set to work to puzzle a simple-minded person named Clesippus. Dionysodorus begins:
You say that you have a dog? Yes, a villain of a one, said Clesippus. And he has puppies? Yes,
and they are very like himself. And the dog is the father of them? Yes, he said, I certainly saw him
and the mother of the puppies come together. And is he not yours? To be sure he is. Then he is a
father, and he is yours; ergo, he is your father, and the puppies are your brothers.In a more serious vein, take the dialogue called The Sophist. This is a logical discussion of
definition, which uses the sophist as an illustration. With its logic we are not at present concerned;
the only thing I wish to mention at the moment as regards this dialogue is the final conclusion:
"He, then, who traces the pedigree of his (the Sophist's) art as follows--who, belonging to the
conscious or dissembling section of the art of causing self-contradiction, is an imitator of
appearance, and is separated from the class of phantastic which is a branch of image-making into
that further division of creation, the juggling of words, a creation human, and not divine--any one
who affirms the real Sophist to be of this blood and lineage will say the very truth."
There is a story about Protagoras, no doubt apocryphal, which illustrates the connection of the
Sophists with the law-courts in the popular mind. It is said that he taught a young man on the
terms that he should be paid his fee if the young man won his first law-suit, but not otherwise, and
that the young man's first law-suit was one brought by Protagoras for recovery of his fee.
However, it is time to leave these preliminaries and see what is really known about Protagoras.
Protagoras was born about 500 B.C., at Abdera, the city from which Democritus came. He twice
visited Athens, his second visit being not later than 432 B.C. He made a code of laws for the city
of Thurii in 444-3 B.C. There is a tradition that he was prosecuted for impiety,