We learn from his own statement in the “Platonic Defence,” that the verdict of guilty was only pronounced by a majority of five or six, amidst a body so numerous as an Athenian dikastery; probably five hundred and fifty-seven in total number,[768] if a confused statement in Diogenes Laërtius can be trusted. Now any one who reads that defence, and considers it in conjunction with the circumstances of the case and the feelings of the dikasts, will see that its tenor is such as must have turned a much greater number of votes than six against him. And we are informed by the distinct testimony of Xenophon,[769] that Sokratês approached his trial with the feelings of one who hardly wished to be acquitted. He took no thought whatever for the preparation of his defence; and when his friend Hermogenês remonstrated with him on the serious consequences of such an omission, he replied, first, that the just and blameless life, which he was conscious of having passed, was the best of all preparations for defence; next, that having once begun to meditate on what it would be proper for him to say, the divine sign had interposed to forbid him from proceeding. He went on to say, that it was no wonder that the gods should deem it better for him to die now, than to live longer. He had hitherto lived in perfect satisfaction, with a consciousness of progressive moral improvement, and with esteem, marked and unabated, from his friends. If his life were prolonged, old age would soon overpower him; he would lose in part his sight, his hearing, or his intelligence; and life with such abated efficacy and dignity would be intolerable to him. Whereas, if he were condemned now, he should be condemned unjustly, which would be a great disgrace to his judges, but none to him; nay, it would even procure for him increase of sympathy and admiration, and a more willing acknowledgment from every one that he had been both a just man and an improving preceptor.[770]
These words, spoken before his trial, intimate a state of belief which explains the tenor of the defence, and formed one essential condition of the final result. They prove that Sokratês not only cared little for being acquitted, but even thought that the approaching trial was marked out by the gods as the term of his life, and that there were good reasons why he should prefer such a consummation as best for himself. Nor is it wonderful that he should entertain that opinion, when we recollect the entire ascendency within him of strong internal conscience and intelligent reflection, built upon an originally fearless temperament, and silencing what Plato[771] calls “the child within us, who trembles before death;” his great love of colloquial influence, and incapacity of living without it; his old age, now seventy years, rendering it impossible that such influence could much longer continue, and the opportunity afforded to him, by now towering above ordinary men under the like circumstances, to read an impressive lesson, as well as to leave behind him a reputation yet more exalted than that which he had hitherto acquired. It was in this frame of mind that Sokratês came to his trial, and undertook his unpremeditated defence, the substance of which we now read in the “Platonic Apology.” His calculations, alike high-minded and well-balanced, were completely realized. Had he been acquitted after such a defence, it would have been not only a triumph over his personal enemies, but would have been a sanction on the part of the people and the popular dikastery to his teaching, which, indeed, had been enforced by Anytus,[772] in his accusing argument, in reference to acquittal generally, even before he heard the defence: whereas his condemnation, and the feelings with which he met it, have shed double and triple lustre over his whole life and character.
