Introduction

It is widely accepted today that philosophy as a specialized discipline was not developed before Plato, but that he was instrumental in creating and defining this new field of intellectual practices. [1] His articulation of philosophy was so powerful that it remained largely uncontested into modern times. [2] But the establishment of the discipline of philosophy in antiquity was anything but a straightforward or uncontested process. [3] There was a fierce debate about the meaning and successful appropriation of the term philosophia, and this debate was pursued as much in terms of what philosophia was not as in terms of what it was. In this context omissions and misrepresentations of competing articulations become an essential strategy. In expressing his own view of philosophy, Plato simultaneously designates sophistry as philosophy’s opposite, its “daemonic double,” to quote Michael MacDonald. [4]

Plato systematically associated a specific group of practitioners of wisdom with the derogatory label sophist and then projected onto them a set of unflattering characteristics. Edward Schiappa has called attention to this Platonic practice, which he labels “dissociation:” [5] The intellectual ostracism of the sophists was upheld and furthered by Aristotle. [7] Michael Frede’s recent exploration of the Aristotelian history of Greek philosophy in the Metaphysics illustrates this development. Frede calls attention to how interrelated Aristotle’s conception of philosophy is with his discussion of its origin and first practitioner: Of particular interest are the temporal limits that Aristotle imposes on the development of philosophy. He traces its origin back to Thales and no further. Though he acknowledges that some (τινες) claim that Thales’ views that water was the origin of everything had already been expressed by others, Aristotle staunchly rejects any attempt to lend the name of philosophy to these earlier expressions.

But who were the ones who wanted to trace the history of philosophy beyond Thales? Plato for one, argues Ross, referring to a passage in the Cratylus (402a–c) that matches the view expressed in Aristotle. [9] Frede, following Bruno Snell, sees a common source for both Plato and Aristotle, and identifies Hippias of Elis as its originator. Through great detective work, Snell has shown that the discussions of the poetic predecessors of Heraclitus and Thales in the Cratylus (402a–c) and the Metaphysics (983b20–984a5) are derived from the work of Hippias (contemporary of Socrates). In this work, argues Snell, Hippias contrasted Thales’ opinions to those of such older poetic predecessors as Homer, Hesiod, and Orpheus. In the Cratylus Plato substitutes Thales with Heraclitus because it better fits his purposes and also because Plato is making a joke. [10] Despite this difference in the two accounts, however, the common source, according to Snell, is Hippias. Carl Joachim Classen has taken this investigation further and found other traces of Hippias in Plato’s Symposium and Aristotle’s Metaphysics. [11]

Building on Snell and Classen, Jaap Mansfeld has convincingly argued that the sophists were instrumental in developing the early forms of doxography, and that the organizing principles of these works—for example the exposition of related ideas—are reflected in the discussions of the history and origin of philosophy in both Plato and Aristotle. [12] In addition to Hippias, both Protagoras and Gorgias exhibited an interest in cataloguing the opinions of their predecessors, though the evidence regarding them suggests a more polemical stance than that found in Hippias. [13]

Much of the evidence relating to the early development of doxography has to be painstakingly reconstructed through a patchwork of references and cross-references. When it comes to Hippias’ contribution, however, we are on slightly firmer footing. Clement of Alexandria in the Stromateis (6.2.15 = DK 86B6) quotes what is supposedly the proem of Hippias’ Synagoge (Collection): [14] It seems that Hippias’ ambition was to present in the Synagoge an overview of contemporary and ancient thinking on an encyclopedic scale, and that the work was organized according to themes that were illustrated by short quotations from the primary sources. [15] Hippias also seems to have assumed that all contemporary thinking was derived from older predecessors; [16] or, to be more precise, Hippias seems to have believed that all contemporary thinking that we today might characterize as philosophical was ultimately derived from older, mythological expressions, though these older expressions might lack the sophistication and explicit articulation found in later writers. [17] The exposition in the Synagoge most likely started with a statement from one of Hippias’ contemporaries or predecessors and then traced it back to the works of one of the poets of old, such as Musaeus, Homer, or Hesiod. [18]

