The first well known Sophist was Gorgias (c. 473-386 B.C.) of Sicily, who brought rhetoric to Athens. He traveled throughout Greece, giving speeches for pay, taking impromptu questions from audiences, and answering them. He was particularly fond of taking an absurd position and making it seem stronger than its rational opposite. Gorgias introduced the concept of paradoxical arguments.
Idea number 2 – The Sophists disconnected rhetoric from ethics to the horror of the traditionalists who saw rhetoric only as a technique to support proof of the ideal. This “disconnection” made rhetoric the most valuable tool for debate – fortifying a position with logic instead of arguing its innate rightness or wrongness.