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Prodicus of Ceos (Πρόδικος Pródikos, born c. 465 or 450 BC) was a Greek humanist of the first period of the Sophistical movement, known as the "precursor of Socrates." He was still living in 399 BC.
He came to Athens as ambassador from Ceos, and
became known as a speaker and a teacher. Like Protagoras, he professed to train
his pupils for domestic and civic affairs; but it would appear that, while Protagoras's chief instruments of education were
rhetoric and style, Prodicus made ethics
prominent in his curriculum. In ethics he was a pessimist. Though he discharged his civic duties in spite of a frail physique, he
emphasized the sorrows of life; and yet he advocated no hopeless resignation, but rather the remedy of work, and took as his
model Heracles, the embodiment of virile activity. The influence of his views may
be recognized as late as The Shepherd of
Hermas.
His views on the origin of the belief in the gods is strikingly modern. He held that man first worshipped those great powers
which benefit mankind (comparing the worship of the Nile), and after these men who have
rendered services to humanity were deified. Yet Prodicus was no atheist, for the
pantheist Zeno spoke highly
of him.
Of his natural philosophy we know only the titles of his
treatises On Nature and On the Nature of Man. His chief interest is that he sought to give precision to the use
of words. Two of his discourses were specially famous; one, "On Propriety of Language," is repeatedly alluded to by Plato; the other contained the celebrated apologue On the Choice of Heracles, of which
the Xenophontean Socrates (Mem. ij. I, 21 seq.) gives a summary. Theramenes,
Euripides and Isocrates are said
to have been pupils or hearers of Prodicus. By his immediate successors he was variously estimated: Plato satirizes him in the
early dialogues; Aristophanes calls him "a babbling brook"; Aeschines the Socratic condemns him as a sophist.
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopędia Britannica.
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