Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/247

 S O C S O C 231 (1777), anil the Life by Wallace (Antitrin. Elog., 1850, ii. 300). The sketch by Cantu in GU Eretici d'ltalia, 18(ii5, vol. ii., gives a genealogy of the Sozzini (needing some correction). The best defence of Sozzini in his relations with David is by Janie.s Yates, in Christ. Pioneer, February 1834 ; a less favourable view is taken by the Hungarian biographer of David (Jakab, Ddvid F. Emleke, 1S79). Of his system, most generally known through the Bacovian Cut i50"> (planned by Sozzini, but chiefly carried out by others, principally Schmalz ; translated by Rees, 1818), there is a special study by Fock, Der SocMlWWiismws, 1847. See also " The Sozzini and their School," in Theol. Rev., 187S> (corrected in Christ. Life, 25th August 1883). Use has been made above of unpublished papers in the archives at Florence, with others in the archives, communal library, and collection of Padre Toti at Siena. (A. GO.) SOCORRO, a town of the United States, in a county of the same name in New Mexico, 76 miles south of Albu- querque junction on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, is beautifully situated in the Rio Grande valley. It is the centre of a silver and lead mining district, and has a stamp mill and smelting-works. Fruit-growing and cattle-breeding are prosecuted in the vicinity. The popula- tion, including old and new town, was about 5000 in 1887. SOCOTRA, or SOCOTORA (Arabic Sokotrd), an island of the Indian Ocean, 150 miles from Cape Gardafui and about 220 from the Arabian coast. Its length from east to west is 71 miles, its greatest breadth 22. A plain 2 to 4 miles wide skirts the greater part of the coast, while the interior is mountainous. The granite peaks behind Tamarfda (a village on the north coast and the chief place in the island, but now much decayed) rise to a height of 4000 feet, and a limestone chain connected with these runs north and south with an average height of about 1900 feet. The climate is moist, but not unhealthy, with much rain, especially during the south-west monsoon. At this season the temperature rises to 80 or even 95, but on the whole the heat is not excessive. The scenery of the island is very striking, with bare rocky heights and fertile valleys ; but there is little cultivation, the inhabitants living mainly by their vast flocks of sheep and goats, or on dates, home- grown and imported. Milch cows are numerous near Tamarfda. The population is about 5000, of two distinct types. The nomad inhabitants of the uplands are a peculiar race, well built, with good features and long curling but not woolly hair ; they resemble neither the Arabs nor the Somal. In Tamarida and other villages and towards the eastern end of the island the population is a mixture of Arab, African, and other elements, even including Portu- guese. The native speech is not intelligible to ordinary Arabs, but Wellsted says that it can sometimes be made out by Arabs from the opposite (Mahra) coast. In fact, according to Ibn Mojawir and Hamdanf, the Socotrans in the Middle Ages were regarded as Mahra and spoke the Mahra dialect. Their way of life is rude and simple in the extreme, but they are hospitable and generally well- behaved, though they have almost no government ; they are nominally dependent on the sultan of Keshin. A certain dependence (at least of places on the coast) on some sove- reign of the Arabian coast has endured for many centuries, except during the short Portuguese occupation of Tamarida by Albuquerque. From 1876 to 1886 the sultan of Keshfn was bound by treaty not to cede the island to a foreign power or allow settlements on it without the consent of England. In 1886 it was formally annexed by Great Britain. The fauna and flora of Socotra are peculiar. As regards mammalia the civet cat is found, but the ordinary wild beasts of Arabia are unknown. The flora was studied by Professor Bailey Balfour in 1880, and his account of it is about to be published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The most valuable vegetable products are now, as in the Middle Ages, aloes and dragon's-blood. The Socotran aloes (the French chicotin) is esteemed the best in the world when unadulterated. In old times the ambergris of Socotra was also famous. Socotra was known to the ancients as the isle of Dioscorides ; this name, and that by which the island is now known, are usually traced back to a Sanscrit form, Dvipa-Sakhadhara, "the island vrjffoi evSal/j-oves