Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/487

 INDICTMENT AGAINST SOKBATES. 465 It was in that year that Meletus, seconded by two auxiljarics, Anytus and Lykon, presented against him, and hung up in the appointed place, the portico before the office of the second or king-archon, an indictment against him in the following terms " Sokrates is guilty of crime: first, for not worshipping the gods tvhom the city worships, but introducing new divinities of hia own; next, for corrupting the youth. The penalty due is death." It is certain that neither the conduct nor the conversation of Sokrates had undergone any alteration for many years past ; since the sameness of his manner of talking is both derided by his enemies and confessed by himself. Our first sentiment, there- fore, apart from the question of guilt or innocence, is one of astonishment, that he should have been prosecuted, at seventy years of age, for persevering in an occupation which he had pub- licly followed during twenty-five or thirty years preceding. Xeno- phon, full of reverence for his master, takes up the matter on much higher ground, and expresses himself in n feeling of indig- nant amazement that the Athenians could find anything to con- demn in a man every way so admirable. But whoever attentively considers the picture which I have presented of the purpose, the working, and the extreme publicity of Sokrates, will rather be inclined to wonder, not that the indictment was presented at last, but that some such indictment had not been presented long before. Such certainly is the impression suggested by the language of Sokrates himself, in the " Platonic Apology." He there proclaims, emphatically, that though his present accusers were men of con- sideration, it was neither their enmity, nor their eloquence, which he had now principally to fear ; but the accumulated force of an- tipathy, the numerous and important personal enemies, each with sympathizing partisans, the long-standing and uncon- tradicted calumnies, 1 raised against him throughout his cross- examining career. 1 Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 2, p. 18, B; c. 16, p. 28, A. "O (5e KUI tv rotf fyi. irpovdev i/.eyov, STI iroT^rj fiot tnre^&sta yeyove nal Trpbf TroXXodf, ev lore UTL u'.rjdff tariv. Kal roiii* larlv b Ifie alprjyet, tuvncp aiptj ob MeA^rcf oi;6t 'AvvTOf, ul.TC TJ TUV iro'h'h.Civ dta/3o%r) Kal 0i?6vof. The expression TUV iroMuv in this last line is not used in its most com mon signification, but is equivalent to rovruv TUV iro'M.uv. VOL. vm. 20* 30oc.