CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE STORY OF THE TRIAL.
It is not too much to say that the young man was prostrated by the news which he had just heard, for the blow fell upon him with a suddenness that seemed to increase the pain tenfold. He had not been indeed on the same intimate terms of friendship with the great philosopher as the older disciples, Crito, Simmias, Cebes, Phaedo and others had been. But he had regarded him with an affection and admiration that was nothing less than enthusiastic; and he had looked forward to getting his advice about the future conduct of his life with a hopeful eagerness that made disappointment very bitter. To find himself in Athens after all the vicissitudes of fortune through which he had passed, and to learn that the man without whom Athens scarcely seemed itself, was lost to him forever, was a terrible shock. Xenophon’s sorrow had not been less keen, but he had been prepared for his loss by at least a few days’ previous knowledge. The news had reached him while he was on his way, and the first shock was over when he landed. But there had been nothing to break the news to Callias. He felt as a son might feel who returns home after a long absence in full expectation of a father’s greeting, and finds himself an orphan.
So overpowered was the young man that he felt solitude to be absolutely necessary for a time.
“Let me talk to you about it another day,” he said to Xenophon, “at present I am not master of myself.”
Xenophon clasped his friend’s hand with a warm and sympathetic pressure. “I understand,” he said. “Yet, I think it will comfort you when you hear how he bore himself at the last and what he said. Come to me to-morrow; Hippocles will tell you where I live.”
Early the next morning, Callias presented himself at Xenophon’s house, a modest little dwelling, not far from the garden of Academus. He found him in the company of some friends, most of whom were more or less known to the young man as having been members of the circle which had been accustomed to listen to the teaching of the great master. Crito, Menexenus and Æschines, and the two Thebans, Cebes and Simmias, were among the number; and there were others whom he did not recognize. He was greeted with kindness and even distinction. His host had evidently been giving a favorable account of him to the company.
“I thought it best,” Xenophon went on to explain, “to ask some of those who were actually present when these things happened, to meet you. I myself, as you know, was not here; and it is well that you should hear a story so important from eye-witnesses, men who saw his demeanor with their own eyes, and heard his words with their own ears.”
“I thank you,” said Callias. “But tell me first how it was that such things came to pass. It seems incredible to me. I have heard that here and there a man has been found so monstrously wicked that he could kill his own father, though Solon thought it so impossible a crime that he would impose no penalty on it. But that a whole people should be stricken with such madness of wickedness seems to pass all imagination or belief.”
“Ah! you do not understand,” said Simmias; “I am a foreigner you know; and those who look at things from outside often see more of them than they who are within. I had long thought that Socrates was making many enemies in Athens. And verily if he had said such things in my own city, as he said here, I doubt whether he had been suffered to live so long.”