Chapter LXVIII: Sokrates (4)

We do not know what provision Sokratês suggested for applying his principle to practice, for discovering who was the fittest man in point of knowledge, or for superseding him in case of his becoming unfit, or in case another fitter than he should arise. The analogies of the pilot, the surgeon, and professional men generally, would naturally conduct him to election by the people, renewable after temporary periods; since no one of these professional persons, whatever may be his positive knowledge, is ever trusted or obeyed except by the free choice of those who confide in him, and who may at any time make choice of another. But it does not appear that Sokratês followed out this part of the analogy. His companions remarked to him that his first-rate intellectual ruler would be a despot, who might, if he pleased, either refuse to listen to good advice, or even put to death those who gave it. “He will not act thus,” replied Sokratês, “for if he does, he will himself be the greatest loser.”[745]

[745] Xen. Mem. iii, 9, 12: compare Plato, Gorgias, c. 56. pp.
469, 470.

We may notice in this doctrine of Sokratês the same imperfection as that which is involved in the ethical doctrine; a disposition to make the intellectual conditions of political fitness stand for the whole. His negative political doctrine is not to be mistaken: he approved neither of democracy, nor of oligarchy. As he was not attached, either by sentiment or by conviction, to the constitution of Athens, so neither had he the least sympathy with oligarchical usurpers, such as the Four Hundred and the Thirty. His positive ideal state, as far as we can divine it, would have been something like that which is worked out in the “Cyropædia” of Xenophon.

In describing the persevering activity of Sokratês, as a religious and intellectual missionary, we have really described his life; for he had no other occupation than this continual intercourse with the Athenian public; his indiscriminate conversation, and invincible dialectics. Discharging faithfully and bravely his duties as an hoplite on military service,—but keeping aloof from official duty in the dikastery, the public assembly, or the senate-house, except in that one memorable year of the battle of Arginusæ,—he incurred none of those party animosities which an active public life at Athens often provoked. His life was legally blameless, nor had he ever been brought up before the dikastery until his one final trial, when he was seventy years of age. That he stood conspicuous before the public eye in 423 B.C., at the time when the “Clouds” of Aristophanês were brought on the stage, is certain: he may have been, and probably was, conspicuous even earlier: so that we can hardly allow him less than thirty years of public, notorious, and efficacious discoursing, down to his trial in 399 B.C.

It was in that year that Melêtus, seconded by two auxiliaries, Anytus and Lykon, presented against him, and hung up in the appointed place, the portico before the office of the second or king-archon, an indictment against him in the following terms: “Sokratês is guilty of crime: first, for not worshipping the gods whom the city worships, but introducing new divinities of his own; next, for corrupting the youth. The penalty due is—death.”

It is certain that neither the conduct nor the conversation of Sokratês had undergone any alteration for many years past; since the sameness of his manner of talking is both derided by his enemies and confessed by himself. Our first sentiment, therefore, apart from the question of guilt or innocence, is one of astonishment, that he should have been prosecuted, at seventy years of age, for persevering in an occupation which he had publicly followed during twenty-five or thirty years preceding. Xenophon, full of reverence for his master, takes up the matter on much higher ground, and expresses himself in a feeling of indignant amazement that the Athenians could find anything to condemn in a man every way so admirable. But whoever attentively considers the picture which I have presented of the purpose, the working, and the extreme publicity of Sokratês, will rather be inclined to wonder, not that the indictment was presented at last, but that some such indictment had not been presented long before. Such certainly is the impression suggested by the language of Sokratês himself, in the “Platonic Apology.” He there proclaims, emphatically, that though his present accusers were men of consideration, it was neither _their_ enmity, nor _their_ eloquence, which he had now principally to fear; but the accumulated force of antipathy,—the numerous and important personal enemies, each with sympathizing partisans,—the long-standing and uncontradicted calumnies,[746] raised against him throughout his cross-examining career.

[746] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 2, p. 18, B; c. 16, p. 28, A. Ὃ δὲ καὶ
ἐν τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν ἔλεγον, ὅτι πολλή μοι ἀπέχθεια γέγονεν καὶ πρὸς
πολλοὺς, εὖ ἴστε ὅτι ἀληθές ἐστιν. Καὶ τοῦτ᾽ ἐστὶν ὃ ἐμὲ αἱρήσει,
ἐάνπερ αἱρῇ—οὐ Μέλητος οὐδὲ Ἄνυτος, ἀλλ᾽ ἡ τῶν πολλῶν διαβολὴ καὶ
φθόνος.

The expression τῶν πολλῶν in this last line is not used in its
most common signification, but is equivalent to τούτων τῶν
πολλῶν.

In truth, the mission of Sokratês, as he himself describes it, could not but prove eminently unpopular and obnoxious. To convince a man that, of matters which he felt confident of knowing, and had never thought of questioning or even of studying, he is really profoundly ignorant, insomuch that he cannot reply to a few pertinent queries without involving himself in flagrant contradictions, is an operation highly salutary, often necessary, to his future improvement; but an operation of painful surgery, in which, indeed, the temporary pain experienced is one of the conditions almost indispensable to the future beneficial results. It is one which few men can endure without hating the operator at the time; although doubtless such hatred would not only disappear, but be exchanged for esteem and admiration, if they persevered until the full ulterior consequences of the operation developed themselves. But we know, from the express statement of Xenophon, that many, who underwent this first pungent thrust of his dialectics, never came near him again: he disregarded them as laggards,[747] but their voices did not the less count in the hostile chorus. What made that chorus the more formidable, was the high quality and position of its leaders. For Sokratês himself tells us, that the men whom he chiefly and expressly sought out to cross-examine, were the men of celebrity as statesmen, rhetors, poets, or artisans; those at once most sensitive to such humiliation, and most capable of making their enmity effective.

