Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/199

 DEATH OF SOCRATES 175 to bear martyrdom for what they beheve. But there is one point about Socrates which is unhke the religious martyr : Socrates died for no supposed crown of glory, had no particular revelation in which he held a fanatical belief. He died in a calm, deliberate conviction, that Truth is really more precious than Life, and not only Truth but even the unsuccessful search for it. The trial has been greatly discussed both now and in antiquity. The Socratics, like yEschines and Antisthenes, poured out the vials of their wrath in literature. Plato wrote the Apology and the Gorgias ; Lysias the orator stepped in with a defence of Socrates in speech form ; Polykrates the sophist dared to justify — probably not as a mere jeu d' esprit — the decision of the court; Isocrates fell upon him with caustic politeness in the Busiris^ and Xenophon with a certain clumsy convincingness in the Memorabilia. The chief point to realise is that the accusers were not villains, nor the judges necessarily Mice' as M. Aurelius tersely puts it. Socrates had always been surrounded by young men of leisure, drawn mainly from the richer and more dissolute classes. He had in a sense * corrupted ' them : they had felt the de- structive side of his moral teaching, and failed to grasp his real aim. His political influence was markedly sceptical. He was no oligarch ; his oldest apostle Chairephon fought beside Thrasybulus at Ph^le ; but he had analysed and destroyed the sacred principle of Democracy as well as every other convention. The city had barely recovered from the bloody reign of his two close disciples Critias and Charmides ; could never recover from the treason of his 'beloved' Alci- biades. The religious terrors of the people were