Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/410

 3*8 HISTORY OF GREECE. lentiment. 1 Granting such charges to be true, how is it con ceivable that any sophist, or any rhetor, could venture to enforce upon an Athenian public audience the doctrine laid down by Kallikles ? To tell such an audience : " Your laws and institu- tions are all violations of the law of nature, contrived to disap- point the Alkibiades or Napoleon among you of his natural right to became your master, and to deal with you petty men as his slaves. All your unnatural precautions, and conventional talk, in favor of legality and equal dealing, will turn out to be nothing better than pitiful impotence, 2 as soon as he finds a good oppor- tunity of standing forward in his full might and energy, so as to put you into your proper places, and show you what privileges Nature intends for her favorites !" Conceive such a doctrine pro- pounded by a lecturer to assembled Athenians ! A doctrine just as revolting to Nikias as to Kleon, and which even Alkibiadea would be forced to affect to disapprove ; since it is not simply anti-popular, not simply despotic, but the drunken extravagance of despotism. The Great man, as depicted by Kallikles, stands in the same relation to ordinary mortals, as Jonathan Wild the Great, in the admirable parody of Fielding. That sophists, whom Plato accuses of slavish flattery to the democratical ear, should gratuitously insult it by the proposition of such tenets, is an assertion not merely untrue, but utterly absurd. Even as to Sokrates, we know from Xenophon how much the Athenians were offended with him, and how much it was urged by the accusers on his trial, that in his conversations he was wont to cite with peculiar relish the description, in the second book of the Iliad, of Odysseus following the Grecian crowd, when running away from the agora to get on shipboard, and prevailing upon them to come back, by gentle words ad- 1 Plato, Grorgias, c. 68, p. 513. Ou y&p fj.t/j.rjrr/v del dvai, u/JX avro(j>vijf ouoiov Tovroif, el fttfJiSie TI yvrjoiov airepyu&adai elf Qihiav T ' "Oarif ovv ae rovroif vfioioraTov uTrepyuaerai, ovrdf as oAm/cdf elvat, KOSTIKOV nal pjjropiKov rc> avriJv yup r/dti eyofievuv TUV 7joyuv fKaarot %aipovai, TV 6s uXTiorpiu uxtiovrai. raur' earl ra KaT^Mmc/iaTa, TU napu Qvoiv vv&TifiaTa, uv&puTrwv <2/.raoi'a icu ov&evbf u<a.
 * Plato, Gorgias, c. 46, p. 492, C (the words of Kallikles). Td 6e u/J.n