[747] Xen. Mem. iv, 2, 40. Πολλοὶ μὲν οὖν τῶν οὕτω διατεθέντων
ὑπὸ Σωκράτους οὐκέτι αὐτῷ προσῄεσαν, οὓς καὶ βλακωτέρους ἐνόμιζεν.

When we reflect upon this great body of antipathy, so terrible both from number and from constituent items, we shall wonder only that Sokratês could have gone on so long standing in the market-place to aggravate it, and that the indictment of Melêtus could have been so long postponed; since it was just as applicable earlier as later, and since the sensitive temper of the people, as to charges of irreligion, was a well-known fact.[748] The truth is, that as history presents to us only one man who ever devoted his life to prosecute this duty of an elenchic, or cross-examining missionary, so there was but one city, in the ancient world at least, wherein he would have been allowed to prosecute it for twenty-five years with safety and impunity; and that city was Athens. I have in a previous volume noted the respect for individual dissent of opinion, taste, and behavior, among one another, which characterized the Athenian population, and which Periklês puts in emphatic relief as a part of his funeral discourse. It was this established liberality of the democratical sentiment at Athens which so long protected the noble eccentricity of Sokratês from being disturbed by the numerous enemies which he provoked: at Sparta, at Thebes, at Argos, Milêtus, or Syracuse, his blameless life would have been insufficient as a shield, and his irresistible dialectic power would have caused him to be only the more speedily silenced. Intolerance is the natural weed of the human bosom, though its growth or development may be counteracted by liberalizing causes; of these, at Athens, the most powerful was, the democratical constitution as there worked, in combination with diffused intellectual and æsthetical sensibility, and keen relish for discourse. Liberty of speech was consecrated, in every man’s estimation, among the first of privileges; every man was accustomed to hear opinions, opposite to his own, constantly expressed, and to believe that others had a right to their opinions as well as himself. And though men would not, as a general principle, have extended such toleration to religious subjects, yet the established habit in reference to other matters greatly influenced their practice, and rendered them more averse to any positive severity against avowed dissenters from the received religious belief. It is certain that there was at Athens both a keener intellectual stimulus, and greater freedom as well of thought as of speech, than in any other city of Greece. The long toleration of Sokratês is one example of this general fact, while his trial proves little, and his execution nothing, against it, as will presently appear.

[748] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 2, p. 3, C. εἰδὼς ὅτι εὐδιάβολα τὰ
τοιαῦτα πρὸς τοὺς πολλούς.

There must doubtless have been particular circumstances, of which we are scarcely at all informed, which induced his accusers to prefer their indictment at the actual moment, in spite of the advanced age of Sokratês.

In the first place, Anytus, one of the accusers of Sokratês, appears to have become incensed against him on private grounds. The son of Anytus had manifested interest in his conversation, and Sokratês, observing in the young man intellectual impulse and promise, endeavored to dissuade his father from bringing him up to his own trade of a leather-seller.[749] It was in this general way that a great proportion of the antipathy against Sokratês was excited, as he himself tells us in the “Platonic Apology.” The young men were those to whom he chiefly addressed himself, and who, keenly relishing his conversation, often carried home new ideas which displeased their fathers;[750] hence the general charge against Sokratês, of corrupting the youth. Now this circumstance had recently happened in the peculiar case of Anytus, a rich tradesman, a leading man in politics, and just now of peculiar influence in the city, because he had been one of the leading fellow-laborers with Thrasybulus in the expulsion of the Thirty, manifesting an energetic and meritorious patriotism. He, like Thrasybulus and many others, had sustained great loss of property[751] during the oligarchical dominion; which perhaps made him the more strenuous in requiring that his son should pursue trade with assiduity, in order to restore the family fortunes. He seems, moreover, to have been an enemy of all teaching which went beyond the narrowest practicality, hating alike Sokratês and the sophists.[752]

[749] See Xenoph. Apol. Sok. sects. 29, 30. This little piece
bears a very erroneous title, and may possibly not be the
composition of Xenophon, as the commentators generally affirm;
but it has every appearance of being a work of the time.

[750] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 10, p. 23, C; c. 27, p. 37, E.

[751] Isokrat. Or. xviii, cont. Kallimach. s. 30.

[752] See Plato, Menon, c. 27, 28, pp. 90, 91.

While we can thus point out a recent occurrence, which had brought one of the most ascendent politicians in the city into special exasperation against Sokratês, another circumstance which weighed him down was, his past connection with the deceased Kritias and Alkibiadês. Of these two men, the latter, though he had some great admirers, was on the whole odious; still more from his private insolence and enormities than from his public treason as an exile. But the name of Kritias was detested, and deservedly detested, beyond that of any other man in Athenian history, as the chief director of the unmeasured spoliation and atrocities committed by the Thirty. That Sokratês had educated both Kritias and Alkibiadês, was affirmed by the accusers, and seemingly believed by the general public, both at the time and afterwards.[753] That both of them had been among those who conversed with him, when young men, is an unquestionable fact; to what extent, or down to what period, the conversation was carried, we cannot distinctly ascertain. Xenophon affirms that both of them frequented his society when young, to catch from him an argumentative facility which might be serviceable to their political ambition; that he curbed their violent and licentious propensities, so long as they continued to come to him; that both of them manifested a respectful obedience to him, which seemed in little consonance with their natural tempers; but that they soon quitted him, weary of such restraint, after having acquired as much as they thought convenient of his peculiar accomplishment. The writings of Plato, on the contrary, impress us with the idea that the association of both of them with Sokratês must have been more continued and intimate; for both of them are made to take great part in the Platonic dialogues, while the attachment of Sokratês to Alkibiadês is represented as stronger than that which he ever felt towards any other man; a fact not difficult to explain, since the latter, notwithstanding his ungovernable dispositions, was distinguished in his youth not less for capacity and forward impulse, than for beauty; and since youthful beauty fired the imagination of the Greeks, especially that of Sokratês, more than the charms of the other sex.[754] From the year 420 B.C., in which the activity of Alkibiadês as a political leader commenced, it seems unlikely that he could have seen much of Sokratês, and after the year 415 B.C. the fact is impossible; since in that year he became a permanent exile, with the exception of three or four months in the year 407 B.C. At the moment of the trial of Sokratês, therefore, his connection with Alkibiadês must at least have been a fact long past and gone. Respecting Kritias, we make out less; and as he was a kinsman of Plato, one of the well-known companions of Sokratês, and present at his trial, and himself an accomplished and literary man, his association with Sokratês may have continued longer; at least a color was given for so asserting. Though the supposition that any of the vices either of Kritias or Alkibiadês were encouraged, or even tolerated, by Sokratês, can have arisen in none but prejudiced or ill-informed minds, yet it is certain that such a supposition was entertained; and that it placed him before the public in an altered position after the enormities of the Thirty. Anytus, incensed with him already on the subject of his son, would be doubly incensed against him as the reputed tutor of Kritias.

