Protagoras and the Beginnings of Grammar

Offering a re-evaluation of all the available evidence, including passages from Aristotle's Rhetoric, Poetics and Sophistici Elenchi, Diogenes Laertius’ biographical sketch as well as the grammar scene in Aristophanes’ Clouds, this article argues that Protagoras’ engagement with grammatical questions must have been more sophisticated and thorough than is often assumed. In Protagoras’ discovery of grammatical gender, formal considerations – most likely inspired by the analysis of personal names – played a more fundamental role than semantic ones, and his typology of πυθμένες λόγων equally presupposes the formal recognition of at least verbal mood, if not also tense.