Erasmus the Sophist? by Eric MacPhail sophists were professional educators whose reputation was established byThe their enemies. This factor leads to a number of complications in as- sessing their activity and their legacy. From the time of Plato, sophist or uo+LuT1js was a term of derision and reproach, carrying connotations of a mercenary and amoral facility with language. This reputation was transmit- ted to the Renaissance under the authority of Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, so that by the time of Erasmus, sophist was an invidious title which the humanists were eager to concede to their institutional rivals, the scholastics. Indeed, as Erika Rummel reminds us, we find "sophist" applied as a term of mutual reproach in the humanist-scholastic debated Yet at the same time some of the ancient sophists managed to retain a resilient prestige and to elicit the admiration of a wide spectrum of Renaissance readers and editors, so that the sophist can be said to have served as both example and counterexample for both the humanists and their adversaries. In his own work Erasmus fully exemplifies the complex and contradictory legacy of the sophists, for he makes frequent use of the pejorative and polemical connota- tion of "sophist" even as he proudly inscribes himself in the pedagogical and rhetorical tradition of the First and Second Sophistic. It is this tension which I propose to examine by discussing Erasmus' use of the Latin term sophista as well as his undeniable affinity for the teachings of the ancient sophists. In particular I will try to elucidate his appropriation of the concept of kairos so crucial to the early sophists and to show how Erasmus followed a precise humanist model in his appropriation of sophistic techniques. In this way I hope to re-evaluate the legacy of the sophists and to re-emphasize the rhetor- ical and philological side of Erasmus' humanism. In his fragmentary dialogue known as the Academica, Cicero furnished Latin humanism with a concise definition of the sophists as philosophers with an ulterior motive. In the early version of the dialogue, which goes by [71] 72 the name of Lucullus, Cicero distinguishes the noblest philosophers such as Anaxagoras from the sophists, who philosophize for the sake of gain or for showing off: "nos autem ea dicimus nobis videri quae vosmet ipsi nobilissimis philosophis placuisse conceditis. Anaxagoras nivem nigram dixit esse ... at quis est? num hic sophistes (sic enim appellabantur ii qui ostentationis aut quaestus causa philosophantur)?" (Academica 2.23.72).2 This parenthetical disparagement of the sophists is faithful to the polemic initiated by Socrates' disciples Plato and Xenophon in the early fourth century BC. In Plato's dia- logue Sophistes, the Eleatic stranger enumerates the attributes of the sophist, calling him first a hunter of the young and rich, secondly a merchant of knowledge, thirdly a retailer, and fourthly a setf-satesman or autopoles (231d), in each instance emphasizing the profit motive of sophistry. Xenophon con- firms this reputation in his Memorabilia, where Socrates in debate with An- tiphon compares the sophist, who sells wisdom, to the pornos or prostitute, who sells beauty (1.6.13). The author of the treatise on hunting entitled Kynegetikos, usually attributed to Xenophon, sums up the whole antisophist tradition when he declares, in the conclusive chapter to his work, where it is not clear why he should mention the sophists, that the worst thing about the sophists is that they are proud to be called sophists, a name which to any right-thinking person is an insult or a shame, oneidos (13.8). The name of sophist retained its potency as an insult even when the sophists themselves had been long defunct, replaced by their descendants the modern professors of rhetoric and philosophy. One of the major conduits for the transmission of the antisophist polemic from antiquity to the Renaissance was Marsilio Ficino's epitome of Plato's dialogue Protagoras. Here Ficino re- groups all the Platonic commonplaces against the sophists from the Gorgias, Hippias, Euthydemus, and elsewhere, providing a handy guide for subsequent vilifications of the sophists. He especially emphasizes the characterization of the sophists as salesmen, "quasi disciplinarum mercatores et caupones."? Crit- ics have acknowledged Ficino's ambivalence in the humanist-scholastic de- bate, and his divided allegiances may have facilitated the free circulation of the epithet "sophist" in the sixteenth century.4 It is curious to remark how .