Such, then, was the reformer who undertook to con- vert the Athenians from the error of their ways. He was more frugal than a Neapolitan laz/.arone or a (Jreek mendicant — (!?ypriiliis i-.iiiriin.t. He was abstemious, given neither to wine nor to pleasure. He was able and willing to drink more than any of his rompotutors; yet "no man ever saw .Socrates drunk" (I'lato, .S'y/H/). p. 220). He was awetic, inviting hardships and careless of pain, like the (Vunobites of the des<'rt or the founders of rnediieval fraternitien. He declined the invitations of princes and poteiitates because he could not return their favors. He refused to take money for his instructions, •Iciioiniced the .Sophists for their mercenary jiractice, and m-nt bark to Aristippus the gains which he desired to nhnrc with him. He condemned existing usages, pMcedurcH, and theories; derided the political institu- tions of Athens; invited all to aliandon their ilelusive
and pernicious doctrines and reasonings ; attached him- self s])ecially to the young for the conversion of the rising generation; yet was himself observant of estab- lished customs and prescription iia religion, in law, in political and social conduct.
A character like this could hardly receive due appre- ciation in the lively and captious community in which he lived and moved without resting, and which he tor- mented through all ranks without ceasing. How dif- licidt the appreciation must have been may be esti- mated from the diverse portraits drawn by his friends and pupils, Xenophon and Plato, without either acliiev- ing a fair picture, Socrates might win the admiration of main' by his brilliant display of dialectical ingenui- ty and intellectual power; he might attract ambitions politicians by the hope of acquiring his arts ; but he could secure the devotion only of the few who caught glimpses of his purpose and desired to share his aims. To the populace and to the upper multitude he must have seemed a strange and unwelcome phenomenon. He must have gone about multiplj'ing dislikes, nursing enmities and antagonisms, and storing up wrath against the day of wrath. In the Platonic Apolof/y he express- es greater apprehension of chronic misconception and calumny and odium than of the immediate capital charge. This is consonant with probability. The dis- tinct reference to Aristophanes is a Platonic device, and excites a suspicion that there is as little authentic and uncolored fact as in the Latin Paneyyrica, or the Diof/enes of Dion Cassius.
Full acquiescence may be accorded to Grote's remark that the indictment and condemnation of Socrates are less surprising than his long escape from prosecution. For twenty or thirty years he had been suffered, with- out molestation, to infest the streets of Athens, to con- sort with oligarchs and tj'rants, to preach novel doc- trines to idlers, to interrupt and deride everj' one, and to offend prevailing sentiment. The Jews would have stoned such a prophet without such patient endurance.
At length, in B.C. 399, after the restoration of the democracy and the re-establishment of the old consti- tion, Socrates was indicted. His accusers had little ob- vious reason for personal enmity. Meletus, or Melitus, was a youthful poet, otherwise almost iniknown. Any- tus was a wealthy tradesman and active politician, who had co-operated efficiently with Thrasybulus in the re- cent overthrow of the Thirty, and whose son had been dissuaded from following his father's trade. Lycon was a professional rhetorician, and was thus involved in the Socratic censure of the Sophists. Anytus alone had any personal grievance. It was very sliglit, but it concurred with a general antipathy to Socrates. The charge was that Socrates neglected his country's gods, introduced new divinities, and corrupted the Athenian youth. These charges may now be admitted to be sub- stantially unjust; but they were then vcrj' ])lausible, and gave utterance to what may well have been the common impression in regard to the tenor and tendency of bis disputations. The purity of the motives, designs, and conduct of Socrates none will now gainsay. None will now repeat the fatal accusations with any thought that Socrates could conceive them to be just. His strict observance of the religious rites of his country is in- sisted upon in both the Ajxilai/ws written after the event. He will not be less reverenced now from a con- viction that his religious views inclined vaguely to the assertion of monotheism and to the adoration of "the unknown (iod." This would result in the negation of existing superstitions and creeds, and would sustain the allegation of the introduction of new divinities. This allegation would be confirmed by his claim of special inspiration, and by the aimouncemcnt of his mysterious and divine coinisellor, whose essential character has not. yet been satisfactorily explained. The third charge of corrupting yoinig men woidd be even more plausible am(»ng the ancient Athenians than the other two. The Socratic method contemplated the comijulsory confes-
SOCRATES
851
SOCRATES
sion of ignorance, and proceeded by a perplexing series of questions and constrained answers, designed to re- move tVie false conceit of knowledge in order to prepare the way for a careful and unprejudiced investigation of truth. Most of the sutt'erers would stop with the neg- ative result, as Socrates himself appears practically to have done. Others, who did not understand the proc- ess and could not appreciate the design, would con- clude that the purpose as well as the effect of the So- cratic elenc/ins was to unsettle belief in accredited in- stitutions no less than in established convictions. Tliis apprehension would be aggravated liy remembering that Alcibiades, Critias, and Charmides had been among his most cherished associates; that his chief disciple, Plato, perhaps not yet prominent, was the nephew of Charmi- des, one of the Thirty, and had recently been active in aristocratical opposition ; that Socrates had always dis- approved the existing modes of appointment to office; and that he had displayed a constant distrust and dis- approval of democratic institutions — a censure which democracies alwaj^s jealously and passionately resent.