Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/427

 flABlTS OF SOKRATES. 405 worked it out on a scale of enlargement and perfection, and given to it a permanence which it could never have derived from its original author, who only talked and never wrote. It is fortunate that our two main witnesses about him, both speaking from personal knowledge, agree to so great an extent. Both describe in the same manner his private life and habits ; his contented poverty, justice, temperance in the largest sense of the word, and self-sufficing independence of character. On most of these points too, Aristophanes and the other comic writers, so far as their testimony counts for anything, appear as confirmatory witnesses ; for they abound in jests on the coarse fare, shabby and scanty clothing, bare feet, pale face, poor and joyless life, of Sokrates. 1 Of the circumstances of his life we are almost wholly ignorant : he served as an hoplite at Potidrea, at Delium, and at Amphipolis ; with credit apparently in all, though exag- gerated encomiums on the part of his friends provoked an equally exaggerated skepticism on the part of Athenajus and others. lie seems never to have filled any political office until the year (B.C. 400) in which the battle of Arginusas occurred, in which year he was member of the senate of Five Hundred, and one of the prytanes on that memorable day when the proposition of Kallixenus against the six generals was submitted to the public assembly : his determined refusal, in spite of all personal hazard, to put an unconstitutional question to the vote, has been already recounted. That during his long life he strictly obeyed the laws, 2 is proved by the fact that none of his numerous ene- mies ever arraigned him before a court of justice : that he dis- charged all the duties of an upright man and a brave as well as pious citizen, may also be confidently asserted. His friends lay ^special stress upon his piety ; that is, upon his exact discharge 1 Aristoph. Xubes, 103, 121, 362, 414; Aves, 1282; Eupolis, Fragment. Inccrt. ix, x, xi, ap. Mcinekc, p. 5.~>2 ; Amcipsias, Fragmcntn, Konnus, p 703, Meinekc; Diopen. L;u : rt. ii. 28. The later comic writers ridiculed the Pythagoreans, as well as Zeno the Stoic, on grounds very similar : cc Diogenes Jaiirt. vii, 1, 24. 1 Plato, Apol. Sokr. c. 1. Kit ^u irpurov i~l (5t/cacrr/ypi(u uv