PROTAGORAS (c. 481-411 B.C.)

This article appears in Volume V22, Page 464 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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PROTAGORAS (c. 481-411 B.C.) , Greek philosopher, was born at Abdera. He is known as the first of the Sophists' (q.v.), i.e. he was the first to teach for payment. It is said that he received nearly L400 from a single

pupil

PUPIL (Lat. pupillus, orphan, minor, dim. of pupus, boy, allied to puer, from root pm- or peu-, to beget, cf. "pupa," Lat. for " doll," the name given to the stage intervening between the larval and imaginal stages in certain insects)

. He learned philosophy in the Ionian school, and was perhaps a

pupil

PUPIL (Lat. pupillus, orphan, minor, dim. of pupus, boy, allied to puer, from root pm- or peu-, to beget, cf. "pupa," Lat. for " doll," the name given to the stage intervening between the larval and imaginal stages in certain insects)

of Democritus, though this is doubtful on

chronological

CHRONOLOGICAL

grounds. He was an older contemporary of Socrates. He was so highly esteemed by Pericles that he was entrusted with the task of framing

laws

LAWS

for the new colony of Thurii (Plut. Pericles, 36). At the age of seventy, having been accused by Pythodorus, and convicted of atheism, Protagoras fled from Athens, and on his way to Sicily was lost at sea. According to Plato (Prot., 318 E), he endeavoured to communicate " prudence " (d(3otAia) to his pupils, " which should fit them to manage their households, and to take

part

PART

by word and deed in civic affairs." The education which he provided consisted of

rhetoric

RHETORIC (Gr. psroperctj TEXvq, the art of the orator)

, grammar, style and the interpretation of the poets. His formal lectures were supplemented by discussions amongst his pupils. He left behind him several

treatises

TREATISES

, of which only a few fragments havesurvived. In Truth, by way of justifying his rejection. of philosophy or science, he maintained that " man is the measure of all thingsof what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not." Besides Truth, and the book Of the Gods which caused his condemnation at Athens,

Diogenes

DIOGENES

Laertius attributes to him

treatises

TREATISES

on political, ethical, educational and rhetorical subjects. Protagoras was the first to systematize grammar, dis-
tinguishing the parts of speech, the tenses and the moods. AUTHORITIES.biog. Laert., ix. 8, &c.; the very different representations in Plato's Protagoras and Theaetetus; k the fragments in Johannes Frei, Quaestiones Protagoreae (

Bonn

BONN

, 1845), and A. J. Vitringa, Disquisitio de Protagorae vita et Philosophia (

Groningen

GRONINGEN

, 185z) ; for the Thurian legislation, M. H. E. Meier, Opuscula, i. 222, and Gomperz in Franz.

Hoffmann

's Beitrage zur Gesch. des griech. and rout. Rechts (187o). On Protagoras' philosophy see the histories of philosophy, e.g. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers (Eng. trans., 1901) i. 438475 and 586-592, Zeller, Ueberweg, Erdmann, and works quoted under SOPHISTS.

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