[753] Æschinês, cont. Timarch. c. 34, p. 74. ὑμεῖς Σωκράτη τὸν
σοφιστὴν ἀπεκτείνατε, ὅτι Κριτίαν ἐφάνη πεπαιδευκὼς, etc. Xenoph.
Mem. i, 2, 12.

[754] See Plato (Charmidês, c. 3, p. 154, C; Lysis, c. 2, p. 201,
B; Protagoras, c. 1, p. 309, A), etc.

Of Melêtus, the primary, though not the most important accuser, we know only that he was a poet; of Lykon, that he was a rhetor. Both these classes had been alienated by the cross-examining dialectics to which many of their number had been exposed by Sokratês. They were the last men to bear such an exposure with patience, and their enmity, taken as a class rarely unanimous, was truly formidable when it bore upon any single individual.

We know nothing of the speeches of either of the accusers before the dikastery, except what can be picked out from the remarks in Xenophon and the defence of Plato. Of the three counts of the indictment, the second was the easiest for them to support, on plausible grounds. That Sokratês was a religious innovator, would be considered as proved by the peculiar divine sign, of which he was wont to speak freely and publicly, and which visited no one except himself. Accordingly, in the “Platonic Defence,” he never really replies to this second charge. He questions Melêtus before the dikastery, and the latter is represented as answering, that he meant to accuse Sokratês of not believing in the gods at all;[755] to which imputed disbelief Sokratês answers with an emphatic negative. In support of the first count, however,—the charge of general disbelief in the gods recognized by the city,—nothing in his conduct could be cited; for he was exact in his legal worship like other citizens, and even more than others, if Xenophon is correct.[756] But it would appear that the old calumnies of the Aristophanic “Clouds” were revived, and that the effect of that witty drama, together with similar efforts of Eupolis and others, perhaps hardly less witty, was still enduring; a striking proof that these comedians were no impotent libellers. Sokratês manifests greater apprehension of the effect of the ancient impressions, than of the speeches which had been just delivered against him: but these latter speeches would of course tell, by refreshing the sentiments of the past, and reviving the Aristophanic picture of Sokratês, as a speculator on physics as well as a rhetorical teacher for pleading, making the worse appear the better reason.[757] Sokratês, in the “Platonic Defence,” appeals to the number of persons who had heard him discourse, whether any of them had ever heard him say one word on the subject of physical studies;[758] while Xenophon goes further, and represents him as having positively discountenanced them, on the ground of impiety.[759]

[755] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 14, p. 26, C.

[756] Xen. Mem. i. 2, 64; i, 3, 1.

[757] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 3, p. 19, B.

[758] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 3, p. 19, C.

[759] Xen. Mem. i. 1, 13.

As there were three distinct accusers to speak against Sokratês, so we may reasonably suppose that they would concert beforehand on what topics each should insist; Melêtus undertaking that which related to religion, while Anytus and Lykon would dwell on the political grounds of attack. In the “Platonic Apology,” Sokratês comments emphatically on the allegations of Melêtus, questions him publicly before the dikasts, and criticizes his replies: he makes little allusion to Anytus, or to anything except what is formally embodied in the indictment; and treats the last count, the charge of corrupting youth, in connection with the first, as if the corruption alleged consisted in irreligious teaching. But Xenophon intimates that the accusers, in enforcing this allegation of pernicious teaching, went into other matters quite distinct from the religious tenets of Sokratês, and denounced him as having taught them lawlessness and disrespect, as well towards their parents as towards their country. We find mention made in Xenophon of accusatory grounds similar to those in the “Clouds;” similar also to those which modern authors usually advance against the sophists.

Sokratês, said Anytus and the other accusers, taught young men to despise the existing political constitution, by remarking that the Athenian practice of naming archons by lot was silly, and that no man of sense would ever choose in this way a pilot or a carpenter, though the mischief arising from bad qualification, was in these cases far less than in the case of the archons.[760] Such teaching, it was urged, destroyed in the minds of the hearers respect for the laws and constitution, and rendered them violent and licentious. As examples of the way in which it had worked, his two pupils Kritias and Alkibiadês might be cited, both formed in his school; one, the most violent and rapacious of the Thirty recent oligarchs; the other, a disgrace to the democracy, by his outrageous insolence and licentiousness;[761] both of them authors of ruinous mischief to the city.

[760] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 9.

[761] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 12.

