a presumptuous encroachment on the province of authority. But it seems incredible that if he had known all that makes Socrates so admirable and amiable in our eyes, he would have assailed him with such vehement bitterness, and that he should never have qualified his satire by a single word indicative of the respect which he must then have felt to be due at least to his character and his intentions. creditors, but also learns to regard filial obedi- but, on the other hand, it is equally well estab ence and respect, and piety to the gods, as lished that he did not merely borrow the name groundless and antiquated prejudices; and it of Socrates for the representative of the soseems hardly possible to doubt that under this phistical school, but designed to point the attencharacter the poet meant to represent Alcibia- tion, and to excite the feelings of his audience des,* whom it perfectly suits in its general out against the real individual. The only question line, and who may have been suggested to the which seems to be still open to controversy thoughts of the spectators in many ways not on this subject concerns the degree in which now perceived by the reader. It seems, at first Aristophanes was acquainted with the real charsight, as if in this work Aristophanes must acter and aims of Socrates, as they are known stand convicted either of the foulest motives or to us from the uniform testimony of his intimate of a gross mistake; for the character of Soc- friends and disciples. We find it difficult to rates was, in most points, directly opposed to adopt the opinion of some modern writers who the principles and practice which he attributes contend that Aristophanes, notwithstanding a here and elsewhere to the sophists and their perfect knowledge of the difference between followers. Socrates was the son of a sculptor Socrates and the sophists, might still have lookof little reputation, and himself for some time ed upon him as standing so completely on the practised the art with moderate success. But same ground with them, that one description he abandoned it that he might give himself up was applicable to them and him. It is true, as to philosophy, though his income was so scanty we have already observed, that the poet would that it scarcely provided him with the means of willingly have suppressed all reflection and insubsistence. In his youth he had made him- quiry on many of the subjects which were disself master of every kind of knowledge then at-cussed both by the sophists and by Socrates, as tainable at Athens which his narrow fortune permitted him to acquire, and he purchased the lessons of several of the learned men who came to sojourn there, at a price which he was never well able to spare. Yet when his own talents had attracted a crowd of admirers, and among them some of the wealthiest youths, he not only demanded no reward for his instructions, but rejected all the offers which they made to relieve his poverty. We have already seen some specimens of the manner in which he discharged the duties of a soldier and a citizen; how he braved the fury of the multitude, and the resentment of the tyrants, in the cause of justice. It is not our intention here to speak of the place which he holds in the history of Greek philosophy. But we have already had occasion to mention his contests with the sophists, and we have ample evidence that his discourses as well as his life were uniformly devoted to the furtherance of piety and virtue. Yet in the Clouds this excellent person appears in the most odious as well as ridiculous aspect; and the play ends with the preparations made by the father of the misguided youth to consume him and his school. The wrong done to him appears the more flagrant on account of its fatal consequences. The wish which the poet intimates at the close of his play, with an earnestness which almost oversteps the limits of comedy, was fulfilled, though not till above twenty years later, after the restoration of the democ-ly in public places, which he seldom entered racy (B.C. 399), when Socrates was prosecuted and put to death, on a charge which expressed the substance of the imputations cast on him in the Clouds; and Aristophanes was believed by their contemporaries to have contributed mainly to this result. There are two points with regard to the conduct of Aristophanes which appear to have been placed by recent investigations beyond doubt. It may be considered as certain that he was not animated by any personal malevolence towards Socrates, but only attacked him as an enemy and corrupter of religion and morals; See Severn's Essay on the Clouds, translated by Mr. Hamilton. Diog. Laert., ii., 24, 31. Alcibiades offered him land, Charmides slaves. But if we suppose what is in itself much more consistent with the opinions and pursuits