We know nothing of the speeches of either of the accusers before the dikastery, except what can be picked out from the remarks in Xenophon and the defence of Plato. Of the three counts of the indictment, the second was the easiest for them to support, on plausible grounds. That Sokratês was a religious innovator, would be considered as proved by the peculiar divine sign, of which he was wont to speak freely and publicly, and which visited no one except himself. Accordingly, in the “Platonic Defence,” he never really replies to this second charge. He questions Melêtus before the dikastery, and the latter is represented as answering, that he meant to accuse Sokratês of not believing in the gods at all;[755] to which imputed disbelief Sokratês answers with an emphatic negative. In support of the first count, however,—the charge of general disbelief in the gods recognized by the city,—nothing in his conduct could be cited; for he was exact in his legal worship like other citizens, and even more than others, if Xenophon is correct.[756] But it would appear that the old calumnies of the Aristophanic “Clouds” were revived, and that the effect of that witty drama, together with similar efforts of Eupolis and others, perhaps hardly less witty, was still enduring; a striking proof that these comedians were no impotent libellers. Sokratês manifests greater apprehension of the effect of the ancient impressions, than of the speeches which had been just delivered against him: but these latter speeches would of course tell, by refreshing the sentiments of the past, and reviving the Aristophanic picture of Sokratês, as a speculator on physics as well as a rhetorical teacher for pleading, making the worse appear the better reason.[757] Sokratês, in the “Platonic Defence,” appeals to the number of persons who had heard him discourse, whether any of them had ever heard him say one word on the subject of physical studies;[758] while Xenophon goes further, and represents him as having positively discountenanced them, on the ground of impiety.[759]
As there were three distinct accusers to speak against Sokratês, so we may reasonably suppose that they would concert beforehand on what topics each should insist; Melêtus undertaking that which related to religion, while Anytus and Lykon would dwell on the political grounds of attack. In the “Platonic Apology,” Sokratês comments emphatically on the allegations of Melêtus, questions him publicly before the dikasts, and criticizes his replies: he makes little allusion to Anytus, or to anything except what is formally embodied in the indictment; and treats the last count, the charge of corrupting youth, in connection with the first, as if the corruption alleged consisted in irreligious teaching. But Xenophon intimates that the accusers, in enforcing this allegation of pernicious teaching, went into other matters quite distinct from the religious tenets of Sokratês, and denounced him as having taught them lawlessness and disrespect, as well towards their parents as towards their country. We find mention made in Xenophon of accusatory grounds similar to those in the “Clouds;” similar also to those which modern authors usually advance against the sophists.
Sokratês, said Anytus and the other accusers, taught young men to despise the existing political constitution, by remarking that the Athenian practice of naming archons by lot was silly, and that no man of sense would ever choose in this way a pilot or a carpenter, though the mischief arising from bad qualification, was in these cases far less than in the case of the archons.[760] Such teaching, it was urged, destroyed in the minds of the hearers respect for the laws and constitution, and rendered them violent and licentious. As examples of the way in which it had worked, his two pupils Kritias and Alkibiadês might be cited, both formed in his school; one, the most violent and rapacious of the Thirty recent oligarchs; the other, a disgrace to the democracy, by his outrageous insolence and licentiousness;[761] both of them authors of ruinous mischief to the city.
Moreover, the youth learned from him conceit of their own superior wisdom, and the habit of insulting their fathers as well as of slighting their other kinsmen. Sokratês told them, it was urged, that even their fathers, in case of madness, might be lawfully put under restraint; and that when a man needed service, those whom he had to look to, were not his kinsmen, as such, but the persons best qualified to render it: thus, if he was sick, he must consult a surgeon; if involved in a lawsuit, those who were most conversant with such a situation. Between friends also, mere good feeling and affection was of little use; the important circumstance was, that they should acquire the capacity of rendering mutual service to each other. No one was worthy of esteem except the man who knew what was proper to be done, and could explain it to others: which meant, urged the accuser, that Sokratês was not only the wisest of men, but the only person capable of making his pupils wise; other advisers being worthless compared with him.[762]
He was in the habit too, the accusation proceeded, of citing the worst passages out of distinguished poets, and of perverting them to the mischievous purpose of spoiling the dispositions of youth, planting in them criminal and despotic tendencies. Thus he quoted a line of Hesiod: “No work is disgraceful; but indolence is disgraceful:” explaining it to mean, that a man might without scruple do any sort of work, base or unjust as it might be, for the sake of profit. Next, Sokratês was particularly fond of quoting those lines of Homer, in the second book of the Iliad, wherein Odysseus is described as bringing back the Greeks, who had just dispersed from the public agora in compliance with the exhortation of Agamemnôn, and were hastening to their ships. Odysseus caresses and flatters the chiefs, while he chides and even strikes the common men; though both were doing the same thing, and guilty of the same fault; if fault it was, to obey what the commander-in-chief had himself just suggested. Sokratês interpreted this passage, the accuser affirmed, as if Homer praised the application of stripes to poor men and the common people.[763]
