Parnassos Press – Fonte Aretusa

Chapter Title: Gorgias’s Laughter, or: Laughing Against Philosophy?

Chapter Author(s): Enrico Piergiacomi

Book Title: Gorgias/Gorgias: The Sicilian Orator and the Platonic Dialogue
Book Subtitle: with new translations of the Helen, Palamedes, and On Not Being
Book Editor(s): S. Montgomery Ewegen, Coleen P. Zoller
Published by: Parnassos Press – Fonte Aretusa. (2022)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv36cj70n.13

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 Enrico Piergiacomi1
Gorgias’s Laughter, or: Laughing Against Philosophy?2
Comedy as Refutation in Gorgias
One of Gorgias’s instructions to his pupils is to employ the art
of antilogical contradiction to win a debate. If the rival delivers a
serious speech, it should be countered with a ridiculous answer; by
contrast, if he gives a ridiculous speech, it should be countered with
a serious response. This instruction is preserved in three sources. The
first one comes from book III of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which places
Gorgias’s claim within a more general reflection on humor:
As for laughter, since it seems to have some use in debate
and Gorgias rightly said [orthos legon] that one should spoil
[diaphtheirein] the opponents’ seriousness with laughter and
their laughter with seriousness, the number of forms of
laughter have been stated in the Poetics, of which some are
appropriate for a gentleman to use and some not. Each
speaker will take up what suits him. Irony is more
gentlemanly than buffoonery: for the ironist makes a laugh
for his own amusement, the buffoon for the amusement of
others.3

1 Enrico Piergiacomi was Francesco De Dombrowski Fellow at Villa I Tatti

| The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies
(Florence) and is Visiting Researcher at the Center for Religious Studies
of the Bruno Kessler Foundation (Trento) in Italy.
2 I thank my wife Maria Pavlova for revising the English of this paper as

well as Fulvia de Luise, Massimo Pulpito, Phillip Mitsis, and Stefania

Giombini who discussed the ideas expressed here. I also thank Heather
Reid and Shane Ewegen for including this essay in the proceedings,
and the latter also for editing the previous version of the text.
3 Aristotle, Rhetoric III 1419b3-9 (s= B12 DK, D18 LM). Translation from

George A. Kennedy, ed., Aristotle: On Rhetoric. A Theory of Civic

Discourse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 248. “DK” refers to
Chapter 82 of Hermann Diels, Walter Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker, 3 vol. (Berlin: Wiedemann, 1956), “LM” to Chapter 32 of
André Laks, Glenn Most (eds.), Early Greek Philosophy, Volume VIII
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

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Enrico Piergiacomi
The second and third sources are the comments on 473e2 made
by Olympiodorus in his Commentary on Plato’s “Gorgias” and by an
anonymous scholiast of the same Platonic dialogue. In the passage in
question, Polus—Gorgias’s pupil—ridicules Socrates’s claim that
committing an injustice is worse than suffering it (461b3-481b5). Both
commentators note that this is precisely Gorgias’s instruction to
destroy a serious thesis through laughter:
‘What’s this, Polus? You’re laughing?’: Polus laughed at this
point. So Socrates asks, ‘Is laughing an alternative form of
refuting and are you refuting through laughter?’ Note that
there is a saying of Gorgias’s, giving the instruction: ‘If your
opponent speaks seriously, laugh, and you will defeat him
[ekkroueis auton]. If he laughs when you are speaking
seriously, exert yourself in order that his laughter should
not be noticed.’ So it was as a student of Gorgias that Polus
laughed.4
This is Gorgias’s teaching: to solve [ekluein] the opponents’
concerns by laughing and rejecting ridiculous things with
serious things.5
It is not fully clear which of these three sources preserves
Gorgias’s original instruction. While we can probably disregard the
scholium, considering that its author does not display any profound
knowledge of the sophist’s work, it is difficult to decide in favor of
Aristotle or Olympiodorus. Both seem to know Gorgias well.
Aristotle often refers to his ideas and instructions.6 Olympiodorus
mentions Gorgias’s treatise On Not Being, or On Nature, calling it a

4 Commentary on Plato’s “Gorgias” 20.5 (om. DK and LM), translation from

Robin Jackson, Kimon Lycos, Harold Tarrant, eds., Olympiodorus:
Commentary on Plato’s Gorgias (Leiden: Brill, 1998). The text
corresponds to source T7 of Robert L. Fowler, ed., “Polos of Akragas:
Testimonia,” Mnemosyne 50.1 (1997): 27-34.
5 Maria Carbonara Naddei, Gli scoli greci al Gorgia di Platone (Pàtron:

Bologna, 1976), 78.

6 Cf. the overview by Renato Laurenti, “Le citazioni di Gorgia in Aristotele,”

in Gorgia e la sofistica, eds. Luciano Montoneri, Francesco Romano

(Catania: Università di Catania, 1985), 357-88.

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 Gorgias’s Laughter
“not unadorned treatise,”7 which means that he could have read it.
However, it is probable that Aristotle should be preferred for the
following three reasons. First, Aristotle maintains that Gorgias’s
remarks on the use of laughter in a rhetorical debate are correct
(orthos legon), which suggests that he could be directly quoting his
words. By contrast, Olympiodorus and the anonymous scholium
both state that there is a saying attributed to the sophist that can be
used to describe Polus’s behavior. Second, Aristotle uses the verb
diaphtheirein to refer to the act of destroying the opponent, which is a
term that we find in §17 of Palamedes, where it is said that the traitor
of one’s homeland destroys (diaphtheirei) the crowd.8 Neither
Olympiodorus’s ekkroueis nor the scholium’s ekluein feature in
Gorgias’s extant works. Finally, one cannot exclude the possibility
that Olympiodorus’s version could be an explanation of the second
half of the instruction that Aristotle leaves unexplained, namely how
one is supposed to react to an opponent who laughs at us. The
answer is that one must pretend to take no notice of the opponent’s
laughter. If so, it follows that Olympiodorus’s source is Aristotle and
that Aristotle’s shorter version is more historically reliable.
The three accounts also differ in their contextualization of
Gorgias’s instruction. Aristotle seems to say that the sophist’s advice
pertains to a rhetorical debate. After all, Gorgias’s instruction is
found in the Rhetoric. Olympiodorus’s and the anonymous
scholiast’s comments on Polus’s laughter at Socrates suggest instead
that Plato knew that Gorgias might have thought that this strategy
could be employed in a philosophical debate.9 Laughing at an
opponent’s seriousness means to undermine his serious thesis,
which in this case is the claim that justice is better than injustice. This
might mean that Gorgias’s instruction also implicitly refers to the

7 Commentary on Plato’s “Gorgias,” paragraph 9: sungramma ouk akompson (=

R23 LM, om. DK). Further arguments in Roberta Ioli, ed., Gorgia:
Testimonianze e frammenti (Roma: Carocci, 2018), 156.
8 On the term, cf. Ioli, Testimonianze e frammenti, 265.

