The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by Cicero — Text and Context

nst him for impiety, according to Diodorus, but probably for some offence of a political nature; perhaps connected with the mutilation of the Hermæ.

That he was an atheist, however, appears to have been quite untrue. Like Socrates, he took new and peculiar views respecting the Gods and their worship; and seems to have ridiculed the honours paid to their statues, and the common notions which were entertained of their actions and conduct. (See De Nat. Deor. iii. 37.) He is said also to have attacked objects held in the greatest veneration at Athens, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries, and to have dissuaded people from being initiated into them. He appears also, in his theories on the divine nature, to have substituted in some degree the active powers of nature for the activity of the Gods. In his own conduct he was a man of strict morality and virtue. He died at Corinth before the end of the century.

_Protagoras_ was a native of Abdera; the exact time of his birth is unknown, but he was a little older than Socrates. He was the first person who gave himself the title of σοφιστὴς, and taught for pay. He came to Athens early in life, and gave to the settlers who left it for Thurium, B.C. 445, a code of laws, or perhaps adapted the old laws of Charondas to their use. He was a friend of Pericles. After some time he was impeached for impiety in saying, That respecting the Gods he did not know whether they existed or not; and banished from Athens (see De Nat. Deor. i. 23). He was a very prolific author: his most peculiar doctrines excited Plato to write the Theætetus to oppose them.

His fundamental principle was, that everything is motion, and that that is the efficient cause of everything; that nothing _exists_, but that everything is continually _coming into existence_. He divided motion (besides numerous subordinate divisions) into active and passive; though he did not consider either of these characteristics as permanent. From the concurrence of two such motions he taught that sensations and perceptions arose, according to the rapidity of the motion. Therefore he said that there is or exists for each individual, only that of which he has a sensation or perception; and that as sensation, like its objects, is engaged in a perpetual change of motion, opposite assertions might exist according to the difference of the perception respecting such object. Moral worth he attributed to taking pleasure in the beautiful; and virtue he referred to a certain sense of shame implanted in man by nature; and to a certain conscious feeling of justice, which secures the bonds of connexion in private and political life.

_Socrates_, the son of Sophroniscus, a statuary, and Phænarete, a midwife, was born B.C. 468. He lived all his life at Athens, serving indeed as a soldier at Potidæa, Amphipolis, and in the battle of Delium; but with these exceptions he never left the city; where he lived as a teacher of philosophy; not, however, founding a school or giving lectures, but frequenting the market-place and all other places of public resort, talking with every one who chose to address him, and putting questions to every one of every rank and profession, so that Grote calls him “a public talker for instruction.” He believed himself to have a special religious mission from the Gods to bring his countrymen to knowledge and virtue. He was at last impeached before the legal tribunals, on the ground of “corrupting the youth of the city, and not worshipping the Gods whom the city worshipped;” and disdaining to defend himself, or rather making a justificatory defence of such a character as to exasperate the judges, he was condemned to death, and executed by having hemlock administered to him, B.C. 399.