READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

ATHENS . 478—401 B.C.

CHAPTER XIII

THE AGE OF ILLUMINATION

I

THE REACTION AGAINST THE IONIAN PHILOSOPHY

THE speculations of the Ionian philosophers, their attempts to make the world intelligible, had begun early in the sixth century, and by the end of the century had produced an intellectual movement which was spreading to nearly all parts of civilized Greece. We may call the period from about 530 to 400 b.c. Greece’s Age of Illumina­tion, an age in which reason was striving to assert her rule in every sphere, and many superstitions, inherited from antiquity, were being challenged and discarded. In this process of en­lightenment two phases can be distinguished, and the dividing line may be drawn roughly about 450 b.c. About that time we become aware that a certain reaction has set in against Ionian philosophy and Ionian science. Some thinkers were still working on the old lines, like Anaxagoras, and it was probably just at this time that the brilliant theory of atoms was being elaborated in the brain of Leucippus. But in the latter part of the fifth century the men of intellectual activity most pro­minent in the eyes of the public were not a Leucippus or a Diogenes of Apollonia but men who were most interested in other problems and who played a different kind of role. It was the age of the Sophists. The results of science were coming into contact with life. Hellas had passed into an age of sophistication.

There was, as has been observed above, a certain reaction against the earlier schools of philosophical speculation, and this reaction was probably due to Zeno of Elea more than to any other man. His penetrating and lively criticism of the conceptions of space, time, and motion which are fundamental in physics led to a scepticism which distrusted both cosmology and ontology, and the influence of Zeno was very wide. He influenced the intellectual activities of Protagoras, of Gorgias, and of Socrates, and the most impatient problem of philosophy was no longer, How was the world made? but how is knowledge of the world possible? Inquiry began to turn from the macrocosm to the microcosm; and concurrently problems of social conduct began to be recognized as problems on which there is as much room for argument and as little reason for dogmatism as in physical matters. It might be put that man was becoming self-conscious. Awareness of man’s importance is the note of the beautiful ode of Sophocles which begins, ‘Miracles in the world are many; there is no greater miracle than man.’

In considering the Hellenic culture of the fifth century, the extent of geographical knowledge must not be overlooked. Although at this stage the ideas of the Greeks as to the size and outlines of the inhabited world were slight and deficient com­pared with what they would be two centuries later, they had in the last few generations made great advances. Delphi was no longer the centre of the world; Phasis and the straits of Gades were no longer its extreme limits. The Milesian geographers had learned much about western Asia, and something was known of north-western Europe through the merchants of Massilia and the information they derived from the sailors of Tartessus. Pythagoreans had announced the discovery that the earth is round. Athens may be said to have taken the place of Miletus, but she did not carry on the Milesian tradition so far as the progress of geography is concerned. Geographical knowledge almost stood still till the end of the fourth century; the Ionian maps continued to be used. This pause was part of the reaction against Ionian speculation; we can see it in Herodotus who is always bent on criticizing the geographical views of Hecataeus.

II.

THE SOPHISTS

The researches of scientific men in Ionia and in Magna Graecia had enlarged the range of knowledge and the number of subjects of which any one aspiring to be a man of culture must have some knowledge, and thus a demand arose for higher education—for instruction in astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics, history. This demand was met by the Sophists who were simply itinerant professors; collectively they performed the functions of a university in Greece. They were polymaths; the Sophist engaged to give a complete training to a pupil, to impart instruction in every possible subject and prepare him for a good life, and for all the duties devolving on a citizen. As to the cost of such an education we have not much evidence. Some of the Sophists had fixed charges. Those who had a big reputation like Protagoras could charge high fees and were probably employed only by people of some wealth. The fee of Evenus of Paros was 5 minae; that of Protagoras is said to have been 100 minae. Protagoras said himself that it was his habit, in case a pupil demurred to pay what he asked for, to request him to go into a temple and declare what he considered the teaching worth, and that he then accepted the sum named. He was said to have made more money than the artist Pheidias.

With the growth of democracies in so many cities, ability to speak in public and persuade your audience, whether in a court of law or in meetings of the Assembly or the Council or of a political club, was every year becoming more necessary for the man who wished to take part in public life, and desirable as a weapon of self-defence even for those who had no such ambitions. In­struction in the art of public speaking—rhetoric—involving not only diction arid elocution but also the arrangement of the topics and arguments was much sought, and the art itself was carefully elaborated by its exponents. The greatest of these was the Sicilian Gorgias, who was one of the two most eminent Sophists of the fifth century. He made prose a fine art and this is his great title to be remembered by posterity. In his hands an oration became as technical a composition as a dithyramb. But while he was first of all a stylist and his true métier was the teaching of rhetoric, Gorgias, like all these eminent teachers, had studied deeply the knowledge and philosophy of the day. He had imbibed the scepticism and learned the method of Zeno and he wrote a metaphysical book defending three theses which to the ordinary man were quite incomprehensible and must have sounded appalling: Being does not exist; if it did exist, it would be unknowable; if it were knowable, the knowledge of it could not be communicated by one mind to another.