9 This point is also noticed by Stefania Giombini, Gorgia epidittico (Perugia:

Aguaplano, 2018), 143; Ioli, Testimonianze e frammenti, 265; and Robert

D. Metcalf, Philosophy as Agôn: A Study of Plato’s Gorgias and Related
Texts (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2018), 94 and 100-1.

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Enrico Piergiacomi
audience. If one demonstrates that the opponent’s serious thesis is
actually ridiculous, then those who listen will not accept it and favor
the one that counters it—again, in Polus’s case, that injustice must be
obviously preferred to justice.
The question of whether the instruction of fragment B12 can be
interpreted as a philosophical weapon—and not only a rhetorical
one—has not attracted scholarly attention. The most complete
account provided by Consigny only uses the text for explaining
Gorgias’s style and polemic humor.10 In what follows, I propose that
Olympiodorus and the scholium could be trusted as sources that
show that the instruction could have also been used for rebutting
philosophy. It can be maintained that Gorgias did not give his
instruction in a specific context. Whether one debates against a
serious rhetorician or a serious philosopher, one will win if one uses
laughter as one’s weapon.
Evidence on Gorgias’s Use of Laughter
Before moving to the more specific thesis that Gorgias might
have used laughter more generally in a philosophical debate, it is
necessary to establish whether one can trust Aristotle and
Olympiodorus when they say the sophist taught that one should
undermine one’s opponent’s reasoning by laughing at it. There is
evidence in favor of this. It could be noted first of all that some
sources report that Gorgias praised his capacity to improvise a
speech at an opportune moment and that he considered this aspect
so important that he even wrote about this subject.11 It is possible that

10 Scott Consigny, Gorgias: Sophist and Artist (Columbia: University of South

Carolina, 2001), 75, 166-76, 192-6. Cf. also Marie-Pierre Noël,
“L’enfance de l’art. Plaisir et jeu chez Gorgias,” Bulletin de l’Association
Guillaume Budé 1 (1994): 74-5.
11 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Literary Composition 12 (= B13 DK, D12

LM), with (for example) Renzo Velardi, Gorgia. Retorica e filosofia

(Urbino: Argalìa, 1971), 202; Marie-Pierre Noël, “Kairos sophistique et
mises en forme du logos chez Gorgias,” Revue de philologie, de littérature
et d’histoire anciennes 72.2 (1998): 233-45; John Poulakos, “Kairos in
Gorgias’s Rhetorical Compositions,” in Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in
History, Theory, and Praxis, eds. P. Sipiora, J.S. Baumlin (Albany: State

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 Gorgias’s Laughter
his instruction to use laughter against a serious opponent, and the
reverse, is also a form of kairos. One can take the opportunity of a
serious speech for improvising a mocking answer, or a mocking
speech for improvising a serious reply.
On the other hand, other sources confirm that Gorgias used
laughter to rebut some serious claims of rival sophists. According to
Plato,12 Gorgias claimed that he only taught how to deliver clever
speeches, and ridiculed those who promised to teach virtue.13 These
sources include Protagoras14 and Prodicus, the latter of whom was
the author of the tale of Heracles’s having to choose between Virtue
and Vice.15 Prodicus was also derided by Gorgias for having repeated
the same speeches many times,16 i.e., for being unable to catch the
kairos and deliver new speeches.
Another piece of evidence consists in a fragment of a speech
delivered in front of the citizens of Larissa. The source is Aristotle,17
who reports the following. The Lariseans were proud of their noble
origins, implying that this superiority was rooted in their innate
nature. Gorgias showed the absurdity of this belief by claiming that

University of New York Press, 2002): 89-96; Mario Untersteiner, I sofisti,

presentazione di Fernanda Decleva Caizzi (Milano: Mondadori, 2008),
178-82, 293-6; Ioli, Testimonianze e frammenti, 208-9 and 264-7.
12 Meno 95c1-4 = A 21, D47 LM.

13 This seems to contradict Plato’s claim that the sophist wanted to teach

about justice and a moral life (Gorgias 460a3-4). I agree with Maurizio
Migliori, La filosofia di Gorgia (Milano: CELUC, 1973), 125-31, and Ioli,
Testimonianze e frammenti, 87, that Gorgias laughs at the promise that
one will learn virtue. I add the further proof that he praised tragedy,
which fulfills its promise to deceive audiences (cf. uposchomenos in
Plutarch, On the Glory of Athens 348B11-C8 = B 23 DK, D35 LM).
14 80 A 5 DK, 31 P13a LM (= Plato, Protagoras 348e4-349a4) and Vincenzo di

Benedetto, “Il Peri tou me ontos di Gorgia e la polemica con Protagora,”

306-7, who adds Protagoras 318a6-9 and 319a6-7.
15 Xenophon, Memorabilia II 1.21-34 = 84 B 2 DK, 34 D21 LM.

16 Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, I proem = A 24 DK, D11b LM. The text is

absent from all the collections, including Robert Mayhew, ed., Prodicus
the Sophist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Prodicus replied to
Gorgias (cf. Plato, Phaedrus 267a6-b5 = 84 A 20 DK, 34 D11a LM).
17 Politics II 1275b26-30 = B19 DK, D53 LM.