Prefaced by this exposition of the feelings of Sokratês, the “Platonic Defence” becomes not merely sublime and impressive, but also the manifestation of a rational and consistent purpose. It does, indeed, include a vindication of himself against two out of the three counts of the indictment; against the charge of not believing in the recognized gods of Athens, and that of corrupting the youth; respecting the second of the three, whereby he was charged with religious innovation, he says little or nothing. But it bears no resemblance to the speech of one standing on his trial, with the written indictment concluding “Penalty, Death,” hanging up in open court before him. On the contrary, it is an emphatic lesson to the hearers, embodied in the frank outpouring of a fearless and self-confiding conscience. It is undertaken, from the beginning, because the law commands; with a faint wish, and even not an unqualified wish, but no hope, that it may succeed.[773] Sokratês first replies to the standing antipathies against him without, arising from the number of enemies whom his cross-examining elenchus had aroused against him, and from those false reports which the Aristophanic “Clouds” had contributed so much to circulate. In accounting for the rise of these antipathies, he impresses upon the dikasts the divine mission under which he was acting, not without considerable doubts whether they will believe him to be in earnest;[774] and gives that interesting exposition of his intellectual campaign, against “the conceit of knowledge without the reality,” of which I have already spoken. He then goes into the indictment, questions Melêtus in open court, and dissects his answers. Having rebutted the charge of irreligion, he reverts again to the imperative mandate of the gods under which he is acting, “to spend his life in the search for wisdom, and in examining himself as well as others;” a mandate, which if he were to disobey, he would be then justly amenable to the charge of irreligion;[775] and he announces to the dikasts distinctly, that, even if they were now to acquit him, he neither could nor would relax in the course which he had been pursuing.[776] He considers that the mission imposed upon him is among the greatest blessings ever conferred by the gods upon Athens.[777] He deprecates those murmurs of surprise or displeasure, which his discourse evidently called forth more than once,[778] though not so much on his own account as on that of the dikasts, who will be benefited by hearing him, and who will hurt themselves and their city much more than him, if they should now pronounce condemnation.[779] It was not on his own account that he sought to defend himself, but on account of the Athenians, lest they by condemning him should sin against the gracious blessing of the god; they would not easily find such another, if they should put him to death.[780] Though his mission had spurred him on to indefatigable activity in individual colloquy, yet the divine sign had always forbidden him from taking active part in public proceedings; on the two exceptional occasions when he had stood publicly forward,—once under the democracy, once under the oligarchy,—he had shown the same resolution as at present; not to be deterred by any terrors from that course which he believed to be just.[781] Young men were delighted as well as improved by listening to his cross-examinations; in proof of the charge that he had corrupted them, no evidence had been produced; neither any of themselves, who, having been once young when they enjoyed his conversation, had since grown elderly; nor any of their relatives; while he on his part could produce abundant testimony to the improving effect of his society, from the relatives of those who had profited by it.[782]
“No man (says he) knows what death is; yet men fear it as if they knew well that it was the greatest of all evils, which is just a case of that worst of all ignorance, the conceit of knowing what you do not really know. For my part, this is the exact point on which I differ from most other men, if there be any one thing in which I am wiser than they; as I know nothing about Hades, so I do not pretend to any knowledge; but I do know well, that disobedience to a person better than myself, either god or man, is both an evil and a shame; nor will I ever embrace evil certain, in order to escape evil which may for aught I know be a good.[783] Perhaps you may feel indignant at the resolute tone of my defence; you may have expected that I should do as most others do in less dangerous trials than mine; that I should weep, beg and entreat for my life, and bring forward my children and relatives to do the same. I have relatives like other men, and three children; but not one of them shall appear before you for any such purpose. Not from any insolent dispositions on my part, nor any wish to put a slight upon you, but because I hold such conduct to be degrading to the reputation which I enjoy; for I have a reputation for superiority among you, deserved or undeserved as it may be. It is a disgrace to Athens, when her esteemed men lower themselves, as they do but too often, by such mean and cowardly supplications; and you dikasts, instead of being prompted thereby to spare them, ought rather to condemn them the more for so dishonoring the city.[784] Apart from any reputation of mine, too, I should be a guilty man, if I sought to bias you by supplications. My duty is to instruct and persuade you, if I can; but you have sworn to follow your convictions in judging according to the laws, not to make the laws bend to your partiality; and it is your duty so to do. Far be it from me to habituate you to perjury; far be it from you to contract any such habit. Do not, therefore, require of me proceedings dishonorable in reference to myself, as well as criminal and impious in regard to you, especially at a moment when I am myself rebutting an accusation of impiety advanced by Melêtus. I leave to you and to the god, to decide as may turn out best both for me and for you.”[785]
