i62 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE less form ; his only resource is to make his puppet, either with cynical coolness or in blind rage, proceed to the necessary extremes, and be there confounded. And who is the puppet to be ? Somebody, if possible, who is not too notoriously incongruous to the part ; whose supposed tenets may vaguely be thought to imply some- thing analogous to the infamous sentiments which have to be defended. Thrasymachus of Chalkedon is made in Republic I. to advocate absolute injustice, to maintain that law and morality are devices of the weak for paralysing the free action of the strong. It is very improbable that this re- spectable democratic professor held such a view : in politics he was for the middle class; and in 411 he pleaded for moderation. He went out of his way to attack the current type of successful injustice, Arche- laus of Macedon. He was celebrated as a sentimental speaker ; he says in an extant fragment that the success of the unrighteous is enough to make a man doubt the existence of divine providence. Plato's fiction is, in fact, too improbable ; no wonder he has to make the puppet lose its temper before it will act. This is the chief crime which has made Thrasymachus the typical " corrupt and avaricious sophist " ; the other is that, being a professional lecturer, he refused to lecture gratuitously and in public to Socrates and his young friends — whose notorious object was to confute whatever he might say. What Aristophanes says of the Sophists is of course mere gibing ; happily he attacks Socrates too, so we know what his charges are worth. What the Socratics tell us — and they are our chief informants — is coloured by that great article of their faith, the ideal One Righteous
