Next to Gorgias in reputation was Protagoras, whose history is still less known. In the opinion of some writers he was the oldest of the sophists. Though the date of his birth be later than that of Gorgias, he preceded him in the profession of the art. He was certainly, I think, born much earlier than is supposed either by Clinton or by Geel, who take him to have been almost exactly of Socrates’ age, that is to have come into the world about 479 B. C. But in this opinion I cannot concur. It is in direct contradiction with a passage in Plato[830] who, however careless in matters of chronology, would, I am persuaded, never push his negligence so far as to make one man say to another, born in the same year with himself, that he was old enough to be his father. To me, therefore it appears necessary that we throw back ten or twelve years the date of his birth. He was ten years, it is admitted, older than Democritos. The latter, who had made considerable progress in philosophy when he saw Protagoras in the capacity of a wood-carrier and undertook to initiate him in his system, could hardly have been less than seven or eight and twenty, so that the former was little short of forty. He exercised the profession of sophist during forty years, and died about 406 B. C. He must therefore have been born about 484–485 B. C.[831] Footnote 830: Addressing Socrates, among many others, he says in one place, ἀλλὰ πότερον ὑμῖν, ὡς πρεσβύτερος νεωτέροις, μῦθον λέγων ἐπιδείξω. κ. τ. λ.—Protag. i. 170. But this is nothing to what he elsewhere says: οὐδενὸς ὅτου οὐ πάντων ἂν ὑμῶν καθ᾽ ἡλικίαν πατὴρ εἴην.—Id. p. 165.—which without extreme absurdity a man could not say to a person exactly of his own age. Meiners. (Hist. des Arts et des Sciences, iii. 258), evidently refers to this passage; as does also Hardion. Dissert. vii. Bib. Acad. iii. 295. Yet it must have wholly escaped Geel, who (Hist. Sophist. p. 71) says: “Deinde _nescimus_ quomodo efficiatur e Platonis Protagorâ, sophistam ejusdem nominis _multo_ majorem fuisse Socrate.” Footnote 831: