his life and arms. The prize for courage, though acknowledgedly due to Socrates, was conferred, at his request, on Alcibiades, that he might be encouraged to merit well of his country in her hours of danger again. At Delium, a town on the coast of Boeotia, a territory north of Attica, when the Athenians, under Laches, were defeated, 424 B.C., Socrates fought bravely, and retreated reluctantly. Xenophon, the historian, was thrown from his horse and disabled. Socrates, as Eneas "Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulders The old Anchises bear," caught him up, and carried him beyond the reach of danger. Alcibiades was there, mounted, and kept between Socrates and the enemy to cover his retreat. This valour in saving life is far more glorious than if he had stood 66 Companionless, spreading destruction abroad." The courage of kindliness is preferable to the bravery of carnage. The above two incidents are related with due enthusiasm by Alcibiades in Plato's "Symposium," which has been beautifully translated by Shelley. Amphipolis, one of the most important commercial towns in the Athenian possessions in the north of the Egean Sea (Archipelago), colonized in 437 B.C., was seized by Brasidas, a Lacedemonian general, in 424 B.C.; and an expedition was sent out from Athens, under Cleon, for its recovery. Socrates, though beyond the years when he was legally bound to do service, was present and active. The affair was unsuccessful; and Socrates returned to the more congenial pursuits of peace. We have, in the preceding paragraphs, anticipated chronology, and must now revert to prior events. At what time Socrates became the public controversialist of Athens it is impossible to determine accurately-nor is it requisite; the manner, and in great measure the matter, of his teaching we know; and these things are to us much more precious than a mere knowledge of the time at which he began his mission. Athens was at this time indeed-as Pericles affirmed-" the school of Greece." Though burnt by Xerxes only twelve years before the birth of Socrates, it had-under the administrations of Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles-been so rebuilt, as to have compelled the admiration of succeeding ages. Its streets, it is true, were ill laid out, and its private houses mediocre; but its public edifices and temples were witnesses at once of Attic taste, genius, skill, munificence, and magnificence. The Acropolis, templecrowned and sculpture-crowded, rose in the centre. The Parthenon and the Erectheum were there, and between them the colossal statue of Athena Promachos (first in fight) threw the gleam of its helmet and the flash of its spear from sea-board to wall. The Areopagus, with law-engraven walls, is there too; and on it the wise men of the state hold counsel and give judgment in presence of the citizens-then numbering about 140,000. The Gardens of Illysus margined the river on the city side, and the long walls stretched down to the three harbour towns, where, by the commercial enterprise of her citizens, Athens had gathered the precious things of all known lands; Gymnasia, Agorai (market places), and public halls were numerous, and, in or near these, assemblies were frequent; for the people were notorious gossips and newsmongers, inveterate talkers, adepts at scandal, and anxious about nothing so much as "either to tell or to hear some new thing." Athens had an annual revenue of about £200,000; and its public offices were filled with functionaries who looked keenly, if not well, after their affairs. Pericles, Alcibiades, Nicias, Cleon, &c., were, in the time of Socrates, among its lawgivers and rulers; Herodotus, Xenophon, and Thucydides composed history; Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides produced the masterpieces of Greek tragedy; and the satiric humour of Aristophanes vented itself in comedy; the sculptures of Phidias, Callicrates, and Mnesicles, the paintings of Parrhasius, and the orations of Lysias and Isocrates, excited and delighted the people; while the Sophists walked in pompous grandiosity, making a parade of their knowledge amongst the wondering crowds of the Athenian populace. Wealth, luxury, energy, intellectual inquisitiveness, wit, conversational urbanity, and immense power of quibble and quarrel, abounded in Athens. It was an age of general intermeddlement and mutual interference. Wordcraft and statecraft were confounded and intertangled; and logic-chopping was more industriously and artistically studied than stone-chipping-as the Sophists sneeringly called sculpture. Socrates chose his life's aim well, and fitted it excellently to the spirit of his age. Among talkers, he too would talk-but with a purpose; among a dramatically-inclined people he would win attention by the quick-cued dialogue of everyday life; among the critical, he too would criticize-but among pretenders he would not be one. Talk, with him, was thought made vital-it was the gymnastic training of Reason. Truth has seldom or ever had sterner or stranger devotee among men. There he goes-squab, rotund, ungainly, and protuberant of paunch; snub-nosed, ox-eyed, thick-lipped, burly-headed, broadbrowed, with a nape of the neck like a butcher's; bare-foot, shabbily dressed, almost satyr-like; mean-looking, rude, virtuous; in each affair measuring all wisdom by its last results. A hero unrefined in speech, yet with a witchery of tongue, a keenness of logic, a readiness of wit, a pungency of style, and skill in exciting intellectual activity, unequalled in Athens. In contented poverty, yet haughty independence; in public converse distinguished-even amid crowds of Sophists and professional haranguers-for striking originality and appropriateness to time, place, and subject, he passes his life in the self-imposed task of teaching and suggesting topics of thought to any and every one who chooses to listen. He was constantly in public; for he went in the morning to the promenades and the gymnasia; 66 at the time when the market-places were full, he was to be seen in "With stately strut along the streets, with eyes askance and mocking, Ameipsias, too† even while ridiculing him, is obliged to confess"This worthy man, Though ne'er so hungry, never flatters any one." What singular seductiveness of manner, of bonhommie, mingled with irony! What strange sympathies must his have been, who knit to himself the affections of the wealthy, the beautiful, the noble, the intellectual, and the young! Seizing and transporting with the fervour of passion alike the wise Euripides, luxurious Alcibiades, spiritual Plato, enthusiast Xenophon, fair, frail, but intellectual Aspasia, and the coy decoy Theodota! Yes! this is the man of whom the Pythia of the Delphic oracle has made this declarationSophocles is wise, Euripides is wiser, but the wisest of all men is Socrates!" Had this Pythic and pithy compliment any influence upon his mind in inclining him to make the inscription on the temple at Delphi-"Know thyself"-the text of his philosophy? One means only have we now of ascertaining the date of his public apostolate in favour of morality, i. e., the production of "The Clouds." In the spring of 423 B.C., at the Dionysian festival, when Athens was filled with tribute-bringers from all parts of Greece and the islands of the Ægean, this play was first performed. Prior to this, therefore, Socrates must have acquired sufficient notoriety to be singled out as a fit object for theatrical caricature, and been of mark enough to make a taking subject. Of the moral signification of this play we have already spoken, and have attempted to supply a reading consistent with the known friendship of Socrates and Aristophanes, and the hatred of both for the Sophists and their demoralized disciples; and to that interpretation we still adhere. That the play unintentionally operated against Socrates, when the jealous Meletus-well bitten by the satire of both Aristophanes and Socrates, and therefore well acquainted with both-took from it, by suggestion, the grounds of an accusation against the burgher of Alopece, it would be unwise to deny; though it was, we are sure, intended to hit harder against Euripides, Theramenes, Critias, Xenophon's "Memorabilia," I. i. 10. † Diogenes Laertius, "Socrates," ix. British Controversialist, May, 1860, p. 290. Prodicus, and Alcibiades-who is specially and poignantly touched in the body of the drama-than against him whom, in that very comedy, Aristophanes makes the chorus address thus: "Prudent man, who long'st through us to be true wisdom's phoenix, And prove it best for every man that nothing he should use ill."* Before 423 B.C., then, Socrates must have been teaching; and so teaching, though unprofessionally and unprofessedly, as to have acquired a wide reputation for eccentricity of manner, curious multifariousness of lore, and strange notions of man and his highest happiness; and we know that this comedy made no alteration in his conduct, but that he went about fearlessly and actively as ever, braving the scorn of men with itching ears; and, with impassive firmness, working the work before him, despite of the misconstructions of men. Pericles died in 429 B.C. Cleon, Nicias, and Alcibiades then became competitors for supremacy in Athens. Cleon was rash, blustering, talkative, and atheistic; Nicias, cold, timid, superstitious, and reserved; Alcibiades, egotistic, versatile, wealthy, eloquent, ambitious. In their contests Socrates took no part. Cleon fell at Amphipolis, 422 B.C.; Nicias perished in Syracuse, 413 