The greatest teacher of this age was Socrates, who was born near Athens in 469 B.C. His father was a sculptor, and the son for some time practiced the same profession at Athens, meanwhile aspiring toward higher things, and pursuing the study of philosophy under Anaxagoras and others. He served his country in the field in the severe struggle between Sparta and Athens, where he was distinguished for his bravery and endurance; and when upward of sixty years of age he was chosen to represent his district in the Senate of Five Hundred. Here, and under the subsequent tyranny, his integrity remained unshaken; and his boldness in denouncing the cruelties of the Thirty Tyrants nearly cost him his life. As a teacher, Socrates assumed the character of a moral philosopher, and he seized every occasion to communicate moral wisdom to his fellow-citizens. Although often classed with the Sophists, and unjustly selected by Aristophanes as their representative, the whole spirit of his teachings was directly opposed to that class. Says MAHAFFY, "The Sophists were brilliant and superficial, he was homely and thorough; they rested in skepticism, he advanced through it to deeper and sounder faith; they were wandering and irresponsible, he was fixed at Athens, and showed forth by his life the doctrines he preached." GROTE, however, while denying that the Sophists were intellectual and moral corrupters, as generally charged, also denies that the reputation of Socrates properly rests upon his having rescued the Athenian mind from their influences. He admires Socrates for "combining with the qualities of a good man a force of character and an originality of speculation as well as of method, and a power of intellectually working on others, generically different from that of any professional teacher, without parallel either among contemporaries or successors." [Footnote: "History of Greece," Chap. lxviii.]