Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/505

 SENTENCE OF DEATH. 483 years younger, with less of acquired dignity, and more years of possible usefulness open before him. Without debasing himself by unbecoming flattery or supplication, he would have avoided lecturing them as a master and superior, 1 or ostentatiously assert- ing a divine mission for purposes which they would hardly under stand, or an independence of their verdict which they might con strue as defiance. The rhetor Lysias is said to have sent to him a composed speech for his defence, which he declined to use, not thinking it suitable to his dignity. But such a man as Lysias would hardly compose what would lower the dignity even of the loftiest client, though he would look to the result also ; nor is there any doubt that if Sokrates had pronounced it, or even a much less able speech, if inoffensive, he would have been acquitted. Quintilian, 2 indeed, expresses his satisfaction that Sokrates maintained that towering dignity which brought out the rarest and most exalted of his attributes, but which at the same time renounced all chance of acquittal. Few persons will dissent from this criticism : but when we look at the sentence, as we ought in fairness to do, from the point of view of the dikasts, justice will compel us to admit that Sokrates deliberately brought it upon himself. If the verdict of guilty was thus brought upon Sokrates by his own consent and cooperation, much more may the same remark be made respecting the capital sentence which followed it. In Athenian procedure, the penalty inflicted was determined by a separate vote of the dikasts, taken after the verdict of guilty. The accuser having named the penalty which he thought suitable, the accused party on his side named some lighter penalty upon himself; and between these two the dikasts were called on to make their option, no third proposition being admissible. The prudence of an accused party always induced him to propose, t-ven against himself, some measure of punishment which the dikasts 1 Cicero (dc Oral i, 54. 231 ) : " Socrates ita in judicio capitis pro sc ipse dixtt, ut 11011 supplex ant reus, scd mafjister aut dominns riu'i nhtrcsxe jiidicum." So Epiktetus also remarked, in reference to the defence of Sokrates : "By all means, abstain from supplication for mercy ; but do not put it specially forwarl, that you will abstain, unless you intend, like Sokrates, purposely to pro/okc the judges." (Annan, Epiktt. Diss. ii, 2, 18.)
 * Quintilian, Inst. Or. ii, 15, 30; xi, 1, 10; Diog. Laert. ii, 40.