Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/102

92 and made it his daily business. In the morning he regularly frequented the gymnasia and exercise-grounds; at noon, when the market was full, he was to be found there; for the rest of the day he went wherever the citizens of Athens happened most to be congregated. Socrates thus became "an institution" and a public character; and as such he was caricatured by Aristophanes in a comedy called 'The Clouds,' in which Socrates was represented, miserable and half-starved, keeping a "thinking shop," in which the most absurd speculations were ventilated. This public raillery probably did Socrates no harm, and was not the least resented by him.

But in the unremitting pursuance of his missionary career for the improvement of his fellow-citizens, Socrates made himself many enemies. There are always people who do not wish to be improved, especially after they have got to a certain age, and who resent the attempt to improve them as an impertinence. Again, with all the grace and good-breeding of the manner of Socrates, it was his invariable object to show people that they did not know so much about things as they themselves imagined. And this operation was applied in the most unsparing way to persons who were considered to be quite "authorities" on political and other questions. We can hardly wonder that such a species of practice should have raised up for the practitioner a plentiful crop of unpopularity. Public men found themselves assailed, before crowds of people, with vexing questions which they were unable to answer. They found their prestige impaired,