Abstract

Three famous sophists are referred to together in theApology of Sokratesas still practising their enviably lucrative itinerant profession in 399b.c.(not, by implication, I in Athens): Gorgias of Leontinoi, Prodikos of Keos and Hippias of Elis. The last of these was the least well known to the Atheniandemos, having practised mainly in I Dorian cities. There is no extant reference to him in Old Comedy, but we can assume that he was sufficiently famous – especially for his fees (possibly the highest charged by any sophist) – to justify his inclusion as the third of this ‘triad’; cf. the triad Protagoras – Hippias – Prodikos in theProtagoras, considered further below. Gorgias was by now a grand old man of about ninety (with more than a decade of active life still ahead of him), the last survivor of the first generation of fee-taking educators, associated first and foremost in the popular mind with the suspect arts of political and forensic persuasion. Prodikos and Hippias were probably in their sixties.