PRODICUS of Ceos, whose birth is conjecturally assigned to 465-460 b.c., was a humanist of the first period of the Sophistical movement. He was still living in 399 b.c. Visiting Athens, in the first instance (it is said) as the accredited agent of his native island, he became known in the intellectual capital as a good speaker and a successful teacher. Like Protagoras, he professed to train his pupils for domestic and civic affairs; but it would appear that, while Protagoras’s chief instruments of education were rhetoric and style, Prodicus made ethics prominent in his curriculum. As a moralist he seems to have been orthodox, neither impugning nor developing traditional notions. In his literary teaching he laid special stress upon distinctions in the use of words. The Platonic Socrates (as well ^as Aristophanes) speaks of Prodicus with a certain respect, earned perhaps by his simple though conventional morality; but it is easy to see that Plato thought him affected and pedantic, and did not rank him either with Protagoras as a thinker or with Gorgias as

a stylist. Two of Prodicus’s discourses were especially famous: one, “on propriety of language,” is repeatedly alluded to by Plato; the other, entitled ωpαι, contained the celebrated apologue of the choice of Heracles, of which the Xenophontean Socrates (Mem., ii. 1, 21 sq.) gives a summary. Theramenes, Euripides, and Isocrates are said to have been pupils or hearers of Prodicus. For some personal traits, and a caricature of his teaching, see Plato’s Protagoras, 315 C sq., 337 A sq.

On the Sophistical movement, as well as for bibliographical information, see Sophists.