built by his initiative, to replace those destroyed by Xerxes. The city increased very rapidly in wealth, and also in culture, and, as invariably happens at such times, particularly when wealth is due to foreign commerce, traditional morality and traditional beliefs decayed.
There was at this time in Athens an extraordinarily large number of men of genius. The three great dramatists, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, all belong to the fifth century. Aeschylus fought at Marathon and saw the battle of Salamis. Sophocles was still religiously orthodox. But Euripides was influenced by Protagoras and by the free-thinking spirit of the time, and his treatment of the myths is sceptical and subversive. Aristophanes, the comic poet, made fun of Socrates, Sophists, and philosophers, but nevertheless belonged to their circle; in the Symposium Plato represents him as on very friendly terms with Socrates. Pheidias the sculptor, as we have seen, belonged to the circle of Pericles.
The excellence of Athens, at this period, was artistic rather than intellectual. None of the great mathematicians or philosophers of the fifth century were Athenians, with the exception of Socrates; and Socrates was not a writer, but a man who confined himself to oral discussion.
The outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 B.C. and the death of Pericles in 429 B.C. introduced a darker period in Athenian history. The Athenians were superior at sea, but the Spartans had supremacy on land, and repeatedly occupied Attica (except Athens) during the summer. The result was that Athens was overcrowded, and suffered severely from the plague. In 414 B.C. the Athenians sent a large expedition to Sicily, in the hope of capturing Syracuse, which was allied with Sparta; but the attempt was a failure. War made the Athenians fierce and persecuting. In 416 B.C. they conquered the island of Melos, put to death all men of military age, and enslaved the other inhabitants. The Trojan Women of Euripides is a protest against such barbarism. The conflict had an ideological aspect, since Sparta was
-80-
the champion of oligarchy and Athens of democracy. The Athenians had reason to suspect some of their own aristocrats of treachery, which was generally thought to have had a part in the final naval defeat at the battle of Aegospotami in 405 B.C.
At the end of the war, the Spartans established in Athens an oligarchial government, known as the Thirty Tyrants. Some of the Thirty, including Critias, their chief, had been pupils of Socrates. They were deservedly unpopular, and were overthrown within a year. With the compliance of Sparta, democracy was restored, but it was an embittered democracy, precluded by an amnesty from direct vengeance against its internal enemies, but glad of any pretext, not covered by the amnesty, for prosecuting them. It was in this atmosphere
