ABSTRACT
A number of different factors encouraged the blossoming of this new spirit. At the end of the sixth century the influences of an increasing use of coinage, more and more cultural exchanges and the criticism of traditional beliefs by thinkers like Xenophanes or Heraclitus all combined to undermine the old ideal of aristocratic education based on the cultivation of hereditary natural virtues and imitation of the examples of the past. This was also a time of political change: the ‘tyrannical’ regimes were gradually disappearing. In Athens, after the tyranny of Pisistratus, the reforms of Cleisthenes, completed by Ephialtes, established a democratic regime. Every Athenian citizen was invited to be involved in the life of the city, to have an opinion, in other words to adopt a political role. However, the need to get one’s view accepted in the assembly required new qualities of thought and expression which only an intellectual education could provide. The Sophists took it upon themselves to supply this education.
