Socrates' contemporaries included a group of traveling paid teachers known as the Sophists (Socrates did not claim to teach and did not receive fees for his discussions). They served a need in Athenian society, in that citizens in a democracy were expected to speak in public. In fact, some of them became wealthy and produced a number of successful students. Plato tells us that for the most part, they did not teach goodness and truth, but only how to persuade others to their point of view. This is in marked contrast with Socrates, who professed no interest in persuasion. He thought of himself as an intellectual midwife, helping others to deliver truth into the world. One particularly prominent Sophist, Protagoras (about 485 to about 415 BC), had declared that "Man is the measure of all things, of things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not." This has been widely interpreted as a relativistic conception of truth. Moreover, both Protagoras and his fellow Sophist Gorgias (about 483 to about 376 BC) argued for the relativity of moral judgment.