This, then, seems to be the competing articulation of the origin of philosophy that Aristotle rejects in the first book of the Metaphysics. As opposed to Hippias, Aristotle will not allow philosophy’s origin to stretch back to the poetic past, be it Greek or non-Greek. [19] But why does Aristotle settle with Thales? This question can of course be answered in numerous ways, but what matters at present is how it relates to Aristotle’s conception of philosophy, a point that Frede has explored. He sees Aristotle’s decision to let philosophy begin with Thales as anything but arbitrary. He reminds us that when Aristotle wrote the Metaphysics there was no consensus about what philosophy was or should be. [20] Part of Aristotle’s ambition was to champion his view of philosophy, to present a normative account of his own intellectual practices. The selection of Thales, then, serves the purpose of portraying philosophy as theoretical and as “universal, knowledge of the ultimate causes and principles of things, of what there is, quite generally.” [21]

But in advocating this view of philosophy, Aristotle rejects another and older view, articulated by Hippias in the Synagoge. It is important that we understand how polemical Aristotle’s articulation is, a point highlighted by Mansfeld. [22] At the core of the Aristotelian articulation of philosophy lies a suppression of an alternate—and unacknowledged because unnamed—articulation. By imposing a limit on when philosophy began—with Thales—Aristotle is simultaneously imposing a limit on what philosophy is and ought to be: that is to say, non-Hippian. There is thus a double process at work in the Metaphysics. To begin with, Aristotle chooses not to mention Hippias by name as the subject of his critique, effectively delegitimizing Hippias’ status as a sophos. But Aristotle also rejects Hippias’ intellectual position on the history and scope of philosophy. As opposed to Hippias, for whom philosophy is not unique to the Greeks nor sufficiently distinct to require separate treatment from the earliest poetic expressions, Aristotle chooses not to grant the status of philosophy to any of Thales’ precursors.

This phenomenon is not limited to the Metaphysics, Aristotle, or even Hippias. Snell, Classen, Patzer, and Mansfeld have shown that Plato too drew on Hippias’ work, also without mentioning Hippias’ name or explicitly acknowledging his source. [23] As already mentioned, Mansfeld has made the case that Protagoras and Gorgias engaged in rudimentary doxography. Their works would presumably also have been available to Plato and Aristotle. We might suspect, though with less certainty than in the case of Hippias, that the Platonic and Aristotelian suppression of alternate articulations of philosophy applied also to these two key sophistic figures. [24]

Except for the titillating suggestion of a comprehensive work authored by Hippias—thus predating Plato (ca. 427–347BCE)—on the origin and development of philosophy, the real significance of this discussion lies in the evidence of a competing articulation of the Greek wisdom tradition. Hippias’ conception of philosophy, according to this analysis, is lurking behind and informing the accounts of both Plato and Aristotle. We might say that Hippias comes to personify the presence of a competing, but ultimately suppressed tradition. It is of course tempting to ask what philosophy could have looked like if Hippias’ view had won the day. Just as Aristotle’s articulation of philosophy is inherently linked with his conceptualization of its beginning, so, presumably, is Hippias’. As enticing as the “what if” question of the Hippian articulation of philosophy is, however, it is too broad for the current project. Let it suffice to say that others have turned to the sophists to find a corrective and more tolerant view of philosophy than that found in Plato and Aristotle—with mixed results. [25]

During Hippias’ lifetime, the debate about philosophy was still actively pursued, and no single position had yet prevailed. It is against this realization that we need to read Plato’s and Aristotle’s all but total omission of competing accounts—a strategy that has proven remarkably successful. In tandem with this omission, Plato and Aristotle also managed to characterize the sophists as an intellectually homogeneous group—and as one that was decisively alien to their own intellectual tradition. Perhaps the most enduring effect of the Platonic characterization of the sophists is precisely their unique status. This “otherness,” I argue, was established first by Plato and later developed by Xenophon and Aristotle, and it has been a feature of almost all consecutive discussions of the sophists up till the present time. [26]

