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Polus

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a Greek sophist, lived about B.C. 400. He was born in Agrigentum (Girgenti), and studied under the celebrated sophist Gorgias, a Sicilian like himself. In his dialogue Gorgias, or about Rhetoric, Plato introduces Socrates in discussion with some of his disciples, among whom is Polus. The point in contest is at first the nature of rhetoric, but as the debate progresses it expands its limits, and touches the question whether the unrighteous call be happy, and whether it is not preferable to suffer injustice rather than to inflict it. The notoriety of Polus rests exclusively on the part assigned to him by Plato in this dialogue. There remains nothing of his writings. Yet he seems, as a true disciple of Gorgias, to have written a rhetorical treatise; for Plato puts the following words in the mouth of Socrates: "To tell you the truth, Polus, I do not consider truth as an art, but only as a thing which you boast of having made an art of, in a writing which I have of late perused."