of Agatharcliides ( 103). The Periplus of the Erythnuan Sea speaks of the island as peopled only in one part by a mixed race of Arab, Indian, and Greek traders. It was subject to the king of the Incense Country, and was a meeting-place of Arabian and Indian ships. Cosmas in the 6th century says that the people spoke Greek and were largely Christian, with a bishop sent from Persia. The Arab geographers also had a tradition of an early Greek settlement (which they naturally ascribe to Alex- ander), but also of later Persian influence, followed by a settlement of Mahra tribes, who partly adopted Christianity. The Socotrans remained Nestorian Christians, with a bishop under the metro- politan of Persia, through the Middle Ages (Assemani, B. 0., ii. 459 ; comp. Mohallebi, in Abulfeda, p. 371) ; but in their isolated position they have gradually lost all trace of Christianity except reverence for the cross, and practise the old South Arabian moon worship. There was much more at least of the forms of Christ- ianity when Europeans first visited the island in the 16th century. In the Middle Ages Socotra was a station of the Indian corsairs who harassed the Arab trade with the far East. The population seems then to have been much larger ; Arabian writers estimate the fighting men at 10,000. See, for the history of Socotra, Yule, Marco Polo, ii. 400 37., anil, besides the authorities there cited, Yakut, s.v. ; Hamdani, p. 52 ; Kazwini, ii. 54. For the state of the island at the begiiming of the 18th century, see the account of the French expedition to Yemen in 1708 (Viaggio -iiell' Arabia Felice, Venice, 1721) ; and, for the present century, Wellsted, City of the Caliphs, vol. ii. (1840). For the topography, &c., see Sea Sea Pilot., 2d ed., 1882. SOCRATES, son of the statuary Sophroniscus and of the midwife Phsenarete, was born at Athens, not earlier than 471 nor later than May or June 469 B.C. As a youth he received the customary instruction in gymnastic and music ; and in after years he made himself acquainted with geometry and astronomy and studied the methods and the doctrines of the leaders of Greek thought and culture. He began life as a sculptor ; and in the 2d century A.D. a group of the Graces, supposed to be his work, was still to be seen on the road to the Acropolis. But he soon aban- doned art and gave himself to what may best be called education, conceiving that he had a divine commission, witnessed by oracles, dreams, and signs, not indeed to teach any positive doctrine, but to convict men of ignorance mis- taking itself for knowledge, and by so doing to promote their intellectual and moral improvement. He was on terms of intimacy with some of the most distinguished of his Athenian contemporaries, and, at any rate in later life, was personally known to very many of his fellow-citizens. His domestic relations were, it is said, unhappy. The shrewishness of his wife Xanthippe became proverbial with the ancients, as it still is with ourselves. Aristotle, in his remarks upon genius and its degeneracy (Ehet., ii. 15), speaks of Socrates's sons as dull and fatuous; and in Xenophon's Memorabilia, one of them, Lamprocles, re- ceives a formal rebuke for undutiful behaviour towards his mother. Socrates served as a hoplite at Potidrea (432-429), where Public on one occasion he saved the life of Alcibiades, at Delium nfe - (424), and at Amphipolis (422). In these campaigns his bravery and endurance were conspicuous. But, while he thus performed the ordinary duties of a Greek citizen with credit, he neither attained nor sought political position. His "divine voice," he said, had warned him to refrain from politics, presumably because office would have en- tailed the sacrifice of his principles and the abandonment of his proper vocation. Yet in 406 he was a member of the senate ; and on the first day of the trial of the victors of Arginusse, being president of the prytanes, he resisted first, in conjunction with his colleagues, afterwards, when they yielded, alone the illegal and unconstitutional pro- posal of Callixenus, that the fate of the eight generals should be decided by a single vote of the assembly. Not less courageous than this opposition to the " civium ardor prava jubentium" was his disregard of the "vultus instantis tyranni " two years later. During the reign of terror of 404 the Thirty, anxious to implicate in their crimes men of repute who might otherwise have opposed their plans, ordered five citizens, one of whom was Socrates, to go to