Sophists

In ancient Greece, originally teachers of rhetoric and the art of disputation. They were not a school or sect, but a class of popular lecturers who aimed at imparting universal culture. The name implied an element of professional skill over and above the 'wisdom' denoted by its literal meaning; thus Pythagoras and Socrates were sometimes called Sophists by their contemporaries. After 450 BC the term covered anyone who taught for pay, and because of the repugnance felt for this practice by men such as Plato it began to acquire a derogatory meaning. The subject of the Sophist's teaching really amounted to 'how to get on in the world', whether by the 'virtue' of Protagoras, the oratory of Gorgias, or the memory-training of Hippias. For this reason a sophist came to mean one who merely pretends to knowledge, or who attempts to the worse appear the better cause.

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