Since, however, the sophists acted so important a part in the education of the Greeks, the space I devote to them is clearly their due: it is necessary to the thorough comprehension of the subject. Almost from the moment they arose they aimed at a monopoly of the art of teaching, and the father of the art, properly so called, was Gorgias. Few names of antiquity, as Geel[816] has well observed, are better known or more celebrated than that of this distinguished sophist, among the causes of whose amazing popularity must be reckoned the number of great men whom he instructed in eloquence, and the splendid vices of style which his example and precept brought into vogue. The exact date of his birth is not known:[817] he is, however, supposed to have been born at Leontium in Sicily, about the seventy-third Olympiad. His father’s name was Charmantes.[818] Nearly all the particulars of his early life are unknown, the ancients having been as much too negligent as we are too lavish of biographical details. Under whom he studied, with whom he conversed, how much he owed to others, and how much to his own genius and industry, are points not easy to be determined, though we cannot adopt the opinion of Ælian,[819] who sends him to school to Philolaos; or of Diogenes Laertius, who will have Empedocles to have been his teacher, since the latter was very little older than himself, and the former much younger. Empedocles is indeed said to have invented the art of rhetoric, in which case we might suppose Gorgias to have been his scholar. But how invented? He may have been the first who sought to reduce it into an art, or who so called it; but as Aristotle observes, every man who reasons persuasively is a rhetorician, whether his eloquence be based on the formal study of the art or not. In philosophy, indeed, he would seem[820] to have been the disciple of Empedocles; but in rhetoric they both very probably derived instruction from Corax and Tisias, who flourished and taught rhetoric in Sicily about the period of their youth.[821] Footnote 816: Hist. Sophist. p. 13. Footnote 817: Clinton, Fast. Hellen. ii. 28. 65. 67. Geel (Hist. Sophist. p. 14) assumes the seventieth Olympiad as the date of his birth; but as it seems to result from the text of Pausanias that he was still living in 380. B.C. this would extend the duration of his life beyond that assigned to it by any ancient writer. Footnote 818: Of whom, as Muretus (Comm. p. 631. seq.) observes, no mention occurs save in Plato de Repub. i. § 2. t. i. p. 8. Stallb. Footnote 819: Var. Hist. i. 23. Diog. Laert. viii. 58.—Mr. Clinton, however, adopts the opinion of Diogenes (Fast. Hell. ii. 365); and, to render it probable, supposes Empedocles to have been a few years older than his pupil. Footnote 820: Plat. Men. p. 14. g. Footnote 821: Cic. Brut. § 12. Geel, Hist. Sophist. p. 15. seq. Sext. Empir. p. 306. seq.