It is with this divergence in aim and method in mind that we must examine the principal document on each side of the argument; the moving and eloquent apology which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates on the one side, and the pamphlet of Polycrates on the other. As we examine the Apology certain things become very clear.

First and foremost, Socrates tells us, he is quite conscious that he is personally very unpopular in Athens, and that any defense he can make must begin with a frank discussion of the suspicion and slander that surround his name. It should be sufficiently clear, by now, on what the suspicion was based. Socrates, as Taylor very well sees, was suspected of being the head and center of an antidemocratic conspiratorial club. The youth whom he was accused of corrupting were wealthy and patrician young men, like Critias and Alcibiades, whom, it was thought, he had indoctrinated with his own contempt for democracy, his own esteem for oligarchical merit, his own conviction that only knowledge and wisdom entitled one to rule, his own suspicion that artisans and democratic' statesmen could not possess this knowledge or wisdom, and his own doctrine that such wisdom was accessible only as a result of a semi-religious "search," of philosophy as a way of life. The new gods whom he was accused of introducing were the mystic divinities of Pythagorean sects-the militant protective deities of international conservatism. It should be clear, too, that this suspicion in the minds of Athenians could not have been of long / 77 / standing. It could, in no case, have dated back earlier than about 415, and probably did not become acute until after 406. In the Apology, Socrates takes great pains to confuse the issue and to confound the recent suspicion with the earlier attack of Aristophanes. He goes to great lengths attempting to push the distrust back much earlier in time. Explaining how the suspicion has arisen he uses, with almost monotonous reiteration, such expressions as "long ago," "many years ago" and so on. The cumulative effect within only one page makes Socrates seem like an innocent man who all through his life has been the object of malicious slander.

He deliberately confounds two quite separate things; the accusations that Aristophanes had made against him-based on the intellectual interests of his early manhood-with the distrust that had arisen much later. He tries to make it appear that the earlier kind of slander had made him suspect in the eyes of the democracy. "But these are much more formidable, fellow citizens, those who have influenced the many of you [notice "the many," i.e. (a technical term), the democracy, not simply "many"] from childhood and persuaded you and accused me without a grain of truth in their accusation-that there is a certain Socrates, a wise man, who is a thinker about astronomical matter and has investigated every, thing beneath the earth and he makes the weaker argument, the stronger." " The words, "sophos aner [wise-man]," should put us on our guard. There is a clear attempt to implicate himself with the sophistic tradition, and to suggest that this implication was the reason for his unpopularity with the demos. The two specific charges he outlines are that he is a materialistic investigator and that he practices the kind of subjective manipulation of concepts which was the stock-in-trade of the sophists. It should be obvious, however, that if this were the charge and this the slander, it would tend to make him unpopular among the oligarchs, but certainly not among the democrats. The fact that he associates all this attack with the comic poet Aristophanes should make the point and its implications perfectly clear. In other words, he was deliberately trying to confound the Pythagorean askesis that the prosecution was charging against him, with the materialistic method and / 78 / the technique of sophistic argument that he had abandoned years ago. He has done this with such success that the two things have remained confounded and all the labors of scholarship have not served to extricate them. We may remember how Xenophon strove to show that Socrates and Critias were at odds, thus disengaging Socrates from any one position. Similarly Plato tries to implicate Socrates with democratic and sophistic traditions just as much as with oligarchical principles. It need hardly be said that Plato is not trying to make a sophist of Socrates. His purpose is much more subtle. He is trying to dissipate the general conviction that Socrates had taken his stand with the oligarchs.

That this is not simply a hyper-ingenious interpretation, but necessary once one appreciates the political issues of the trial is well demonstrated by the account which Socrates gives of the "divine sign" and the unpopularity which arose therefrom. "You know, I think, Chairephon," he says; "he was a friend of mine from youth and a friend to your democratic party. He went *into exile with you [democrats] and returned from exile with you." 44 "It was this individual," says Socrates in effect, "who with his usual impetuosity went off to Delphi and inquired of the god whether there was anywhere a wiser man than 1. It was this individual and this episode which started me on my career of questioning to find whether any of our great and successful men really knew anything. It was a democrat who launched me on my career of anti-democratic philosophy. 44a And so, out of deference to the god I went around questioning our distinguished statesmen and craftsmen to see if they knew anything-demonstrating to my own satisfaction that they did not. And it happened that young men followed me quite of their own accord-the sons of the wealthiest parents, for these had most time, and they liked to hear the great and near-great exposed and did the same thing in their fashion." The whole account is handled with profound skill. The original unpopularity was a result of my brush with / 79 / your old enemy, the comic poet. I was attacked for materialistic investigation and sophism just like the great democratic thinkers, Anaxagoras and Euripides; it was a democrat who started me on the "quest" which has done so much to ruin my reputation with die democracy and it is the sheerest accident that only wealthy young men have leisure to follow me and imitate.

