PRECURSOR OF SOCRATES

He is considered a minor philosopher, undistinguished by the attentions of the likes of Nietzsche or Russell, yet he is frequently featured in quite a few Platonic Dialogues, which is of course quite sufficient to get him noticed.

Prodicus of Ceos (465-395 BC) has been known as the “precursor of Socrates,” and Socrates himself was said to be a student of his at one time. His fate resembles that of Socrates, and follows the latter’s almost immediately: both of them were put to death on the charges of corrupting their wards, that is, the Athenian youth. Prodicus happened to be a disciple of Protagoras and for this reason alone he is included among the sophists, although he never actually called himself one, and Plato, known for his contempt for the sophists, gives Prodicus an uncharacteristically preferential treatment in several dialogues, and most significantly, in the Protagoras.

Like Gorgias, he first came to Athens as the ambassador of his native Ceos, and, like Gorgias, was instantly so much admired that it prompted him to open a school of rhetorical arts in the city. He was said to be fond of money, but this charge must have been made against every Athenian teacher who charged a fee from his students just because that was their only source of income. Uncharacteristically, but instructively, the great scoffer Aristophanes did not satirize him too much, but on the contrary, described him glowingly as an extraordinary natural philosopher, and complimented him on his wisdom and character.

In his teaching Prodicus emphasized ethics and linguistics. He promoted the general principle of the correct use of names (definitions, definitions, definitions!), which must have attracted Socrates to him above all and precipitated their close friendship, although Plato has his Socrates joking that had he been able to afford the fifty drachmas that Prodicus was charging for his lessons, he would by now have become a veritable expert on the correctness of names. But it’s almost certain that it was under the influence of Prodicus that Socrates had developed his famous theory that using correct language is a prerequisite of correct living.

Curiously, it was not ethics or semantics that brought Prodicus his greatest notoriety among contemporaries and fame in modernity. It was rather his view of religion. Cicero remarks that his doctrines were subversive of all religion. He regarded religion as man-made and saw the origin of the gods in man’s personification of natural events. It was his theory that people saw gods (mind you, polytheistically speaking!) in everything and anything useful or destructive to their lives, and started paying reverence to them as a token of furthering their collective and personal interests. No doubt, then, that Prodicus was summarily declared an atheist, and it was his attitude toward religion rather than any other transgression, which got him in trouble with the Athenian authorities and brought about his demise.