Pródico

Prodicus (fl. late 5th century bc)

Prodicus was a Greek Sophist from the island of Ceos; he was active in Athens. He served his city as ambassador and also became prominent as a professional educator. He taught natural philosophy, ethics, and of course rhetoric, but he is best known as an authority on correct language, specializing in fine verbal distinctions. Prodicus’ greatest influence was due to his naturalistic interpretation of the traditional Greek gods; as a result, he later figured on the short list of famous atheists.

Prodicus came to Athens on public business as representative of his native Ceos, and seems to have settled there permanently as a professional teacher, earning large sums from his course of instruction. By 423 bc he was famous enough to be mocked by Aristophanes in his comedy the Clouds, together with Socrates, as a teacher of natural philosophy (Clouds 360–1; A5). The Platonic Socrates claims to have heard Prodicus lecture on language, although he could only afford the cheap, one-drachma course, not the deluxe course for fifty drachmas (Plato, Cratylus 384b). And Socrates says that he frequently sends students to Prodicus who do not seem apt to profit from associating with himself (Plato, Theaetetus 151b). Prodicus is cited in Plato’s dialogues as an authority on ’the correctness of names’. Plato has made him a figure of fun by representing him as insisting upon fine distinctions between near synonyms such as ‘pleasure’ and ’enjoyment’, ’wanting’ and ’desiring’ (see, for example, Plato, Protagoras 337a–c, 340a).

Prodicus was author of a book entitled Hōrai (Seasons) from which Xenophon (Memorabilia II 1.21–34) has extracted a long quotation or paraphrase known as the ’Choice of Heracles’. In this text two allegorical figures, women named Virtue and Vice, present Heracles with alternative paths to happiness, one of which is short and easy, while the other is long and arduous (Xenophon, Memorabilia, II. 1.21–34; fr.2). The rhetoric is picturesque, the morality is predictable, but the allegory became extremely influential.

The most interesting philosophical contribution of Prodicus was a naturalistic theory of the origin of religion (fr.5). According to Sextus Empiricus, Prodicus claimed that ’the ancients considered that sun, moon, rivers and springs, and generally all things beneficial for our lives, are gods because of their usefulness’. Other reports suggest that the development of agriculture played an important role in Prodicus’ explanation, and that names like Demeter and Dionysus were said to reflect the invention of bread and wine. According to several authors, Prodicus denied the existence of the traditional Greek gods. If this is correct, his theory would be more anthropological than allegorical.

Prodicus’ explanation of the origin of religion apparently presupposes a more general account of the evolution of human culture from primitive beginnings, when the life of mankind was like that of beasts. This account in turn belongs in a larger cosmological context: the attempt of Ionian natural philosophy to explain how the current world order developed from a more primitive state of affairs ’in the beginning’. The rise of human civilization is the final chapter in Presocratic cosmogony, as we find it more fully reproduced in later authors such as Lucretius.

Prodicus’ explanation of Demeter and Dionysus as inventors of bread and wine is echoed in Euripides’ Bacchae (274–85), where it is used to justify the worship of Dionysus. Since we do not have Prodicus’ own words, it is difficult to know how far his theory is compatible with the allegorical practice by which later philosophers preserved respect for the civic cult by reinterpreting the traditional gods in more scientific terms. Like the evolutionary account, the allegorical interpretation is older than Prodicus. Thus Metrodorus of Lampsacus and other followers of Anaxagoras will identify Zeus with intelligence (nous), Athena with art or craft (see Technē), Achilles with the sun, Hector with the moon, and so on (A4 and 6). Diogenes of Apollonia is reported to have identified Zeus with cosmic intelligence in the form of air (see Diogenes of Apollonia §2). It was this type of allegory that became conventional (Apollo as the sun, Artemis as the moon, Athena as wisdom, and so on) and was later developed systematically by Stoicism. According to some scholars, Prodicus belongs in this tradition.

If the report of atheism is correct, however, Prodicus was concerned only to explain and not to justify the worship of the gods. The relevant parallel would be what we find in the Sisyphus fragment (fr.25 variously attributed to Euripides and to Critias), where the invention of the gods is described as the device introduced by a clever man in order to enforce morality. A similar cultural prehistory must lie behind the fragment 30 of Democritus (compare Democritus §4), that claims that ’a few learned people raised their hands on high and called the Air "Zeus"’. Prodicus’ theory was apparently more elaborate. He seems to have distinguished two stages in the development of religion. In the earlier stage human beings began to worship the forces of nature on which they depended: sun, rivers, springs, and things useful for life. In the next stage, moving from the state of nature, they deified cultural heroes and heroines who invented agriculture and useful arts: Demeter, Dionysus, Athena and the like were divinized mortals, like Heracles and Asclepius. On this view, Prodicus is the author of the theory of religion later known as Euhemerism, which claims that the gods were originally human beings who were deified because of their great achievements.