of the comic poet, that he observed the philosopher attentively, indeed, but from a distance which permitted no more than a superficial acquaintance, we are then at no loss to understand how he might have confounded him with a class of men with which he had so little in common, and why he singled him out to represent them He probably first formed his judgment of Socrates by the society in which he usually saw him. He may have known that his early studies had been directed by Archelaus, the disciple of Anaxagoras; that he had both himself received the instruction of the most eminent sophists, and had induced others to become their hearers; that Euripides, who had introduced the sophistical spirit into the drama, and Alcibiades, who illustrated it most completely in his life, were in the number of his most intimate friends. Socrates, who never willingly stirred beyond the walls of the city, lived almost whol without forming a circle round him, and opening some discussion connected with the objects of his philosophical researches; he readily ac cepted the invitations of his friends, especially when he expected to meet learned and inquisitive guests, and probably never failed to give a speculative turn to the conversation. Aristophanes himself may have been more than once present, as Plato represents him, on such occasions. But it was universally notorious that, wherever Socrates appeared, some subtle disputation was likely to ensue; the method by which he drew out and tried the opinions of others, without directly delivering his own, and *See Roetscher, Aristophanes, &c. Plato, Theatet., p. 151, modλovs pèr en Bédwra Ilpočíxy, πολλοὺς ἄλλοις σοφοῖς τε καὶ θεσπεσίοις ἀνδράει. RELIGION OF SOCRATES.-GROWTH OF SUPERSTITION. | 523 The motives which induced Aristophanes to bring Socrates on the stage in preference to any other of the sophistical teachers are still more obvious than the causes through which he was led to confound them together. Socrates, from the time that he abandoned his hereditary art, became one of the most conspicuous and notorious persons in Athens. There was, perhaps, hardly a mechanic who had not at some time or other been puzzled or diverted by his questions.* His features were so formed by nature as to serve with scarcely any exaggeration for a highly laughable mask. His usual mien and gait were no less remarkably adapted to the comic stage. He was subject to fits of absence which seem now and then to have involved him in ludicrous mistakes and disasters. Altogether his exterior was such as might of itself have tempted another poet to find a place for him in a comedy. even his professions-for he commonly described himself as a seeker, who had not yet discovered the truth-might easily be mistaken for the sophistical skepticism, which denied the possibility of finding it. Aristophanes might also, either immediately or through hearsay, have become acquainted with expressions and arguments of Socrates, apparently contrary to the established religion. And, indeed, it is extremely difficult to determine the precise relation in which the opinions of Socrates stood to the Greek polytheism. He not only spoke of the gods with reverence, and conformed to the rites of the national worship, but testified his respect for the oracles in a manner which seems to imply that he believed their pretensions to have some real ground. On the other hand, he acknowledged one Supreme Being, as the framer and preserver of the universe;* used the singular and the plural number indiscriminately concerning the object of his adoration; and Aristophanes justly esteemed the Clouds as when he endeavoured to reclaim one of his one of his master-pieces; yet it did not obtain friends who scoffed at sacrifices and divination, even an inferior prize; and though he altered it was, according to Xenophon, by an argument it for a second exhibition, he either did not vendrawn exclusively from the works of the one ture to produce it again, or, according to anothCreator.‡ We are thus tempted to imagine er account, the repetition was still more unsucthat he treated many points to which the vulgar cessful. We see no sufficient reason for reattached great importance as matters of indif-jecting a tradition preserved by one of the anference, on which it was neither possible, nor very desirable, to arrive at any certain conclusion; that he was only careful to exclude from his notion of the gods, all attributes which were inconsistent with the moral qualities of the Supreme Being; and that, with this restriction, he considered the popular mythology as so harm-rates was partly screened from the danger which less, that its language and rites might be inno- threatened him by the same powerful proteccently adopted. The observation attributed to tion. But as he continued unmolested to