By M.'s count, this new edition nearly doubles the testimonia and fragments of Prodicus: 44 of 90 texts are added beyond Diels and Kranz (Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, sixth edition 1952), whose 10.5 pages on Prodicus include several texts by citation only. (M. also cuts some material in DK.) Not all added material is equally significant, and several passages are divided into multiple ‘texts’ to fit the divisions of the volume (biographical material 1–30, then texts on language 31–60, natural philosophy 61–78, ethics, 79–90). M. has integrated two important passages now known from papyrus, Didymus the Blind's attribution of the thesis against gainsaying to Prodicus (Commentary on Ecclesiastes, text 60) and Philodemus' listing of Prodicus among the atheists (P. Herc. 1428, text 70). He accepts an emendation for Aristotle's Rhetoric 1400b17–25 (text 58) proposed long ago by Spengel and defended by Manetti (2005), on the way to tentatively documenting Prodicus' interest in etymology of proper names. In addition to translating all texts, M. offers enough discussion of Prodicus' thought, with integration of the scholarship, that it stands as the fullest treatment of Prodicus (replacing the standard treatments in English by Guthrie 1969 and Kerferd 1981 and older influential overviews by, e.g., Gomperz 1912 and Nestle 1936) and the basis for future research. The definition of ‘sophist’, and whether and how Prodicus fits it, remain controversial.
The main area of interest in Prodicus has long been the degree to which he was like Socrates, as a colleague or precursor (as Welcker 1833 was first to argue), or an opponent, one of ‘the sophists’ who rejected the possibility of objective truth about ethical topics. These options are not mutually exclusive: Socrates could turn out to be less different from ‘the sophists’ than Plato tends to imply. Whereas some texts, Aristophanes' Clouds 360–2, Xenophon's Memorabilia 2.1.21–34, Plato's Charmides 163d, Protagoras 341a, Meno 96d, and the pseudo-Platonic Eryxias and Axiochus (texts 66, 84, 55, 50, 23, 86–9), put Prodicus and Socrates into close alignment, others, Plato's Protagoras 358e, Meno 75e and Theaetetus 151b (texts 52, 54, 21), imply that they were opponents in important respects. M. comes down clearly, not least in his title, on the point that Prodicus was a ‘sophist’ (if a ‘reluctant’ one), defined (pp. xxiv–xxv) as an ultimately sceptical thinker who severs human reasoning and language from knowledge of objective truth. He does not think Prodicus' study of synonyms was closely related to the Academic procedure of diairesis (p. 153), which is closely linked to the foundations of philosophy as a discursive practice: he regularly severs Prodicus' linguistic interests from serious philosophy (pp. 136, 140, 142, all commentary on Platonic passages). Rather, correctness in language was important as ‘a legitimate human attempt to impose order on a vague … reality’ (p. xxv). Yet M. leaves open the possibility that Prodicus and Socrates were similar, through rehabilitation of the evidence in Eryxias and Axiochus and inclusion of testimonia assimilating Prodicus' reputation and fate to that of Socrates.
To judge from Plato, Prodicus was interested only in the correctness of names, but other evidence tells other stories: the Suda (text 1) calls him a ‘natural philosopher and a sophist’, and Aristophanes in Clouds and Birds seems to agree (texts 66–9). Although Aristophanes could be dismissed as humorous, and Suda dependent on Aristophanes, M. encourages the view that Prodicus had a range of interests fitting to the Hellenistic divisions of logic, physics and ethics. (He is clear that ‘linguistic analysis was a part’ of all, p. xiv.) In physics, where M. (with the ancient tradition) places theology, Prodicus' interests in the origin of religion are presented through a collection larger than DK, including passages from Minucius Felix and Galen as well as Philodemus. (Some of Cicero is dropped.) M. departs from the reconstruction of Prodicus' views on religion by Henrichs (1975, 1976) in asserting full atheism, as implied in text 70 together with Obbink's 1996 commentary. The Parabasis of Birds, M. argues (pp. 171–5), refers to Prodicus in more than v. 692; rather, there is an extended tease on Prodicus' cosmology and the role names play in constituting such a system. M. holds that Galen's testimony for book titles additional to Horae (texts 62–5), On Nature and On the Nature of the Human, is sound, even as he also shows (pp. 237–41) that the medical tradition has sometimes confused the name ‘Prodicus’ with ‘Herodicus’.
