Sophists and Money

The sophists are repeatedly said to have been the first wisdom experts to charge money for their instruction. This chapter examines the historical basis for this claim and argues that the discourse of teaching for pay often figures in an invective context—one in which the commodification of wisdom carries negative connotations. The claim that the sophists taught for pay, then, is not necessarily reflective of historical practices but rather serves as an effective rhetorical strategy to undermine someone’s intellectual authority. The chapter then explores the discourse of teaching for pay in other contexts and argues that similar invective features are at play there too. We thus need to be careful not to assume that our primary sources reflect historical practices—about which we seem to know remarkably little.