Moreover, the youth learned from him conceit of their own superior wisdom, and the habit of insulting their fathers as well as of slighting their other kinsmen. Sokratês told them, it was urged, that even their fathers, in case of madness, might be lawfully put under restraint; and that when a man needed service, those whom he had to look to, were not his kinsmen, as such, but the persons best qualified to render it: thus, if he was sick, he must consult a surgeon; if involved in a lawsuit, those who were most conversant with such a situation. Between friends also, mere good feeling and affection was of little use; the important circumstance was, that they should acquire the capacity of rendering mutual service to each other. No one was worthy of esteem except the man who knew what was proper to be done, and could explain it to others: which meant, urged the accuser, that Sokratês was not only the wisest of men, but the only person capable of making his pupils wise; other advisers being worthless compared with him.[762]

[762] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 49-53.

He was in the habit too, the accusation proceeded, of citing the worst passages out of distinguished poets, and of perverting them to the mischievous purpose of spoiling the dispositions of youth, planting in them criminal and despotic tendencies. Thus he quoted a line of Hesiod: “No work is disgraceful; but indolence is disgraceful:” explaining it to mean, that a man might without scruple do any sort of work, base or unjust as it might be, for the sake of profit. Next, Sokratês was particularly fond of quoting those lines of Homer, in the second book of the Iliad, wherein Odysseus is described as bringing back the Greeks, who had just dispersed from the public agora in compliance with the exhortation of Agamemnôn, and were hastening to their ships. Odysseus caresses and flatters the chiefs, while he chides and even strikes the common men; though both were doing the same thing, and guilty of the same fault; if fault it was, to obey what the commander-in-chief had himself just suggested. Sokratês interpreted this passage, the accuser affirmed, as if Homer praised the application of stripes to poor men and the common people.[763]

[763] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 56-59.

Nothing could be easier than for an accuser to find matter for inculpation of Sokratês, by partial citations from his continual discourses, given without the context or explanations which had accompanied them; by bold invention, where even this partial basis was wanting; sometimes also by taking up real error, since no man who is continually talking, especially extempore, can always talk correctly. Few teachers would escape, if penal sentences were permitted to tell against them, founded upon evidence such as this. Xenophon, in noticing the imputations, comments upon them all, denies some, and explains others. As to the passages out of Hesiod and Homer, he affirms that Sokratês drew from them inferences quite contrary to those alleged;[764] which latter seem, indeed, altogether unreasonable, invented to call forth the deep-seated democratical sentiment of the Athenians, after the accuser had laid his preliminary ground by connecting Sokratês with Kritias and Alkibiadês. That Sokratês improperly depreciated either filial duty or the domestic affections, is in like manner highly improbable. We may much more reasonably believe the assertion of Xenophon, who represents him to have exhorted the hearer “to make himself as wise, and as capable of rendering service, as possible; so that, when he wished to acquire esteem from father or brother or friend, he might not sit still, in reliance on the simple fact of relationship, but might earn such feeling by doing them positive good.”[765] To tell a young man that mere good feeling would be totally insufficient, unless he were prepared and competent to carry it into action, is a lesson which few parents would wish to discourage. Nor would any generous parent make it a crime against the teaching of Sokratês, that it rendered his son wiser than himself, which probably it would do. To restrict the range of teaching for a young man, because it may make him think himself wiser than his father, is only one of the thousand shapes in which the pleading of ignorance against knowledge was then, and still continues occasionally to be, presented.

[764] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 59.

[765] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 55. Καὶ παρεκάλει ἐπιμελεῖσθαι τοῦ ὡς
φρονιμώτατον εἶναι καὶ ὠφελιμώτατον, ὅπως, ἐάν τε ὑπὸ πατρὸς ἐάν
τε ὑπὸ ἀδελφοῦ ἐάν τε ὑπ᾽ ἄλλου τινὸς βούληται τιμᾶσθαι, μὴ τῷ
οἰκεῖος εἶναι πιστεύων ἀμελῇ, ἀλλὰ πειρᾶται, ὑφ᾽ ὧν ἂν βούληται
τιμᾶσθαι, τούτοις ὠφέλιμος εἶναι.

Nevertheless, it is not to be denied that these attacks of Anytus bear upon the vulnerable side of the Sokratic general theory of ethics, according to which virtue was asserted to depend upon knowledge. I have already remarked that this is true, but not the whole truth; a certain state of the affections and dispositions being not less indispensable, as conditions of virtue, than a certain state of the intelligence. An enemy, therefore, had some pretence for making it appear that Sokratês, stating a part of the truth as the whole, denied or degraded all that remained. But though this would be a criticism not entirely unfounded against his general theory, it would not hold against his precepts or practical teaching, as we find them in Xenophon; for these, as I have remarked, reach much wider than his general theory, and inculcate the cultivation of habits and dispositions not less strenuously than the acquisition of knowledge.

The censures affirmed to have been cast by Sokratês against the choice of archons by lot at Athens, are not denied by Xenophon. The accuser urged that “by such censures Sokratês excited the young men to despise the established constitution, and to become lawless and violent in their conduct.”[766] This is just the same pretence, of tendency to bring the government into hatred and contempt, on which in former days prosecutions for public libel were instituted against writers in England, and on which they still continue to be abundantly instituted in France, under the first President of the Republic. There can hardly be a more serious political mischief than such confusion of the disapproving critic with a conspirator, and imposition of silence upon dissentient minorities. Nor has there ever been any case in which such an imputation was more destitute of color than that of Sokratês, who appealed always to men’s reason and very little to their feelings; so little, indeed, that modern authors make his coldness a matter of charge against him; who never omitted to inculcate rigid observance of the law, and set the example of such observance himself. Whatever may have been his sentiments about democracy, he always obeyed the democratical government, nor is there any pretence for charging him with participation in oligarchical schemes. It was the Thirty who, for the first time in his long life, interdicted his teaching altogether, and were on the point almost of taking his life; while his intimate friend Chærephon was actually in exile with the democrats.[767]

[766] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 9. τοὺς δὲ τοιούτους λόγους ἐπαίρειν ἔφη
τοὺς νέους καταφρονεῖν τῆς καθεστώσης πολιτείας, καὶ ποιεῖν
βιαίους.

