If you’ve read Plato, or even about Plato, you have probably come into contact with the sophist by the name of Gorgias after whom one of Plato’s dialogues is named.

But Gorgias was more than a function of Socratic dialogue. He reputedly lived to be over a hundred years old, traditionally placed between 487-376 BCE. Gorgias was born in Sicily, which at the time was a Greek colony, and came to Athens in 427 BCE, already an old man by Greek standards, as part of a delegation trying to persuade the Athenians to enter into war with his city against the city of Syracuse. The Athenians were enchanted by his speeches, filled with rhetorical innovation, which brought him to great fame. As so many sophists Gorgias began teaching his skills for a fee and became famous in his time for the great wealth he supposedly amassed teaching this art of making the weak argument the stronger one. So confident was he in his own skill that he even composed a defence of Helen of Troy, who was widely disliked in antiquity. Gorgias is also famous for his love of paradox, to the extent where he even argued the non-existence of existence and the existence of non-existence.

The most famous of Gorgias’s critics is of course Plato. If you want to learn more about the Socratics’ perception of Gorgias’s shortcomings, the dialogue is available in its entirety at The Internet Classics Archive. If you’re curious about the writings of the man himself, his Encomium of Helen is not a long read.

That’s it for γ. Until it’s time for δ, feel free to nominate ancient great Greeks of any letter of the alphabet following γ in the comments section!

About the author: E P Wohlfart is a twenty-something freelance writer with a Classical Archaeology degree, a laptop and a maxed-out library card. Aside from administrating PastPresenters.com, which she started in 2008, she works with several historical publications and is a regular contributor at Suite101.