The Paradox of the Court
A student agrees to pay for his lessons the day he wins his first case. He never takes a case. His teacher sues him for the money.
c. 420 BCE (traditional); earliest surviving account 2nd century CE20 min read
Roman antiquarian scholarship
Aulus Gellius
125
Roman author of the Attic Nights, a twenty-book commonplace collection of notes on law, grammar, philosophy and anecdote compiled in the second century CE. His chapter on "convertible" arguments contains the earliest surviving telling of the lawsuit between Protagoras and Euathlus.