the him in one of Plato's early works, seems to end of the Peloponnesian war, we must also throw great light on the nature and extent of conclude that his poverty, and the favourable his conformity to the state religion. Being ask- impression which was generally produced by ed whether he believes the Attic legend of Bo- intercourse with him among all classes, co-opreas and Orithuia, he replies that he should in- erated, with the growing number of his friends deed only be following the example of many in- and admirers, to shield him from persecution. genious men if he rejected it, and attempted to After the Anarchy the state of public feeling was explain it away; but that such speculations, changed in a manner which tended to raise a however fine, appeared to him to betoken a strong prejudice against him. We find several mind not very happily constituted; for the sub-indications, that during the war, while the pubjects furnished for them by the marvellous be- lic morals were more and more infected with ings of the Greek mythology were endless, ¶ and licentiousness, and while the new skeptical to reduce all such stories to a probable form was a task which required much leisure. This he could not give to it; for he was fully occupied with the study of his own nature. therefore let those stories alone, and acquiesced in the common belief about them.** * Mem., iv., 3, 13, ô rdv öλov kóopov ovvτáttwv te kaì συνέχων. cient commentators on the poet,† that this failure was caused by the intrigues of Alcibiades, concerning whom we hear many similar stories, and who probably perceived that he himself was one of the foremost objects of the poet's satire. And it seems not improbable that Soc opinions were spreading among the upper classes, superstition was gaining ground in the great body of the people. The proceedings and disHe closures which followed the mutilation of the Hermes busts are not to be overlooked as illustrations of the state of religion, though they remains of the old comedy contain many alluwere the result of political intrigues. But the sions to the introduction of new rites, all of a mystic and enthusiastic nature, and belonging to foreign and barbarous superstitions, which seem either to have been newly imported during this period into Athens, or to have attracted a greater number of devotees than before, especially among the women. Such were the orgies † Οἱ θεοὶ, ὁ θεὸς, τὸ θεῖον, τὸ δαιμόνιον. Mem., .,4. If the conversation has been faithfully reported by Xenophon, Aristodemus shifted his ground in the course of the argument. But he suggests no objection to the inference drawn by Socrates from the being and providence of God, as to the propriety of conforming to the rites of the state religion, and Xenophon himself seems not to have been aware that it might be disputed. He thinks that he has sufficiently refuted the indictment, which charged Socrates with disbelieving the existence of the gods acknowledged by the state, when he has proved that he believed in a deity. Phædrus, p. 229. I should say that she had been carried by the north wind over the cliffs near which she was playing with Phar macea. He mentions the Centaurs, the Chimæra. Kai tippei δὲ ὄχλος τοιούτων Γοργόνων καὶ Πηγάσων, καὶ ἄλλων ἀμηχάνων πλήθη τε καὶ ἀτοπίαι (better, perhaps, άτοπίαν) τερατολόγων τινῶν φύσεων. ** Χαίρειν εάσας ταῦτα, πειθόμενος δὲ τῷ νομιζομένῳ περὶ abrov. The last expression is ambiguous; Schleiermacher of the Thracian goddess Cotytto, those of the god Sabazius, the Phrygian Bacchus, the worship of Rhea or Cybele, and of Adonis. Some of these rites appear, like the Roman Bacchanalia, to have been used as a cover for the grossest licentiousness: as those secret orgies of Cotytto, which were the subject of a play of Eupolis, by which he is said to have provoked the resentment of Alcibiades, whom he must, therefore, have represented as partaking in them.* Others only afforded an opportunity to impostors of profiting by vulgar credulity, and their credit was promoted by a great mass of iterary forgeries, especially by numerous works bearing the revered names of Orpheus and Musæus, in which the authority of the most remote antiquity was claimed for these institutions, and their objects were described in language which bewildered the understanding, no less than the rites themselves excited the senses. It was generally noticed as an ill omen, that the festival of Adonis, which was celebrated by the women with the representation of funeral exsequies, fell on the day on which the Sicilian expedition was decreed.