He also had colleagues who did serious mathematical research, in particular Archytas, a Pythagorean philosopher. Another contemporary was Isocrates, not to be confused with Socrates: Isocrates was a brilliant rhetorician, and heir to the sophistical tradition Socrates had confronted in the fifth century. As we’ll be seeing, Plato devotes a lot of attention to the question of rhetoric, and Isocrates may be one of his targets.
