ABSTRACT
GORGIAS OF LEONTINI spanned with his long life (108 years, according to most versions) almost the entire fifth century and at least the first decade of the fourth. 1 He was probably born about 490, a date that agrees with the report in pseudo-Plutarch (DK A6) which makes him older than Antiphon of Rhamnus (born ca. 480) and Socrates (born ca. 470), and would put him in his middle or possibly late sixties when he came to Athens on the famous embassy of 427 (Diodorus 12.53). 2 The tradition also makes him a pupil of Empedocles, 3 and receives some independent support from the reports of Plato and of Theophrastus (DK B4-5) on Gorgias' holding Empedoclean theories of the illumination of the sun and of optics and color. 4 His activity in Sicily may also have brought him in contact with the Eleatic school and its theories about to on and doxa, which are perhaps reflected in his apparently early work, Πεpὶ του μή ὂντος (B3), possibly, though not certainly, identical with the Peri physeos (B2) which Olympiodorus (A10, B2) dates to the Olympiad 444-441; and the latter title may also help place Gorgias' early activity partly in the Eleatic tradition; his own "teacher," Empedocles, is, of course, himself said to have been a follower of Parmenides. 5 But whatever the influence of Eleatic and Empedoclean philosophy on his early years, his maiu.o work in the later fifth century is not immediately concerned with a systematic philosophy and, if anything, implies a definite denial of such an abstract, systematic approach to problems of being and existence. Whatever early philosophical training he had is thus significant more for the negative impression it left than for the inculcation of any positive doctrine, except for the analytical and critical method of argumentation which Gorgias was to apply to the rhetorical logos. 6 It has even been suggested that in the course of his life he rejected the Eleatic position in favor of a Protagorean practical acceptance of the world of doxa; 7 it is not, however, impossible that he retained some interest in philosophical and physical speculations throughout his life, as Gigon has argued, though his later work is oriented primarily toward practical activity within the framework of the polis.
