1654, Zachary Coke (prob. pseud. of Henry Ainsworth), The art of logick, or, The entire body of logick in English : unfolding to the meanest capacity the way to dispute well, and to refute all fallacies whatsoever, London: printed by Robert White, for George Calvert, →OCLC, page [sequence 17]:
What were the Hierogliphicks, and Imagery Reſemblances of Egypt, and Ancient Greece, But to Captive the People under blindneſs of mind, whilſt ſome few obtained Titles of Magi, Dæmones, and Sophoi; The Guerdon of their moſt injurious ſervices.
1741, Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, “Letter 38: account of the Italic sect and Pythagoras its founder”, in Athenian letters : or, the epistolary correspondence of an agent of the King of Persia, residing at Athens during the Peloponnesian war, volume 1, Dublin: John Archer, translation of original by Cleander, published 1792, →OCLC, page 132:
[…] that he was the firſt who called himſelf by the modeſt title Philoſopher, a lover of wiſdom only; whereas the ſages, his predeceſſors, ſtiled themſelves Sophoi, the wise, […]
1841 July, “[Reviewed work:] Manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians […] by J[ohn] G[ardner] Wilkinson […]”, in The Westminster review[1], volume 36, number 1, London: Henry Hooper, →OCLC, page 33:
The contest of the Egyptian sophoi with Moses before Pharaoh, giys singular tribute to their union of “ knowledge and power.” No supernatural aid is intimated. Three of the miracles of their natural magic (see Sir D. Brewster) the jugglers of the East can and do now perform.
1858 December, Sir Nathaniel, “Notes on note-worthies, of divers orders, either sex, and every age”, in The new monthly magazine[2], volume 114, number 456, London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, page 425:
But he wished to distinguish himself from the Sophoi, or philosophers of his day, by name, as he had done by system. What was the meaning of Sophos? Unquestionably what we mean by a wise man, as distinct from a philosopher; […]
1899, F. R. Montgomery Hitchcock, Clement of Alexandria, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, →OCLC, page 135:
And yet a great many so-called philosophers deride and scoff at the truth. Such are the Sophists, who are called Sophistai, or Sophoi, because they are versed in logomachy or wordy strife.
1969, William K. C. Guthrie, “What is a sophist?”, in The Sophists, London, New York: Cambridge University Press, published 2003, →ISBN, page 27:
A shipwright in Homer is 'skilled in all sophia, a charioteer, a steersman, an augur, a sculptor are sophoi each in his occupation, Apollo is sophos with the lyre, Thersites a contemptible character but sophos with his tongue; […]
1990, Arthur W. H. Adkins, “Myth, philosophy, and religion in ancient Greece”, in Frank Reynolds, David Tracy, editors, Myth and philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press, →ISBN, page 97:
Other early thinkers were referred to as sophoi, wise, without qualification. Let me emphasize that there are no transcendental overtones in most of the earlier usages of sophos in extant Greek literature. The Seven Sages (sophoi) of archaic Greece for the most part gave shrewd practical advice for daily life.
1997, Peter A Redpath, Wisdom's odyssey : from philosophy to transcendental sophistry, Amsterdam [u.a.]: Rodopi, →ISBN, page 17:
Together with the rest of the sophoi, apart from the philosophers and some sophists, the poets claimed to be able, through divine inspiration, to provide their students with precise and exact knowledge
2005, Christian J. Emden, Nietzsche on language, consciousness, and the body, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 16:
[…] since sophos means “wise,” sophia generally means “wisdom,” and sophoi denotes “wise men” of any kind and in any field […]. As a consequence, he regards Thales as having been the first of the sophoi and the profession as having begun with the seven sophoi of the oracle at Delphi […]. Given this understanding, the sophoi stood in close relation to religious ritual as well as to linguistic, musical, and dramatic performance, and philosophy itself becomes first of all an advanced form of poetic discourse still submerged in mythical images […]
2000, Catherine Porter et al., transl., edited by Jacques Brunschwig, Geoffrey Lloyd, et al., Greek thought: a guide to classical knowledge, Cambridge, MA [u.a.]: Belknap Press, translation of Le savoir grec : dictionnaire critique (in French), →ISBN, page 39:
In ancient Greece, up to Plato's time, the word sophia could be assigned any meaning at all, since it was not tied to any particular content in the physical world. To be sophos meant to be master of one's own actions, to have control over oneself and others; hence, carpenters, ship captains, doctors, political leaders, seers, and poets, in particular, could all be called sophoi. Those who possessed this sort of knowledge traced it back to the god who had inspired it or revealed its secret. Thus all knowledge came, in one way or another , from a god, whether it was the common knowledge shared by all members of a community or the particular knowledge of a given technical skill.
2007, Michael Gagarin, Paul Woodruff, “Early Greek legal thought”, in Fred D. Miller, Jr., Carrie-Ann Biondi, editors, A treatise of legal philosophy and general jurisprudence, volume 6, Dordrecht: Springer, →ISBN, page 7:
[…] many who are now classified separately as poets, philosophers, sophists, or historians, but whom the Greeks would have grouped together under the term sophoi—“wise men.”
2008, Christos C. Tsagalis, Inscribing sorrow : fourth-century Attic funerary epigrams, Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 174:
[…] Potamon's supremacy in the art of playing the aulos is a touchstone for the other auletai, the other skilled flute-players who are the sophoi.