[767] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 5, p. 21. A; c. 20, p. 32, E; Xen.
Mem. 1, 2, 31.

Xenophon lays great emphasis on two points, when defending Sokratês against his accusers. First, that his own conduct was virtuous, self-denying, and strict in obedience to the law. Next, that he accustomed his hearers to hear nothing except appeals to their reason, and impressed on them obedience only to their rational convictions. That such a man, with so great a weight of presumption in his favor, should be tried and found guilty as a corruptor of youth,—the most undefined of all imaginable charges,—is a grave and melancholy fact in the history of mankind. Yet when we see upon what light evidence modern authors are willing to admit the same charge against the sophists, we have no right to wonder that the Athenians when addressed, not through that calm reason to which Sokratês appealed, but through all their antipathies, religious as well as political, public as well as private—were exasperated into dealing with him as the type and precursor of Kritias and Alkibiadês.

After all, the exasperation, and the consequent verdict of guilty, were not wholly the fault of the dikasts, nor wholly brought about by his accusers and his numerous private enemies. No such verdict would have been given, unless by what we must call the consent and concurrence of Sokratês himself. This is one of the most important facts of the case, in reference both to himself and to the Athenians.

We learn from his own statement in the “Platonic Defence,” that the verdict of guilty was only pronounced by a majority of five or six, amidst a body so numerous as an Athenian dikastery; probably five hundred and fifty-seven in total number,[768] if a confused statement in Diogenes Laërtius can be trusted. Now any one who reads that defence, and considers it in conjunction with the circumstances of the case and the feelings of the dikasts, will see that its tenor is such as must have turned a much greater number of votes than six against him. And we are informed by the distinct testimony of Xenophon,[769] that Sokratês approached his trial with the feelings of one who hardly wished to be acquitted. He took no thought whatever for the preparation of his defence; and when his friend Hermogenês remonstrated with him on the serious consequences of such an omission, he replied, first, that the just and blameless life, which he was conscious of having passed, was the best of all preparations for defence; next, that having once begun to meditate on what it would be proper for him to say, the divine sign had interposed to forbid him from proceeding. He went on to say, that it was no wonder that the gods should deem it better for him to die now, than to live longer. He had hitherto lived in perfect satisfaction, with a consciousness of progressive moral improvement, and with esteem, marked and unabated, from his friends. If his life were prolonged, old age would soon overpower him; he would lose in part his sight, his hearing, or his intelligence; and life with such abated efficacy and dignity would be intolerable to him. Whereas, if he were condemned now, he should be condemned unjustly, which would be a great disgrace to his judges, but none to him; nay, it would even procure for him increase of sympathy and admiration, and a more willing acknowledgment from every one that he had been both a just man and an improving preceptor.[770]

[768] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 25, p. 36, A; Diog. Laërt. ii, 41.
Diogenes says that he was condemned by two hundred and eighty-one
ψήφοις πλείοσι τῶν ἀπολυούσων. If he meant to assert that the
verdict was found by a _majority_ of two hundred and eighty-one
above the acquitting votes, this would be contradicted by the
“Platonic Apology,” which assures us beyond any doubt that the
majority was not greater than five or six, so that the turning
of three votes would have altered the verdict. But as the number
two hundred and eighty-one seems precise, and is not in itself
untrustworthy, some commentators construe it, though the words as
they now stand are perplexing, as the aggregate of the majority.
Since the “Platonic Apology” proves that it was a majority of
five or six, the minority would consequently be two hundred and
seventy-six, and the total five hundred and fifty-seven.

[769] Xen. Mem. iv, 8, 4, _seq._ He learned the fact from
Hermogenês, who heard it from Sokratês himself.

[770] Xen. Mem. iv, 8, 9, 10.

These words, spoken before his trial, intimate a state of belief which explains the tenor of the defence, and formed one essential condition of the final result. They prove that Sokratês not only cared little for being acquitted, but even thought that the approaching trial was marked out by the gods as the term of his life, and that there were good reasons why he should prefer such a consummation as best for himself. Nor is it wonderful that he should entertain that opinion, when we recollect the entire ascendency within him of strong internal conscience and intelligent reflection, built upon an originally fearless temperament, and silencing what Plato[771] calls “the child within us, who trembles before death;” his great love of colloquial influence, and incapacity of living without it; his old age, now seventy years, rendering it impossible that such influence could much longer continue, and the opportunity afforded to him, by now towering above ordinary men under the like circumstances, to read an impressive lesson, as well as to leave behind him a reputation yet more exalted than that which he had hitherto acquired. It was in this frame of mind that Sokratês came to his trial, and undertook his unpremeditated defence, the substance of which we now read in the “Platonic Apology.” His calculations, alike high-minded and well-balanced, were completely realized. Had he been acquitted after such a defence, it would have been not only a triumph over his personal enemies, but would have been a sanction on the part of the people and the popular dikastery to his teaching, which, indeed, had been enforced by Anytus,[772] in his accusing argument, in reference to acquittal generally, even before he heard the defence: whereas his condemnation, and the feelings with which he met it, have shed double and triple lustre over his whole life and character.