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Enrico Piergiacomi
this “nobility” was a rhetorical construction, or a product of the city’s
own constitution, using the following ridiculous analogy to prove
this. Just as there are mortar-makers who make mortars, there are
also “Larisean-makers” (larisopoious) who are producers (demiourgoi)
of the “Lariseans,” namely the civic magistrates.18 Now, Aristotle
adds that this speech was delivered partly in an ironic manner
(eironeuomenos). And we have seen at the beginning, from the context
of the quotation of fragment B12 DK, that irony is one of the forms of
humor that intends to destroy a serious opponent. It could be then
supposed that Gorgias’s speech against the Lariseans is an
application of this strategy. The sophist undermines the serious
claim that the Lariseans have a noble nature with a pun that shows
instead that nobility is a cultural construction.
Humor may also be present in all of Gorgias’s fragments that are
characterized by an excessively tragic, pompous, and poetic tone.
Most of them are found in Aristotle’s discussion of frigidity in
Chapter 3 of book III of the Rhetoric (1405b35-1406b14), namely of the
style that is perceived as obscure and ridiculous due to its
extravagance or inappropriateness (cf. 1406a32-35, esp. geloion in l.
32). He lists three compounds (“beggar-mused flatterers,”
“forsworn,” “right-solemnly sworn”) and two metaphors (“pale and
bloodless doings,” “you have sown shamefully and have reaped
badly”). He also recounts the following anecdote. Gorgias exclaimed,
in a tragic manner, “Shame on you, Philomela!” to a swallow that let
fall its droppings on him, pretending that the bird was the maiden
Philomela who—according to the myth—had been transformed into
this animal. Since defecating on a man is shameful for a young girl,
the swallow deserves the scolding.19 Two more fragments are quoted

18 The best explanation of the pun is by Alonso Tordesillas, “Aristotele,

Gorgia e i mortai di Larissa,” in Aristotele e la storia, eds. C. Rossitto, A.
Coppola, F. Biasutti (Padova: CLEUP, 2013), 139-147, who builds a
convincing parallel between the demiourgoi of B19 DK and Gorgias’s
definition of rhetoric as a producer of persuasion (peithous demiourgos),
attributed to him by Plato (Gorgias 453a2, 454e9-455a1).
19 These texts correspond to fragments A23 and B15-16 DK, D43-44 and
R10a-c LM. I am using Kennedy’s translation: On Rhetoric, 202-4. On

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 Gorgias’s Laughter
by Athanasius of Alexandria and the pseudo-Longinus as examples
of frigid and ridiculous expressions: “Xerxes, the Zeus of the
Persians” and “vulture, living tombs.”20
Now, there are two ways of interpreting the ridiculous frigidity
of Gorgias’s tragic expressions. On the one hand, it could be
supposed that their ridiculousness is unintentional. This is surely the
interpretation given by Athanasius and the pseudo-Longinus. On the
other hand, it is possible to read this ridiculousness as intentional,
which has led scholars like Rosenmeyer and Consigny to suppose
that Gorgias produced a parody of tragedy.21 This also seems to be
Aristotle’s exegesis. In the above-mentioned chapter of the Rhetoric,
he says that frigidity is intentional in the verses of iambic poets and
comic playwrights (1406b3-7), after which he quotes some fragments
of Gorgias and tells the anecdote of Gorgias rebuking the
swallow/Philomela. The juxtaposition seems to suggest that the
sophist wrote these tragic lines with a comic spirit. Moreover, a few
pages later (Rhetoric III 1408b10-20) Aristotle affirms that Gorgias
pronounced these pompous poetic expressions not passionately (i.e.,
truly) like Isocrates (Panegyricus 96, 186), but ironically (met’ eironeias)
like in Plato’s Phaedrus.22 Now, I suggest that these fragments are also

the anecdote of Gorgias rebuking the swallow/Philomela, cf. Thomas

Rosenmeyer, “Gorgias, Aeschylus, and Apate,” The American Journal of
Philology 76.3 (1955): 226 and 249-50.
20 Cf. peri geloiode in Athanius of Alexandria, Commentary on Hermogenes’
“On Legal Issues” 14.180.16-19, and gelatai in pseudo-Longinus, On
Sublimity 2.3 = B5a DK, D30 LM.
21 Rosenmeyer, “Gorgias, Aeschylus, and Apate,” 225-7, Consigny, Sophist
and Artist, 168 and 181-4. Ioli, Testimonianze e frammenti, 272, supposes
a parody of parasites and of Orphic poems. See also Jonas Schollmeyer,
Gorgias’s Lobrede auf Helena (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 34-6, who
supposes that Gorgias drew from line 1021 of Aristophanes’s Frogs the
(parodic?) judgment that Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes is “full of
Ares” (B 24 DK, D36 LM = Plutarch, Table Talks VII 715D11-E3).
22 The source is omitted in Diels-Kranz and Laks-Most, but included in
Thomas Buchheim, ed., Gorgias von Leontinoi: Reden, Fragmente und
Testimonien (München: Meiner, 1989), 134 and 204-5, who suggests that
Aristotle has also in mind Plato, Phaedrus 238c9-d3, 241e1-7.

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Enrico Piergiacomi
evidence of Gorgias’s use of laughter for destroying a serious
opponent, in this case the seriousness of tragedy.
This seems to contradict Gorgias’s famous praise of tragedy,
defined as “a deception in which the one who deceives is more just
than the one who does not deceive, and the one who is deceived is
more intelligent than the one who is not deceived.”23 Some scholars
were led by this fragment to suppose that tragic poetry corresponds
to the persuasion of the deceptive logos of the Encomium of Helen that
shapes or changes our opinions, since logos produces the same
cathartic effect of tragic fear/piety and the same deceptions of
opinion (doxes apatemata) that are created by poetical magic.24 Others
go even further and claim that the sophist considered life itself to be
a tragedy, referring to the third thesis of On Not Being. Since this
argument shows that there is no correspondence between language
and reality,25 Gorgias may have used it for concluding that the
deceptive logos shapes our reality by determining or changing our
opinions, just like tragic poetry creates a fictional reality on stage.26
However, this interpretation is not without alternatives. One could
also propose that tragic poetry may provide just an example of the
persuasion of the deceptive logos of the Helen. After all, Gorgias says

23 On the Glory of Athens 348B11-C8 (= B 23 DK, D35 LM), trans. Laks Most.
24 Compare Encomium of Helen 8-11 with the famous definition of tragedy in
Aristotle, Poetics 1449b22-28, and cf. Charles Segal, “Gorgias and the
Psychology of the Logos,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 66
(1962): 122-32; Willem J. Verdenius, “Gorgias’s Doctrine of Deception,”
in The Sophists and Their Legacy, ed. G.B. Kerferd (Wiesbaden: Steiner,
1981), 116-28; Kurt Sier, “Gorgias über die Fiktionalität der Tragödie,”
in Dramatische Wäldchen, eds. E. Stärk, G. Vogt-Spira (Zürich: Olms,
2000), 586-613; Roberta Ioli, Il felice inganno. Poesia, finzione e verità nel
mondo antico (Milano-Udine: Mimesis, 2018), 137-52.
25 Anonymous, On Melissus, Xenophanes, Gorgias 6.21-25; Sextus Empiricus,

Against the Mathematicians VII 83-86 = B 3 DK, D26 LM.

