Memorabilia

ind is the belief that Soc

he never lacked sufficiency - is it credible that such a man could have made others irreverent or lawless, or licentious, or effeminate in face of toil? Was he not rather the saving of many through the passion for virtue which he roused in them, and the hope he infused that thr

he disapproved,20 to gratify the natural claim of appetite in conjunction with moderate exercise was a system he favoured, as tending to a healthy condition of the body without trammel

ing his own freedom; in so much that he stigmatised those who condescended to take wages for their society as vendors of their own persons, because they were compelled to discuss for the benefits of their paymasters. What surprised him was th

would play their parts as good and true friends to himself and one another their lives long. Once more then:

. But for myself I think that those who cultivate wisdom and believe themselves able to instruct their fellow-citizens as to their interests are least likely to become partisans of violence. They are too well aware that to violence attach enmities and dangers, whereas results as good may be obtained by persuasion safely and amicably. For the victim of violence hates with vindictiveness as one from whom something precious has been stolen, while the willing subject of persuasion is ready to kiss the hand which has done hi

cibiades the democrat. Where would you find a more arrant thief, savage, and murderer24 than the one? where such a portent of insolence, incontinence, and high-handedness as the other? For my pa

in respect of pleasures; lastly that he was so formidable in debate that there was no antagonist he could not twist round his little finger. Such being their views, and such the character of the pair, which is the more probable: that they sought the society of Socrates because they felt the fascination of his life, and were attracted by the

be the masters of those they came in contact with than they sprang aside from Socrates and

s own precepts, and this along with argumentative encouragement. Now I know that Socrates disclosed himself to his companions as a beautiful and noble being, who would reason and debate with them concerning virtue and other human interests in the nobl

however, is not my own conclusion. It is with the workings of the soul as with those of the body; want of exercise of the organ leads to inability of function, here bodily, there spiritual, so that we can neither do the things that we should nor abstain

et27 is a witn

bleness; but, and if thou minglest with the ba

28 who

s hour of baseness as we

habits of drunkenness or plunges headlong into licentious love, loses his old power of practising the right and abstaining from the wrong. Many a man who has found frugality easy whilst passion was cold, no sooner falls in love than he loses the faculty at once, and in his prodigal expenditure of riches he will no longer withhold his hand from gains which in former days were too base to invite his touch. Where then is the difficulty of supposing that a man may be temperate today, and to

in lawlessness than justice. And Alcibiades fared no better. His personal beauty on the one hand incited bevies of fine ladies33 to hunt him down as fair spoil, while on the other hand his influence in the state and among the allies exposed him to the corruption of many

ame Socrates kept them modest and well-behaved, not one word of praise is uttered by the accuser for all this. That is not the measure of justice elsewhere meted. Would a master of the harp or flute, would a teacher of any sort who has turned out proficient pupils, be held to account because one of them goes away to another teacher and turns out to be a failure? Or what father, if he have a son who in the society of a certain friend remains an honest lad, but falling into the company of some other becomes a good-for-nothing, will that father straightway accuse the earlier instruct

attached to Euthydemus,35 aware too that he was endeavouring to deal by him after the manner of those wantons whose love is carnal of the body. From this endeavour he tried to deter him, pointing out how i

asion of the presence of a whole company and of Euthydemus to remark that Critias appeared to be suffering from a swini

ates, if I may judge from anything I ever heard fall from his lips myself or have learnt about him from others. But the animus of Critias was clear. At the time when the Thirty were putting citizens, highly respectable citizens, to death wholesale, and when they were egging on one man after another to the commission of crime, Socrates let fall an observation: "It would be sufficiently extraordinary if the keeper of a herd of cattle39 who was continually thinning and impoverishing his cattle did not admit himself to be a sor

," the two

n the supposition that the art of words tends to correctness of statement or to incorrectness that you bid us abstain from it? for

ance,40 Socrates, we will frame the prohibition in language better suited to you

doing anything else than what you are pleased to command, may I ask

s a member of the Council,41 as not having attained to the maturity of wisdom

t to ask, what is the price of this? if

ou have a way of asking questions, when all the while you kno

concerns what I know, as, for instance, where doe

time you had better have done with your shoemakers, carpenters, and coppersmiths.42 These must

their attendant topics also -

cowherds in particular; or else see that you

tes about the cattle had come to their ears,

ng to the pupil there is no education. Now it cannot be said of Critias and Alcibiades that they associated with Socrates because they found him pleasing to them. And this is true of the whole period. From the fir

