Page:God Manifest.djvu/67

Rh servant, and innured it to every privation, so that moderation became to him an easy virtue, and he retained in old age his youthful vigor, physical and mental. He not only instructed his fellow-citizens in their duties, but also set before them a perfect example. He was a zealous worshiper of the Supreme Being; and, from his care not to offend his weaker brethren, observed with punctilious exactness all the religious uses which antiquity and custom had consecrated.

"As a citizen, he discharged with exemplary faithfulness all his public duties. Three times he served in the army of his country; the first time, when he was thirty-nine years of age, at the seige of Potidæa. Here, he excelled his fellow-soldiers in the patience with which he endured the hardships of a winter campaign, distingnished himself by his valor, saved the life of his friend Alcibiades, and resigned to that youth the prize of honour which had been awarded to his own bravery. In civil life his conduct was equally admirable, displaying as much moral courage as he had before shown physical. When president of the Council of Five Hundred, he saved by his inflexible firmness the lives of ten brave officers, for whose death the multitude clamored because after a battle they had omitted, in consequence of a storm, the customary duty of burying the slain. To that popular violence, however, which he so nobly withstood in defence of others, he himself at length fell a victim. In a time of public excitement and general disorder, and at the instigation of a few base individuals, Socrates was brought before the popular tribunal, and, on the charge of introducing the worship of new gods, with other frivolous accusations, was condemned to death. Mildly,