‡ And Aristophanes, in the passage where he alludes to this fact, intimates that such superstitions had not been long prevalent, and that they were attended with pernicious effects on female manners. It seems probable that their introduction, or, at least, their more extensive diffusion, may be ascribed to the influence of the pestilence, both in its immediate effects and its remoter consequences. It may have driven many to seek refuge or consolation, under the pressure of public and private distress, in new forms of religion, which held out easy modes of expiation to a stricken conscience, and brighter prospects to a desponding spirit. But Aristophanes also gives a hint which may lead us to suspect, that the propagation of these foreign rites was connected with that influx of new citizens, many of whom were of barbarian origin, which, as we have seen, was one result of the calamity. a work on the nature of the gods, which began with a declaration that he was unable to ascertain whether the gods existed or not; because the subject was too obscure, and life too short to investigate it. He was charged with impiety by a person named Pythodorus-a man of some distinction, for he was one of the Four Hundred*-and condemned to death, according to some accounts, without a regular trial. He, however, escaped, and was soon after drowned in his voyage to Sicily; but the offensive book was publicly burned in the Athenian agora, and all who possessed copies were ordered by public proclamation to give them up. That, while such a spirit prevailed at Athens, Socrates, though he was accused, and probably was generally suspected, of holding like opinions, should have been so long spared, is much more surprising than that he should at last have been prosecuted, even if there had been no peculiar causes to operate against him. For Aristophanes was not the only comic poet who traduced him and his disciples upon the stage; he continued to enforce the impression he had made by occasional allusions; and perhaps scarcely a year passed in which a theatrical audience did not hear the name of Socrates coupled with some odious imputations. The time in which he was brought to trial was one, as we have seen, in which great zeal was professed, and some was undoubtedly felt, for the revival of the ancient institutions, civil and religious, under which Athens had attained her past greatness; and it was to be expected that all who traced the public calamities to the neglect of the old laws and usages, should consider Socrates as a dangerous person. But there were also specious reasons, which will shortly be mentioned, for connecting him more immediately with the tyranny under which the city had lately groaned. His accusers, howev er, were neither common sycophants, nor do they appear to have been impelled by purely patriotic motives. This, however, is a point which must always remain involved in great Intolerance, as usual, kept pace with super- uncertainty. Anytus, who seems to have tastition and fanaticism. Not long before the ex-ken the lead in the prosecution, and probably hibition of the Clouds, Diagoras of Melos, hav- set it on foot, is said to have been, like Cleon, ing either divulged or derided the mysteries of a tanner, and to have acquired great wealth by Eleusis, and in various other ways subjected his trade; but he was also a man of great pohimself to the charge of atheism, was proscri- litical activity and influence, for the Thirty bed at Athens: a decree engraved on a brazen thought him considerable enough to include column offered a talent to any one who should him in the same decree of banishment with kill him, and two to any who should bring him Thrasybulus and Alcibiades,|| and he held the to justice. To intimate the affinity of their rank of general in the army at Phyle. With opinions, the poet in the play described Socra-him were associated two persons much inferior rates as the Melian. Not many years before the end of the war, ** it became known that Protagoras, for the entertainment of a select circle assembled in the house of Euripides, †† had read to him in reputation and popularity: a tragic poet, named Melitus or Meletus, in whose name the indictment was brought, and who, if we may judge of him from the manner in which he is mentioned by Aristophanes, was not very cel*See p. 397. Compare what is said of the mysteries of ebrated or successful in his art,** and one LyRhea in Schol. Aristoph., Av., 877. † Plato, Polit., ii., p. 364. Plut., Alc., 18, compared with the passage of Aristoph-have been aware of his danger. case according to another account, Protagoras can scarcely anes quoted in the next note. Lys., 387. *According to Aristotle, his accuser was named Euathlus. † Ὑπὸ κήρυκα ἀναλεξάμενοι παρ' ἑκάστου τῶν κεκτημένων. Eupolis had charged him with a sleight of hand like that described in the Clouds (see Schol. Nub., 180), and had introduced Charephon in his Kolokes as a parasite of Callias. Schol. Plat.. Bekker, p. 331. Αρ' ἐξέλαμψε τῶν γυναικῶν ἡ τρυφή, Χώ τυμπανισμὸς χοὶ πυκνοι Σαβάζιοι, Ὁ τ' 'Αδωνιασμὸς οὗτος οὑπὶ τῶν στεγῶν. Av., 1525. Schol. Aristoph., Av., 1073. **The lines of Timon, from which it has sometimes been inferred (see Herbst in Petersen's Studien, i., p. 97) that Protagoras survived Socrates, do not appear to have been intended to convey that meaning. ++ Diog. Laert, ix., 54. According to others, it was in the house of one Megaclides. It might have been read in both but if it was read in the Lyceum, which was the Schol. Plat., Apol. Socr., p. 331, Bekk. If the Scholiast is right, he was the same person of whom Plutarch tells the anecdote, Alc., 4. Xenophon, Hell., ii, 3, 42. Lysias, Agorat., p. 137. ** In the Tnpuraens he was introduced as one of the deputies sent to the poets in Hades, and was selected for the con, who is described as an orator,* and probably furnished all the assistance that could be derived from experience in the proceedings and temper of the law courts. According to an opinion ascribed to Socrates himself, they were all three instigated by merely personal resentment, which he had innocently provoked by his ordinary habits. Chærephon, one of his most ardent disciples and admirers, had, it seems-though the story is one which we can neither safely reject nor satisfactorily explainconsulted the Delphic oracle, perhaps by the advice of Socrates himself, to learn whether he could find any master wiser than Socrates, and the oracle is said to have declared Socrates the wisest of men.‡ Socrates, however, who was deeply conscious of the imperfection of his own knowledge, and always disavowed all claims to wisdom, was only induced, it is said, by the answer of the oracle to scrutinize more accurately the pretensions of others, and was thus, by degrees, convinced that the superiority which it attributed to him over other men consisted only in his clearer insight into his own ignorance. Among the numerous persons whom, in the course of this inquiry, he had convicted of an empty profession of knowledge were, as he is made to assert, his three prosecutors; and, in fact, Plato, in one of his dialogues, introduces Anytus as vehemently offended with Socrates, on account of the turn which his discourse had taken, and as quitting him with a threat, which, if it was ever uttered, was fulfilled by the indictment.§ It charged him with three distinct offences "Socrates"-so it ran-" is guilty of not believing in the gods which the state believes in, and of introducing other new divinities: he is moreover guilty of corrupting the young." The case was one of those in which the prosecutor was allowed to propose the penalty which he thought due to the crime; and Melitus proposed death. Before the cause was tried, Lysias composed a speech in defence of Socrates, and brought it to him for his use; but he declined it as too artificial for his character. Among the works of Plato is an apology which purports to be the defence which he really made; and, if it was written by Plato, it probably contains the substance, at least, of his answer to the charge.** The tone is throughout embassy, with Sannyrion and Cinesias, on account of his light weight and his natural tendency to the lower regions: οὐ σώματ' ὄντας, ἀϊδοφοίτας, καὶ θαμὰ Ἐκεῖσε θιλοχωρούνTas (to understand the point of the sarcasm, we must compare the balancing scene in the Frogs, and the remark of Æschylus, 867, ὅτι ἡ πόησις οὐχὶ συντέθνηκέ μοι, τούτῳ δὲ OUVTEOνNKEV). See also the Scholiast on Av., 1406. Apol., p. 24, prop. Diog. Laert., ii., 38, ρonтoiuaσs πάντα Λύκων ὁ δημαγωγός. † Apol., p. 23. † Ανδρῶν ἁπευτων Σωκράτης σοφώτατος. The comparison with Sophocles and Euripides (Schol. Aristoph., Nub., σοφὸς Σοφοκλῆς· σοφώτερος δ' Ευριπίδης) must have been prefixed afterward. In the Apology attributed to Xenophon, the answer has been arbitrarily altered. Meno, p. 95. "Erepa kaiva daiμóvia clonyouμevos. The ambiguity of the word dapóvia cannot be easily imitated in English. See the Philological Museum, vol. it., p. 581. Γ 'Αγών τιμητός. Schleiermacher's arguments for this proposition in his Introduction to the Apology have not, as far as we know, been hitherto confuted. They are not met by Stallbaum's remarks in his preface to the edition of the Apology in the Bibliotheca Græca. There are, however, several difficulties, besides those discussed in the article above referred to of the Philological Museum. It is a little singular that the Apology makes no mention of Alcibiades or Critias. This that of a man who does not expect to be ac quitted; and he represents himself as labour ing at once under the obloquy which had been thrown upon him, especially by Aristophanes, and under the ill-will which he had provoked by the performance of that which he considered as a service due to the Delphic god. The first head of the indictment he meets with a direct denial, and observes