[771] Plato, Phædon, c. 60, p. 77, E. ἀλλ᾽ ἴσως ἔνι τις καὶ
ἐν ἡμῖν παῖς, ὅστις τὰ τοιαῦτα φοβεῖται. Τοῦτον οὖν πειρώμεθα
πείθειν μὴ δεδιέναι τὸν θάνατον, ὥσπερ τὰ μορμολύκεια.

[772] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 17, p. 29, C.

Prefaced by this exposition of the feelings of Sokratês, the “Platonic Defence” becomes not merely sublime and impressive, but also the manifestation of a rational and consistent purpose. It does, indeed, include a vindication of himself against two out of the three counts of the indictment; against the charge of not believing in the recognized gods of Athens, and that of corrupting the youth; respecting the second of the three, whereby he was charged with religious innovation, he says little or nothing. But it bears no resemblance to the speech of one standing on his trial, with the written indictment concluding “Penalty, Death,” hanging up in open court before him. On the contrary, it is an emphatic lesson to the hearers, embodied in the frank outpouring of a fearless and self-confiding conscience. It is undertaken, from the beginning, because the law commands; with a faint wish, and even not an unqualified wish, but no hope, that it may succeed.[773] Sokratês first replies to the standing antipathies against him without, arising from the number of enemies whom his cross-examining elenchus had aroused against him, and from those false reports which the Aristophanic “Clouds” had contributed so much to circulate. In accounting for the rise of these antipathies, he impresses upon the dikasts the divine mission under which he was acting, not without considerable doubts whether they will believe him to be in earnest;[774] and gives that interesting exposition of his intellectual campaign, against “the conceit of knowledge without the reality,” of which I have already spoken. He then goes into the indictment, questions Melêtus in open court, and dissects his answers. Having rebutted the charge of irreligion, he reverts again to the imperative mandate of the gods under which he is acting, “to spend his life in the search for wisdom, and in examining himself as well as others;” a mandate, which if he were to disobey, he would be then justly amenable to the charge of irreligion;[775] and he announces to the dikasts distinctly, that, even if they were now to acquit him, he neither could nor would relax in the course which he had been pursuing.[776] He considers that the mission imposed upon him is among the greatest blessings ever conferred by the gods upon Athens.[777] He deprecates those murmurs of surprise or displeasure, which his discourse evidently called forth more than once,[778] though not so much on his own account as on that of the dikasts, who will be benefited by hearing him, and who will hurt themselves and their city much more than him, if they should now pronounce condemnation.[779] It was not on his own account that he sought to defend himself, but on account of the Athenians, lest they by condemning him should sin against the gracious blessing of the god; they would not easily find such another, if they should put him to death.[780] Though his mission had spurred him on to indefatigable activity in individual colloquy, yet the divine sign had always forbidden him from taking active part in public proceedings; on the two exceptional occasions when he had stood publicly forward,—once under the democracy, once under the oligarchy,—he had shown the same resolution as at present; not to be deterred by any terrors from that course which he believed to be just.[781] Young men were delighted as well as improved by listening to his cross-examinations; in proof of the charge that he had corrupted them, no evidence had been produced; neither any of themselves, who, having been once young when they enjoyed his conversation, had since grown elderly; nor any of their relatives; while he on his part could produce abundant testimony to the improving effect of his society, from the relatives of those who had profited by it.[782]

[773] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 2, p. 19, A. Βουλοίμην μὲν οὖν ἂν
τοῦτο οὕτω γενέσθαι, εἴτι ἄμεινον καὶ ὑμῖν καὶ ἐμοὶ, καὶ πλέον
τί με ποιῆσαι ἀπολογούμενον· οἶμαι δὲ αὐτὸ χαλεπὸν εἶναι, καὶ
οὐ πάνυ με λανθάνει οἷόν ἐστι. Ὅμως δὲ τοῦτο μὲν ἴτω ὅπῃ τῷ θεῷ
φίλον, τῷ δὲ νόμῳ πειστέον καὶ ἀπολογητέον.

[774] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 5, p. 20, D. Καὶ ἴσως μὲν δόξω τισὶν
ὑμῶν παίζειν—εὖ μέντοι ἴστε, πᾶσαν ὑμῖν τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐρῶ. Again,
c. 28, p. 37, E. Ἐάν τε γὰρ λέγω, ὅτι τῷ θεῷ ἀπειθεῖν τοῦτ᾽
ἐστὶ, καὶ διὰ τοῦτ᾽ ἀδύνατον ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, οὐ πείσεσθέ μοι ὡς
εἰρωνευομένῳ.

[775] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 17, p. 20, A.

[776] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 17, p. 30, B.

[777] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 17, p. 30, A, B. οἴομαι οὐδέν πω ὑμῖν
μεῖζον ἀγαθὸν γενέσθαι ἐν τῇ πόλει ἢ τὴν ἐμὴν τῷ θεῷ ὑπηρεσίαν.

[778] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 18, p. 30, B.

[779] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 18, p. 30, B. καὶ γὰρ, ὡς ἐγὼ οἶμαι,
ὀνήσεσθε ἀκούοντες—ἐὰν ἐμὲ ἀποκτείνητε τοιοῦτον ὄντα οἷον ἐγὼ
λέγω, οὐκ ἐμὲ μείζω βλάψετε ἢ ὑμᾶς αὐτούς.

[780] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 18, p. 30, E. πολλοῦ δέω ἐγὼ ὑπὲρ
ἐμαυτοῦ ἀπολογεῖσθαι, ὥς τις ἂν οἴοιτο, ἀλλὰ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν μή τι
ἐξαμάρτητε περὶ τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ δόσιν ὑμῖν ἐμοῦ καταψηφισάμενοι· ἐὰν
γὰρ ἐμὲ ἀποκτείνητε, οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἄλλον τοιοῦτον εὑρήσετε, etc.

