Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/490

 468 HISTORY OF GREECE. and Sokrates, observing in the young man intellectual impulse and promise, endeavored to dissuade his father from bringing him up to his own trade of a leather-seller. 1 It was in this gen- eral way that a great proportion of the antipathy against Sok rates was excited, as he himself tells us in the " Platonic Apol- ogy." The young men were those to whom he chiefly addressed himself, and who, keenly relishing his conversation, often carried home new ideas which displeased their fathers ; 2 hence the general charge against Sokrates, of corrupting the youth. Now this circumstance had recently iappened in the peculiar case of Anytus, a rich tradesman, a leading man in politics, and just now of peculiar influence in the city, because he had been one of the leading fellow-laborers with Thrasybulus in the expulsion of the Thirty, manifesting an energetic and meritorious patriot- ism. He, like Thrasybulus and many others, had sustained great loss of property 3 during the oligarchical dominion ; which perhaps made him the more strenuous in requiring that his son should pursue trade with assiduity, in order to restore the family fortunes. He seems, moreover, to have been an enemy of all teaching which went beyond the narrowest practicality, hating alike Sokrates and the sophists. 4 While we can thus point out a recent occurrence, which had brought one of the most ascendent politicians in the city into special exasperation against Sokrates, another circumstance which weighed him down was, his past connection with the deceased Kritias and Alkibiades. Of these two men, the latter, though he had some great admirers, was on the whole odious ; still more from his private insolence and enormities than from his public treason as an exile. But the name of Kritias was detested, and deservedly detested, beyond that of any other man in Athenian history, as the chief director of the unmeasured spoliation and atrocities committed by the Thirty. 1 See Xenoph. Apol. Sok. sects. 29, 30. This little piece bears a very erroneous title, and may possibly not be the composition of Xenophon, as the commentators generally affirm ; but it has every appearance of being a work of the time. 3 Isokrat. Or. xviii, cont. Kallimach. s. 30. See Plato, Menon, c. 27, 28, pp. 90, 91.
 * Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 10, p. 23, C ; c. 27, p 37, E.