The rest of the Apology is in the same way an essay in persuasion. In the indictment Socrates is accused of disloyalty to the state religion, but in the defense he very adroitly changes the sense of this indictment so that it appears that he is charged with atheism. Now such an accusation would obviously be ridiculous, and in Plato's version Socrates mockingly refutes it.

Plato has done his usual thorough job of making the opposition obligingly stupid. Meletus is made to blunder into the ridiculous error of arguing out the question in terms of whether Socrates is an atheist. And obviously he was not! But notice how skillfully his argument is offered. Any tinge of atheism would be connected with materialistic philosophy, with the doctrines jibed at by Aristophanes in the Clouds, the banishing of Zeus and the enthroning of Vortex or materialistic law. This is again the same attempt to confuse the issue, by defending himself against charges which might have had point in his earlier life, but which for the last fifteen or twenty years could have had no meaning. To the real charge of subverting the state religion and bringing in Pythagorean divinities Socrates answers only with impressive silence.

In his essay on the Impiety of Socrates, A. E. Taylor has discussed the nature of the real charge, proving beyond question that the accusation was based on Socrates' known affinity for the Pythagorean sects. Taylor bases his exceedingly well-grounded discussion on the main point that the democracy suspected Socrates of being "the able and dangerous head of an antidemocratic club." The main evidence for this Pythagorean affiliation can be summarized fairly briefly. In the first place there is the unquestionable fact of a contact between Socrates and a number of men who can be directly linked to the Pythagorean cults. Some of their names appear in the Platonic dialogues. Taylor / 80 / cites the following who are mentioned: Philolaus 45 (though not referred to by name), the famous Sicilian Pythagorean, Simmias and Cebes, pupils of Philolaus, who were residents of Thebes; Echecrates of Phlius, mentioned in lamblichus' Catalogue of the Pythagoreans; Phaedo, a friendly acquaintance of the "club" at Phlius; and Euclides and Terpsion, the Eleatics from Megara. 46 Secondly, there is the highly suggestive account which Plato gives of the generosity and solicitude of Simmias and Cebes who brought a sum of money from Thebes to buy Socrates' release from prison .47 There is also the interesting if casual comment made by Socrates in the Phaedo 48 that if he had decided to escape from Athens he would, of course, have gone to Megara or Thebes, both strongholds of Pythagorean activity.

Most extraordinary of all, however, is the way Socrates has met the charge that he had corrupted the youth. His argument, in essence, is this: "To corrupt means to make men worse: I have made these young men better. How, then, could I have corrupted them? I have taught them virtue and knowledge." The implication to the minds of his accusers he mentions not at all-that in making young men" better" he was also suggesting to them that the "best" should rule; or the further implication that in contrasting these better with the worse, in exposing the "ignorance' of artisans and statesmen, he was showing that they were unfit to hold office; or the much more serious implication that the logical outcome of this semi-mystical, half-fanatical Pythagorean creed upon the excitable minds of patrician young men in a period of bitter political strife was the formation of anti-democratic clubs and even, in one or two extreme cases, of anti-democratic terror. How simple the ruse would have seemed to the prosecution from the standpoint of practical politics.

The other side of the argument has been laboriously and ingeniously re-created by recent scholarship. It is a great pity from the point of view of historical objectivity that the friends and defenders of Socrates have had almost a monopoly on the literary evidence that has survived. We are reminded of another parallel. The very sharp criticisms which Celsus in his True Word leveled at the / 81 / tradition of Jesus have survived only in the refutation of Origen. There is, however, one important difference. Where in the case of the argument against Celsus, the polemic is not delivered until the early part of the third century, in the case of Socrates the literary cultus was well on its way to formation within a decade of his death.