The oldest and perhaps the most eminent and typical of the Sophists was Protagoras of Abdera. He has a distinct and considerable place in the history of philosophy through having propounded the doctrine which may be called, in modern jargon, the subjectivity of knowledge and which he expressed in the formula ‘Man is the measure of all things; of the being of things that are and of the non-being of things that are not.’ The meaning of this pronouncement has indeed been disputed, but the most probable interpretation is that what appears to you to be true, is true for you, and what appears to me to be true, is true for me; there is no objective standard to which anyone can appeal. It seems not improbable that Protagoras may have drawn the conclusion that for practical purposes what seems true to the majority of minds is true. We do not know how he worked it out. But one important corollary was deduced. On every and any matter two opposite statements can be made and maintained, which may be distinguished as the stronger and the weaker, the stronger being that which is more commonly accepted, and generally taken for granted as true. But the weaker can always be strengthened by an able exponent. One of the things which can be learned and which an expert Sophist can teach is the art of strengthening the weaker statement—an art indispensable for success in public debates and in litigation— that dangerous art which is now called sophistry and which in the hands of a virtuoso can often secure the victory of injustice. This theory of the two statements was held up to ridicule in a scene of his Clouds by Aristophanes, where they appear on the stage personified as the Just and the Unjust Statement.

In ethics and politics, Protagoras does not appear to have taught or promoted any revolutionary doctrines but to have been content with explaining the value of conventional morality and the generally accepted views of political virtue. It is probable that in religion too he was conventional, so far as practice was concerned, and believed in the ethics of conformity, although speculatively he was a sceptic. He wrote a book On the Gods, of which one sentence is preserved: ‘Concerning the gods I am unable to say whether they exist or not, nor, if they do, what they are like; there are many things which hinder us from knowing; there is the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life’. Such a statement, taken out of its context, was sure to be interpreted by the public as a shameless declaration of atheism; and the story was that he was prosecuted and condemned; whereas it may be compatible with a quite orthodox view if Protagoras admitted, as he probably did, that where there is no possibility of knowledge, one opinion may be more probable than another.

As the Sophists professed to train aspirants to a political career, they were considered experts in political science, and it is not surprising to find that Protagoras was chosen by Pericles to draw up a constitution for the colony which was founded at Thurii under Athenian auspices.

Athens was now becoming the intellectual capital of Greece, the place where ideas were exchanged and Hellenic public opinion created, drawing from the periphery savants and thinkers of all kinds and appreciating them. It is significant that she became the chief centre of the book trade in Greece. This position of his city as a centre and example of culture was what Pericles aimed at. Most of the Sophists of the fifth century are known chiefly in connection with Athens.

It has been said by a learned modern critic that the Sophists were ‘half-professors, half-journalists.’ It is difficult, however, to see the aptitude of the comparison with journalists. It is probable that most of them were publicists; that was a useful and natural form of self-advertisement, but there is nothing to show that even the less reputable were newsmongers or political propagandists. Another Sophist who enjoyed a high reputation at Athens, though his talents were more commonplace than those of Protagoras and Gorgias, was Prodicus of the island of Ceos. He was a man of delicate health and a pessimist who maintained that the bad things in men’s lives are more numerous than the good. He specialized in the study of diction and wrote a treatise on synonyms; but that he taught cosmology at Athens and some theory of the origin of the world is evident from a play of Aristophanes whose Birds, when they propound a fanciful version of the genesis of the world, urge the audience to bid Prodicus pack with his preaching.

All the Sophists were versatile and could teach almost any subject but perhaps the most versatile of all was the fourth of the great Sophists of pan-Hellenic fame, Hippias of Elis. It was on his versatility that he particularly prided himself, and he certainly excelled in the variety of his accomplishments. He was proud to be self-sufficing; he could make all his own clothes. He kept abreast of mathematical research, worked at the classical problems of finding geometrical constructions to trisect an angle, and to ‘square the circle and discovered a new curve, the ‘quadratrix,’ with the help of which they might be solved. He worked also at antiquarian studies, and compiled a chronological list of victors in the Olympic games, with the help of the inscriptions on their statues in the Altis, and so laid the foundations for the later Greek system of dating by Olympiads which was first introduced by the historian Timaeus. Two other names among the prominent Sophists may be mentioned, Antiphon of Athens (not to be confounded with the orator and politician) and Thrasymachus of Chalcedon.

The considerable demand for the education which such teachers could give shows how enlightenment was spreading in Greece, and nowhere perhaps are the rationalistic tendencies of the time more strikingly shown than in the rise of the new medical school of Cos, inaugurated by Hippocrates, who was born probably about 460 b.c. and had been profoundly affected by the scientific speculations of the preceding generation. His treatise on ‘Airs, Waters, and Places,’ dealing with the effects of climate and locality on the human organism, shows a wide philosophical view reaching beyond the ordinary outlook of a medical practitioner. He and his school emancipated themselves from old superstitions, and a religious man of the stamp, say, of Nicias, would have been quite justified in calling them godless. They did not believe that particular diseases were divine visita­tions. Epilepsy had always been regarded as sent direct from heaven; its name in Greek was ‘the sacred malady’. The following comments on this belief indicate the spirit of the new school, and are probably due to the master himself.

