Greek Texts & Translations

He too first introduced the method of discussion which is called Socratic. Again, as we learn from Plato in the Euthydemus, ^note he was the first to use in discussion the argument of Antisthenes which strives to prove that contradiction is impossible, and the first to point out how to attack and refute any proposition laid down : so Artemidorus the dialectician in his treatise In Reply to Chrysippus. He too invented the shoulder-pad on which porters carry their burdens, so we are told by Aristotle in his treatise On Education ; for he himself had been a porter, says Epicurus somewhere. ^note This was how he was taken up by Democritus, who saw how skilfully his bundles of wood were tied. He was the first to mark off the parts of discourse into four, namely, wish, question, answer, command ^note ; 9.8.54 others divide into seven parts, narration, question, answer, command, rehearsal, wish, summoning ; these he called the basic forms of speech. Alcidamas made discourse fourfold, affirmation, negation, question, address.

The first of his books he read in public was that On the Gods, the introduction to which we quoted above ; he read it at Athens in Euripides' house, or, as some say, in Megaclides' ; others again make the place the Lyceum and the reader his disciple Archagoras, Theodotus's son, who gave him the benefit of his voice. His accuser was Pythodorus, son of Polyzelus, one of the four hundred ; Aristotle, however, says it was Euathlus.

The works of his which survive are these :

* * The Art of Controversy.

Of Wrestling.

On Mathematics.

Of the State.

Of Ambition.

Of Virtues.

Of the Ancient Order of Things.

On the Dwellers in Hades.

Of the Misdeeds of Mankind.

A Book of Precepts.

Of Forensic Speech for a Fee, two books of opposing arguments.

This is the list of his works. ^note Moreover there is a dialogue which Plato wrote upon him.

Philochorus says that, when he was on a voyage to Sicily, his ship went down, and that Euripides hints at this in his Ixion. 9.8.56 According to some his death occurred, when he was on a journey, at nearly ninety years of age, though Apollodorus makes his age seventy, assigns forty years for his career as a sophist, and puts his floruit in the 84th Olympiad. ^note

There is an epigram of my own on him as follows ^note :

Protagoras, I hear it told of thee

Thou died'st in eld when Athens thou didst flee ;

Cecrops' town chose to banish thee ; but though

Thou `scap'dst Athene, not so Hell below.

The story is told that once, when he asked Euathlus his disciple for his fee, the latter replied, "But I have not won a case yet." "Nay," said Protagoras, "if I win this case against you I must have the fee, for winning it ; if you win, I must have it, because you win it."

There was another Protagoras, an astronomer, for whom Euphorion wrote a dirge ; and a third who was a Stoic philosopher.