twenty he engaged his own guardian, Pericles, at that time

les, can you teach

be sur

e epithet "law-abiding" applied in a complimentary sense; yet, it strikes

law is? Well, those are laws which the majority, being met together in conclave, appr

that it is right to do what i

to be sure, young s

n the case of an oligarchy, the minority, who me

state after deliberation enacts as our

ower in the state, enacts rules of conduct

ant as head of the state enact

ne them? Is it not when a stronger man forces a weaker to do

should

thout persuading the citizens, drives them by ena

tement that measures passed by a tyrant w

asion of the majority, but in the exercise of its power only

s another to do without persuasion, whether by

of its power over the possessors of wealth, and without persuading th

hands at such quibbles ourselves. It was just such subtleties which

do wish we could have met in those days whe

their backs on Socrates. They found his society unattractive, not to speak of the annoyance of being cross-questioned on their own

excel in the rhetoric of the Assembly or the law-courts, but with the nobler ambition of attaining to such beauty and goodliness of soul as would enable them to discharge the various duties of life to ho

at he could make them wiser than their sires, or by pointing out that the law allowed a son to sue his father for aberration of mind, an

superiors in knowledge; and to come to the bottom of such questions, to discover the difference between madness and ignorance was a problem which he was perpetually working at. His opinion came to this: If a madman may,

other." "Listen further to his language about friends," says the accuser: "'What is the good of their being kindly disposed, unless they can be of some practical use to you? Mere goodness of disposition is nothing; those only are worthy of honour who combine with the knowledge of what is right the faculty of expou

sight." "Even in life," he used to say, "each of us is ready to part with any portion of his best possession - to wit, his own body - if it be useless and unprofitable. He will remove it himself, or suffer another to do so in his stead. Thus men cut off their own nails, hair, or corns; they allow surgeon

means lack of worth;48 and so he called upon his hearers to be as sensible and useful as they could be, so that, be it father or brother or any one else whose este

s of the famous poets, and using them as evidences, he taught his assoc

ce; slackness of wo

f the poet enjoined us to abstain from no work wic

hat "work is good and idleness a curse," the question arises, whom did he mean by workers? In his vocabulary only those were good workmen50 who were engaged on good work; dicers a

grace; only idle

ver on his lips, as the accuser tells us -

ce, or ma

he would restrain with

you not to fly, or

stay yourself, but s

'd; the worst, whose spi

ceptre, chid, and said,

thou art base, and b

without name in c

not all

ch indeed would have been tantamount to maintaining that he ought to be beaten himself. What he did say was, that those who were useful neither in word nor deed, who were incapable of re

t his hands were taken and sold at high prices to the rest of the community by some,54 who were not, as he was, lovers of the people, since with those who had not money to give in return they refused to discourse. But of Socrates be it said that in the eyes of the whole world he reflected more honour on the state and a richer lustre than ever Lichas,55 whose fame is prove

nd this I take to be the strictly legal view of the case, for what does the law require?56 "If a man be proved to be a thief, a filcher of clothes, a c

imputation of any of those misdoings. WHere then is his liability to the indictment to be found? Who, so far from disbelieving in the gods, as set forth in the indictment, was conspicuous beyond all men for service to heaven; so far from corrupting the young - a charge alleged with insistence by the prosecutor - was

[Plat.] "Er

antz, op. cit., "Einleitun," S. 6: "Die Anklager

te on the colour of a bean. See Aristot. "

l." I. and

istatos te kai biaiotatis, translate "such a manner of greed and violence

indedness," "temperence.

ix. 30, areskei d' autois kai ten areten didakten einai, katha phesin 'Antisthe

. See "Symp." ii. 4

unknown. See Pl

." V. i. 9 fo

, "Hellenica Essa

at.] "Thea

ell." II.

t. "Ages.,

"Henry VIII. II. iv. 110": "But your heart i

V. ii. 1 (if th

. 2; Dem. 706. For Charicles see Lys. "c.

Laert. II.

iein, "of making the worse appear th

o Chrys.

ot. "de Soph

e. See W. L. Newman,

A; "Symp." 221 E; Dio Chr

us in the pages of Plato, ("Crito," "Apol

1407, where Pheidippides "drags his

ote, "H.

so angry venture to say of myself, that I am as capable as

tot. "Eth.

s and worthless

'Ergon d' ouden oneidos.

elow, II

8 foll., 199 fo

f the people he saw and fou

3; Plat. "Hipp. maj.

g. Laert.

Plut. "Cim." 284 C. For the Gymnopaediae,

36; Plat. "Rep." 57

means of which states and families are pr