No one who reads the “Platonic Apology” of Sokratês will ever wish that he had made any other defence. But it is the speech of one who deliberately foregoes the immediate purpose of a defence, persuasion of his judges; who speaks for posterity, without regard to his own life: “solâ posteritatis curâ, et abruptis vitæ blandimentis.”[786] The effect produced upon the dikasts was such as Sokratês anticipated beforehand, and heard afterwards without surprise as without discomposure, in the verdict of guilty. His only surprise was, at the extreme smallness of the majority whereby that verdict was passed.[787] And this is the true matter for astonishment. Never before had the Athenian dikasts heard such a speech addressed to them. While all of them, doubtless, knew Sokratês as a very able and very eccentric man, respecting his purposes and character they would differ; some regarding him with unqualified hostility, a few others with respectful admiration, and a still larger number with simple admiration for ability, without any decisive sentiment either of antipathy or esteem. But by all these three categories, hardly excepting even his admirers, the speech would be felt to carry one sting which never misses its way to the angry feelings of the judicial bosom, whether the judges in session be one or a few or many, the sting of “affront to the court.” The Athenian dikasts were always accustomed to be addressed with deference, often with subservience: they now heard themselves lectured by a philosopher who stood before them like a fearless and invulnerable superior, beyond their power, though awaiting their verdict; one who laid claim to a divine mission, which probably many of them believed to be an imposture, and who declared himself the inspired uprooter of “conceit of knowledge without the reality,” which purpose many would not understand, and some would not like. To many, his demeanor would appear to betray an insolence not without analogy to Alkibiadês or Kritias, with whom his accuser had compared him. I have already remarked, in reference to his trial, that, considering the number of personal enemies whom he made, the wonder is, not that he was tried at all, but that he was not tried until so late in his life: I now remark in reference to the verdict, that, considering his speech before the dikastery, we cannot be surprised that he was found guilty, but only that such verdict passed by so small a majority as five or six.
That the condemnation of Sokratês was brought on distinctly by the tone and tenor of his defence, is the express testimony of Xenophon. “Other persons on trial (he says) defended themselves in such manner as to conciliate the favor of the dikasts, or flatter, or entreat them, contrary to the laws, and thus obtained acquittal. But Sokratês would resort to nothing of this customary practice of the dikastery contrary to the laws. Though he might easily have been let off by the dikasts, if he would have done anything of the kind even moderately, he preferred rather to adhere to the laws and die, than to save his life by violating them.”[788] Now no one in Athens except Sokratês, probably, would have construed the laws as requiring the tone of oration which he adopted; nor would he himself have so construed them, if he had been twenty years younger, with less of acquired dignity, and more years of possible usefulness open before him. Without debasing himself by unbecoming flattery or supplication, he would have avoided lecturing them as a master and superior,[789] or ostentatiously asserting a divine mission for purposes which they would hardly understand, or an independence of their verdict which they might construe as defiance. The rhetor Lysias is said to have sent to him a composed speech for his defence, which he declined to use, not thinking it suitable to his dignity. But such a man as Lysias would hardly compose what would lower the dignity even of the loftiest client, though he would look to the result also; nor is there any doubt that if Sokratês had pronounced it,—or even a much less able speech, if inoffensive,—he would have been acquitted. Quintilian,[790] indeed, expresses his satisfaction that Sokratês maintained that towering dignity which brought out the rarest and most exalted of his attributes, but which at the same time renounced all chance of acquittal. Few persons will dissent from this criticism: but when we look at the sentence, as we ought in fairness to do, from the point of view of the dikasts, justice will compel us to admit that Sokratês deliberately brought it upon himself.
If the verdict of guilty was thus brought upon Sokratês by his own consent and coöperation, much more may the same remark be made respecting the capital sentence which followed it. In Athenian procedure, the penalty inflicted was determined by a separate vote of the dikasts, taken after the verdict of guilty. The accuser having named the penalty which he thought suitable, the accused party on his side named some lighter penalty upon himself; and between these two the dikasts were called on to make their option, no third proposition being admissible. The prudence of an accused party always induced him to propose, even against himself, some measure of punishment which the dikasts might be satisfied to accept, in preference to the heavier sentence invoked by his antagonist.
