Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander, Continuity and Change in Athenian Social and Intellectual History, Education, the Sophists, and New Intellectual Developments, The Sophists, Protagoras

Home Collections/Texts Perseus Catalog Research Grants Open Source About Help

Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:

This text is part of:

Greek and Roman Materials

View text chunked by:

chapter : section : subsection : subsubsection

Protagoras

The most famous sophist was Protagoras¹, a contemporary of Pericles² from Abdera in northern Greece.³ Protagoras emigrated to Athens about 450 B.C. when he was about forty and spent most of his career there. His oratorical ability and his upright character so impressed the men of Athens that they soon chose him to devise a code of laws for a new colony to be founded in Thurii in southern Italy in 444 B.C. Some of Protagoras' ideas eventually aroused considerable controversy, such as his agnostic position concerning the gods: “Whether the gods exist I cannot discover, nor what their form is like, for there are many impediments to knowledge, [such as] the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.”

1 Plat. Prot. 309, Plat. Theaet. 162, References to Protagoras

2 Plut. Per. 36.3, References to Pericles

3 Abdera [Site]

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar:

Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander

This text is part of:

View text chunked by:

Table of Contents:

Protagoras