‘With regard to the so-called “sacred disease” it appears to me to be in no respect more divine or sacred than other diseases, but to have a natural origin like other complaints. Men regard its nature and cause as divine, from ignorance and wonder because it is not like other diseases; and its divine character is maintained because men find it difficult to understand and easy to cure, since the means used for curing it are purifications and incantations. But if it is considered divine because it is wonderful, then sacred maladies will be numerous, not merely one. For I will show that there are other maladies just as wonderful and amazing which no one considers sacred. Quotidian, tertian and quartan fevers appear to be as sacred and as much sent by a god as this disease, even if they be not wonderful. They who first consecrated this disease appear to me to have been men of the same kind as the magicians and purifiers and mountebanks and impostors of the present day who pretend to be extremely religious and to have greater knowledge than others. They use the divinity as a cloak and screen to cover their own inability to benefit the patient, and to hide their ignorance, and consider this affection “sacred”.’

The revolution in medicine by the adoption of the principle that diseases are always due to natural causes only is one of the most impressive signs of the growth of the rationalistic temper. The same spirit manifested itself in the criticism of legendary traditions. The first drastic critic of Hellenic mythology had been Xenophanes, but a tendency to deal more or less freely with myth and not to believe all that is handed down had appeared in Stesichorus and appears in Pindar, neither of whom had heterodox inclinations. The kind of speculation which would finally be systematized by Euhemerus had already begun; a well-known example is ‘the story of Heracles’ by Herodorus who, living towards the end of the fifth century, attempted to produce a biography of the hero that should be humanly credible by ex­plaining away incidents that were plainly miraculous. But this sophisticated temper is most clearly and fully shown by the historians, Herodotus who rebels against accepting things that are miraculous or incredible and tentatively explains them away, and Thucydides who silently and magisterially ignores them.

III.

 BLASPHEMY TRIALS AT ATHENS

In such an age disturbance was naturally caused in many Hellenic cities to old beliefs and prejudices, outraged and endangered by new, subversive ideas. Of this conflict it is at Athens that we can particularly find traces. At Athens during the second third of the century, the leading statesman’s personal interest in philosophical questions, his belief in expert knowledge, his freedom from prejudice must have helped sensibly towards the realization of his great aim to make this city the centre of Hellenic enlightenment, and his political opponents found it easy to excite ill-will against him on account of his eccentric intellectual proclivities. Two of his intimate friends were Anaxagoras the physicist and Damonides, the expert in music, and it was believed that both of them advised him on political matters. It can be imagined with what resentment an Aristides or a Cimon would have spoken of ‘those damned professors’ being con­sulted or allowed to interfere in politics. Both these friends of Pericles suffered. Damonides was ostracized.

It seems to have been early in the political career of Pericles that Anaxagoras was prosecuted for irreligion, and his accusers went to some trouble in the matter. We do not know what particular offences were comprised under the name asebeia, ‘irreligion’ or ‘impiety,’ by the laws of Solon, but as the law stood, Anaxagoras had done nothing to expose him to the charge, for in order to make him liable to prosecution it was found neces­sary to pass a special decree through the Assembly, which had the effect of widening the definition of ‘impiety’. This decree was introduced by one Diopeithes and it authorized the impeachment of persons who do not conform to the religious observances of the city, or who teach doctrines concerning things in the sky. The general public in Athens doubtless regarded the doctrines of Anaxagoras, who denied that the sun and the moon are divine beings, as extremely irreligious, just as today many people in the United States of America consider Darwinism irreligious and would like to suppress as illegal the teaching of Evolution. But Anaxagoras would probably have been suffered to live and specu­late in peace if it had not been for his friendship with Pericles. It is to be noted that the charge of irreligion was reinforced by a charge that he had intrigued with Persia. The impeachment of the philosopher has always been accounted for as an attempt of political opponents to discredit that statesman. Anaxagoras was condemned to death presumably, and all Pericles could do was to aid him to escape from Athens, lie withdrew to Lampsacus where he was welcomed and there spent the rest of his life. It is worthy of notice that in this enlightened age, the study of astronomy was forbidden for nearly half a century (up to the archonship of Eucleides in 403 b.c.) in the city which was the centre of Greek culture.

During the latter part of the fifth century there were some other impeachments for irreligion at Athens, and of these we know even less. There was the case of Aspasia; we are not told of what particular blasphemous acts or words she was accused, but the charge of impiety was reinforced by a charge of a totally different kind. Then there was a certain Diagoras of Melos (said to have been a dithyrambic poet), who was pro­secuted apparently for making disrespectful and blasphemous observations about divinities and ceremonies which were recognized bv the Athenian state. He was declared an outlaw at some­time after the reduction of his native island, but his name had somewhat earlier become associated with atheism and in the Clouds,  performed in 423 b.c., Aristophanes can speak of Socrates as ‘the Melian,’ with this innuendo. The other recorded prosecu­tion is that of Euripides, possibly the same time as the Clouds, The accuser of Euripides was no less a person than Cleon the politician. But the prosecution seems to have failed; nothing happened to interfere with the usual activities of the poet. It is quite possible that Cleon was a man of very orthodox beliefs, who hated the advanced views of Euripides and considered them dangerous to society. The extreme democrats who came of the tradesman class, like Cleon and Lysicles, Eucrates and Hyperbolus, might resort to the Sophists to learn rhetoric and political craft but were doubtless as prejudiced against freedom of speculation in matters of religion as old-fashioned conservatives like Nicias. It is however quite possible that the charge of blasphemy may have been rather a pretext than the true reason, which may have been the desire of silencing an influential critic who had access to the ears of the public, and whose ideas of justice and humanity were outraged by some political acts of Cleon, as they assuredly must have been by his proposal to put to death the population of Mitylene.

