Thirdly, whoever has read the account of the trial and defence of Sokratês, will see that he himself contributed quite as much to the result as all the three accusers united. Not only he omitted to do all that might have been done without dishonor, to insure acquittal, but he held positive language very nearly such as Melêtus himself would have sought to put in his mouth. He did this deliberately,—having an exalted opinion both of himself and his own mission,—and accounting the cup of hemlock, at his age, to be no calamity. It was only by such marked and offensive self-exaltation that he brought on the first vote of the dikastery, even then the narrowest majority, by which he was found guilty: it was only by a still more aggravated manifestation of the same kind, even to the pitch of something like insult, that he brought on the second vote, which pronounced the capital sentence. Now it would be uncandid not to allow for the effect of such a proceeding on the minds of the dikastery. They were not at all disposed, of their own accord, to put in force the recognized principle of intolerance against him. But when they found that the man who stood before them charged with this offence, addressed them in a tone such as dikasts had never heard before and could hardly hear with calmness, they could not but feel disposed to credit all the worst inferences which his accusers had suggested, and to regard Sokratês as a dangerous man both religiously and politically, against whom it was requisite to uphold the majesty of the court and constitution.
In appreciating this memorable incident, therefore, though the mischievous principle of intolerance cannot be denied, yet all the circumstances show that that principle was neither irritable nor predominant in the Athenian bosom; that even a large body of collateral antipathies did not readily call it forth against any individual; that the more liberal and generous dispositions, which deadened its malignity, were of steady efficacy, not easily overborne; and that the condemnation ought to count as one of the least gloomy items in an essentially gloomy catalogue.
Let us add, that as Sokratês himself did not account his own condemnation and death, at his age, to be any misfortune, but rather a favorable dispensation of the gods, who removed him just in time to escape that painful consciousness of intellectual decline which induced Demokritus to prepare the poison for himself, so his friend Xenophon goes a step further, and while protesting against the verdict of guilty, extols the manner of death as a subject of triumph; as the happiest, most honorable, and most gracious way, in which the gods could set the seal upon a useful and exalted life.[805]
It is asserted by Diodorus, and repeated with exaggerations by other later authors, that after the death of Sokratês the Athenians bitterly repented of the manner in which they had treated him, and that they even went so far as to put his accusers to death without trial.[806] I know not upon what authority this statement is made, and I disbelieve it altogether. From the tone of Xenophon’s “Memorabilia,” there is every reason to presume that the memory of Sokratês still continued to be unpopular at Athens when that collection was composed. Plato, too, left Athens immediately after the death of his master, and remained absent for a long series of years: indirectly, I think, this affords a presumption that no such reaction took place in Athenian sentiment as that which Diodorus alleges; and the same presumption is countenanced by the manner in which the orator Æschinês speaks of the condemnation, half a century afterwards. I see no reason to believe that the Athenian dikasts, who doubtless felt themselves justified, and more than justified, in condemning Sokratês after his own speech, retracted that sentiment after his decease.
FOOTNOTES
[1] See Thucyd. v, 36.
[2] Thucyd. viii, 45. Καὶ ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν ἀφικομένης ἐπιστολῆς πρὸς Ἀστύοχον ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος ὥστ᾽ ἀποκτεῖναι (ἦν γὰρ καὶ τῷ Ἄγιδι ἐχθρὸς καὶ ἄλλως ἄπιστος ἐφαίνετο), etc.
[3] Thucyd. viii, 45, 46.
[4] Thucyd. viii, 46-52.