Page:The works of Plato, A new and literal version, (vol 6) (Burges, 1854).djvu/442

430 called "king," meets while he is walking in the portico, where that magistrate used to sit in judgment, with Euthyphro, a person deeply versed in the knowledge of religious affairs, as sacrifices, oracles, divinations, and such matters, and full of that grave kind of arrogance which these mysterious sciences use to inspire. His father, having an estate in the isle of Naxus, had employed among his own slaves a poor Athenian who worked for hire. This man, having drunk too much, had quarrelled with and actually murdered one of the slaves. Upon which, the father of Euthyphro apprehended and threw him into a jail, till the Εξηγηταὶ, Interpreters, had been consulted, in order to know what should be done. The man, not having been taken much care of, died in his confinement: upon which Euthyphro determines to lodge an indictment against his own father for murder. Socrates, surprised at the novelty of such an accusation, inquires into the sentiments of Euthyphro with regard to piety and the service of the gods, by way of informing himself on that subject against the time of his trial, and by frequent questions, entangling him in his own concessions, and forcing him to shift from one principle and definition to another, soon lays open his ignorance, and shows that all his ideas of religion were founded on childish fables and on arbitrary forms and institutions.

The intention of the dialogue seems to be, to expose the vulgar notions of piety, founded on traditions unworthy of the Divinity, and employed in propitiating him by puerile inventions and by the vain ceremonies of external worship, without regard to justice and to those plain duties of society, which alone can render us truly worthy of the Deity.

was himself present at the trial of Socrates, being then about twenty-nine years of age; and he was one of those who offered to speak in his defence, though the court would not suffer him to proceed, and to be bound as a surety for the payment of his fine: yet we are not to imagine, that this oration was the real de-