26 Cf. especially Velardi, Gorgia, 148-52, 180-1, 210-1; Untersteiner, I sofisti,

159-84, 215-40, 279-86; Thérèse Pentzopoulou-Valalas, “Gorgias:

philosophe du tragique de la condition humaine,” in Plato, Poet and
Philosopher, eds. E. Moutsopoulos, M. Protopapas-Marneli (Athen:
Academy of Athens, 2013), 181-91; Milena Bontempi, La fiducia secondo
gli antichi (Napoli: Editoriale Scientifica, 2013), 98-110.

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 Gorgias’s Laughter
in §13 that in order to learn how a speech can easily create new
opinions or change old ones, we must also consider the speeches of
scholars of heaven, the contentions of public debates, and the
contests of philosophers. In this sense, Gorgias’s praise is more a
praise of deception than a praise of tragedy. Now, if we abandon the
identification of logos with tragic poetry,27 nothing precludes us from
supposing that tragic language could be parodied and that opinions
represented on stage could be reshaped just as any other opinion.
After all, this is what happens in the Helen itself, which wants to
modify the popular opinion (i.e., deception), based on the fictions of
poets (including the tragic ones), that Helen was responsible for her
choice to follow Paris to Troy, while in reality she was prevented by
a superior force (love, divine necessity, etc.) from exercising her free
will (§2). If these observations are plausible, it could be added that
fragment B12 suggests that one can win a debate against the
solemnity of tragedy through laughter, or challenge deceptive tragic
speeches by employing the deception of logos.
This claim could be connected to one last piece of evidence: the
conclusion of the Helen, which claims that the whole speech is, for
the sophist, an amusement or paignion (§21). The term has puzzled
scholars, since it seems to downplay the speech that describes the
power of logos and shows the innocence of Helen to an innocuous
divertissement. In order to solve the difficulty and defend the
seriousness of the Helen, it has been suggested that paignion means
“educative game” and that, therefore, speech is pleasurable and
playful in form but serious in its ideas (i.e., the problem of free will)
and in its ends (e.g., to train to reason carefully, or to deliver
persuasive orations),28 or that the word is a metaphorical reference to

27 Further arguments in Stephen Halliwell, Between Ecstasy and Truth:

Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 275-77.
28 Cf., e.g., Giombini, Gorgia epidittico, 142-4; Roberto Velardi, “Il λογισμός

di Gorgia,” in Id., Retorica, filosofia, letteratura. Saggi di storia della retorica

greca su Gorgia, Platone e Anassimene di Lampsaco (Napoli: Istituto
Universitario Orientale, 2001), 37; Vessela Valiavitcharska, “Correct
Logos and Truth in Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen,” Rhetorica 24/2
(2006): 147-61, esp. 157-8.

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Enrico Piergiacomi
the power of fancy or imagination,29 or that the sophist is recognizing
with an ironic smile how strong the power of his seduction is.30 Noël
puts forward the interesting hypothesis that Gorgias wants to create
an enigma and, therefore, she presents his writing as both indebted
to previous poetry and a new kind of prose.31 Some suppose, finally,
that Gorgias intends to produce an honest self-parody, namely, to
confess that even his writing is full of limits and artificial
conventions.32 However, I tend to be more convinced by those
scholars who suppose that the paignion qualifies the Helen as a speech
that is designed to ridicule and comically abuse the solemn poets
who accused Helen of having willingly followed Paris.33 The
refutation of the charge of ill-will against Helen is qualified as a
“child’s game,” or an opinion that was easy to argue and impose on
the audience. This seems perfectly reconcilable with the contents of
fragment B12, which may be implicitly at work in the Helen. If one
wishes to convince the tragedians that Helen is to blame, one can just
claim one’s speech is a paignion, thus suggesting that the whole poetic
tradition leveled ridiculous charges at this woman.
Laughing Against Philosophy (and Eleatism)?
I believe that the evidence collected and analyzed in the
previous section has demonstrated the plausibility of the first thesis
of my essay, namely, that Gorgias made recourse to laughter in order
to undo his serious opponents. I can now move to the second part of
my argument: that the instruction of fragment B12 could have also
been used against philosophers.

29 Sier, “Gorgias über die Fiktionalität der Tragödie,” 588-9; Bontempi, La

fiducia secondo gli antichi, 107.
30 James I. Porter, “The Seductions of Gorgias,” Classical Antiquity 12/2

(1993): 267-99; Stephen Makin, “Amusing Gorgias: Why Does the

Encomium of Helen End as It Does?,” Ancient Philosophy 33 (2013): 291-
305; Halliwell, Between Ecstasy and Truth, 269-70.
31 Noël, “L’enfance de l’art,” especially 85-93.

32 Consigny, Sophist and Artist, 176.

33 Giuseppe Mazzara, Gorgia. La retorica del verosimile (Sankt Augustin:

Academia, 1999), 188-9; Consigny, Sophist and Artist, 174, 194-7, esp.
196; Schollmeyer, Gorgias’s Lobrede auf Helena, 30-7 and 316-7.

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 Gorgias’s Laughter
In a very generic way, this argument rests on the fact that the
above-mentioned references to the debates of the philosophers
(Encomium of Helen 13) and the Peri tou mē Ontos (On Not Being)
clearly point to Gorgias’s interest in philosophy. One could also
mention the participation of the sophist in the dialogue with Socrates
in Plato’s Gorgias and the maxim of the Gnomologium Vaticanum that
compares those who neglect philosophy to the suitors of Penelope.34
However, what is missing from this evidence is an explicit link with
Gorgias’s instruction to use laughter in a philosophical debate. In
Plato’s Gorgias, the sophist always remains serious when reacting to
Socrates’s arguments, contrary to his pupil Polus who cannot help
laughing with contempt.
It would also be tempting to further support this argument by
using Athenaeus of Naucratis and Philostratus as witnesses. The
former says that Gorgias compared Plato’s Gorgias to an iambic (i.e.,
comic) text and quotes Hermippus of Smyrna, who says in his
biography On Gorgias that when Plato tried to shame Gorgias for
having received from the Athenians a golden statue in his honor, the
sophist replied by ridiculously comparing the philosopher to a “new
Archilochus.”35 The latter tells an anecdote that also gives evidence
of the use of seriousness against a scornful philosopher. When
Chaerephon—Socrates’s pupil—made fun of the sophist’s
seriousness (ten spouden tou Gorgiou diamasomenos) by asking him
“why beans puff up the belly but not fire,” he refused to answer the
question and instead made the harsh reply that “earth grows fennel
stalks to be used against people like you.”36 Unfortunately, it is clear

