The Sophists considered themselves experts in teaching, writing, and poetry and traveled throughout Greece, lecturing and selling their services to young men who could afford to pay for higher education in the arts and sciences. . Although the Sophists came from many European countries, they gained most of their notoriety and recognition in Athens, which was the epicenter of Greek culture in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Because few of their original works have survived, the reports and critiques of other philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates are used for historical and philosophical accounts of the Sophistic period, but tend to be very harsh about their modes and motivations. Although the Sophists and their views were ridiculed and dismissed by classical philosophers, the contributions they made to social, ethical, and political philosophy, as well as to higher education and public debate, have had lasting effects throughout of history and show that the negative opinions they have endured are rarely deserved. In the Sophistic era of ancient Greece, sophists were the first to charge for their services and taught whatever their students wanted to learn, as long as they could pay. The studies they taught were very varied and included, among others, philosophy, grammar, languages, oration, and rhetoric. They were skilled in public debate and were known for arguing both sides of an issue with equal effectiveness. This is one of the reasons they gained a reputation for being deceptive in their reasoning and it also allowed many of them to succeed as judicial speechwriters. This is not a specific ideology that all sophists shared, they leaned towards relativism and empiricism and believed that...... middle of article...... obvious and remains effective in society and today's education system.BibliographyCrome, Keith. Lyotard and Greek thought. Gordonsville, VA: Palgrave Mcmillan, 2004. Gagarin, Michael. Antiphon the Athenian, Oratory, Law and Justice in the Age of the Sophists. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2002. Kennedy, George A. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Popkin, Richard H, and Avrum Stroll. Philosophy Made Simple, second edition, revised. New York, NY: Broadway Books, 1993. Rohmann, Chris. A world of ideas, a dictionary of important theories, concepts, beliefs and thinkers. New York, NY: The Random House Publishing Group, 1999. Waterfield, Robin. The first philosophers: the pre-Socratics and the sophists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.