I will survey central criteria of sophistic otherness, in order to outline what stands in the way of assuming a fully integrated position for the sophists in the Greek wisdom tradition. I will start with the characteristics established by the Platonic tradition and move on to features that have been added over time by successive commentators, both ancient and modern. In some cases there exists a large body of scholarly literature critical of the Platonic portrayal. In these instances, I will mostly summarize those findings. In other instances, however, the Platonic verdict has largely gone unchallenged. I shall have more to say about those points later on. The first three criteria of sophistic distinctiveness fall into this category.

A certain group of practitioners of wisdom were singled out and labeled sophists. This classificatory designation clearly marks them off as a distinct category of sophoi. In the first chapter, I will examine the use of the term σοφιστής in antiquity and go on to argue that it is only in Plato and Aristotle that we find a consistent application of it to specific individuals. Elsewhere the term was in far wider use, and referred to a wider range of intellectual life. Yet, most modern treatments of fifth and fourth century BCE Greece use the term sophist in respect to the individuals so designated in Plato and Aristotle without acknowledging its wide—and contentious—application in antiquity. By perpetuating this use of the term sophist, then, we are perpetuating a Platonic category—in a way analogous to the hypothetical scenario of labeling Socrates a sophist because he is so characterized in Aristophanes’ Clouds, without considering the wider implications of its comic and Aristophanic use.

We are so trapped in Platonic categories that it is almost impossible to discuss this group of thinkers without simultaneously reinforcing their unique status as championed by Plato. But since this is a connection that I am trying to question, what is the appropriate terminology to adopt to distinguish between the Platonically designed sophists, on the one hand, and the historical individuals, on the other? To add to this confusion, we should note that many individuals that we typically would not think of as sophists were frequently so labeled in antiquity. What terms can we employ that adequately capture and clearly differentiate these different groups?

Given that the label sophist is so ingrained, it seems impractical and unnecessarily counterintuitive to avoid it. I propose to sacrifice semantic precision for the sake of comprehensibility. The term sophist will be used with different significations, sometimes indicating anyone labeled σοφιστής in our primary texts, and sometimes referring strictly to the group of individuals so designated in Plato and onward, that is, Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, and the rest. The discussion in chapter one and elsewhere is intended to illustrate the semantic range of the term in antiquity and to demonstrate why it is problematic as a modern category to describe a set of specific individuals, given how dependent this grouping and its characterization are on the influential testimony of Plato.

More advisable, however, and to the extent possible, I will avoid group labels altogether and refer to each individual by his own name. To highlight the fluidity of categories in the Greek wisdom tradition and to emphasize the lack of intellectual specialization, I will occasionally use the term sophos (plural sophoi) as an unmarked designation to refer to individuals with a claim to wisdom (sophia). This term is common in Greek and embraces a wide variety of groups that we would hesitate to juxtapose, such as sages, lawgivers, religious experts, poets, and philosophers.

Another area in which the sophists’ distinctiveness is claimed is that they are said to trade in wisdom. In fact, this association has become so strong that it works both ways; that is, anyone who is a sophist must teach for money, and anyone who teaches for money must be a sophist. Chapter two is devoted to exploring how this association of money and wisdom is part of a larger invective discourse with analogous features in old comedy and tragedy. In these genres charges of venality are frequently levied against sophoi in an attempt to undermine their position as authorities in wisdom by implying that they are motivated by greed. The Platonic characterization of the sophists as greedy peddlers of specious wisdom, I argue, needs to be understood less as a way to describe historical practices than as an attempt to undercut their intellectual integrity.