34 Gnomologium Vaticanum 743n166 = B 29 DK, P22 LM. But this maxim is

doubtful, due to the fact that a similar thought is also attributed to
Aristippus by Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers II 79, found in
Gabriele Giannantoni, ed., Socratis et Socraticorum reliquiae (Napoli:
Bibliopolis, 1990), source IV A 107.
35Athenaeus of Naucratis, The Sophists at Dinner XI 113 = 15a DK, 32 P24 LM,

F41; Jan Bollansée, “Hermippos of Smyrna (1026),” in Die Fragmente der

Griechischen Historiker, ed. G Schepens (Leiden: Brill, 1999).
36 Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists I proem (= A 24 DK, P21 LM), trans. by

Laks-Most, Early Greek Philosophy VIII, 135. The source is omitted from
Giannantoni, Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae.

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Enrico Piergiacomi
that the two sources are too fictitious to be reliable. The most that can
be said about Athenaeus’s source is that the witness notes correctly
that Plato’s Gorgias was indeed a parody of the sophist’s activity.37
Further doubt on Philostratus can also be shed by pointing out that
Chaerephon is presented by Plato as a friend of Gorgias.38 It is
evident that a philos could not have ridiculed the sophist as harshly
as happens in the anecdote.
Is it inevitable, then, to conclude that only Olympiodorus
represents the source that attests that the instruction of B12 was
applied in a philosophical polemic? My final hypothesis is that the
answer should be negative, for I suppose that an implicit sign may
be found in Gorgias’s On Not Being, which almost all scholars
consider to be a treatise aimed at refuting the ontology of
Parmenides.39 Far less agreement exists with regard to the three
arguments that nothing exists, nothing can be known, and nothing is
communicable. Scholars debate on whether Gorgias’s On Not Being
is a serious philosophical work that proposes a theory of language

37 I agree with Brad Levett, “Platonic Parody in the Gorgias,” Phoenix 59.3/4
(2005): 210-227. On Athenaeus’s reference to the golden statue and the
“new Archilochus,” cf. Alberta Lorenzoni, “Platone ‘novello
Archiloco’ e l’ ‘aureo’ Gorgia (Athen. XI 505de; Plat. Phaedr. 235d-236b),
Eikasmos 6 (1995): 109-20.
38 Gorgias 447b2: philos gar moi Gorgias. Noël, “Kairos sophistique,” 237-38,

and Ioli, Testimonianze e frammenti, 90, read the anecdote as an example

of Gorgias’s kairos.
39 Cf., for example, Olof Gigon, “Gorgias ‘Über das Nichtsein’,” Hermes 71/2

(1936): 186-213; Hans-Joachim Newiger,Untersuchungen zu Gorgias’s

Schrift Über das Nichtseiende (Berlin-New York: De Gruyter, 1973);
Guido Calogero, Studi sull’eleatismo (Firenze: La NuovaItalia, 1977),
189-268; Velardi, Gorgia, 186-96; Patricia Curd, “Gorgias and the
Eleatics,” in La costruzione del discorso filosofico nell’età dei Presocratici, ed.
Maria Michela Sassi (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 2006),
183-200; Mazzara, La retorica, 33-118. Others think that the enemy is
Protagoras (di Benedetto, “Il Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος di Gorgia,” 287-307),
or Melissus (cf. Ioli, Testimonianze e frammenti, 154), or philosophy in
general—cf. Adolfo Levi, Studi su Gorgia (Gubbio: Oderisi, 1941), 22-
24, Untersteiner, I sofisti, 230-1.

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 Gorgias’s Laughter
and reality40 or a rhetorical speech that does not really defend the
anti-Eleatic conclusions which are drawn from it.41 In the present
essay, I do not intend to dwell on the question of its content, but
rather I would like to suppose that the sophist may have rebutted
Parmenides through a sort of “philosophical rhetoric.” The
expression suggests that Gorgias builds counterarguments against
Eleatism in the language of the philosophers, i.e., a dialectic
language, yet his rebuttal of Eleatism is consistent with the rhetorical
strategy presented in fragment B12. Parmenides delivers a serious
speech that the sophist wants to undermine through laughter, or
with a reasoning that is intentionally ridiculous, for it arrives to the
impossible theses that nothing exists, nothing can be known, and
nothing can be communicated.
That said, we must acknowledge that the summaries of On Not
Being provided by the anonymous pamphlet On Melissus,
Xenophanes, Gorgias and by Sextus Empiricus do not feature words or
expressions that could be explicitly connected to the language of
humor. At the same time, it has been noted that the title and the style
of the treatise might deliberately want to parody Parmenides.42 I
would add here that one could interpret as parodic also some
passages of Sextus’s summary of On Not Being that attribute to
Gorgias the idea that, if we bring Eleatism under rational scrutiny,
then Eleatic reasoning is revealed to be atopos or absurd, i.e.,
ridiculous. It is true that the atopia could refer to a logical or
epistemological absurdity.43 And it might be true that the use of
atopos could be a choice of Sextus rather than of Gorgias.44 However,
what is logically or epistemologically absurd may be ridiculous. And
even if atopos is a word chosen by Sextus, it could well be a translation
of a term used by Gorgias.

40 Cf. the scholars quoted in notes 22, 24, and 39 as well as George B. Kerferd,
“Gorgias on Nature or That Which is Not,” Phronesis 1.1 (1955): 3-25,
and Mario Bonazzi, I sofisti (Roma: Carocci, 2010), 39-52.
41 Consigny, Sophist and Artist, 60-92, 189; Giombini, Gorgia epidittico, 47-62.

42 Consigny, Sophist and Artist, 173-4; Makin, “Amusing Gorgias,” 292.

43 Gigon, “Über das Nichtsein,” 207-8; Mazzara, La retorica, 18, 20-1, 46.

44 Carl Joachim Classen, “L’esposizione dei sofisti e della sofistica in Sesto

Empirico,” Elenchos 13.1-2 (1992), 75.

