WORLD CIVILIZATION

Detailed explanation-1: -The Sophists (Ancient Greek) The sophists were itinerant professional teachers and intellectuals who frequented Athens and other Greek cities in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E.

Detailed explanation-2: -A sophist (Greek: , romanized: sophistes) was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics, and mathematics.

Detailed explanation-3: -The names survive of nearly 30 Sophists properly so called, of whom the most important were Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Prodicus, and Thrasymachus. Plato protested strongly that Socrates was in no sense a Sophist-he took no fees, and his devotion to the truth was beyond question.

Detailed explanation-4: -Sophists switched the focus of education from traditional to more physical and engaging activities but included traditional religious and moral values as part of education; Plato established the basic goals for education, but both sophists and technology increased our capacity to reach these goals.

Detailed explanation-5: -A number of Plato’s dialogues bear the names of the major sophists in the tradition-Gorgias, Protagoras, Critias and Hippias. For instance, at Protagoras 339a, there begins an extended passage in which the sophist explains a lyric poem by Simonides so as to rationalize some of its contradictions.