It would not be reasonable to repeat, as true and just, all the polemical charges against those who are called Sophists, even as we find them in Plato, without scrutiny and consideration. But modern writers on Grecian affairs run down the Sophists even more than Plato did, and take no notice of the admissions in their favor which he, though their opponent, is perpetually making. This is a very extensive subject, to which I hope to revert. [59] I dissent entirely from the judgment of Dr. Thirlwall, who repeats what is the usual representation of Sokratês and the Sophists, depicting Alkibiadês as “ensnared by the Sophists,” while Sokratês is described as a good genius preserving him from their corruptions (Hist. of Greece, vol. iii, ch. xxiv, pp. 312, 313, 314). I think him also mistaken when he distinguishes so pointedly Sokratês from the Sophists; when he describes the Sophists as “pretenders to wisdom;” as “a new school;” as “teaching that there was no real difference between truth and falsehood, right and wrong,” etc. All the plausibility that there is in this representation, arises from a confusion between the original sense and the modern sense of the word Sophist; the latter seemingly first bestowed upon the word by Plato and Aristotle. In the common ancient acceptation of the word at Athens, it meant not a _school_ of persons professing common doctrines, but a _class_ of men bearing the same name, because they derived their celebrity from analogous objects of study and common intellectual occupation. The Sophists were men of similar calling and pursuits, partly speculative, partly professional; but they differed widely from each other, both in method and doctrine. (See for example Isokratês, cont. Sophistas, Orat. xiii; Plato, Meno. p. 87 B.) Whoever made himself eminent in speculative pursuits, and communicated his opinions by public lecture, discussion, or conversation, was called a Sophist, whatever might be the conclusions which he sought to expound or defend. The difference between taking money, and expounding gratuitously, on which Sokratês himself was so fond of dwelling (Xenoph. Memor. i, 6, 12), has plainly no essential bearing on the case. When Æschinês the orator reminds the dikasts, “Recollect that you Athenians put to death _the Sophist Sokratês_, because he was shown to have been the teacher of Kritias,” (Æschin. cont. Timarch. c. 34, p. 74,) he uses the word in its natural and true Athenian sense. He had no point to make against Sokratês, who had then been dead more than forty years; but he describes him by his profession or occupation, just as he would have said, _Hippokratês the physician_, _Pheidias the sculptor_, etc. Dionysius of Halikarn. calls both Plato and Isokratês sophists (Ars Rhetor. De Compos. Verborum, p. 208 R.). The Nubes of Aristophanês, and the defences put forth by Plato