Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/495

 TOPICS OK ACCUSATION. 473 without scruple do any sort of work, base or unjust as it might be. for the sake of profit. Next, Sokrates was particularly fond of quoting those lines of Homer, in the second book of the Hiad, wherein Odysseus is described as bringing back the Greeks, who had just dispersed from the public agora in compliance with the exhortation of Agamemnon, and were hastening to their ships. Odysseus caresses and flatters the chiefs, while he chides and even strikes the common men ; though both were doing the same thing, and guilty of the same fault ; if fault it was, to obey what the commander-in-chief had himself just suggested. Sokrates interpreted this passage, the accuser affirmed, as if Homer praised the application of stripes to poor men and the common people. 1 Nothing could be easier than for an accuser to find matter for inculpation of Sokrates, by partial citations from his continual discourses, given without the context or explanations which had accompanied them ; by bold invention, where even this partial basis was wanting ; sometimes also by taking up real error, since no man who is continually talking, especially extempore, can always talk correctly. Few teachers would escape, if penal sen- tences were permitted to tell against them, founded upon evidence such as this. Xenophon, in noticing the imputations, comments upon them all, denies some, and explains others. As to the pas- sages out of Hesiod and Homer, he affirms that Sokrates drew from them inferences quite contrary to those alleged; 2 which latter seem, indeed, altogether unreasonable, invented to call forth the deep-seated democratical sentiment of the Athenians, after the accuser had laid his preliminary ground by connecting Sokrates with Kritias and Alkibiades. That Sokrates improperly depreciated either filial duty or the domestic affections, is in like manner highly improbable. We may much more reasonably believe the assertion of Xenophon, who represents him to have exhorted the hearer " to make himself as wise, and as capable of rendering service, as possible ; so that, when he wished to acquire esteem from father or brother or friend, he might not sit still, in reliance on the simple fact of relationship, but might earn such feeling by doing them positive good." 3 To tell a young 1 Xcn. Mem. i, 2, 5G-59. * Xcn. Mero. i, 2, 59.
 * Xen. Mem. i, 2, 55. Ka< rrapuAet tirtfi&dc 9ai TOV