Another blasphemy trial has been recorded, but the record is open to suspicion. Protagoras is said to have been indicted for irreligion, on account of his treatise On the, by Pythodorus and to have escaped from Athens before the trial came on, and the story adds that all copies of the book that could be found were burned publicly in the market place. The occur­rence was dated at the time of the oligarchic revolution of 411 b.c. and what we otherwise know of the chronology of the Sophist’s life makes the whole story dubious.

So little information is preserved as to the details of any of these prosecutions that it is difficult to judge them, especially as we do not know the laws of Solon on the offence of asebeia, or precisely what that term included. But our short review of the cases recorded seems to point to the conclusion that under the early Athenian democracy there was nothing that could be called a policy of religious intolerance, and that when a prosecution for blasphemy occurred there was usually some other interest than that of religion in the background.

It is only in a highly sophisticated society that it would occur to people to ask the question whether punishment is justifiable, and on what grounds. It is still debated, and it was debated in the fifth century b.c.—probably for the first time in man’s history —by Pericles and other thinkers. The vindictive or retributive theory which is the primitive and natural view was considered unsatisfactory, and it is interesting to find that in the speech placed by Thucydides in the mouth of Diodotus, the speaker, discussing punishment, ignores entirely the retributive theory and tacitly assumes that the only reason for punishment is the prevention of crime. This is what he says: “no law will ever prevent people from committing of­fences and doing wrong to others, whatever penalties it impose”.

It is the nature of all men, individually and collectively, to do wrong. Society, in the endeavour to suffer less injury from evil­doers, has exhausted the whole gamut of punishments. In ancient times punishments were lighter; as time went on, they were made severer, and now death is the penalty in most cases, but crimes are still committed. Something more fearful than death must be discovered to outweigh the motives of desire and hope which prompt evildoing.

Another question which exercised men’s minds and lent itself to sophistical discussion was the justification of law, as against nature, which is violated for instance by the restraints which law lays upon those who are stronger and abler than their fellows, thus preventing them from reaping the fruits of their superior strength and ability. The right of the superior man to exercise tyranny and commit acts of injustice could be defended by an appeal to nature, and the prevailing doctrine of Equality of rights in a community be discredited as a principle which had no other basis than an unnatural convention. The best presentation of the argument in favour of the superior man is that which Plato puts in the mouth of Callicles in the Gorgias.

Of the Athenian representatives of the Illumination, who were active during the last thirty years of the fifth century, the three names most eminent and most important for posterity are So­crates, Euripides, and Thucydides. Of these, Thucydides, the founder of critical history, was then still obscure, composing his work in exile, and we know little of him personally. The two most important things we know about him are, as will be shown in the following chapter, that he would not have the gods and would not have women at any price in history. They both represented the irrational, and this was the age of reason. Of Euri­pides, whose influence in literature was to be immense for centuries after his death, we know little, apart from his extant plays; these show us that he was a man unchained by conventional views, that he was not a sound polytheist, that he was sceptical about oracles and omens, that he looked with wavering complacency on the institution of slavery, that his men and women were in the habit of saying things which provoked the audience to think dangerously. Of Socrates we know a good deal, much more than we know of any other man of the time. His trial and death have always been remembered as one of the notable events in the history of civilization.

IV.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SOCRATES

The book of Xenophon on the life and teaching of Socrates, known as the Memorabilia, would, if it stood alone, give us little idea of what Socrates was like, and no idea of the secret of his greatness. Xenophon belonged (probably for a very short time) to the Socratic circle, but he had no notion of what philosophy really means and but a slight first-hand knowledge of the master. He produced a portrait such as a journalist with a commonplace mind might contribute to a gallery of ‘good men,’ and in his endeavour to show that Socrates was a good man he succeeds in concealing the fact that he was a great man. Most of the anec­dotes he tells are uninstructive or insignificant, and some, as edifying stories are apt to be, simply tedious, like the remon­strances of Socrates with his son Lamprocles who could not put up with the rough side of his mother Xanthippe’s tongue. Discerning as Xenophon was in many practical things he displays conspicuous want of discernment here: and for appreciating the personality of Socrates his book is almost negligible, while for most of the bare external incidents of his life that are inter­esting and which a biographer ought to supply, we go to him in vain. He was not present at the trial of Socrates.

It is in the Dialogues of his companion Plato that a figure probably resembling the real Socrates appears. There we find his animae figura, his mind and methods, and the features of his personality, and also many details of his life. At all events, it is very difficult to resist the impression that the Platonic Socrates is a genuine life-like portrait of the original man, however unsocratically Platonic may be the argument and ideas of which he is made the spokesman.

Socrates was born about 470 b.c., and since he served as a hoplite he must have inherited some property from his father, Sophroniscus. He is said to have possessed a house and a capital sum of 70 minae which was invested for him by his friend Crito, who belonged to the same deme (Alopece). He witnessed the development of the Athenian democracy under Pericles and lived through the Peloponnesian War, serving in some of the earlier campaigns. He was a man of strong physical constitution, and of eccentric appearance and habits. His features are well known from portrait busts which are probably faithful enough to reality. With his flat nose and prominent eyes he was compared by his contemporaries to a satyr. He was subject to trances of meditation; when rapt in thought he would stand for hours, unconscious of what was going on around him. He said that from his childhood he used to hear from time to time the monition of an inner voice; its monitions were always negative, never prompting him to an action, but always restraining him from doing things.

