38 msr on Y oi' GBKI: Alkiliadfis, full of impulse and ambition of evsry kind, eu joyed the conversation of all the eminent talkers and lecturers to teacher vl Kritias," (JEschin. cont. Timarch. c. 34, p. 74.) lie uses the word in its natural and true Athenian sense. He had no point to make against Sokrates, who had then been dead more than forty years ; but he describes him by his profession or occupation, just as he would have said, Ilippokrat&s the physician, Plieidias the sculptor, etc. Dionysius of Halikarn. calls both Plato and Isokratcs sophists (Ars Rhetor. DC Compos. Verborum, p. 208 R.). The Xubes of Aristophanes, and the defences put forth by Plato and Xenophon, show that Sokrates was not only called by the name Sophist, but regarded just in the same light as that in which Dr. Thirlwall presents to us what he calls i: the new School of the Sophists;" as " a corruptor of youth, indifferent to truth or falsehood, right or wrong," etc. See a strik- ing passage in the Politicus of Plato, c. 33, p. 299 B. Whoever thinks, as I think, that these accusations were falsely advanced against Sokrates, will be careful how he advances them against the general profession to which Sokrates belonged. That there were unprincipled and immoral men umong the class of Soph- ists as there are and always have been among schoolmasters, profcs sors, lawyers, etc., and all bodies of men I do not doubt; in what pro- portion, we cannot determine. But the extreme hardship of passing a sweeping condemnation on the threat body of intellectual teachers at Athens, and canonizing exclusively Sokrates and his followers, will be felt, when we recollect that the well-known Apologue, called the Choice of Hercules, was the work of the Sophist Prodikus, and his favorite theme of lecture (Xenophon, Memor. ii, 1. 21-34). To this day, that Apologue remains without a superior, for the impressive simplicity with which it presents one of the most important points of view of moral obligation : and it has been embodied in a greater number of books of elementary morality than any- thing of Sokrates, Plato, or Xenophon. To treat the author of that Apo- loiriic. and the class to which he belonged, as teaching ' that there was no real difference between right and wrong, tnith and falsehood," etc., is a criticism not in harmony with the just and liberal tone of Dr. Thirlwall's history. I will add that Plato himself, in a very important passage of the Repub- lic (vi, c. 6, 7, pp. 492-493), refutes the imputation against the Sophists of being specially the ccrruptors of youth. He represents them as inculcating upon their youthful pupils that morality which was received as true and just in their age a*id society: nothing better, nothing worse. The grand ronr.ptor. he says, is society itself ; the Sophists merely repeat the voice and judgment of society. Without inquiring at present how far Plato or Sokrati-s were right in condemning the received morality of their country- men. I most fully accept his assertion that the great body of the contempo-
HIT 5>i-jf.' r : onal teachers taught what was considered good morality ann;ng