In ethics, M. offers a new interpretation of the Choice of Heracles (pp. 209–21) consistent with his presentation of Prodicus the sophist. On his view, Prodicus' story presented Virtue and Happiness/Vice each presenting her best case to Heracles, but the story did not judge the way of Virtue as better than the way of Vice. Emphasising the heavy use of conditional statements by each, and the point that Virtue's exhortation appeals to the gods, which seem not to exist according to Prodicus, M. concludes that ‘Virtue and Vice … represent two different human inventions or conceptions of how to live a good life’ (p. 215), whether to be content in an egoist way or to have ‘a great, heroic life’ (p. 214) in ‘public matters’ (p. 212). Heracles chose the way of Virtue not from the case she makes, but from his own prior disposition. By leaving space between Prodicus' version of the story and Xenophon's retelling, M. allows that Xenophon understood Virtue to present a better case than Vice, and this extra framework skewed later reception of the story.
As for linguistic topics, M. (building on Mayer 1913) asserts that Prodicus held three core theses (p. xv): there should be no synonyms, there should be no homonyms and all meanings should agree with etymology. Mayer focused on the first but implied the third; the second can be documented from the denial that δεινός can be both good and bad (Pl. Prt. 341a–b = text 50). The etymological point, which would open the floodgates to the relevance of Plato's Cratylus, was denied by Classen (1976). M. could be more confident in reasserting this principle, in light of Arist. Rh. 1400b17–25 and the discovery from Philodemus, which touches on etymology. As for the evidence linking Prodicus to the thesis against gainsaying, M. is cautious (pp. 155–6). If Prodicus asserted the thesis, it had a subjectivist force: each speaker speaks about his own incorrigible perception or belief, not a common objective object (pp. 157–8). Therefore it was restricted to the realm of ethics, at the primary level of setting out its goal (consistently with M.'s interpretation of the Choice of Heracles); Prodicus could not have upheld the thesis otherwise. Omitted from M.'s discussion is the possibility that the disagreeing speakers are disagreeing asymmetrically, not symmetrically: Didymus' text does assert that only one speaker can be stating the truth. Unfortunately, the text breaks off where we would have learned what the other speaker does. Asymmetrical disagreement is implied also in Cratylus (the deviating speech is nonsense, not false) and in Antisthenes' account (the deviating speaker speaks of something else). It could be that subjectivism is not the main point. Rather, the speaker who fails to state the truth could be deficient in some aspect of the use of language. Therefore the paradox, through its connection between linguistic competence and substantial matters, could suggest a serious purpose for Prodicus' linguistic studies.
The book contains errors (‘Polybius’ for Hippocrates' son-in-law Polybus, p. 162, ‘P. Dervani’ for P. Derveni, p. 177, misspelled Latin accusatives in the titles to texts 74 and 75) which should be corrected in any new printing. The translation can be imprecise (e.g. text 77). One translation error sticks out as critical for interpretation: in Hermias' discussion of Prodicus' terms for pleasure (text 46; commentary on pp. 127–8), the word καλῶν is a participle, ‘calling’, not a genitive plural substantive, ‘of the beautiful things’. Therefore, Hermias' phrasing neither establishes that τέρψις (‘delight’), attained through the ears, has a soul-based component nor resonates directly with the Choice of Heracles. Given the many difficulties surrounding ideal translation of material of this kind, one hopes that M.'s prediction that studies of fragmentary Greek philosophers will be based increasingly on translations, not the Greek and Latin passages (p. xxviii n. 14), will prove false. M.'s insistence (p. xxix) that Diels' strong distinction between testimonia and fragments of the philosophers inhibits scholarship and must be discarded is both well said and even better demonstrated in this useful volume on Prodicus.