that he has been calumni ously burdened with the physical doctrines of Anaxagoras and other philosophers. But that part which related to the introduction of new divinities he does not positively contradict; he only gets rid of it by a question which involves his adversary in an apparent absurdity. The charge itself seems to have been insidiously framed, so as to aggravate and distort a fact, which was universally notorious, but which was then very little understood, and has continued ever since to give rise to a multitude of conjectures. Socrates, who was used to reflect profoundly on the state of his own mind, had, seems, gradually become convinced that he was favoured by the gods-who, as he believed, were always willing to communicate such a knowledge of futurity to their worshippers as was necessary to their welfare-with an inward sign, which he described as a voice, by which, indeed, he was never positively directed, but was often restrained from action. It was by this inward monitor that he professed to have been prohibited from taking a part in public business. In the latter part of his life its warnings had been more frequently repeated, and it had consequently become a matter of more general notoriety. There was nothing in such a claim at all inconsistent with any doctrine of the Greek theology. But the language of the indictment was meant to insinuate that in this supernatural voice Socrates pretended to hear some new deity, the object of his peculiar worship. His answer to the third charge is also somewhat evasive, and seems to show that he did not understand its real drift. Nevertheless, we have the best evidence that it was on this the event of the trial mainly turned. Æschines, who had probably often heard all the particulars of this celebrated cause from his father, asserts that Socrates was put to death because it appeared that he had been the instructer of Critias; and that the orator neither was mistaken, nor laid too much stress on this fact, seems to be clearly proved by the anxiety which Xenophon shows to vindicate his master on this head.+ But at the same time we learn from him, that the prosecutors did not confine themselves to this example of the evils which had arisen from the teaching of Socrates, and that they made him answerable for the calamities which Alcibiades had brought upon his country. It was, however, no doubt the case of Critias that supplied them with their most efficacious appeals to the passions of their hearers. Critias, the bloodthirsty tyrant, the deadly enemy of the people, had once sought the society of Socrates, and had introduced his young cousin and at least with regard to Critias-would have been natural for Plato, but is not so easily explained with respect to Socrates. * Timarch., p. 24, ὑμεῖς Σωκράτην τὸν σοφσιτὴν ἀπεκτεί νατε, ὅτι Κριτίαν ἐφάνη πεπαιδευκώς. + Mem., ì., 2. ward Charmides-the same who shared his pow- | were usually made in the Athenian tribunals to er and fell by his side-to the philosopher's acquaintance. It was true, and probably was not disputed by the accusers of Socrates, that Critias had afterward been entirely alienated from him. He had been deeply offended by the freedom with which Socrates reproved his vices. During the Anarchy a law or edict was made forbidding any one to teach the art of speaking. Xenophon says that it was aimed at Socrates, though he did not profess this art, but it furnished Critias with a pretext for commanding him to abstain from his usual disputations. Socrates had openly spoken against the proceedings of the oligarchical government; he had disobeyed its commands, as we have seen, in the case of Leon. He himself mentioned this transaction in his defence, and expressed his belief that, if the Thirty had retained their power a little longer, they would have put him to death. But these facts were not likely to counteract the impression which must have been made upon his judges by the persuasion that he had contributed to form the mind and character of Critias. There was another point of view in which this example must have appeared to illustrate and confirm the other charges. Critias, whose talents were as brilliant as his passions were headstrong, had stored his mind with all the learning that could be acquired by a man of the highest rank at Athens, and might be considered as a model of an accomplished sophist. He was an eloquent orator, an elegant poet, and speculated on many subjects connected with natural and moral philosophy. He seems to have made no secret of his contempt for the belief of the vulgar, and in one of his works‡ avowed his opinion that all religions were mere political contrivances, designed to supply the defects of human laws. When we consider that Socrates, notwithstanding his conduct during the Anarchy, must have been