It is also regularly claimed that the sophists led an itinerant lifestyle and traveled all over Greece in search of employment. As opposed to their predecessors and contemporaries, their travels were not motivated by intellectual curiosity, only by the prospects of attracting students and of increasing their profits. Silvia Montiglio perfectly reproduces this essentially Platonic characterization when she establishes a contrast between the professional travels of the sophists and the intellectual journeys of Solon and Democritus: However, an examination of the primary sources reveals that travel and wisdom were intrinsically linked in ancient Greece from at least the archaic period onward. In chapter four, I argue that travel was a fundamental aspect of the archaic Greek institutions of wisdom and of crucial importance to the circulation and dissemination of wisdom. In the institutional framework that made travel possible and gave cultural credibility to individual sages to crisscross the Greek world there are no clearly identifiable differences between the travels of the sophists and those of other practitioners of wisdom. Instead, they seem to undertake their travel for similar purposes and within established channels of communication. If anything, Socrates seems to be the odd man out with his insistence on remaining in Athens and rejection of (intellectual) travel.

Yet another persistent claim is that the sophists were predominantly concerned with rhetoric, not philosophy. [28] Both Schiappa and Thomas Cole have argued convincingly that the close association of rhetoric with the sophists is another Platonic and Aristotelian definitional imposition aimed at circumscribing sophistic intellectual practices and portraying them as subordinate to their own philosophical enterprises. [29] Schiappa writes that “the word rhêtorikê may have been coined by Plato in the process of composing the Gorgias around 385 BCE.” [30] As Andrea Nightingale has pointed out, it was in the Gorgias that Plato first offered an exhaustive definition of philosophy and applied it to his own activities. She goes on to note that, “if Schiappa is right about rhêtorikê, then the first explicit and systematic definition of the art of rhetoric would go hand in hand with the first attempt to define philosophy. In attempting to define his own territory, as it seems, Plato had to define and delimit his rival’s terrain.” [31]

There are thus good reasons to question the contention that the sophists’ intellectual activities were predominantly focused on rhetoric, especially given the negative assessment of rhetoric in comparison with philosophy found in both Plato and Aristotle. The workings of language was an area of interest that many of the sophists shared, but it was not restricted to what Plato labels rhetoric, [32] nor was it their exclusive interest, [33] and it had not gone unexplored by earlier practitioners of wisdom. In the Helen (2–3), for example, Isocrates compared the rhetorical writings of Gorgias and Protagoras to those of Zeno and Melissus, [34] who are traditionally included among the Presocratics; and Aristotle, in his lost work the Sophist (DK 29A10 = Diogenes Laertius 8.57) wrote that Empedocles invented rhetoric and Zeno of Elea dialectic. [35] G. B. Kerferd has shown how Heraclitus and Parmenides, both in different ways, struggled with the relationship between language and reality, and he has suggested that their arguments “provided the starting point for sophistic discussions of linguistic theories.” [36]

As for the rhetorical features that we do find in the writings of the sophists, Mark Griffith has argued that, far from being novel in nature, they exhibit strong traditional characteristics: As we have already seen, however, it was not only in the poetic predecessors that models for the sophistic rhetorical techniques were found. There is no doubt that the focus on public oratory intensified in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. But it was not exclusive to the group Plato labels sophists, nor can it be used as a sufficient defining characteristic to describe the extent of their intellectual activities.

It is often claimed that the sophists falsely represent the content of their teaching—that they teach what appears to be X but is not X—thus actively deceiving their pupils. This is a position upheld by Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle—and modern scholars, too. Aristotle gives the position a clear expression: In the Metaphysics, Aristotle adds that “dialectic is tentative regarding the things where philosophy is capable of knowledge, and the sophistic art is what appears to be philosophy but is not.” [39] The seventh definition of sophist in the Platonic dialogue of the same name unequivocally underscores the Platonic position:

Xenophon, in turn, takes a less convoluted stance and asserts that, “the sophists talk to deceive, write for their own profit, and benefit no one.” [41]

This characterization of the sophists as charlatans and intellectual forgers will receive substantial attention in chapters three to six. These chapters contain an exploration of the traditional elements of the sophists’ intellectual practices and highlight how deeply embedded they were in the Greek wisdom tradition.