Nothing could be easier than for an accuser to find matter for inculpation of Sokratês, by partial citations from his continual discourses, given without the context or explanations which had accompanied them; by bold invention, where even this partial basis was wanting; sometimes also by taking up real error, since no man who is continually talking, especially extempore, can always talk correctly. Few teachers would escape, if penal sentences were permitted to tell against them, founded upon evidence such as this. Xenophon, in noticing the imputations, comments upon them all, denies some, and explains others. As to the passages out of Hesiod and Homer, he affirms that Sokratês drew from them inferences quite contrary to those alleged;[764] which latter seem, indeed, altogether unreasonable, invented to call forth the deep-seated democratical sentiment of the Athenians, after the accuser had laid his preliminary ground by connecting Sokratês with Kritias and Alkibiadês. That Sokratês improperly depreciated either filial duty or the domestic affections, is in like manner highly improbable. We may much more reasonably believe the assertion of Xenophon, who represents him to have exhorted the hearer “to make himself as wise, and as capable of rendering service, as possible; so that, when he wished to acquire esteem from father or brother or friend, he might not sit still, in reliance on the simple fact of relationship, but might earn such feeling by doing them positive good.”[765] To tell a young man that mere good feeling would be totally insufficient, unless he were prepared and competent to carry it into action, is a lesson which few parents would wish to discourage. Nor would any generous parent make it a crime against the teaching of Sokratês, that it rendered his son wiser than himself, which probably it would do. To restrict the range of teaching for a young man, because it may make him think himself wiser than his father, is only one of the thousand shapes in which the pleading of ignorance against knowledge was then, and still continues occasionally to be, presented.
Nevertheless, it is not to be denied that these attacks of Anytus bear upon the vulnerable side of the Sokratic general theory of ethics, according to which virtue was asserted to depend upon knowledge. I have already remarked that this is true, but not the whole truth; a certain state of the affections and dispositions being not less indispensable, as conditions of virtue, than a certain state of the intelligence. An enemy, therefore, had some pretence for making it appear that Sokratês, stating a part of the truth as the whole, denied or degraded all that remained. But though this would be a criticism not entirely unfounded against his general theory, it would not hold against his precepts or practical teaching, as we find them in Xenophon; for these, as I have remarked, reach much wider than his general theory, and inculcate the cultivation of habits and dispositions not less strenuously than the acquisition of knowledge.
The censures affirmed to have been cast by Sokratês against the choice of archons by lot at Athens, are not denied by Xenophon. The accuser urged that “by such censures Sokratês excited the young men to despise the established constitution, and to become lawless and violent in their conduct.”[766] This is just the same pretence, of tendency to bring the government into hatred and contempt, on which in former days prosecutions for public libel were instituted against writers in England, and on which they still continue to be abundantly instituted in France, under the first President of the Republic. There can hardly be a more serious political mischief than such confusion of the disapproving critic with a conspirator, and imposition of silence upon dissentient minorities. Nor has there ever been any case in which such an imputation was more destitute of color than that of Sokratês, who appealed always to men’s reason and very little to their feelings; so little, indeed, that modern authors make his coldness a matter of charge against him; who never omitted to inculcate rigid observance of the law, and set the example of such observance himself. Whatever may have been his sentiments about democracy, he always obeyed the democratical government, nor is there any pretence for charging him with participation in oligarchical schemes. It was the Thirty who, for the first time in his long life, interdicted his teaching altogether, and were on the point almost of taking his life; while his intimate friend Chærephon was actually in exile with the democrats.[767]
Xenophon lays great emphasis on two points, when defending Sokratês against his accusers. First, that his own conduct was virtuous, self-denying, and strict in obedience to the law. Next, that he accustomed his hearers to hear nothing except appeals to their reason, and impressed on them obedience only to their rational convictions. That such a man, with so great a weight of presumption in his favor, should be tried and found guilty as a corruptor of youth,—the most undefined of all imaginable charges,—is a grave and melancholy fact in the history of mankind. Yet when we see upon what light evidence modern authors are willing to admit the same charge against the sophists, we have no right to wonder that the Athenians when addressed, not through that calm reason to which Sokratês appealed, but through all their antipathies, religious as well as political, public as well as private—were exasperated into dealing with him as the type and precursor of Kritias and Alkibiadês.
After all, the exasperation, and the consequent verdict of guilty, were not wholly the fault of the dikasts, nor wholly brought about by his accusers and his numerous private enemies. No such verdict would have been given, unless by what we must call the consent and concurrence of Sokratês himself. This is one of the most important facts of the case, in reference both to himself and to the Athenians.