Before we proceed to mention the sophists, there is one person on our list who must be examined though the result will be negative, namely, Diagoras of Melos. As he appears in our records, he falls outside the classification adopted here; but as he must have lived, at any rate, about the middle of the fifth century (he is said to have “flourished” in 464) he may most fitly be placed on the boundary line between the Ionian philosophy and Sophistic.
For later antiquity Diagoras is the typical atheist; he heads our lists of atheists, and round his person a whole series of myths have been formed. He is said to have been a poet and a pious man like others; but then a colleague once stole an ode from him, escaped by taking an oath that he was innocent, and afterwards made a hit with the stolen work. So Diagoras lost his faith in the gods and wrote a treatise under the title of _apopyrgizontes logoi_ (literally, destructive considerations) in which he attacked the belief in the gods.
This looks very plausible, and is interesting in so far as it, if correct, affords an instance of atheism arising in a layman from actual experience, not in a philosopher from speculation. If we ask, however, what is known historically about Diagoras, we are told a different tale. There existed in Athens, engraved on a bronze tablet and set up on the Acropolis, a decree of the people offering a reward of one talent to him who should kill Diagoras of Melos, and of two talents to him who should bring him alive to Athens. The reason given was that he had scoffed at the Eleusinian Mysteries and divulged what took place at them. The date of this decree is given by a historian as 415 B.C.; that this is correct is seen from a passage in Aristophanes’s contemporary drama, _The Birds_. Furthermore, one of the disciples of Aristotle, the literary historian Aristoxenus, states that no trace of impiety was to be found in the works of the dithyrambic poet Diagoras, and that, in fact, they contained definite opinions to the contrary. A remark to the effect that Diagoras was instrumental in drawing up the laws of Mantinea is probably due to the same source. The context shows that the reference is to the earlier constitution of Mantinea, which was a mixture of aristocracy and democracy, and is praised for its excellence. It is inconceivable that, in a Peloponnesian city during the course of, nay, presumably even before the middle of the fifth century, a notorious atheist should have been invited to advise on the revision of its constitution. It is more probable that Aristoxenus adduced this fact as an additional disproof of Diagoras’s atheism, in which he evidently did not believe.