Prodicus

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Prodicus

Prodicus of Ceos (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ???d???? Pródikos, (c. 465 BC - 415 BC) was a Greek philosopher

Greek philosophy

Greek philosophy focused on the role of reason and inquiry. Many philosophers today concede that Greek philosophy has shaped the entire Western thought since its inception....
, part of the first generation of Sophists

Sophism

Sophism can mean two very different things: In the modern definition, a sophism is a confusing or illogical argument used for deceiving someone....
. "He was a Sophist in the full sense of a professional freelance educator."

He came to Athens

Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
as ambassador from Ceos, and became known as a speaker and a teacher. Like Protagoras

Protagoras

Protagoras was a Pre-Socratic philosophy Ancient Greeks philosopher and is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras , Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of virtue....
, he professed to train his pupils for domestic and civic service; but it would appear that, while Protagoras's chief instruments of education were rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse....
and style, Prodicus made linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
prominent in his curriculum.

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Encyclopedia

Prodicus of Ceos (Greek

Greek language

Greek philosophy

Sophism

Athens

Protagoras

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse....
and style, Prodicus made linguistics

Linguistics

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
dialogues focus upon Prodicus' linguistic theory, and his insistence upon the correct use of names. There seems to have been a standing joke about the difference between his one-drachma and fifty-drachma lecture. In the Cratylus

Cratylus (dialogue)

Cratylus is the name of a dialogue by Plato. Most modern scholars agree that it was written mostly during Plato's so-called middle period....
(384b) Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a Classical Greece Philosophy. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students....
says that if he could have afforded the fifty drachmas he would now be an expert on "the correctness of names." In several of the Platonic dialogues Socrates appears as the friend and companion of Prodicus, which reveals at least that the two did have close personal relations, and that Socrates did attend at least a few of his lectures. "For Socrates, correct language was the prerequisite for correct living (including an efficient government). But Prodicus, though his linguistic teaching undoubtedly included semantic distinctions between ethical terms, had stopped at the threshold. The complete art of logoi embraced nothing less than the whole of philosophy."

While the essence of his teaching seems to have been linguistic, the Suda

Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine Empire Medieval Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world. It is an Encyclopedia lexicon with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers....
identifies Prodicus rather as "a natural philosopher and Sophist." In addition, Galen

Galen

Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus , better known as Galen of Pergamum , was a prominent Ancient Rome physician and philosopher of Greek origin, and probably the most accomplished medical researcher of the Roman period....
, includes him in a list of writers on nature. Galen also writes that he brought the linguistic discipline to bear on physiological terms. If Prodicus did contribute to natural philosophy there are no extant texts or testimonia that would illuminate his contributions.

Much of the content, if not the actual words, of one of his rhetorical displays are known today. The speech was apparently a fable detailing the education of Heracles

Heracles

In Greek mythology, Heracles or Herakles meaning "glory of Hera", or "Glorious through Hera" Alcides or Alcaeus " was a hero, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus....
by Virtue. The text of the fable is to be found in the "Memorabilia"

Memorabilia (Xenophon)

The Memorabilia are also known by the alternate Latin title Commentarii, the Greek title Apomnemoneumata , and a variety of English translations ....
of Xenophon

Xenophon

Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens and Xenophon of Thebes, was a soldier, mercenary and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates....
.

Prodicus' outlook, like those of his fellow Sophists, was humanistic, and he interpreted religion through the framework of naturalism

Naturalism (philosophy)

Naturalism is a philosophical position that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and natural law. In its broadest and strongest sense, naturalism is the metaphysics position that "nature is all there is and all basic truths are truths of nature." This is generally referred to as metaphysical or ontological natur...
. "His theory was that primitive man was so impressed with the gifts nature provided him for the furtherance of his life that he believed them to be the discovery of gods or themselves to embody the godhead. This theory was not only remarkable for its rationalism but for its discernment of a close connection between religion and agriculture."