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Enrico Piergiacomi
To further support my claim, it is also useful to note that some
sources attest that philosophers were derided for their atopia. More
precisely, it is possible to find a connection between atopos and
geloios. These sources include Protagoras’s and Meletus’s laughter
against the absurd views of Socrates;45 Aristotle’s eleventh (comic)
objection in book III of the treatise On Heavens (307a19-24) to the four
elements defended in Plato’s Timaeus (54b6-d3, 56c8-e1)46; Epicrates’s
satire of the atopia of the ancient Platonists;47 Arcesilaus’s and Cato’s
mockery of the Stoic paradoxes;48 and Plotinus’s ludicrous judgment
about those who negate providence (Enneads II 9.16). Proclus’s
Commentary on Plato’s “Parmenides” also shows that the Peripatetics
derided the ontology of Parmenides as atopos49 and that already Zeno
of Elea noticed that Eleatism was rejected with laughter by some
unnamed adversaries:
You have mentioned something that happened
accidentally. The truth is that the book comes to the defense
of Parmenides’s argument against those who try to make
fun [komodein] of it by claiming that, if it is one, many and
laughable [polla kai geloia] self-contradictions result from
that argument.50

45 Plato, Apology of Socrates 26d1-e4, and Protagoras 361a3-b3.

46 The parodic intent is noted by Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s “On
Heaven,” 664.26-27.
47 Athenaeus of Naucratis, The Sophists at Dinner I 54 = fragment 10 of

Rudolph Kassel, Colin Austin, eds., Poetae comici graeci. Vol. 5 (Berlin-
New York: De Gruyter, 1986), 153-63.
48 For the former, cf. Plutarch, Against the Stoics on Common Notions 1078C5-

D7 = F73 of Simone Vezzoli, ed., Arcesilao di Pitane: l’origine del

Platonismo neoaccademico (Brepols: Turnhout, 2016). For the latter, see
Plutarch, Comparison between Demetrius and Cicero 1.5.
49 Cf. 716.25-717.13. It is possible that the first Peripatetic who did so was

Aristotle himself in book I of the Physics. Cf. the convincing arguments

of Diana Quarantotto, “Aristotle’s Way Away from Parmenides’ Way:
A Case of Scientific Controversy and Ancient Humour,” Elenchos 37.1-
2 (2016): 207-228.
50 Plato, Parmenides 128c5-d2 = 29 A 12 DK, 20 R2 LM, trans. Laks-Most, Early

Greek Philosophy, vol. 5, 193-5, slightly modified.

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 Gorgias’s Laughter
With due caution, it is not implausible to suppose that one of these
laughing enemies of Eleatism includes Gorgias. He may then be
included in this crowd of ridiculers of philosophical absurdities.
To return to Sextus’s version, it should be noted that it is
normally considered as less reliable than the version given by
pseudo-Aristotle. Sextus might aim at transforming the Gorgianic
theses into a skeptical discourse about the criterion.51 Migliori also
tries to explain the differences between the two texts by supposing
that the latter is actually the source of the former.52 However,
Rodriguez and Giombini have argued that Sextus may be more
reliable than it sounds.53 My personal proof of this is that the word
atopos could be more consistent with Gorgias’s possible intent to
ridicule Parmenides according to the principle of fragment B12.
Sextus may eventually distort the arguments of the sophist, not his
comic spirit.
It remains to analyze the arguments of On Not Being which are
absurd, and hence ridiculous per se. According to the first one (VII
67),54 if we claim that non-being is, then at the same time we would
say: (1) non-being is, since it is what is not; (2) non-being is not, for it
is thought of as not being. But defending simultaneously (1) and (2)
is absurd, therefore what is not is not.55 At first sight, Gorgias

51 Classen, “L’esposizione dei sofisti e della sofistica in Sesto Empirico,” 72-

8; Roberta Ioli, “Gorgia scettico? Una riflessione sulla presenza del
sofista nelle opere di Sesto Empirico,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie
152.3/4 (2009): 331-57; Roberta Ioli, ed., Gorgia di Leontini: Su ciò che non
è (Olms: Zürich-New York, 2010), 36-50 and 167-71.
52 Migliori, La filosofia di Gorgia, 61-2.

53 Cf. Evan Rodriguez, “Untying the Gorgianic ‘Not’: argumentative

structure in On Not-Being,” The Classical Quarterly 69.1 (2019): 87-106;

Stefania Giombini, “Why Sextus? The Pros logikous as Reliable Source
for Gorgias’s Peri tou me ontos,” Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia 14.1
(2019): 83-96.
54 This and subsequent quotations are taken from Against the Mathematicians.

55 The argument is considered Gorgianic by Kerferd, “Gorgias on the Nature

or That Which is Not,” 14-5, Giuseppe Mazzara, Gorgia ontologo e

metafisico (Palermo: Ila Palma, 1982), 25-37, and Bonazzi, I sofisti, 43. For

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Enrico Piergiacomi
apparently reiterates Parmenides’s rejection of non-being, or what is
not, since it cannot be known or expressed.56 In reality, the sophist
may be arguing that his adversary admits (1), when he says that what
is not is what is not (v. 3 of B2: ouk estin… esti me einai), and also (2),
when he affirms that one cannot think that what is not is not (vv. 13-
14 of B7/8: oude noeton / estin opos ouk esti). So, Parmenides is confuted
because his serious rejection of non-being turns out to consist in the
ridiculous claim that non-being is and is not at the same time.
Another passage seems to address the Parmenidean arguments
that being is one, since it is indivisible and continuous (B7/8.9-11, 27-
30, 47-54). Gorgias argues (VII 70) that it is absurd to think that what
is is enclosed within itself. This seems to be a translation of
Parmenides’s idea that the continuity of being implies that it is
homogeneous in its boundaries (v. 54: oi gar pantothen ison, omos en
peirasi kurei), which is refuted by adding that in a being of this sort
the container (to en oi) or the place that contains (topos) and the
content (to en autoi) or the body that is contained (soma) will be
identical.57 But this will mean that what is actually consists in two
beings, another ridiculous absurdity: what is one is also multiple.
In the third passage (VII 73), Gorgias states that it is absurd to
conceive a continuous being that is also indivisible. It is worth
quoting his argument in full:
And in a different way: if it is, it is either one or multiple.
But it is neither one nor many, as will be proven; so what is
is not. For if it is one, it is either a quantity, or continuous,
or a magnitude, or a body. But whichever of these it is, it is
not one: if it is constituted as a quantity, it will be divided;
if it is continuous, it will be cut; in the same way, if it is
thought as a magnitude, it will not be indivisible; and if it

the differences with the pseudo-Aristotle, cf. Newiger, Untersuchungen,

29-39, and Calogero, Studi sull’Eleatismo, 194-202.
56 28 B 2, 6, 7/8 DK (= 19 D6-8 LM). Here and in what follows, I use the
numeration of Giovanni Cerri, ed., Parmenide: Poema sulla natura
(Milano: Rizzoli, 1992).
57 The proof that Gorgias might have reasoned in this way is provided by
Ioli, “Gorgia scettico?,” 334-5.

