In his ‘Republic’, Plato recorded Socrates’ unflattering view of the Sophists. The great Greek philosopher, he said, saw them as akin to animal trainers who feed the public like some wild animal, and at the same time study the creature’s behaviour closely so they can learn to how control its moods with the right word in season.

The Sophists, Socrates went on, collect their observations of the human animal in the mass, and make of them a system which they dignify as Wisdom. He wondered that such men, who neither understood nor cared about what they taught except insofar as it stirred a response in the savage public, could be thought of as teachers.

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