The sophists, it is also claimed, subscribed to extreme relativism and denied the existence of objective judgments. [42] The basis for this view is mainly to be found in Plato’s treatment of Protagoras’ homo mensura doctrine in the Theaetetus. Modern scholars, treating Protagoras as the intellectual spearhead of the sophistic movement, seem to have generalized this Platonic characterization and applied similar views to the sophists as a group. [43] But, as Richard Bett has shown, extreme relativism, strictly speaking, can be attributed only to Protagoras, and even in his case with great uncertainty. It is of course possible to attribute relativistic ideas to the sophists—for example, that what qualifies as a virtuous action depends on the context and circumstances under which it is undertaken—but such reasoning is in no way exclusive to them; if this is the criterion for relativism, we would have to include both Socrates and Aristotle in this group. [44] In other words, if by relativism is meant the rejection of objectivity, then it is misguided to attribute this position to any of the sophists, with the possible exception of Protagoras. [45] There is very little evidence to suggest that the sophists as a group shared relativistic ideas or that such philosophical inclinations would constitute a trademark of their thinking.

It is further claimed that the sophistic movement developed in response to specific Athenian social forces, and that the sophists spent most of their time in Athens. Kerferd articulates this point most succinctly: “Their coming was not simply something from without, but rather a development internal to the history of Athens.” [46] Another traditional assumption emphasizes the sophists’ democratic sensibilities—an assumption closely linked to the previous point, since Athens is strongly identified with its democratic form of government. Jacqueline de Romilly writes that: Against this Athenocentric view of the sophistic movement, Robert Wallace has argued that Athens—and its democratic form of government—has been given too much importance in understanding the sophists: Rosalind Thomas, in her work on Herodotus, is also highly critical of the way scholars tend to over-emphasize the significance of Athens, both as the sole impetus for the intellectual movement in the second half of the fifth century (at the expense of, say, eastern Greece), but also as the undisputed center of all intellectual activity in general. [49]

There is an abundance of evidence of the sophists’ activities outside of Athens, explored in chapters four and five. When Gorgias first visited Athens in 427 BCE, for example, he was around sixty years old and had presumably already made a reputation for himself. [50] To judge from Plato’s characterization in the dialogue Protagoras, many years had elapsed since Protagoras’ last visit—years during which he was active elsewhere. [51] As is argued at greater length in chapters four and five, to claim that the sophists owed their existence to Athens overstates Athens’ importance and ignores intellectual developments elsewhere in Greece.

What about the sophists’ democratic experiences outside of Athens? Eric Robinson has recently argued that modern scholarship has put too much emphasis on Athens while not sufficiently exploring the contexts in which the sophists initially shaped their intellectual frameworks. He concludes that: But the evidence to support a specifically democratic political influence on the intellectual articulations of the sophists is scant and mainly circumstantial, and it seems to be assumed solely as a result of Athens’ presumed role in shaping the sophistic movement. More attractive—and certainly more substantiated—is G. E. R. Lloyd’s claim that the development of Greek scientific rationality as a whole was intrinsically linked with democratic ideology. [53] Lloyd is careful not to argue for a direct causal relationship between the emergence of democracy and rationality, but he clearly sees democratic ideology as fertile ground for the kinds of intellectual developments typically associated with rationality and philosophy. [54] From the point of view of Lloyd’s thesis, with its emphasis on democratic ideology over realities, [55] it seems unnecessary and even problematic to separate different degrees of democratic influence among the various philosophers; it seems preferable to assume a suggestive analogy between the political developments that took place in the wake of the rise of the polis and the emergence of a rational and philosophical discourse in ancient Greece. [56]