B.C.; Alcibiades, after Cleon's death, became a leading politician, but was scarcely deemed trustworthy, and popular fear and jealousy kept Athens on the rack about his likings and doings. He was suspected, charged with wishing to establish a democracy, recalled from a command he had received in Sicily, 415 B.C., fled in fear of injustice, was restored to citizenship in 407 B.C., was superseded next year, went into exile, and was assassinated at Bisanthe, in the Thracian Chersonesus, 404 B.c. Socrates opposed the expedition against Sicily, as unjust; and the sorrow in which it closed seemed to make good his auguries. In this interval the victory of Arginusæ, 406 B.C., occurred. *That we are so far right in our conjecture regarding this drama may be further inferred from the fact that, though the comedy was popular with the people, the judges awarded the prize to Cratinus, "the wine-bibber," who contested with Aristophanes and Amepsias, both of whom had placed Socrates amongst their dramatis personæ. As these judges were specially appointed to decide upon the merits of each drama critically, there can be little doubt that defects in characterization-so palpable in their nature as those regarding Socrates-must, notwithstanding the wit of the dialogue and comicality of the incidents, have been the cause of the failure. Aristophanes himself thought it the best of his pieces; and as he lived till after the trial and death of Socrates, it is not likely that he would have remained in that opinion, had it been through other cause than a misunderstanding of its meaning that his friend had been treated to hemlock by the State. Near these three islands the Athenians conquered the Spartans. After the battle a storm arose; and neither were the warriors slain in battle picked up and buried, nor the living saved from the vessels wrecked by warfare or by the storm. Joy for the victory was mingled with grief and horror at the fate of these victims of battle and the elements. The generals, though thanked, were superseded, and recalled. Six came, one was faultless, one slain, and two held aloof in fear. They were tried before the public assembly. An astute, far-sighted, ambitious statesman, Theramenes, was their accuser. Thrasybulus, who was implicated in the generals' report, helped him. The evidence was contradictory, and the trial was adjourned. The solemn days of the Apaturia (registration) intervened. The relatives of the dead clad themselves in mourning during those days of joy; for it was the belief of the Greeks that the unburied dead wandered in woe a hundred years along the banks of the Styx. This affected the citizens much, and the minds of the people were inflamed against the generals by this sad demonstration. It was proposed to take the votes upon the criminality of the accused at one finding-guilty or not guilty on all in one. This was contrary to all law and precedent; for each man was entitled to separate trial and judgment. The people determined it should be done. The tribe Antiochis occupied that day the Prytanæum (judgment hall). Socrates was president-an office legally held one day only. He refused to entertain the proposal, because it was illegal. Menace and clamour were employed: the mob became furious. Socrates would not commit an act of injustice on the seat of justice, and he held out. The other judges wavered, then yielded; but he would not put it to the vote. His duty he would do, whatever betide. The assembly was adjourned-a new president was chosen-the vote was taken the urns were set-the generals were doomed, and they perished by hemlock. It is pleasing to know that one man in Athens could outbrave the mob in the interest of law, justice, and a reverence for right; still more so, that that one man was Socrates. It is a noble power that to be able to stand alone. Athens after this fell into sore straits. Calamity and failure followed each other with close-coming footsteps; and, in the leaderless state of Athens, intrigue—which had become more fashionable than intelligence and effort-became active, powerful, supreme. Ambition imped its wings. Antiphon gained a change in the constitution. The uncontrolled power of the State was vested in four hundred men of wealth and dignity. Their tyranny became intole rable, and they were overthrown. War continued. Famine and disease united their energies with war to feed death. Athens fell before Lysander; and the seventy-sixth anniversary of Salamis saw the queen of the sea subject to Sparta. Thirty tyrants-persons possessed of supreme power-were appointed. To be popular was dangerous; to be wealthy was a crime. Socrates continued his dialectic conversations throughout all changes of men and things. The tyrants desired to silence him; and forbade the pursuit of his |