What we know of the external events of his life is not a great deal but it is interesting. In his youth he was a pupil of Archelaus, who was a disciple of Anaxagoras, and accompanied him to Samos in 440 b.c. when the Athenians were blockading it. In 437-6 b.c. he may have served as hoplite at Amphipolis, and in 432 b.c. he served at Potidaea; again in 424 b.c. at Delium where he exhibited remarkable presence of mind in the retreat. On these military occasions he showed extraordinary powers of endurance in sus­taining cold, hunger, and fatigue; barefooted in a severe frost he could outmarch the other soldiers who were shod.

Perhaps it was not till he was an elderly man that he was called upon to perform any public duty, beyond serving in the army. In 406 b.c. he was a member of the Council of Five Hundred, being one of the fifty representatives of his tribe (Antiochis). It was the year of Arginusae, and when the unhappy Generals were tried, Socrates was the only member who stood out in refusing to agree with the illegal resolution that all should be tried together. Under the Thirty he risked his life by refusing to carry out an order which was illegal. In all the public affairs in which he happened to be concerned he displayed moral and physical courage and respect for the laws of his city. Thus remarkable for courage and justice, Socrates was no less distinguished for his sobriety and temperance, but he was not an ascetic nor a spoilsport. He would take part in potations, but his head was strong, and he was never the worse for them.

Athenians had taken no part in the scientific speculations which had been so vigorously pursued by men of Ionia and in far western Greece. Archelaus, the instructor of Socrates, was the earliest, and not a very eminent exception. The sharp intellectual curiosity of Socrates was accompanied by a sane spirit of scepticism which was confirmed by the influence of Zeno. He cannot have been much over twenty when he came under that influence which was powerful in determining the direction of his thought.

Parmenides, with his young friend Zeno, may have visited Athens not long after 450 b.c. and, if so, every Athenian of inquiring mind was interested in their visit. In any case, Zeno seems to have resided at Athens for several years; he was the inventor of dialectic and Socrates learned his method.

In the course of time a small circle of friends gathered around Socrates, drawn to him by the stimulus of his conversation. Knowledge he consistently professed himself unable to impart, and these friends were associated with him not as disciples but as fellow-inquirers. Their inquiries appear to have been chiefly concerned with mathematical and physical questions, the doctrines of Anaxagoras and Archelaus and Diogenes of Apollonia and of Pythagoras. In fact during the first half of his life the studies of Socrates were devoted chiefly to physical science; it was in his later years that he turned to the logical and ethical problems with which we chiefly associate his name.

Socrates and his circle became notorious in Athens as the Thinkers, and comic poets seized on them as an obvious and legitimate subject for ridicule. In 423 b.c. Ameipsias produced his Connus, in which the chorus consisted of Thinkers and Socrates was derided, and in the same year was acted the Clouds of Aristophanes in which the scene was laid in the Thinking-shop of Socrates and his fellow-workers.

The most devoted in this group of students was a certain Chaerephon who adored Socrates so sincerely that he went to Delphi and put to the oracle the amazing question “Is any man wiser than Socrates?”. More amazing still was the categorical answer of the oracle, without any reservations, “No one is wiser”. Socrates said that he was greatly puzzled by this reply, being acutely conscious how little he knew. If the oracle were true, it must mean that others were not so wise as they seemed, or imagined themselves to be; and in order to test its truth, he states that he went about questioning and cross-examining persons who were eminent as proficients in their special subjects—politicians, poets, handicraftsmen. None of them stood the test; they were all convinced that they were wise, but none possessed more wisdom than Socrates himself, but he was superior in that he was fully aware of his own ignorance. In this way the oracle was justified. We do not know at what time it was given, but in the later portion of his life Socrates seems to have spent much of his time, not only in his accustomed haunts, the gymnasia of the Academy and the Lyceum, but also in the market-place and the workshops of artisans, cross-examining people and exposing their erroneous convictions that they were wise, thus fulfilling, as he put it, a duty imposed upon him by the god. Defending himself at his trial he said: “People suppose that I am wise myself in those things in which I convict another of ignorance. They are mistaken. The god alone is wise, and his oracle declares that human wisdom is worth little or nothing, using the name of Socrates as an example. That man is wisest who like Socrates knows that he is worthless so far as wisdom is concerned. The disgraceful ignorance is to think you know what you do not know”. Sceptical as Socrates was and always careful to appeal to reason, we cannot fail to sec, in some parts of his defence, that there was a side of his nature which was moved by reasons that reason does not know.

In all ages of active progress, the warfare between the ideas and fashions of a young critical generation, and the old strongly en­trenched opinions and customs which the innovators mock and assail, always presents amusing and humorous pictures which can furnish material for comedy. Comic poets can laugh impartially at the extravagances and the prejudices of both the combatants. If Aristophanes held up to ridicule the scientific Thinkers and the modern critics of society, he did not spare the praisers of the past, the old fogies whose ideas are out of date who bore you with faded memories of the veterans of Marathon, and descant on bygone virtues and modern degeneracy.

