Protagoras

Rhetorician and writer

Born: c. 485 b. c.e.; Abdera, Thrace (now in Greece)

Died: c. 410 b. c.e.; place unknown

Category: Oratory and rhetoric; education; literature

Life Protagoras (proh-TAG-uh-ruhs), one of the earliest Sophists (itinerant teachers of rhetoric), was reputed to have been the first to accept fees for teaching. He traveled throughout Greece and to Sicily, and in Athens he was associated with the political leader Pericles. In 444 b. c.e., he was appointed to write laws for Thurii, an Athenian colony, perhaps at Pericles’ request. Of many written works attributed to him, only fragments remain; however, he seems to have covered a wide range of subjects including grammar, theology (he was agnostic), and philosophy (his aphorism “the human is the measure of all things” earned him a reputation as a relativist). In the dialogue Protagoras (399-390 b. c.e.; Protagoras, 1804) by Plato, a long speech on the origins of society may closely resemble one of Protagoras’s actual works. He has been called “the father of debate” because he said that “there are two contrary accounts [dissoi logoi] about everything.” Though Protagoras was clearly a controversial figure, Plato contradicts a story that he was tried at Athens and banished.

Influence Protagoras’s most important accomplishment was probably in making argument and debate functional within the early democracies of the city-states.

Further Reading

Brunschwig, Jacques, and G. E. R. Lloyd, eds. Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.

Lee, Mi-Kyoung. Epistemology After Protagoras: Responses to Relativism in Plato, Aristotle, and Democritus. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Lougovaya, Julia, and Rodney Ast. “Menis and Pelex: Protagoras on Solecism.” Classical Quarterly 1, no. 54 (2004): 274-277.

O’Brien, Michael, trans. “Protagoras.” In The Older Sophists, edited by Rosamond Kent Sprague. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990.

Plato. Protagoras. Translated by C. C. W. Taylor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Schiappa, Edward. Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.

Janet B. Davis

See also: Athens; Oratory; Pericles; Philosophy; Plato; Sophists.