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 Gorgias’s Laughter
turns out to be a body, it will be triple, for it will have length,
breadth, and depth. But it is absurd [atopon de] to say that
what is is not any of these: so what is is not one.58
The interesting part of this argumentation is that Gorgias does not
directly ridicule Parmenides. Its conclusion shows that what the
sophist finds absurd/ridiculous is that being cannot be conceived as
continuous. In this respect, Parmenides is right.59 The problem is that
his adversary is doomed to suffer defeat in a different way in the
previous absurdity of VII 70, namely, to qualify being as one and
multiple at the same time: for what is continuous could be divided
into many parts. So even if Parmenides is not ridiculed for admitting
to the existence of a non-continuous being, he nonetheless becomes
ridiculous for implicitly admitting that a single being is many.
The final argument that qualifies the Parmenidean ontology as
absurd is repeated twice in a long passage of the second thesis of On
Not Being, according to which what is is unknowable, and so cannot
be rationally grasped or thought (VII 78-82). This rebuts
Parmenides’s doctrine that thinking and being are the same (B3,
B7/8.39-41), as well as the claim that one should not trust sight and
hearing in a rational enquiry (B7/8.1-6). Gorgias reads the first
doctrine (§78) as the idea that thoughts (ta phronoumena) are things
that are (ta onta). Such a reasoning implies (§79) that things that are
not (ta me onta) will not be thought (ou phronethesetai).60 Gorgias
interprets the second doctrine as the claim that we should not doubt
our thoughts, only because they grasp things that are not grasped by
sight and hearing. He may affirm that Parmenides is saying that we

58Trans. Laks-Most, Early Greek Philosophy, vol. 8, 235.

59VII 73, on which see Adolfo Levi, Studi su Gorgia, 19. Gorgias’s argument
actually here takes as its target a being which may be one also because
it is conceived as quantity, magnitude, and body. Here I ignore these
qualifications, since they seem not to be among the properties of
Parmenides’s being. For more details, cf. Gigon, “Über das Nichtsein,”
198-9, Newiger, Untersuchungen, 71-3, and Ioli, Su ciò che non è, 157n19.
60 On the historicity of this argument, cf. Victor Caston, “Gorgias on

Thought and Its Objects,” in Presocratic Philosophy Essays in Honor of

Alexander Mourelatos, eds. Victor Caston, Daniel W. Graham (London-
New York: Routledge, 2002), 222-4.

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Enrico Piergiacomi
cannot reject the rational properties of being (uniqueness,
indivisibility, continuity, etc.) just because we see and hear many
divisible and non-continuous entities (§81). Now, Gorgias finds
absurd or ridiculous these conclusions because they fall against two
plain counterfactuals:
And that is why, in general, if it happens to what is to be
thought of, it will happen to what is not to not be thought of.
But this is absurd [atopon d’ esti touto]. For Scylla, Chimera,
and many things that are not are thought of. (VII 80)
So that if someone has the thought that chariots are racing in
the sea, even if he does not see them, he must have the
conviction that chariots really are racing in the sea. But this is
absurd [atopon de touto]. (VII 82)61
Both absurdities could be interpreted as the accusation that
Parmenides is contradicting what will be described as the principle
of the adaequatio rei et intellectus.62 Scylla, Chimeras, and chariots that
can cross the sea do not exist, nor are perceived through sight and
hearing, yet the intellect is able to think of them. One could even add
that Gorgias knows that Parmenides must recognize this last point.
After all, he opened his poem about being by imagining chariots that
fly to a realm where a goddess reveals the true ontological wisdom.63
Therefore, Parmenides’s identification of being and thought is
ridiculous for the following reason: it admits that non-existent things
are not thought and that anything that is thought but escapes
sensation must exist, with the result that he cannot distinguish

61 Trans. Laks-Most, Early Greek Philosophy, 237-239.

62 Mazzara, La retorica, 42-49, e Ontologo e metafisico, 107-11. The historical
reliability of the argument that creates a conflict between senses and
thought is corroborated by its reception in lines 1-26 of Aristophanes’s
Thesmophoriazusae. Cf. Steve Hays, “On the Skeptical Influence of
Gorgias’s On Non-Being,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 28/3 (1990):
335-7.
63 B1 (= D4 LM). Untersteiner, I sofisti, 231, and Caston, “Gorgias on Thought

and Its Objects,” 224, think instead of a polemic reference to the

creations of poets.

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 Gorgias’s Laughter
between fictional entities and real ones.64 According to Gorgias, this
rejection of Eleatic ontology will strengthen the perspective that
what is cannot be thought of and apprehended.
However, as I said at the beginning of this section, this essay will
not examine the theoretical implications that can be drawn from the
sophist’s laughter at Parmenides. For now, suffice it to say that, if we
accept the supposition that the sophist defended a “philosophical
rhetoric,” it could be argued that laughter may display a
philosophical spirit. In other words, Gorgias laughs at the
seriousness of Parmenides in order to remove the rationality or
“aura” from his arguments and to reveal how absurd the philosophy
that he defends really is.
Appendix. Alcidamas’s and Agathon’s Paidia
We saw at the beginning of this essay that Gorgias’s instruction
to ridicule a serious adversary was surely put into practice by his
pupil Polus. What can be said about the two other pupils of the
sophist, i.e., the rhetorician Alcidamas of Elea and the tragedian
Agathon? Both conclude one of their writings with the word paidia
and scholars agree that this is the equivalent of Gorgias’s conclusive
use of paignion. The former does so in the work On Those Who Write
Written Speeches, or On Sophists,65 the latter in the praise of Eros that
Plato attributes him in the Symposium.66 Nobody, however, has