We are told nothing of personal relations between Socrates and Pericles, but it is difficult to think that they were not ac­quainted. Socrates, though he belonged to a different class of society, had such a high repute as a thinker and talker that he could hardly have failed to arouse the curiosity and interest of Pericles, and they had many common friends. On the other hand, we hear of an intimacy between Socrates and Aspasia, who, it was even supposed, gave him instruction in the art of rhetoric.

Though Socrates consistently disclaimed the possession of knowledge and therefore of the power of imparting it, he was a master of dialectic, for which he had a natural gift, and he was really teaching all the time, disguising the instruction and the ideas which he communicated under the form of question and answer. Many young men attached themselves to him and were his constant companions, and among them were the men, both Athenians and foreigners, who in the next generation were to be the great thinkers of Greece, the founders of philosophical schools, each emphasizing according to his own temperament a different side of the master’s teaching. Plato, son of Ariston, the greatest of them all; Antisthenes, a poor man, who founded the school of the Cynics, which was the parent of Stoicism; Aristippus of Cyrene, whose Cyrenaic school was to be the parent of Epicureanism; Eucleides of Megara; Phaedo of Eretria; Aeschines, generally called ‘the Socratic,’ to distinguish him from Aeschines the orator. Thus Socrates was in some sense the ancestor of all the later philosophies of Greece. Outside this circle of com­panions, who were virtually disciples, his society was sought by men who were not interested much in philosophical questions but who were interested in listening to him cross-examining people and perhaps hoped to learn the secret of his skill. Two of the most distinguished were the versatile man of letters, Critias, and Alcibiades, of whom the second was an ardent admirer and an intimate friend of the philosopher. It was natural that Socrates should, in the popular mind, have to bear some ill fame for associating with these enemies of the democracy and be held responsible for their mischievous conduct. Although he was always loyal to existing authorities he never concealed his unfavourable opinion of democracy, which must have seemed to him an irrational form of government; Alcibiades called it bluntly “acknowledged folly”.

Throughout the Peloponnesian War Socrates had with perfect impunity pursued his unpopular mission. But under the restored democracy it seemed to some of the democratic leaders that he was a dangerous and insidious anti-democratic influence and that it was desirable to silence him. The fact that he had remained at Athens unharmed during the government of the Thirty could not be made a charge against him on account of the amnesty. As a matter of fact he had barely escaped with his life from the despotism of the Thirty. Two of these oligarchs had been his friends, Critias the leader, and Charmides the uncle of Plato, and knowing that he was no admirer of the democracy they thought they were sure of his adhesion. They did not realize the unshakable strength of his respect for law and his love of justice. But they would not tolerate free speech and Critias thought it well to warn the philosopher that his discussions with the young men who sought his society must cease, and the government then made an effort to associate him with their unjust and tyrannous acts. The tyrants ordered him and four others to go to Salamis and arrest there a certain Leon whom they had resolved to put to death. Socrates said nothing and simply went home. Ide would have been executed for his disobedience to the government, if it had not fallen. This notorious incident however did not convince the people in power that Socrates stood quite outside party sympathies, and cared only for justice and right. They considered him disloyal to democracy, and that his criticisms were more to be feared than the plots of an oligarchical conspirator. It was therefore deemed highly desirable to rid Athens of a citizen whose influence and fearless tongue were felt to be a danger, though he took no part in politics and was the least likely of men to do anything contrary to the law. Anytus, an honest and moderate democrat and at this moment perhaps the most important Athenian statesman next to Thrasybulus, was the prime mover in preparing a prosecution intended to silence the embarrassing philosopher. No one was more determined than Anytus to observe honestly and to interpret strictly the terms of the amnesty; so that he was concerned carefully to keep out of sight the political motive for the action. He decided that the best ground of attacking Socrates successfully would be irreligion; it was common knowledge that the philosopher was far from orthodox. Accordingly an arrangement was made with a minor poet named Meletus, who was a fanatical champion of religion, that he should bring against Socrates a public suit for irreligion and that Anytus should support it by acting as an advocate for the prosecution. Anytus associated with himself a second advocate, a rhetorician named Lycon of whom otherwise we know nothing.

Legal actions having to do with religion came into the court of the King archon. The charge which Meletus lodged against Socrates was formulated thus: “Socrates is guilty of not worshipping the gods whom the city worships, and of introducing religious novelties. He is guilty also of corrupting the young men”. This accusation seems to prove that neglect of the worship of the gods was an indictable offence under the laws of Solon; for no one could now be indicted under the decree of Diopeithes which had been passed to meet the case of Anaxagoras, inasmuch as the effect of the settlement of 403 b.c. was that no prosecution could be based solely on one decree passed before that date.

Meletus, in the writ of indictment, named death as the penalty which he demanded, for irreligion was one of the offences for which there was no punishment fixed by the code; the court itself determined the penalty on each occasion. But the court was limited to a choice between two penalties, that which was de­manded by the prosecutor and one which it was the right of the prisoner himself to propose in case he were found guilty. It was the prisoner’s interest to name a substantial penalty milder than that named in the indictment, yet not so light that it could not be entertained by the jury. A result of this curious judicial method was that the prosecutor generally assessed a penalty greater than he expected or wished to inflict. This is emphatically a case in point. There is no reason to suppose that Anytus wished Socrates to be put to death. It was doubtless expected that if he were convicted he would, as he had a right to do, propose exile as an alternative penalty and the court would assuredly be satisfied with that. To have him out of Athens was the object.