Putting together Xenophon's Memorabilia and Libanius' Apology it is entirely possible to make out the main lines of the political charges leveled against Socrates. They have been grouped by recent scholars under five heads. 49 "The first was that Socrates had been the teacher of Alcibiades and Critias.

Xenophon quotes as one of the charges directed against him that he makes his associates disregard the existing laws. 50 He further notices the charge against Socrates that the effect of his teaching is to make young men despise the existing constitution and resort to violence, 51 even more specifically that the association of Critias and Alcibiades with Socrates was the source of untold mischief to the state. 52 He is accused also of stirring young men to enmity with their parents 53 and that he quoted line's from the poets and used these quotations in a subversive way. 54 Xenophon has a difficult task in correcting the very bad impression that such verses torn from their contexts must have had on people imbued with a passion for democratic liberty and equality. The first is from Hesiod, "No work is a disgrace, but idleness is a disgrace." Xenophon explains that "he was charged with explaining this line as an injunction to refrain from no work, dishonest or disgraceful, but to do anything for gain." 55 The other is from Homer's Iliad. 56

"Whenever he found one that was a captain and a man of mark, he stood by his side, and restrained him with gentle words: Good Sir, it is not seemly to affright thee like a coward, but do thou sit thyself and make all thy folk sit down. . . .'But whatever man of the people he saw and found him shouting. Him he drove with his scepter and chid him with loud words: Good Sir, sit still and hearken to the words of others, that arc thy betters: but thou art no warrior and a weakling, never reckoned whether in battle or in council." Perhaps Xenophon's fantastic piece of / 82 / exegesis is worth quoting, ". . . What he did say was that those who render no service either by word or deed, who cannot help army or city or the people itself in time of need, ought to be stopped, even if they have riches in abundance, 57 above all if they are insolent as well as inefficient." It is no wonder that simple people who lacked Xenophon's ingenuity and talent for scholarly discipleship took the quotation in its more obvious sense. Libanius mentions Theognis and Pindar as other poets in whom Socrates discovered apt malice.

Again, Libanius shows clearly that one of the charges brought against Socrates by Polycrates was that he was a teacher of the young oligarchs. We may quote the following passages: "For," says he (i.e., Polycrates), "he teaches people to perjure themselves." 58 "Allusion visible � Alcibiade," says Humbert. Precisely. "If then Socrates taught people to perjure themselves and steal and commit violence and do all the other things which Anytus claims . . ." 59 Here again there is a reference to Alcibiades and Critias. Libanius, however, is even more clear about what is meant when he says that "as a teacher of evil deeds he [i.e., Polycrates] has no one he can mention except Alcibiades and Critias." 60 That, we should think, would have been mention enough. Libanius himself admits that Critias overthrew the democracy. 61

To make his point clear Polycrates had mentioned the great men of old, Miltiades and Themistocles, who had not consorted with the philosophers. 62 And to show his own political position Polycrates spoke in terms of warm praise of such democratic leaders as Thrasybulus and Conon who had not been corrupted as Alcibiades and Critias had. 63

The second charge against Socrates was that his teaching tended to encourage idleness and neglect of civic duties. "Socrates," the first statement runs, "made people lazy." 64 This was met by the rejoinder that Anytus thought that only the sycophants (i.e., professional accusers) were active. 65 Socrates is accused of failure to address the assembly. Libanius puts the accusation in the following terms: "He does not speak from the tribune." "Yes," is the / 83 / reply, "like many Athenians, following the precedent given by Solon, since he did not have a temperament that enabled him to consort with the people, and yet he watched over many private citizens. But if he saw immature youths mounting to the platform, he seized them, he checked them, he would not let them bother themselves with the interests of the commonwealth. This was the peculiar feature of Socrates' method, as a result of which he rescued the city from inexperienced pilots." 66 The implication in the mind of the accuser is clear, that Socrates did not feel at home in a public assembly, but was much better adapted to secret intrigues, to committee meetings, to the conspiratorial clubs, and intimate discussions with the inner circle of disciples.

