I would not, however, be understood to share the opinions of those, who can discern nothing but evil in the doctrines of the sophists. On many points their notions harmonised altogether with those of the wisest philosophers. Accordingly it was not precisely what they inculcated, but the principles which regulated their teaching, that rendered them sophists. They taught with a view to enrich themselves, which is wholly incompatible with a strict allegiance to truth; since, with such views, men will always be found to prophesy agreeably in order that they may effect their purpose. This circumstance has not been sufficiently considered by the writers who undertake their apology. They compare them with the literary men of modern times, and imagine this comparison a defence. But does it not rather substantiate the accusation? It is true that, like modern literary men, they haunted the houses of the great, whom they regarded as their patrons; that to them, rather than to the people, they looked for support; that, like them, they worshipped wealth and abhorred poverty; that their studies, their discourses, their writings, diffused far and wide through society a taste for arts and elegance; that they furnished the public in their declamations, satires, novels, of which they were the inventors, with inexhaustible sources of amusement:—but what virtue did they inculcate? On whom did they urge the necessity of sacrificing private to public good? On what occasion did they dare to stem the torrent of immorality, of impiety, of unpatriotic maxims, which the base and the selfish were pouring forth against the old bulwarks of freedom? That among them there were men of a very high order of genius, it is impossible to deny. Gorgias of Leontium, from whose name we have borrowed an epithet to express whatever is most glorious in nature or dazzling and elaborate in art, Protagoras, Prodicos, Hippias of Elis, Polos of Agrigentum, Thrasymachos of Chalcedon, have left behind them an imperishable memory;[815] but so have Busiris and Phalaris and Catiline. They are remembered for the good they might have done, and the evil they did. Footnote 815: Muretus considers the word sophist to be synonymous with a teacher of eloquence: “Sophista, id est, dicendi magister;” and, speaking of this same Thrasymachos, cites a passage from Cicero which attributes to him the invention of the rhetorical style. Orat. § 12. Suidas regards Thrasymachos as the first who made use of the period and the colon; and supposes him to have been pupil to Plato and Isocrates, whereas he preceded both.—Muret. Comm. p. 631. seq.