Our knowledge of this famous trial is derived from one of the most memorable and impressive books in the literature of the world, Plato’s Apology of Socrates. The view that it was Plato’s own composition used generally to be held although it was never doubted that it was based on the facts of the trial, but some critics now believe that it is the actual speech of Socrates, edited by Plato for publication, and as near to what was said as, say, a speech of Demosthenes or Cicero in its published form to the speech the orator actually delivered. The truth probably lies be­tween these two views. We cannot suppose that the prisoner was allowed to make an address to the court after the sentence was passed. The epilogue is an addition imagined by Plato, an artistic and moving conclusion. If this is admitted, it must also be al­lowed that Plato may have taken other liberties with the Defence; he may have left out parts of it and considerably expanded other parts. The most grave and perilous of the charges brought against Socrates was that of being a corrupter of youth. That would count for much with the judges because they knew that leading politicians who were enemies of the democracy had cultivated his society—Critias, Alcibiades, Charmides. But this was just the proof of the accusation which Meletus and his two advocates were prohibited from touching on. The amnesty forbade them to pronounce these names. They must however have made an attempt to show in what ways the conversation of Socrates misled and injured the young men. Of this there are no indications in the Defence according to Plato, nor can we discover from that defence how Meletus explained what were the strange religious practices which he alleged that Socrates introduced, as he as­suredly must have done, producing some proof of his statements. It seems to follow that the Apology does not supply a full account of the trial.

Socrates was found guilty by a majority of 60 votes, for he mentions in his Defence that he would have been acquitted if 30 of the votes recorded against him had been for acquittal. It is probable, though not certain, that the number of Athenians in the jury appointed by the king to try the case was 501. If that was so, 225 must have voted in his favour, and it is quite likely that he would have been acquitted if he had assumed a different attitude and had really been concerned to secure a verdict of ‘not guilty.’ But he adopted throughout a very high tone, which was far from calculated to conciliate the court though he expressed himself with his usual urbanity and politeness. He had not condescended to make the conventional appeal to pity by bringing into court his wife and children to excite the compassion of the judges by family tears, as was almost invariably done by prisoners tried on a grave issue, and the omission of which many of the judges might consider an affront to themselves.

When the verdict of his guilt was pronounced, it was for Socrates to submit a punishment less drastic than death, and there can be no question that he could have saved his life if he had proposed banishment. But Socrates was not as other men. His tone now became higher than ever and to the ears of his judges more offensive. “Meletus”, he said, “assesses the penalty at death. What fair counter-assessment then shall I make, Athenians? What do I deserve to suffer, or what fine to pay, because during my life I would not keep quiet, but neglecting the things that most people care for—making money, managing their property, public offices and political clubs—I considered myself really too good for such things, and instead of entering upon these ways of life in which I should have been no good either to you or to myself I set myself on the way of benefaction, to confer the greatest of all benefactions as I assert, by attempting to persuade each of you individually not to care for any of his own belongings before he cares for himself—for his being as good and as wise as possible, nor for any of the city’s belongings before he cares for the city, and on the same principle in all other matters. What then do I deserve for this? Something good surely, Athenians, and a good that would be suitable to me personally, suitable to a poor man who is a benefactor and requires leisure. There is nothing so suitable than that such a man should have free commons in the Prytaneum, far more than for one of you who has won a victory at Olympia in a horse-race or a chariot­race; because while he makes you appear happy, I make you be happy, and he does not need public support while I do. Accordingly, if I am to propose what I deserve, I propose that my sentence be free board in the Prytaneum”.

This was not calculated to conciliate the judges; it was an undisguised ‘contempt of court’ and was quite unnecessary; it seemed as if the prisoner was determined to make it certain that he should be condemned to death. Having by this digression done what he could to dispose the judges against him he returned to business and considered possible penalties which the court might accept. He knew quite well that banishment would probably be considered adequate. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘banishment is what you think I deserve. Yet I should be fond indeed of life, Athenians, if I were so poor a reckoner as to calculate that if you who are my fellow citizens could not put up with my lectures and discourses, and if they have be­come so onerous and offensive, that you are now wishing to rid yourselves of them, other people will readily tolerate them. Nay, a fine life I should have, leaving my own city at my age and moving from one city to another and continually being driven out. I know that wheresoever I came the young men would listen to my talk as they do here. If I repulse them they will persuade the older men to expel me, and if I do not, their fathers and relatives will do so for their sakes.

“But it will be said: But, Socrates, when you leave Athens, why not keep quiet and hold your tongue? This is just what is so difficult to make you understand. To do that would be to disobey the god, and therefore it is impossible to keep quiet. When I say this, you will not believe me, you will take it as irony. And again if I say that a man’s greatest good is to debate every day concerning virtue and the other things you hear me discussing and cross-examining myself and others about, and that the life which is not tested and proved by such examination is not worth living—when I say this, still less do you believe me to be in earnest. If  I hid money I should be ready to offer all I have as a fine; paving it would do me no harm. I could pay a mina. Plato, however, and Crito and two other friends bid me name 30 minae and will stand as sureties for the payment. They are solvent. So I propose this fine”.

