Callias listened with delight. “Oh, how like him!” he cried.
“Yes,” replied Crito, “like him indeed, and truly admirable. But such things do not please those to whom they are spoken, especially do not please men in power. Then consider the number of empty-headed, ignorant fellows whose vanity and conceit he exposed every day by his pitiless questioning. There was not a pretentious fool in Athens whom he had not at some time or other held up to ridicule.”
“And they deserved it richly,” said Callias.
“Yes,” replied the other, “but I have never found that a man liked punishment more because he knew that he deserved it. So you see that the city was full of his enemies. And there were some honest men who really believed that he did harm by his teaching. What with knaves whom he opposed with all his might, and fools whom he exposed, and right-minded, wrong-headed men whom he could not help offending, there was a very formidable host arrayed against him.”
“I see,” said Callias. “But they must have had some pretext, they could not put any of the things you have been speaking about into a formal charge. Tell me, what did they accuse him of?”
“Oh, it was the old story, treason and blasphemy. Men who would have sold their country for a quarter of a talent, men who believe in no other gods than their own lusts, were loud in proclaiming that Socrates had ruined the State, and was teaching the young not to worship the gods.”
“Good heavens!” cried Callias, “how dared they utter such lies? A better patriot, a truer worshipper of the gods never lived.”
“You are right; yet, these were the charges against him, these and other things equally absurd, as that he taught the young to despise their fathers and to think meanly of all their relatives and friends, as if he himself were the only friend that was worth having; that he perverted words from Homer and the old poets to a bad sense, making them mean that no work was disgraceful so that it brought in gain, and that it was lawful for kings and nobles to beat the common people[85]—these were the charges that they brought against him. And then they added the accusation that Critias and Alcibiades who had done great harm to Athens had both been disciples of his.”
“But tell me,” said Callias, “how did these liars and villains proceed? And first, who were they? Who took the lead?”
“One Meletus was the chief.”