PRODICUS OF CEOS (b. c. 465 or 450 B.C.)

This article appears in Volume V22, Page 422 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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PRODICUS OF CEOS (b. c. 465 or 450 B.C.) , a Greek humanist of the first period of the Sophistical

movement

MOVEMENT

, known as the " precursor of Socrates." He was still living in 399 B.C. He came to Athens as

ambassador

AMBASSADOR (also EMBASSADOR, the form sometimes still used in America; from the Fr. ambassadeur, with which compare Ital. ambasciatore and Span. embajador, all variants of the Med. Lat. ambassiator, ambassiator, ambasator, &c., derived from Med. Lat. amba

from Ceos, and became known as a speaker and a teacher. Like Protagoras, he professed to

train

TRAIN (M. Eng. trayn or trayne, derived through Fr. from Late Lat. trahinare, to drag, draw, Lat. trahere, cf. trail, trace, ultimately from the same source)

his pupils for domestic and civic affairs; but it would appear that, while Protagoras's

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

instruments of education were rhetoric and style, Prodicus made ethics prominent in his curriculum. In ethics he was a pessimist. Though he discharged his civic duties in spite of a frail physique, he emphasized the sorrows of life; and yet he advocated no hope-less resignation, but rather the remedy of

work

WORK

, and took as his model Heracles, the embodiment of virile activity. The influence of his views may be recognized as

late

LATE

as the Shepherd" of Hernias. His views on the origin of the belief in the gods is strikingly modern. First came those

great

GREAT

powers which benefit mankind (comparing the

worship

WORSHIP (i.e. " worth-ship," O. Eng. weor8scipe)

of the Nile), and after these the deified men who have rendered services to humanity. But he was no atheist, for the pantheist Zeno spoke highly of him. Of his natural philosophy we know only the titles of his treatises On Nature and On the Nature of Man. His

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

interest

INTEREST

is that he sought to give precision to the use of words. Two of his discourses were specially famous; one, " On Propriety of Language," is repeatedly alluded to by Plato; the other, entitled 't pae, contained the celebrated

apologue

APOLOGUE (from the Gr. &rroXoyos, a statement or account)

of the Choice of Heracles, of which the Xenophontean Socrates (Mem. ii. 1, 21 seq.) gives a summary. Theramenes, Euripides and Isocrates are said to have been pupils or hearers of Prodicus. By his immediate successors he was variously estimated: Plato satirizes him in the early dialogues; Aristophanes in the Taynvturai calls him " a babbling brook "; Aeschines the Socratic condemns him as a sophist.
See Spengel, Artium scriptores, pp. 45 sqq.; Welcker, " Prodikos der Vorganger des Sokrates," in Rheinisches Museum (1833), and in Kleine Schriften, ii. 393; Hummel, De Prodico Sophista (Leiden, 1846) ; Cougny, De Prodico Ceio (Paris, 1858).
prisoner not having been formally charged when brought before the vice-chancellor); so the writ was granted and the prisoner released. She afterwards brought an action against the proctor, which failed. It was now decided to abolish the practice of hearing these cases in camera. The whole practice was, how-ever, objected to by the authorities of the town, and after conference an agreement was arrived at, the proctorial jurisdiction over persons not members of the university being abolished (1904).

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