Pericles: A Sourcebook and Reader

Protagoras

Protagoras Protagoras of Abdera, the most famous sophist of the age, visited Athens on several occasions, probably for extended periods of time. He came once about 443 b.c. in preparation for creating a law code for the settlement at Thurii. Pericles almost certainly picked him for the task. Plato in his Protagoras records another visit about 432. In that dialogue he depicts Pericles’ sons, Xanthippus and Paralus, as present at his discourse, which takes place at the home of Callias, their half brother on their mother’s side. Protagoras, who was born about 490 and died about 420, was just slightly younger than Pericles and probably knew him very well. Protagoras enjoyed high repute during his lifetime. He was an agnostic for whom suspension of judgment about the existence or nonexistence of the gods was the only possible course. He was most famous for the saying “Man is the measure of all things,” by which he seems to have meant that the sensory experiences and beliefs that each man has are true for that man. In 116 short, what seems to each man is. By this reasoning, everything is relative, dependent on each person’s perceptions.1 Right and wrong, good and bad, beauty and its opposite, then exist only as each individual determines them. His ideas stirred up much controversy. Plato especially found such teachings very dangerous , for if taken to their logical conclusion, especially in a political setting, the result is anarchy. Despite Protagoras’s importance, almost nothing of his writings has survived.2 It is intriguing, then, for understanding the relationship between Pericles and Protagoras, that the one substantial fragment that remains of his writings expresses his admiration for Pericles’ behavior in the face of the deaths of his sons from the onslaught of the plague in the summer of 430.3 When his youthful sons, fine young men, died within a space of just eight days, he bore it with no outward sign of emotion. For he clung to a tranquillity that every day contributed greatly to his own good fortune and self-composure, as well as to his esteem among the people. For each man, as he saw him enduring his sufferings so steadfastly, considered him to be heroic, brave, and superior to himself, knowing well what his own desperation would be in similar circumstances. While we cannot discount the possibility that this account is secondhand—that is, based on what Protagoras had heard from others—it certainly purports to be his own observations. If so, 117 / Protagoras 1. On the teachings of Protagoras, see W.K.C. Guthrie, The Sophists (London, 1971) esp. 181–92. 2. For the fragments, see H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Zurich and Berlin, 1951–1952). 3. See Diels and Kranz, vol. 2, p. 268, frag. 80 B 9. the passage reveals that Protagoras had access to Pericles at one of the most personally trying times in his life and, since others also saw Pericles dealing with his suffering, that he carried on at least some of his normal business. Protagoras writes in a prose style that is rather poetic. He emphasizes the enormity of the loss in the first sentence. They were fine young men and his sons. For any parent, the death of a child is the most difficult loss to bear, for children are, in the natural course, expected to outlive their parents and carry on the family line. Not only has Pericles suffered such a loss, but doubly so— he has lost both of his sons—and in the space of just eight days. Protagoras leaves unsaid what everyone knew, namely, that these young men were his only legitimate heirs. Whatever Pericles ’ private grief—and it must have been overwhelming—he gave no sign of it to others. He kept absolute control of his emotions . It is little wonder, then, that his contemporaries, especially the comic poets, found him aloof and remote. Protagoras / 118 ...