The majority voted for death and this majority was greater than the previous one. We can understand that the tone which Socrates had adopted caused resentment among some of those who had originally voted for acquittal. One knows the type of persons who would be reasonable and fair enough to see that the accuser had failed to prove his case and would vote accordingly, yet would feel it an outrage that any prisoner should value his life so little as to neglect all the customary and obvious methods of trying to save it and take no trouble to conciliate the judges. Such an attitude was indecent and dangerous. If prisoners were not afraid of death, what could any one do? Socrates, it almost seemed, was so impertinent as to reverse the roles of judge and accused; he had treated them as if it was they who were on trial, and had gone too far in his insolent assumption that he was a great and good man.

A month intervened between the sentence and the execution, because it happened to be the feast of the Delian Apollo when every year Athens sent a ship to Delos, and the law was that from the time the ship set sail till it returned to the Piraeus the city should not be polluted by any death inflicted by the authority of the State. The ship had been adorned with the official garlands on the day before the trial of Socrates, and, as it turned out, a month elapsed before it returned, a month which he had to spend in the public prison in chains. He seems to have been treated there with much consideration; the overseer of the prison was a humane man and did what he could to make the confinement as little irksome as possible. His friends came daily to visit him and his last days were passed in philosophical discussion. Some of his companions, particularly Crito, urged him to escape; a plan was prepared, and there is little doubt that it could easily have been managed; even the authorities might not have been very unwilling to connive; but Socrates refused to consent. It had always been his principle to obey the laws and had he not been legally con­demned? And to flee from prison and death would have been glaringly inconsistent with his own attitude at the trial and ren­dered it obviously absurd. If to live was such an important consideration as to prompt escape, which meant abiding in exile, he ought clearly to have proposed exile as the alternative penalty.

The last hours and death of Socrates have been described by Plato in his Phaedo. His friends were with him to the end, and he was killed by the painless method of a draught of hemlock poison which produced a gradual paralysis. It is the one famous execution, recorded in history, of which the circumstances are quite ideal; the end of Socrates is marred, for our memory, by no violence or shedding of blood; and modern critics have often praised the Athenians for their humane methods of punishment. But it would be an error to suppose that the ways of brutal evil­doers at Athens were made so easy for them, or that robbers and assassins were treated like Socrates. It is not long ago since excavations near Phalerum revealed evidence that the Athenians used to inflict punishments which in agony rivalled crucifixion and hardly fell short of Assyrian atrocity. We do not know on what principle or in what cases execution by hemlock was adopted.

Among the companions of Socrates his memory was piously cherished, while they were stirred by a deep resentment against the democracy of Athens for the crime of his death. Seen through their eyes, the trial of Socrates by a jury of average practical citizens at the prosecution of an honest politician seems as absurd an event as, to use Plato’s comparison, the trial of a physician in a court of little boys at the instance of a confectioner. The great memorial of Socrates is the body of Plato’s works; no other man has had a more wonderful monument. Having described the last moments of his master, Plato wrote, ‘Such was the end of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, the justest and the best of all the men I have ever known.’ In the study of his imagination the revered master grew into the ideal figure of a perfect philosopher and as such has passed into history. The tragedy changed the course of Plato’s own life. He had always meant to enter political life. The behaviour of the oligarchs during their short tenure of power, in which his relatives Critias and Charmides had been conspicuous, disgusted him so deeply that he was probably inclined to support the democracy, but the crowning injustice of the condemnation of Socrates decided him to abandon the idea of a political career. More than forty years later, in a letter addressed to ‘the friends and associates’ of Dion of Syracuse, he recalled his experience at this time, and his decision to embrace a life of philosophy. Phis is what he says: “Socrates an elderly friend of mine who, I should not be ashamed to say, was the justest man among the men of the time, was sent with others by the Thirty to arrest one of the citizens, to be executed, in order that he (Socrates) might himself share in their actions whether he wished it or not; he refused and ran the extreme risk, rather than become a participant in their wicked deeds. Seeing all these things, and other similar things which were not trifling, I was disgusted and withdrew and stood aloof from the crimes of that Government. Not long afterwards the Thirty fell and the existing constitution was changed. I felt myself again drawn though slowly towards public life. The new Government had merits, though it had also defects, but it so happened that this companion of ours, Socrates, was brought into court by certain men who were in power. They preferred against him a most wicked charge and one which was least applicable to Socrates of all men in the world. They accused him of impiety, and he was condemned and put to death, the man who had refused to take part in the wicked arrest of one of their friends who was trying to flee at the time when they were themselves unfortunate”.

He goes on to explain how this experience of the new de­mocracy finally decided him to give up the idea of a political career.

How great Socrates was as an original thinker, whether he can be set beside Pythagoras, for instance, is a question that is open to dispute, and depends much on the view that is taken of the Platonic Dialogues. But there can be only one opinion as to the greatness and the unique quality of his personality, and his unrivalled power as a stimulator of thought. The Athenians, with the exception of his personal friends, were quite unconscious of his greatness. Posterity looks back at him as the most remarkable figure of the Illumination; the contemporary man in the market-place of Athens probably remembered him merely as an eccentric Sophist. One can imagine what he would have said: “Socrates—yes, an incessant talker, who fancied himself as a good-mixer. He was really an expert bore preaching for ever about virtue and other wearisome things. He got at last what he probably had richly deserved”.

CHAPTER XIV

HERODOTUS AND THUCYDIDES