accounted one of the party of the city, since he remained there throughout the whole period, and that the prosecutors were probably able to give evidence of many expressions apparently unfavourable to democracy, which had fallen from him in his manifold conversations, we cannot be surprised that the verdict was against him, but rather, as he himself professed to be, that the votes of the judges were almost equally divided. It appears, indeed, most likely that, if his defence had been conducted in the usual manner, he would have been acquitted; and that even after the conviction he would not have been condemned to death, if he had not provoked the anger of the court by a deportment which must have been interpreted as a sign of profound contempt or of insolent defiance. When the verdict had been given, the prisoner was entitled to speak in mitigation of the penalty proposed by the prosecutor, and to assign another for the court to decide upon. Socrates is represented as not only disdaining to deprecate its severity by such appeals as *Plato, Charmides. † Λόγων τέχνην. Mem., i., 2, 32 Probably, as Brandis observes (Handbuch., i., p. 545, m.), his ἔμμετροι πολιτείαι. How it happened that a part at least of the verses quoted by Sextus Empiricus adv. Math., ix., 54, from this work were also found by Pseudo-Plutarch, De Plac., i., 7, in the Sisyphus of Euripides, is uncertain. But there seems to be no good reason for doubting that he did so. See Hinrichs, De Theram, &c., p. 63. See Mem., i., 2, 58; iii., 7, 6, and the remark attributed to him about Antisthenes in Diog. Laert., ii., 31. the feelings of the jurors, but as demanding reward and honour instead of the punishment of a malefactor; and he was at last only induced by the persuasions and offers of his friends to name a trifling pecuniary mulet. The execu tion of his sentence was delayed by the departure of the Theoris, the sacred vessel, which carried the yearly offerings of the Athenians to Delos. From the moment that the priest of Apollo had crowned its stern with laurel until its return, the law required that the city should be kept pure from all pollution, and, therefore, that no criminal should be put to death. The opening ceremony had taken place on the day before the trial of Socrates, and thirty days elapsed before the Theoris again sailed into Præus. During this interval some of his wealthy friends* pressed him to take advantage of the means of escape which they could easily have procured for him. But he refused to prolong a life which was so near its natural close-for he was little less than seventy years old-by a breach of the laws, which he had never violated, and in defence of which he had before braved death; and his attachment to Athens was so strong that life had no charms for him in a foreign land. His imprisonment was cheered by the society of his friends, and was probably spent chiefly in conversation of a more than usually elevated strain. When the summons came, he drank the fatal cup, in the midst of his weeping friends, with as much composure, and as little regret as the last draught of a long and cheerful banquet. The sorrow which the Athenians are said to have manifested for his death, by signs of public mourning, and by the punishments inflicted on his prosecutors, ‡ seems not to be so well attested as the alarm it excited among his most eminent disciples, who, perhaps, considered it as the signal of a general persecution, and are said to have taken refuge in Megara and other cities.|| CHAPTER XXXIII. THE EXPEDITION OF CYRUS THE YOUNGER. BEFORE we proceed with the history of the period which followed the close of the Peloponnesian war, our attention must for a time be turned to a series of events, which, though they took place for the most part far beyond the limits of Greece, and did not immediately affect its interests, will be found to be most intimately connected with its final destinies, and with some of the greatest revolutions of the ancient * Crito more probably than Æschines, to whom Idomeneus attributed the proposal (Diog. Laert., ii., 60), for Eschines seems to have been at this time extremely poor. + Plato, Crito p. 52, b. According to Diog. La., ii., 43, they immediately repented, so as to close the palestras and the gymnasia, and con→ demned Anytus and Lycon to banishment, Melitus to death. We also read in Pseudo-Plutarch, Vit. X. Orat., that Isoerates appeared in mourning for Socrates the day after his execution. Hermodorus, in Diog., ii., 106; but the addition ériσαντας τὴν ὠμότητα τῶν τυράννων seems to imply great is norance or carelessness in the writer. Libanius, Socr. Apol., iii., p. 63. Reisk mentions Corinth, Elis, and Euba among their places of refuge, probably meaning to display his learning. It may, however, be no more than a rhetorical flourish. |