Now Melêtus, in his indictment and speech against Sokratês, had called for the infliction of capital punishment. It was for Sokratês to make his own counter-proposition, and the very small majority, by which the verdict had been pronounced, afforded sufficient proof that the dikasts were no way inclined to sanction the extreme penalty against him. They doubtless anticipated, according to the uniform practice before the Athenian courts of justice, that he would suggest some lesser penalty; fine, imprisonment, exile, disfranchisement, etc. And had he done this purely and simply, there can be little doubt that the proposition would have passed. But the language of Sokratês, after the verdict, was in a strain yet higher than before it; and his resolution to adhere to his own point of view, disdaining the smallest abatement or concession, only the more emphatically pronounced. “What counter proposition shall I make to you (he said) as a substitute for the penalty of Melêtus? Shall I name to you the treatment which I think I deserve at your hands? In that case, my proposition would be that I should be rewarded with a subsistence at the public expense in the prytaneum; for that is what I really deserve as a public benefactor; one who has neglected all thought of his own affairs, and embraced voluntary poverty, in order to devote himself to your best interests, and to admonish you individually on the serious necessity of mental and moral improvement. Assuredly, I cannot admit that I have deserved from you any evil whatever; nor would it be reasonable in me to propose exile or imprisonment, which I know to be certain and considerable evils, in place of death, which may perhaps be not an evil, but a good. I might, indeed, propose to you a pecuniary fine; for the payment of that would be no evil. But I am poor, and have no money: all that I could muster might perhaps amount to a mina: and I therefore propose to you a fine of one mina, as punishment on myself. Plato, and my other friends near me, desire me to increase this sum to thirty minæ, and they engage to pay it for me. A fine of thirty minæ, therefore, is the counter penalty which I submit for your judgment.”[791]
Subsistence in the prytaneum at the public expense, was one of the greatest honorary distinctions which the citizens of Athens ever conferred; an emphatic token of public gratitude. That Sokratês, therefore, should proclaim himself worthy of such an honor, and talk of assessing it upon himself in lieu of a punishment, before the very dikasts who had just passed against him a verdict of guilty, would be received by them as nothing less than a deliberate insult; a defiance of judicial authority, which it was their duty to prove, to an opinionated and haughty citizen, that he could not commit with impunity. The persons who heard his language with the greatest distress, were doubtless Plato, Krito, and his other friends around him; who, though sympathizing with him fully, knew well that he was assuring the success of the proposition of Melêtus,[792] and would regret that he should thus throw away his life by what they would think an ill-placed and unnecessary self-exaltation. Had he proposed, with little or no preface, the substitute-fine of thirty minæ with which this part of his speech concluded, there is every reason for believing that the majority of dikasts would have voted for it.
The sentence of death passed against him, by what majority we do not know. But Sokratês neither altered his tone, nor manifested any regret for the language by which he had himself seconded the purpose of his accusers. On the contrary, he told the dikasts, in a short address prior to his departure for the prison, that he was satisfied both with his own conduct and with the result. The divine sign, he said, which was wont to restrain him, often on very small occasions, both in deeds and in words, had never manifested itself once to him throughout the whole day, neither when he came thither at first, nor at any one point throughout his whole discourse. The tacit acquiescence of this infallible monitor satisfied him not only that he had spoken rightly, but that the sentence passed was in reality no evil to him; that to die now was the best thing which could befall him.[793] Either death was tantamount to a sound, perpetual, and dreamless sleep, which in his judgment would be no loss, but rather a gain, compared with the present life; or else, if the common mythes were true, death would transfer him to a second life in Hades, where he would find all the heroes of the Trojan war, and of the past generally, so as to pursue in conjunction with them the business of mutual cross-examination, and debate on ethical progress and perfection.[794]