tion with “Plato”) was to recombine intellectual stances: where the Sophists
had worked this material from the relativistic (and politically liberal) side,
Socrates/Plato combined it with the transcendent ontology that came from the
Pythagoreans, and fortified it by grappling with the ontological puzzle be-
queathed by Parmenides. Relativism and dialectic still anchor this position: in
Plato, it is that opposition by which the doctrine of Forms defines itself. In
Socrates, it is more likely that the dialectic itself remains central; though he
had ties to wealthy conservative patrons (and did not have to live the life of
commercial scrambling for which he scorned his Sophist rivals), he seems to
have balanced the possibility of eternal truths and standards against the argu-
ments of relativism. Most of Socrates’ offshoots in the next generation would
take some portion of the relativistic turf, especially Euclides at Megara, who
emphasized the intellectual side as logic; and Antisthenes, who taught that
FIGURE 3.2. CENTRALIZATION OF THE GREEK NETWORK IN
ATHENS, 465–365 B.C.E.88 •^ The Skeleton of Theory