Plato depicts Socrates as refuting sophists in several dialogues. Socrates warns the excitable Hippocrates that Sophists are dangerous. Socrates suggests that the sophists are teachers of virtue. It is said to have parallels with that of the Ancient Greek sophists or dialecticians. Rhetoric originated in a school of pre-Socratic philosophers known as the Sophists circa 600 BC. This then became the wisdom of philosophers such as sophists. Socrates' attitude towards the sophists was by not entirely oppositional. The comic playwright Aristophanes, a contemporary of the sophists, criticized the sophists as hairsplitting wordsmiths. The sophists and Socrates introduced dialectics as a new text genre. The thinking of the Sophists is mainly known through their opponent, Plato. He is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. The societal roles the sophists filled had important ramifications for the Athenian political system. While employed at the school, he adopted the ascetic lifestyle of the Greek Sophists. Prodicus, like some of his fellow Sophists, interpreted religion through the framework of naturalism. Elites sent their sons to be educated in schools developed by these sophists.