Note 699 — Chapter LXVIII · SOKRATES.

It is this narrow purpose that Plutarch ascribes to Sokratês, Quæstiones Platonicæ, p. 999, E; compare also Tennemann, Geschicht. der Philos. part ii, art. i, vol. ii, p. 81.

Amidst the customary outpouring of groundless censure against the sophists, which Tennemann here gives, one assertion is remarkable. He tells us that it was the more easy for Sokratês to put down the sophists, since their shallowness and worthlessness, after a short period of vogue, had already been detected by intelligent men, and was becoming discredited.

It is strange to find such an assertion made, for a period between 420-399 B.C., the era when Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias, etc., reached the maximum of celebrity.

And what are we to say about the statement, that Sokratês put down the sophists, when we recollect that the Megaric school and Antisthenês, both emanating from Sokratês, are more frequently attacked than any one else in the dialogues of Plato, as having all those skeptical and disputatious propensities with which the sophists are reproached?