Style and the ‘idea’ of the sophist in the time after Plato. The impact of form typology in sophistic teaching and writing on interdisciplinary scholarly work

Abstract

Sophists acted among the educated persons and scholars in the Mediterranean after the 1st Sophistic in many regards as a special and distinct group. Since many examples show that they acted not only as sophists, but also performed other activities, we will examine here several cases were we see similarities and differences between them and other groups of scholars. Our three basic questions ‘what, how and why did the sophists teach and write?’ we answer examining diachronically the major forms and genres of writings they produced (‘What’), the ‘How’ will be answered looking at their performance as a communicative activity beyond borders of contemporary disciplines, and the ‘Why’ we try to answer emphasizing the necessity of sophistical activity in the contemporary socialization and education of late antiquity. Claiming that style was the idea of the sophists, we put Plato’s concept of ideas critically in the context of the concept of ideas derived from contemporary and later sophists focusing on the function of visuality from early sophistic works to the late antique era represented by Philostatus’ Imagines.