Gorgias

Socrates (ca. 469-399 BCE), like Plato, was one of the foundational philosophical figures in the West, yet very little can be said about the man with any degree of certainty. Socrates himself never wrote anything down, meaning that what we know about him and his ideas must be pieced together from the writings of his contemporaries, including Plato as well as the soldier Xenophon (428-ca. 354 BCE) and the comedian Aristophanes (ca. 450-ca. 385 BCE). Plato and Xenophon, who are usually considered to be more reliable than Aristophanes, present a portrait of a man interested in examining ethical issues. Aristophanes’s Socrates, by contrast, is savagely mocked in the Clouds as an almost sophist-figure whose stock-in-trade consists of research of natural questions and cheap oratorical tricks. While Plato’s Socrates constantly challenges conventional ideas, Xenophon’s Socrates is much more traditional. Which of these is a truer portrait of the historical Socrates is much disputed—it is not likely that the matter will ever be settled.

Socrates was evidently careful to distinguish himself from the sophists of Classical Athens. Unlike the sophists (such as Gorgias), Socrates did not charge fees from his students. Also unlike the sophists, Socrates did not make any claims to knowledge. Socrates characterized himself as a “gadfly,” interrogating professionals and public figures in his city of Athens to try to answer ethical questions about justice, right and wrong, and the soul, as he does in the Gorgias. He used elenchus—a method of reaching logical conclusions through question- and-answer—to expose fallacies and inconsistencies in the opinions of interlocutors, and in the Gorgias (as in many of Plato’s dialogues) this method tends to inspire anger and resentment.

The historical Socrates apparently inspired this anger and resentment too, for in 399 BCE the Athenians put Socrates on trial for “impiety” and corrupting the youth, finding him guilty. Socrates was executed by being forced to drink hemlock.

Gorgias (ca. 485-ca. 380 BCE), the first of Socrates’s three interlocutors in Plato’s Gorgias, was a highly esteemed orator from the Sicilian city of Leontini. He garnered a strong following in Athens in 429 BCE when he arrived as an ambassador for his own city of Leontini. Gorgias became one of several orators or sophists to make their home in Athens, acquiring prestige and wealth and charging fees for his lessons (See: Background).

Gorgias also produced several written works, though most of these survive only in fragments. One display speech by Gorgias, the Encomium of Helen, does survive. This speech advertises the power of oratory by arguing that the mythical Helen of Troy should not be blamed for her adultery because she was powerless against the masterful arguments that Paris used to convince her to run off with him.

Plato’s Gorgias is represented as distinguished but pretentious, and even as rather dull. He praises the value of oratory extravagantly but gets into trouble when Socrates presses him to back up his claims. He is contrasted with the much- sharper Socrates, who easily leads the distinguished orator into inconsistency and absurdity, and soon largely vanishes from the dialogue as Polus and Callicles take up his cause.

Polus was a pupil of Gorgias and a teacher of oratory from the Sicilian city of Acragas. Besides what Plato tells us about him, nothing is known about him as a historical figure. In Plato’s Gorgias, Polus has an impulsive personality and speaking style (characteristics that are reflected in his name, which means “foal” in Greek). Polus challenges Socrates much more aggressively than Gorgias does, and is generally willing to disregard or question traditional values. In the end, though, Socrates outsmarts and refutes Polus as easily as he did Gorgias.