64 I agree with Untersteiner, I sofisti, 234.

65 §34. Translation from Juan Luis López Cruces, Javier Campos Daroca,
Miguel Ángel Márquez Guerrero, eds., Alcidamante de Elea: Testimonios
y fragmentos (Madrid, Editorial Gredos, 2005), 76-92. From now on, I
refer to the work just with the title On Sophists. For the parallel between
Alcidamas’s paidia and Gorgias’s paignion, cf. O’Sullivan, Alcidamas,
Aristophanes and the Beginnings of Greek Stylistic Theory (Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag, 1992), 31, 64, 84-5, Noël, “L’enfance de l’art,” 73-4, Ruth
Mariß, ed., Alkidamas: Überdiejenigen, die schriftliche Redenschreiben, oder
über die Sophisten (Münster: Aschendorf, 2002), 311-2, and Cruces-
Daroca-Guerrero, Testimonios y fragmentos, 92n145.
66 Cf. 197e6-8 and Robert G. Bury, The Symposium of Plato (Cambridge:

Heffer and Sons, 1909), 84; Pierre Léveque, Agathon (Paris: Les belles
lettres, 1955), 123n4; Kenneth Dover, Plato’s Symposium (Cambridge:

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Enrico Piergiacomi
investigated whether this parallelism is indeed an application of the
Gorgianic instruction of fragment B12. I think that the answer can be
affirmative.
Alcidamas’s On Sophists laughs twice (§11, 21) at the authors of
written speeches, including poets and philosophers,67 who are also
described as people who claim to possess a solemn wisdom68 and be
able to educate others (§15). In the section where he explains why he
continues to write instead of making only oral and improvised
speeches, he declares that writing could be a pleasurable or amusing
way to earn fame among the Greeks (§§29-33, especially 33). The
reference to the paidia in the conclusion of the On Sophists might then
hint at the fact that his text intends to destroy the seriousness of
speech-writers (i.e., to apply the instruction of Gorgias’s fragment
B12)69 and to gain the pleasure of amusement. This last notion could
also find a parallel at the end of his work on Homer, if we accept that
Alcidamas declares here to have written on Homer’s birth and poetry
for entertainment (paidias charin). Even this activity is then presented
as a means for gaining pleasure and earning fame.70 According to this

Cambridge University Press, 1980), 123; Noël, “L’enfance de l’art,” 72-

3; Esteban Bieda, “Gorgias en el Banquete de Platón. Ecos del Encomio
de Helena en el discurso de Agatón,” Elenchos 31.2 (2010): 223, 227, 240.
67 Cf. poietas in §2 and poietes logon in §34. Although I am aware that these

words refer generically to the creators of written speeches (O’Sullivan,

Alcidamas, Aristophanes and the Beginnings, 52-3; and John V. Muir, ed.,
Alcidamas: The Works and Fragments (London: Bristol Classical Press,
2002), 42-3), I believe that poets can be included among speech-writers,
for the writings of the latter are said to be more similar to those of
authors of poems (§12). Philosophers are mentioned in §15. On
Alchidamas’s conception of philosophy, cf. Mariß, Alkidamas, 95-9.
68 Cf. §1 (sophian semunontai), §30 (te dunamei sumnunomenois), and

Mariß, Alkidamas, 89-90.

69 Contra Yosef Z. Liebersohn, “Alcidamas’ On the Sophists: a Reappraisal,”

Eranos 97 (1999), 115, who says that laughing against speech-writers is

a common rhetorical device.
70 I refer to ll. 19-20 of the Michigan Papyrus 2754 (= fragment 6 of Cruces-

Daroca-Guerrero, Testimonios y fragmentos), which could also be read

as paideias charin. In defense of paidias charin, cf. O’Sullivan, Alcidamas,

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 Gorgias’s Laughter
interpretation, one can suppose that the fragment of a lost work that
says “bringing no such plaything to his poetry” (i.e., another
reference to the writing of a paignion)71 has a negative connotation.
Since Alcidamas considers the paidia as a means for crushing his
serious opponents and earning fame in a pleasurable manner, he
might affirm that a poet who does not write for amusement is one of
the many bad speech-writers.
As regards Agathon’s praise of Eros in Plato’s Symposium (194e4-
197e5), one could perhaps find an application of Gorgias’s fragment
B12, if we suppose that his speech is considered a playful way to
deride the serious claims in the speech that was previously delivered
by Phaedrus (178a6-180b7).72 After all, the conclusion of lines 197e6-
8 shows that the tragedian wants to address him in his paidia. It could
then be supposed, for example, that Agathon laughs at Phaedrus’s
claim that Eros is the oldest of the mortals (178a9-c2) with a funny
description of this god’s delicate youth,73 or at his idea that love
bestows gifts especially on the beloved (178c2-d1 and 180a7-b2),
which is ridiculed by affirming that the lover wants the goods

Aristophanes and the Beginnings, 63-5. Contra Liebersohn, “Alcidamas’

On the Sophists,” 123-5, who affirms that the playfulness is for
Alcidamas a way to educate or instruct a more intelligent kind of
reader, and Muir, Alcidamas, 92, who affirms that paidia means that
“Homer is now becoming light entertainment.”
71 Guido Avezzù, ed., Alcidamante: Orazioni e frammenti (Roma: L’Erma di

Bretschneider, 1982), 93. The text corresponds to fragment 19 of

Cruces-Daroca-Guerrero, Testimonios y fragmentos: ouden toiouton
athurma te poiesei prosferon. The source is Aristotle, Rhetoric III 1406b13-
14—the same text that gives evidence about Gorgias’s possible use of
frigidity as a form of a parody of tragedy (supra, §2). We have no
evidence that this practice was recovered by Alcidamas.
72 To my knowledge, nobody has put forward this claim before. For the

presence of Gorgias in Agathon’s speech, cf. Bury, The Symposium of

Plato, xxxv-vi, and Bieda, “Gorgias en el Banquete de Platón,” 213-41.
On the more general influence of the teachings of the sophist on
tragedy, cf. Léveque, Agathon, 119-37.
73 194a8-196a1. On the comic element of this passage, cf., e.g., Dover, Plato’s

Symposium, 124-5. For humorous elements of Agathon’s praise, cf.

Valiavitcharska, “Correct Logos and Truth,” 154.

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Enrico Piergiacomi
deriving from beauty firstly for himself or herself and only
secondarily in favor of his or her beloved (197b7-c3).
This is a brief overview of the reception of Gorgias’s instruction
in the works of his early pupils. The topic could be extended to
consider the later tradition, in particular Plato, who also qualifies
writing in general as a paidia and makes recourse to playfulness in
his serious research (cf., e.g., Phaedrus 276b1-e3, Philebus 30e6-7).
This, however, falls outside the scope of the present investigation.

194
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