[188] Convivium: end.
[189] Convivium, § xxxix., part ii., vol. ii., p. 452, ed. Bekker.
[190] Xen. Conviv., c. 3. So in the Protagoras of Plato, part i., chap. 92, vol. ii., p. 221, ed. Bekker. “Such meetings as these, when they occupy men such as most of us here profess to be, require no stranger’s voice, and no poets, whom it is impossible to question about the meaning of what they relate ... but such men seek the company of each other for their own sakes, giving and making trial of each other in their conversation.”
[191] Plat. Laches, § 14, part i., vol. i., p. 270, ed., Bekker.
[192] Convivium, § 44, part ii., vol. ii., p. 465, ed., Bekker.
[193] It would seem to be, in reference to this sort of feeling, that Plato puts these words into the mouth of Socrates, after sentence passed on him near the end of the Apology: “For now you have done this, thinking that you should be liberated from the necessity of giving an account of your life;” a necessity which, to take Socrates’ own account of his conduct, they may have been very glad to be liberated from. “For if you should put me to death, you will not easily find such another (though the comparison is ridiculous) whom Divinity has united to this city as to a generous and great horse; but sluggish through his magnitude, and requiring to be excited by some fly. In like manner, Divinity appears to have united me, being somewhat like this (i. e., the fly) to the city, that I might not cease exciting, persuading, and reproving each of you, and everywhere settling on you all day long.”—Apol. ed., Bekk., part i., vol ii., chap. 18, p. 118. Nobody, however, ever heard that the horse was grateful to the fly. Again, “As to what I before observed, that there is great enmity towards me amongst the vulgar, you may be well assured that it is true. And this it is which will condemn me, if I should be condemned—the hatred of the multitude, and not Melitus or Anytus.”—Part i., vol. ii., chap. 16, p. 112, ed., Bekk.
[194] Solon appointed a set of officers, ten in number, who were called ῥέτορες, speakers, to argue and explain to the people the merits of public questions, for a certain fee. Their qualifications were to be made the subject of a very close inquiry, according to his laws. Whether in later times the appellation was confined to these recognized speakers, or whether all who were ready to speak and plead causes, as Lysias, Isocrates, &c., were so called, the author has not been able to ascertain to his satisfaction; but he believes the latter to be the case, which is not incompatible with the term still retaining its special meaning, as the title of an officer. Demosthenes calls himself a ῥέτωρ (De Cor. 301). In later times they acquired much more importance. Demosthenes was a sort of prime minister. In his time, he says, the orators and generals ran in couples; one to plan and defend, the other to perform (ῥέτωρ ἡγεμὼν, καὶ στρατηγὸς ὡπὸ τούτῳ, De Rep. Ord., 173). In earlier times, on the contrary, all the leaders in Athens were men of action, Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles, &c., down to Nicias and Alcibiades, though most of them cultivated eloquence at the same time. Even Cleon thought it necessary to pretend to military renown.
[195] The passage of Ælian (iii., 17), quoted both by Mitford and Mitchell, as giving the true solution of the cause of Socrates’ death, contains no solution at all of that problem: it merely tells us, what we knew on better authority, that Socrates did not like democracy. Xenophon, Mem. i., c. 2, does more to support this opinion; for he states distinctly that the avowed dislike of Socrates to the practice of choosing magistrates by lot, the bad character of his pupils Alcibiades and Critias, and his alleged perversion of passages in the poets, to teach his pupils “to be evil–doers and supporters of tyrannies,” were topics insisted on by his accusers in the speech for the prosecution. Nor is it improbable that such topics had their weight with many in the multitude of judges who composed the court, a body too numerous to discriminate and weigh evidence.
[196] Apol., c. x., part i., vol. ii., p. 103, ed., Bekker.
[197] “Seeing Anytus pass by, he said, ‘In truth this man is self–important, as if he would have done some great and noble action, in having procured my death, because I said that it was not expedient that he should educate his son about hides, seeing that he himself was held in the highest esteem by the commonwealth.’”—Apol. Xen., § 29. In the Menon of Plato, Anytus is represented as taking great offence with Socrates, for showing that neither Aristides nor Pericles, nor other great statesmen, had been able to educate their sons so as to impart to them their own great abilities (he omits to mention Miltiades, who had a son more eminent than himself, Cimon): a ground of offence which seems odd enough, unless we suppose Anytus to have felt that Socrates was talking at him all the time. Anytus concludes his share in the dialogue with a caution to the philosopher against his freedom of speech, and a hint that in all places it is readier to do harm than good to a man, and of all places, most especially in Athens. ‘No wonder,’ Socrates replies, ‘that Anytus is angry, since he thinks that I am abusing men, of whom he esteems himself to be one’ (Ed., Bekker, part ii., vol. i., p. 378, § 34). These men are the πολιτικὸι (see § 42;) so that Anytus was both πολιτικὸς, and (as being a leather–dealer) δημιουργὸς; the two terms used in the passage quoted from the Apology, and in both capacities it would seem that Socrates had offended him. One of the commentators on Plato (Forster, Apol. as above) tells us that the tradesmen of Athens thought that Socrates corrupted the youth of Athens, because he disapproved of educating young men, as Anytus is said to have brought up his son solely to the lucrative crafts of their fathers, and because he led them into the idle habit of thinking and talking. It may be observed that the character of Anytus did not stand quite clear; since, according to Diodorus, having been sent with a fleet to relieve Pylos, and having failed to do so, as he alleged, from the badness of the weather, he was accused of treachery, “and, being in great danger, bought himself off, being the first of the Athenians, as it appears, who ever bribed a court of justice” (Diod., xiii. 64).