'How true would it be to say that Socrates was a sophist?'

Sophists were travelling teachers who went around the cities of the mediterranean teaching skills such as the art of rhetoric (or eloquence), and claimed to be able to teach wisdom which they interpreted as statecraft. Most were non-Athenians who attracted enthusiastic followings among the Athenian youth and received large fees for their services. Sophists sometimes studied the nature of the universe and their most prominent element of philosophy was scepticism (a doubting state of mind), …

…Athenians to think for themselves and simply to question what they knew. Socrates never claimed to know the truth as sophists did, and insisted that no fees were paid in exchange for a conversation or knowledge. Therefore I believe that Socrates was not a sophist, although he and his methods had similar elements to that of sophistry and I think that it could have been an easy mistake to confuse the two at the time.