Observations on the rece ption of the ancient Greek sophists and the use of the term sophist in the Renaissance

Abstract

This paper presents some material for a history of the reception of ancient Greek sophistic in the Renaissance. First, it discusses what knowledge the dialectician and rhetorician Rudolph Agricola (1483-1485) may have had about the ancient Greek sophists by analysing two passages where Agricola explicitly mentions the ancient sophists. Second, it explores the meaning and use of the word ‘sophista’ in the context of the humanist-scholastic debate of the early 16^thcentury and in the first comprehensive history of the Greek sophists in antiquity, Louis de Cressolles’ Theatrum veterum rhetorum, oratorum, declamatorum quos in Graecia nominabant sophistas(1620). It will be observed that Agricola’s views on the early Greek sophists, in so far as they can be reconstructed, stand in strong contrast with those of Cressolles.