“ Like Protagoras, he professed to train his pupils for domestic and civic affairs; but it would appear that, while Protagoras's chief instruments of education were rhetoric and style, Prodicus made ethics prominent in his curriculum. In ethics he was a pessimist. Though he discharged his civic duties in spite of a frail physique, he emphasized the sorrows of life ”

“ His views on the origin of the belief in the gods is strikingly modern. First came those great powers which benefit mankind (comparing the worship of the Nile) , and after these the deified men who have rendered services to humanity. ”