This list of alleged criteria of sophistic distinctiveness is of course not exhaustive, but it does, I hope, help shed light on the pervasiveness of the ways in which the sophists have been construed as qualitatively different from their predecessors and contemporaries. The notion of sophistic difference seems to undermine any attempt to argue for a reconsideration of the areas of intellectual overlaps. But such an argument finds strong support in our primary sources. To begin with, we have ample documentation indicating that Gorgias, Hippias, Prodicus, and Antiphon had an interest in physical speculation, while Hippias and Antiphon were accomplished mathematicians—both areas traditionally considered a dividing line between philosophers and sophists. [57] But more importantly, if we take as our starting point Greek conceptualizations of wisdom and wise men, our modern taxonomies often appear ill-suited to describe with any kind of accuracy the multiplicity of positions found in ancient Greece.

What precisely did the Greeks mean by wisdom (sophia), and whom did they look to as experts (sophoi)? Lloyd stresses the range of the term sophia in the classical period, where: Aristotle’s classic account of the different developmental stages of wisdom has had a strong influence on modern scholars. [59] In his view, described in the first chapter of the Metaphysics, wisdom showed a steady progression in Greek culture from skill in particulars to skill in universals, eventually culminating in Aristotle’s own scientific philosophy. [60] Kerferd has persuasively rejected this view on the grounds that the account too directly reflects Aristotle’s own theories of philosophy and the development of wisdom, especially in the emphasis on the intellectual vector from particulars to universals. [61] In opposing this Aristotelian account, Kerferd notes that wisdom was initially connected with the poet, the seer, and the sage, and that their knowledge was not pertaining to a particular skill, “but knowledge about the gods, man and society, to which the ‘wise man’ claimed privileged access.” [62] This knowledge, in turn, was divinely inspired—always pertaining to content; and the content in question was education—the turf par excellence of sophoi. [63]

In response to Aristotle’s teleological vision, Kerferd argues for a single and unified notion of sophia and stresses the role of the wise man as educator. [64] Depending on context, sophia can come to take on particular meanings, but this should not invite us to see shifts in the overall meaning of the word itself; [65] rather, we must investigate the various meanings by paying particular attention to the context in which the word occurs. [66]

Built into any definition of sophia must be an understanding of its polyvalence and the competing (and sometimes mutually exclusive) conceptions that existed at different times and in different groups in Greek culture. A good example of such a contestation over sophia is Euripides’ Bacchae, where Pentheus’ vision and wisdom are repeatedly contrasted to those of Cadmus and Teiresias. Line 395, uttered by the chorus of Bacchae, perfectly captures the tension between the two camps, as the Bacchae challenge the position of Pentheus: τὸ σοφὸν δ’ οὐ σοφία, “cleverness/wisdom is not wisdom.” Here τὸ σοφόν is equated with the rejection of the gods as opposed to the true devotion of the Bacchae themselves. The approach adopted in this study is to avoid fixed, lexicographical definitions and instead expect multiple appropriations and contestations of the meaning and development of sophia. Fixed definitions run the danger of ignoring such cultural processes. In other words, rather than proceeding from the meaning of sophia to the successive establishment of the category of sophos, we would perhaps arrive at a better understanding if we turned this formula on its head and explored sophia precisely through the category of sophos: whoever could authoritatively claim a position as sophos would be an illustrative example of sophia, regardless of how well (or not) his expertise fits standard definitions of the term. [67]

But what were the necessary requirements to claim a position as a sophos? Wits and personality, argues Lloyd. [68] As much as this statement is true and avoids reifying the concept of philosophy and philosopher, it nevertheless fails to take seriously the problem of authority, that is, the process of acquiring the cultural legitimacy necessary to claim a position of sophos. Authority, it seems to me, is ideally considered sociologically.

