These, however, are mere conjectures. He would probably have died in obscurity, and been forgotten with the kings who reigned _ante Agamemnona_, had not the misfortunes of his country brought him, in old age, to the great workshop of Fame. The immediate occasion was this; the people of Leontium having engaged and been worsted in war by the Syracusans, sent ambassadors to demand succour of the Athenian people, and among these the principal speaker was Gorgias. Practised in a style of oratory new at Athens, indulging in a profusion of metaphors and other figures bordering on the licences of poetry, he immediately hurried away captive his hearers, fulfilled the desires of his fellow citizens, and established for himself a reputation[822] where all men most desired to possess one. To augment his glory it has not been unusual to enumerate Pericles and Thucydides among those who became his scholars. But this embassy took place in the fifth year of the Peloponnesian war when Pericles had been dead two years. That Thucydides heard him, however, is not at all improbable, since his exile did not take place[823] till the eighth year of the war. Among his admirers are mentioned two other men, whose principles and history afford the best illustration of what fruit the teaching of the sophists was likely to produce,—Critias and Alcibiades, whose ability, courage, and profligacy rendered them the scourges of their country. It has been with great probability supposed that, having on his return to Leontium rendered an account of his mission, he quitted Sicily for ever, for the purpose of becoming a professor of eloquence in Greece. This is Diodorus’s account, but the Scholiast on Hermogenes supposes him to have remained at Athens. Whether this was the case or not, he soon considered one city, however great or celebrated, too confined a theatre for the display of his merit. He, therefore, adopted the profession of an itinerant lecturer, with the double view of gratifying his vanity and filling his purse. And he thoroughly understood the art of dazzling mankind, for, not supposing it enough to unfold before his auditors his magazines of tropes and figures, stored up, like theatrical thunder and lightning, to be introduced at the proper moment, he had recourse to other dramatic arts for producing effect, appearing in magnificent attire, flowing purple robes, embroidered sandals, his fingers sparkling with gold and gems. But though the oldest of the sophists, he was not the first who adopted this course. Protagoras, and perhaps others, had previously commenced their peregrinations, and begun to practise on the credulity and weakness of the multitude. Among the Athenians they were paid chiefly with praise; “the solid pudding” was to be sought elsewhere. And accordingly we find, as Plato sarcastically expresses it, that upon the advent of the sophists, the Thessalians, usually celebrated for their full purses and fine horses,[824] grew all at once