The word “Sophist” had a development among the Greeks. It first meant a wise man (the Cosmologists, from Thales to Anaxagoras, were Sophists); then a teacher of wisdom; then a paid teacher of wisdom. Moreover, among the Sophists there is a difference between the early Sophists, who were inspired by a distinct desire to spread culture, and the later Sophists, who were mercenary teachers, and had on that account degenerated into mere quibblers. In general, the ground of the contemporary hostility to the Sophists was the hatred of the conservative and reactionary party, to which belonged Aristophanes the satirist, Æschylus “the father of tragedy,” and the exponent of institutional morals, and Xenophon, who stood for a complete return to a patriarchal state. This party was very bitter against the exponents of the new and radical spirit springing up in Greece. All the philosophers of the new learning, including Socrates, suffered at the hands of those who would conserve the old traditions. In particular, the accusations against the Sophists of this period were: they were cavilers; they taught for pay; they represented the universalizing of education against the old aristocracy; they menaced institutions. The Sophists were then primarily and, on the whole, the transmitters to the people of the culture of the time. They were the teachers of the humanities to that age. They were not technically philosophers, but were interested in philosophical questions. Protagoras was the only Sophist who was the author of any fruitful philosophical conceptions. Gorgias made occasional essays into philosophy. But besides Protagoras and Gorgias no other Sophists can be classed as philosophers, except possibly Hippias and Prodicus.