The crucial theoretical assumptions in my approach have to do with building into the analysis a critical understanding of the competitive and opposing claims to authority by the practitioners in the field of sophia. These claims often go unnoticed as such, since they are presented by the individual sophoi as disinterested and, thus, as universal. My approach draws on the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and places the locus of contestation in the internal dynamics of the field, a realm of social practices that has managed to carve out its own social space and to achieve relative autonomy vis-à-vis other fields. [69] Autonomy translates into cultural authority. The higher the degree of autonomy acquired by a field—the extent to which it can impose its own logic and rules on the players and resist the logic of other fields—the greater the authority of its practices. Internally, in turn, a similar struggle over legitimacy occurs among the participants, where each individual or institution attempts to present his or her own practices as most in line with the logic of the field and, therefore, as most legitimate. This internal jockeying for position creates a highly agonistic climate where contestation is endemic. [70] In the words of Loïc Wacquant, “a field is an arena of struggle, through which agents and institutions seek to preserve or overturn the existing distribution of capital …; it is a battlefield wherein the bases of identity and hierarchy are endlessly disputed over.” [71] The struggle over hierarchy often takes the form of a struggle over definitions and categories, over orthodoxy versus heterodoxy, in attempts to boost one’s own position by describing it as orthodox and undermining the positions of others by categorizing them as heterodox. [72]

Bourdieu’s notion of field has particular hermeneutic value for studying the social world of ancient Greece. We do not have a clearly differentiated social world in ancient Greece with distinctly separated fields of, say, politics, economy, religion, and philosophy, so the applicability of his concept will not be entirely straightforward. But even though the process of differentiation might not yet be fully advanced in this early period, the period under investigation, the development of higher degrees of separation among various social realms is nevertheless underway. Indeed, following Bourdieu, I would argue that the field of philosophy is among the first social realms to establish itself as a truly independent social universe, and that this development started to take place in the fifth century BCE. [73]

For these reasons Bourdieu’s notion of field can be a useful theoretical tool to analyze the spawning process of social differentiation and of rival claims to legitimacy and authority among ancient practitioners of wisdom. I put this theoretical insight to work in focusing on the internal contestation among sophoi, to illustrate, for example, how the term σοφιστής became critical in the struggle over legitimacy, and how accusations of teaching for pay took on a similar role. If this interpretation is valid, it becomes problematic for modern critics to adopt ancient categories (such as σοφιστής) confidently as if they were neutral designations, totally removed from their original, contentious context. In doing this we would effectively be taking sides in an ideologically driven battle over legitimacy, rather than examining the conditions under which the categories came to be attached to certain individuals, and the connotations that those categories conveyed.

The rehabilitation of the sophists championed in this study is of course not altogether new. In recent decades the intellectual balkanization of the sophists has been challenged in a number of influential contributions to the study of Greek culture. G. E. R. Lloyd, for example, has questioned the validity of the category of sophist and stressed the fluidity among the different categories of practitioners of wisdom. [74] Andrea Nightingale, while emphasizing the continuity in practices among the early practitioners of wisdom, has warned about the danger of adopting Platonic and Aristotelian terms when discussing the early practitioners of wisdom. [75] Robert Wallace, too, has pointed out that “[i]n fifth-century texts the distinction between sophist and philosopher was not made.” [76] R. P. Martin, finally, has expanded on our understanding of the meaning and cultural significance of wisdom in early Greek society. In an ethnographic exploration of the Seven Sages, Martin has emphasized the non-verbal and gestural qualities of the wisdom distinct to the early sages. [77] His notion of the early sages as “performers of wisdom” offers a rich template from which to understand the Greek conceptualization of wisdom and the way in which these qualities appear—however refracted—in later practitioners of wisdom, including the sophists. While there is thus no shortage of contemporary scholarship to support a rehabilitation of the sophists—and it is precisely in dialogue with these works that I would like to position my own analysis—most of these works address the sophists only incidentally. There has not appeared since Kerferd’s Sophistic Movement a monograph devoted entirely to exploring their role in the Greek wisdom tradition. The present study hopes to remedy this situation by providing such a full-length examination.