[781] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 20, 21, p. 33.

[782] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 22.

“No man (says he) knows what death is; yet men fear it as if they knew well that it was the greatest of all evils, which is just a case of that worst of all ignorance, the conceit of knowing what you do not really know. For my part, this is the exact point on which I differ from most other men, if there be any one thing in which I am wiser than they; as I know nothing about Hades, so I do not pretend to any knowledge; but I do know well, that disobedience to a person better than myself, either god or man, is both an evil and a shame; nor will I ever embrace evil certain, in order to escape evil which may for aught I know be a good.[783] Perhaps you may feel indignant at the resolute tone of my defence; you may have expected that I should do as most others do in less dangerous trials than mine; that I should weep, beg and entreat for my life, and bring forward my children and relatives to do the same. I have relatives like other men, and three children; but not one of them shall appear before you for any such purpose. Not from any insolent dispositions on my part, nor any wish to put a slight upon you, but because I hold such conduct to be degrading to the reputation which I enjoy; for I _have_ a reputation for superiority among you, deserved or undeserved as it may be. It is a disgrace to Athens, when her esteemed men lower themselves, as they do but too often, by such mean and cowardly supplications; and you dikasts, instead of being prompted thereby to spare them, ought rather to condemn them the more for so dishonoring the city.[784] Apart from any reputation of mine, too, I should be a guilty man, if I sought to bias you by supplications. My duty is to instruct and persuade you, if I can; but you have sworn to follow your convictions in judging according to the laws, not to make the laws bend to your partiality; and it is your duty so to do. Far be it from me to habituate you to perjury; far be it from you to contract any such habit. Do not, therefore, require of me proceedings dishonorable in reference to myself, as well as criminal and impious in regard to you, especially at a moment when I am myself rebutting an accusation of impiety advanced by Melêtus. I leave to you and to the god, to decide as may turn out best both for me and for you.”[785]

[783] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 17, p. 29, B. Contrast this striking
and truly Sokratic sentiment about the fear of death, with the
common-place way in which Sokratês is represented as handling the
same subject in Xenoph. Memor. i, 4, 7.

[784] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 23, pp. 34, 35. I translate the
substance and not the words.

[785] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 24, p. 35.

No one who reads the “Platonic Apology” of Sokratês will ever wish that he had made any other defence. But it is the speech of one who deliberately foregoes the immediate purpose of a defence, persuasion of his judges; who speaks for posterity, without regard to his own life: “solâ posteritatis curâ, et abruptis vitæ blandimentis.”[786] The effect produced upon the dikasts was such as Sokratês anticipated beforehand, and heard afterwards without surprise as without discomposure, in the verdict of guilty. His only surprise was, at the extreme smallness of the majority whereby that verdict was passed.[787] And this is the true matter for astonishment. Never before had the Athenian dikasts heard such a speech addressed to them. While all of them, doubtless, knew Sokratês as a very able and very eccentric man, respecting his purposes and character they would differ; some regarding him with unqualified hostility, a few others with respectful admiration, and a still larger number with simple admiration for ability, without any decisive sentiment either of antipathy or esteem. But by all these three categories, hardly excepting even his admirers, the speech would be felt to carry one sting which never misses its way to the angry feelings of the judicial bosom, whether the judges in session be one or a few or many, the sting of “affront to the court.” The Athenian dikasts were always accustomed to be addressed with deference, often with subservience: they now heard themselves lectured by a philosopher who stood before them like a fearless and invulnerable superior, beyond their power, though awaiting their verdict; one who laid claim to a divine mission, which probably many of them believed to be an imposture, and who declared himself the inspired uprooter of “conceit of knowledge without the reality,” which purpose many would not understand, and some would not like. To many, his demeanor would appear to betray an insolence not without analogy to Alkibiadês or Kritias, with whom his accuser had compared him. I have already remarked, in reference to his trial, that, considering the number of personal enemies whom he made, the wonder is, not that he was tried at all, but that he was not tried until so late in his life: I now remark in reference to the verdict, that, considering his speech before the dikastery, we cannot be surprised that he was found guilty, but only that such verdict passed by so small a majority as five or six.

[786] These are the striking words of Tacitus (Hist. ii, 54)
respecting the last hours of the emperor Otho, after his suicide
had been fully resolved upon, but before it had been consummated:
an interval spent in the most careful and provident arrangements
for the security and welfare of those around him: “ipsum viventem
quidem relictum, sed solâ posteritatis curâ, et abruptis vitæ
blandimentis.”

[787] Plato. Apol. Sok. c. 25, p. 36, A. Οὐκ ἀνέλπιστόν μοι
γέγονεν τὸ γεγονὸς τοῦτο, ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον θαυμάζω ἑκατέρων τῶν
ψήφων τὸν γεγονότα ἀριθμόν. Οὐ γὰρ ᾤμην ἔγωγε οὕτω παρ᾽ ὀλίγον
ἔσεσθαι, ἀλλὰ παρὰ πολὺ, etc.

