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Prodicus

Prodicus

c. 465 BCE–c. 395 BCE · Athens

Prodicus of Ceos (active later 5th century BCE) was a Greek Sophist and contemporary of Socrates, known especially for his interest in the precise meanings and fine distinctions of words. Ancient sources attribute to him the famous moral fable 'The Choice of Heracles,' in which the hero must choose between the paths of Virtue and Vice. His works survive only in fragments and reports by later writers.

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AthensAttica (Greece)

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

About Athens

Athens, the capital of Greece since 1834, was the leading intellectual centre of the classical Greek world. Socrates taught there, and four major philosophical schools took root in the city: Plato's Academy, founded around 387 BCE, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Stoa of Zeno, and Epicurus' Garden. Under Hellenistic and Roman rule Athens remained a place of study that drew students from across the empire; in the 4th century CE the Christian writers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus studied there together, while Neoplatonist teachers kept lecturing. Emperor Justinian's ban on pagan teaching of philosophy in 529 is generally taken to mark the end of the city's ancient history.

In Athens at the same time

Aeschylus, Themistocles, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Sophocles, Gorgias of Leontini

Across the traditions, in Athens at the same time

See other sages who lived in Athens→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Prodicus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Prodicus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(1)