  Hippias was above all a polymath. He first appears in the Protagoras (315c) sitting in a professorial chair giving detailed answers to questions on science generally and astronomy in particular, and later (318e) Protagoras in effect accuses him of defrauding his pupils by making them study arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and mousikē (music and poetry) instead of concentrating on teaching excellence. In the Greater Hippias (285b–e) he describes how he lectured at Sparta on genealogy and all aspects of ancient history, and he is variously reported as lecturing on painting and sculpture, as having developed a mnemonic technique which enabled him to repeat a list of fifty names after a single hearing (both DK 86A2 (Philostratus)), and as appearing at the Olympic Games wearing and carrying nothing which he had not made himself, down to his signet-ring (Lesser Hippias 368b). His writings included a list of Olympic victors and a work entitled Synagōgē, ‘Collection’ or ‘Miscellany’, which seems to have been a compendium of miscellaneous information collected from the poets and other sources, both Greek and foreign (DK 86B6 (Clement)). At the Olympic Games he gave speeches on any subject anyone proposed, and like Gorgias, answered any question anyone put to him (Lesser Hippias 363c), and in the same dialogue (346a) he says that since he began competing (agōnizesthai) at the games he has never been beaten. Presumably the competitions were eristic contests (see above). Like Protagoras and Prodicus he taught the correct use of language (Lesser Hippias 368d), and despite Protagoras’ stricture, he also offered the standard sophistic fare of poetic exegesis (Protagoras 347b, Lesser Hippias passim) and moral and practical instruction (Greater Hippias  286a–c). We saw above that his moral and religious stance was conservative, and his championing of phusis against nomos (see above) is rather an appeal to cosmopolitan elitism than any kind of challenge to conventional morality. Perhaps more than any other single person he encapsulates the complexity of the sophistic phenomenon.