That the condemnation of Sokratês was brought on distinctly by the tone and tenor of his defence, is the express testimony of Xenophon. “Other persons on trial (he says) defended themselves in such manner as to conciliate the favor of the dikasts, or flatter, or entreat them, contrary to the laws, and thus obtained acquittal. But Sokratês would resort to nothing of this customary practice of the dikastery contrary to the laws. Though _he might easily have been let off by the dikasts, if he would have done anything of the kind even moderately_, he preferred rather to adhere to the laws and die, than to save his life by violating them.”[788] Now no one in Athens except Sokratês, probably, would have construed the laws as requiring the tone of oration which he adopted; nor would he himself have so construed them, if he had been twenty years younger, with less of acquired dignity, and more years of possible usefulness open before him. Without debasing himself by unbecoming flattery or supplication, he would have avoided lecturing them as a master and superior,[789] or ostentatiously asserting a divine mission for purposes which they would hardly understand, or an independence of their verdict which they might construe as defiance. The rhetor Lysias is said to have sent to him a composed speech for his defence, which he declined to use, not thinking it suitable to his dignity. But such a man as Lysias would hardly compose what would lower the dignity even of the loftiest client, though he would look to the result also; nor is there any doubt that if Sokratês had pronounced it,—or even a much less able speech, if inoffensive,—he would have been acquitted. Quintilian,[790] indeed, expresses his satisfaction that Sokratês maintained that towering dignity which brought out the rarest and most exalted of his attributes, but which at the same time renounced all chance of acquittal. Few persons will dissent from this criticism: but when we look at the sentence, as we ought in fairness to do, from the point of view of the dikasts, justice will compel us to admit that Sokratês deliberately brought it upon himself.

[788] Xenoph. Mem. iv, 4, 4. Ἐκεῖνος οὐδὲν ἠθέλησε τῶν εἰωθότων
ἐν τῷ δικαστηρίῳ παρὰ τοὺς νόμους ποιῆσαι· ἀλλὰ ῥᾳδίως ἂν ἀφεθεὶς
ὑπὸ τῶν δικαστῶν, εἰ καὶ μετρίως τι τούτων ἐποίησε, προείλετο
μᾶλλον τοῖς νόμοις ἐμμένων ἀποθανεῖν, ἢ παρανομῶν ζῇν.

[789] Cicero (de Orat. i, 54, 231): “Socrates ita in judicio
capitis pro se ipse dixit, ut non supplex aut reus, sed _magister
aut dominus videretur esse judicum_.” So Epiktêtus also remarked,
in reference to the defence of Sokratês: “By all means, abstain
from supplication for mercy; but do not put it specially forward,
that you _will_ abstain, unless you intend, like Sokratês,
purposely to provoke the judges.” (Arrian, Epiktêt. Diss. ii, 2,
18.)

[790] Quintilian, Inst. Or. ii, 15, 30; xi, 1, 10; Diog. Laërt.
ii, 40.

If the verdict of guilty was thus brought upon Sokratês by his own consent and coöperation, much more may the same remark be made respecting the capital sentence which followed it. In Athenian procedure, the penalty inflicted was determined by a separate vote of the dikasts, taken after the verdict of guilty. The accuser having named the penalty which he thought suitable, the accused party on his side named some lighter penalty upon himself; and between these two the dikasts were called on to make their option, no third proposition being admissible. The prudence of an accused party always induced him to propose, even against himself, some measure of punishment which the dikasts might be satisfied to accept, in preference to the heavier sentence invoked by his antagonist.

Now Melêtus, in his indictment and speech against Sokratês, had called for the infliction of capital punishment. It was for Sokratês to make his own counter-proposition, and the very small majority, by which the verdict had been pronounced, afforded sufficient proof that the dikasts were no way inclined to sanction the extreme penalty against him. They doubtless anticipated, according to the uniform practice before the Athenian courts of justice, that he would suggest some lesser penalty; fine, imprisonment, exile, disfranchisement, etc. And had he done this purely and simply, there can be little doubt that the proposition would have passed. But the language of Sokratês, after the verdict, was in a strain yet higher than before it; and his resolution to adhere to his own point of view, disdaining the smallest abatement or concession, only the more emphatically pronounced. “What counter proposition shall I make to you (he said) as a substitute for the penalty of Melêtus? Shall I name to you the treatment which I think I deserve at your hands? In that case, my proposition would be that I should be rewarded with a subsistence at the public expense in the prytaneum; for that is what I really deserve as a public benefactor; one who has neglected all thought of his own affairs, and embraced voluntary poverty, in order to devote himself to your best interests, and to admonish you individually on the serious necessity of mental and moral improvement. Assuredly, I cannot admit that I have deserved from you any evil whatever; nor would it be reasonable in me to propose exile or imprisonment, which I know to be certain and considerable evils, in place of death, which may perhaps be not an evil, but a good. I might, indeed, propose to you a pecuniary fine; for the payment of _that_ would be no evil. But I am poor, and have no money: all that I could muster might perhaps amount to a mina: and I therefore propose to you a fine of one mina, as punishment on myself. Plato, and my other friends near me, desire me to increase this sum to thirty minæ, and they engage to pay it for me. A fine of thirty minæ, therefore, is the counter penalty which I submit for your judgment.”[791]

[791] Plato. Apol. Sok. c. 26, 27, 28, pp. 37, 38. I give, as
well as I can, the substantive propositions, apart from the
emphatic language of the original.

Subsistence in the prytaneum at the public expense, was one of the greatest honorary distinctions which the citizens of Athens ever conferred; an emphatic token of public gratitude. That Sokratês, therefore, should proclaim himself worthy of such an honor, and talk of assessing it upon himself in lieu of a punishment, before the very dikasts who had just passed against him a verdict of guilty, would be received by them as nothing less than a deliberate insult; a defiance of judicial authority, which it was their duty to prove, to an opinionated and haughty citizen, that he could not commit with impunity. The persons who heard his language with the greatest distress, were doubtless Plato, Krito, and his other friends around him; who, though sympathizing with him fully, knew well that he was assuring the success of the proposition of Melêtus,[792] and would regret that he should thus throw away his life by what they would think an ill-placed and unnecessary self-exaltation. Had he proposed, with little or no preface, the substitute-fine of thirty minæ with which this part of his speech concluded, there is every reason for believing that the majority of dikasts would have voted for it.

[792] See Plato, Krito, c. 5, p. 45, B.