GO'RGIAS, of Leontici, in Sicily, celebrated among contemporaries as a statesman, sophist, and orator, belongs to the most brilliant period of the literary activity of Greece, and has been immortalised by the Dialogue of Plato which bears his name. The dates of his birth and death are alike uncertain, hut he is said to have been older than Antiphon, the orator, who was born in 380 ac., and the number of his years far outran the ordinary length of human existence, in the different etatements ranging between 100 and 109. Whatever may have been the speculative errors of Gorgias, his long life was remark able for an undeviating practice of virtue and temperance, which secured to his last days the full possession of his faculties, and im parted cheerfulness and resignation to the hour of death.
According to Euseblus, Gorgias flourished in the 86th Olympiad, and went to Athens (Olymp. 88, 2, or sac. 427) to seek assiatauce for his native city, whose Independence was menaced by its powerful neighbour Syracuse. In this mission he justified the opinion which his townsmen had formed of his talents for business and political sagacity, and upon its successful termination withdrew from public life and returned to Athens, which, as the centre of the mental activity of Greece, offered a grand field for the display of his intellectual powers and nequirementa He did not however take up his residence permanently in that city, but divided his time between it and Larissa In Thesealy, where he is said to have died shortly before or after the death of Socrates.
To the 84th Olymp. is assigned the publication of his philosophical work entitled ' Of the Non-being, or of Nature,' in which, according to the extracts from it in the pseudo-Aristotelian work ' Do Xeno phane, Zenone, et Gorgia,' end rn Sextus Empiricus, be proposes to show, 1st, that absolutely nothing subsists; 2nd, that even if anything subsists, it cannot be known; and 3rd, that even if aught subsists and can be known, it cannot bi expressed and communicated to others. Ilis pretended proof of the first position is nothing leas than a subtle play with tho dialectics of the Eleatra, as carried out to its extreme consequences by Zeno and :delimits. There is much more of originality in the arguments which he advances to support the other two: thus, in respect to the second, he urged that if being is conceivable, every conception must be an entity, and the non-being inconceivable; while, In the third case, he showed that as language is distinct from its object, it is difficult either to express accurately our perceptions or adequately to convey them to others. Now, however sophistical may
have been the purpose for which all this was advanced, still it is no slight merit to have been the first to establish the distinction between conception and its object, and between the word as the sign of thought and thought itself. By thus awakening attention to the difference between the subject and the object of cognition, he contributed largely to the advancement of philosophy.
In these arguments however, and generally in his physical doctrines, Gorgias deferred in some measure to the testimony of sense which the stricter Eleatas rejected absolutely as inadequate and contradictory: on this account, although the usual statement which directly styles him the disciple of Empedocles is erroneous, it is probable that he drew from the writings of that philosopher his acquaintance with the physiology of the Eleatic school.
Subsequently it would appear that Gorgias devoted himself entirely to the practice and teaching of rhetoric ; and in this career his pro fessional laboura seem to have been attended both with honour and with profit. According to Cicero (' De Orat', i. 22; iii. 32), he was the first who engaged to deliver impromptu a public address upon any given subject. These oratorical displays were characterised by the poetical ornament and elegance of the language and the antithetical structure of the sentence, rather than by the depth and vigour of the thought ; and the coldness of his eloquence soon passed into a proverb among the ancients. Besides some fragments, there are still extant two entire orations, ascribed to Gorgias, entitled respectively The Encomium of Helen,' and ` the Apology of Palamedes,' two tasteless and insipid compositions, which may however not be the works of Gorgias.
On this point consult Foss ('De Gorgia Leontino Commentatio,' Halle, 1828), who denies their authenticity, which is maintained by Schou horn ('De Authentia Declamationum qua, Georgia) Leontini nomine extant,' Breslau, 1826).