Included in the accusation is the assertion that Socrates took no part in commerce and mercantile life, that he was not "a merchant." 67 This whole paragraph we shall discuss a little later. In the meantime it is sufficient to point out the profound significance of this charge, in view of the political clash going on between the democratic mercantile class and the wealthy agrarian patricians.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the specific charge is made against him of training his associates in an anti-democratic direction and leading them to overthrow the democratic state. "Socrates trains the young men to attack the laws. [The Greek word askei is the verb corresponding to the noun askesis which, as we have pointed out, is connected with the Pythagorean, part religious, part political, part "philosophical" way of life.] The constitution is in danger. Our philosopher creates men who are reckless and tyrannical, insufferable, despisers of the principle of equality. Shall we not check him? Shall we not expel him before those who are nurtured by him overthrow the power of the laws? 68 "He hates the democracy and persuades his associates to mock at democracy." 69 "He reproaches our [democratic] customs 70 and his accuser has dared to call him a tyrant." 71

The final charge against Socrates is that his influence tended to make young men despise their parents and compare them unfavorably with Socrates, that it made them impertinent to their elder brothers. 72 It seems impossible to associate this with any specific / 84 / individuals or instances, though it is possible that the extraordinary deferential treatment of Cephelus at the beginning of The Republic is consciously intended by Plato to erase this impression.

These accusations all point to one thing, a conspiracy against the democratic constitution of Athens and an intellectual assault on the whole democratic way of life. We should remember, however, that if the argument of the prosecution seems less coherent than that of Plato, it is only because the case against Socrates has never come down to us in a unified form. Moreover, coming to us as it does from the refutations of Socrates' supporters, we must conjecture that the defense has dealt only with those items which they felt they could convincingly refute. It is almost certain that much of the evidence actually produced against the defendant, and perhaps even the most damaging evidence, was passed over in silence.

Let us remind ourselves once again that in Plato's own admission the restored democracy had conducted itself with great moderation and that a clear majority of the jury felt that the case had been amply proved. All this should make us very hesitant to accept the conventional explanation that a high-minded and guiltless philosopher fell an innocent victim to the excited and hysterical passions of a Philistine and ignorant mob, that an innocent and tolerant soul was sacrificed to the machinations of cynical politicians, to machinations that his gentle nature could never really comprehend.

Some of our readers may have been vaguely disturbed by a method of interpretation which correlates social and intellectual forces which on the surface may seem unrelated. We must emphasize that this correlation was very keenly present to the minds of men living in the early fourth century B.C. -- clearer to them than it could possibly have been again for many centuries. This is shown quite explicitly in a paragraph from Libanius, 73 where the accusation is leveled against Socrates that he does not take part in the life of commerce, that he is not a merchant. In great scorn the defense supposedly asks how he could be a better guide for youth if he were a merchant. The rest of the paragraph makes it clear that there is a very close association in Polycrates' mind between / 85 / three separate arguments  the argument concerning the clash between the mercantile and the aristocratic way of life, the discussion of the relative merits of the Spartan and Athenian constitutions ("no philosopher grows in Spartan soil"), that is, between the democratic and oligarchic constitutions, and the philosophical argument between idealists and their opponents. It is no matter that Libanius quite misunderstands the charge and thinks that Socrates is being reproached for his poverty. The important point is that this identification of an argument on three levels with the clash between two ways of life, mercantile and aristocratic, could not be an importation from the fourth century A.D., for in this period the issues were very different. It must go back to Polycrates and is a convincing demonstration of the position that we have taken  that there was a transparent unity in fifth- and early fourth-century Athens between thought and life, between philosophy and social antagonisms.

In the tradition that grew around Socrates hostile social forces found unequal expression. As we have already mentioned, one side of the controversy has already perished; the other side has come to us refracted through the eyes of a man of transcendent genius, but a man whose sympathies are evident. Socrates had the good fortune to die just when the great tradition of idealistic philosophy was beginning to find articulate expression and a respectable technique of controversy; indeed, he contributed not a little to the process. It is no wonder, therefore, that Socrates was caught up in the process of transfiguration, that he shared the ascent of philosophy from earth to heaven, and that the Socratic myth which has dominated the imagination of the ages, has been given something like a universal sanction and an absolute validity. For the movement which creates idealistic philosophy is also, to a degree, a process of canonization.

End of Part III and of the Book

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