VII. THE DEATH OF SOCRATES
Strange to say, the only cruelty of the restored democracy was committed upon an old philosopher whose seventy years should have put him beyond the possibility of being a danger to the state. But among the leaders of the victorious faction was the same Anytus who years before had threatened to revenge himself upon Socrates for dialectical slights and the “corruption” of his son. Anytus was a good man: he had fought bravely under Thrasybulus, had saved the lives of oligarchs who had been taken captive by his soldiers, had been instrumental in arranging the amnesty, and had left in undisturbed enjoyment of his property those to whom it had been sold after confiscation by the Thirty. But his generosity failed when it came to Socrates. He could not forget that when he had gone into exile his son had stayed in Athens with Socrates, and had become a drunkard.32 It did not appease Anytus to observe that Socrates had refused to obey the Thirty, and (if we may take Xenophon’s word for it) had denounced Critias as a bad ruler.33 To Anytus it seemed that Socrates, more than any Sophist, was an evil influence both on morals and on politics; he was undermining the religious faith that had supported morality, and his persistent criticism was weakening the belief of educated Athenians in the institutions of democracy. The murderous tyrant Critias had been one of Socrates’ pupils; the immoral and treasonable Alcibiades had been his lover; Charmides, his early favorite, had been a general under Critias, and had just died in battle against the democracy.* It seemed fitting to Anytus that Socrates should leave Athens, or die.
The indictment was brought forward by Anytus, Meletus, and Lycon in 399, and read as follows: “Socrates is a public offender in that he does not recognize the gods that the state recognizes, but introduces new demoniacal beings” (the Socratic daimonion); “he has also offended by corrupting the youth.”*35 The trial was held before a popular court, or dikasterion, of some five hundred citizens, mostly of the less educated class. We have no means of knowing how accurately Plato and Xenophon have reported Socrates’ defense; we do know that Plato was present at the trial,37 and that his account of Socrates’ “apology” agrees in many points with Xenophon’s. Socrates, says Plato, insisted that he believed in the state gods, even in the divinity of the sun and moon. “You say first that I do not believe in gods, and then again that I believe in demigods. . . . You might as well affirm the existence of mules, and deny that of horses and asses.”38 And then he referred sadly to the effects of Aristophanes’ satire:
I have had many accusers, who accused me of old, and their false charges have continued during many years; and I am more afraid of them than of Anytus and his associates. . . . For they began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heavens above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause. These are the accusers I dread; for they are the circulators of this rumor, and their hearers are too apt to fancy that speculators of this sort do not believe in the gods. And they are many, and their charges against me are of ancient date, and they made them in days when you were impressionable—in childhood, or perhaps in youth—and the cause when heard went by default, for there was none to answer. And hardest of all, their names I do not know and cannot tell, unless in the chance case of a comic poet. . . . That is the nature of the accusation, and that is what you have seen yourselves in the comedy of Aristophanes.39
He lays claim to a divine mission to teach the good and simple life, and no threat will deter him.
Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing death—if, I say, now when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philosopher’s mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death. . . . If you say to me, Socrates, this time we will let you off, but upon one condition, that you are not to inquire and speculate in this way any more . . . I should reply: Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet, after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you, who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth? Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.40
The judges appear to have interrupted him at this point, and to have bidden him desist from what seemed to them insolence; but he continued in even haughtier vein.
I would have you know that if you kill such a one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me. . . . For if you kill me you will not easily find another like me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by the God; and the state is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. . . . And as you will not easily find another like me, I would advise you to spare me.41
The sentence of guilty was pronounced upon him by the small majority of sixty; had his defense been more conciliatory it is likely that he would have been acquitted. He had the privilege of proposing an alternative penalty in place of death. At first he refused to make even this concession; but on the appeal of Plato and other friends, who underwrote his pledge, he offered to pay a fine of thirty minas ($3000). The second polling of the jury condemned him by eighty more votes than the first.42
It still remained open to him to escape from the prison; Crito and other friends (if we may follow Plato) prepared the way with bribery,45 and probably Anytus had hoped for such a compromise. But Socrates remained himself to the last. He felt that he had but a few more years to live, andthat “he relinquished only the most burdensome part of life, in which all feel their powers of intellect diminished.”46 Instead of accepting Crito’s proposal he examined it from an ethical point of view, discussed it dialectically, and played the game of logic to the end.47 His disciples visited him daily in his cell during the month between his trial and his execution, and he seems to have discoursed with them calmly until the final hour. Plato pictures him as fondling the hair and head of the young Phaedo, and saying, “Tomorrow, Phaedo, I suppose that these fair locks will be cut”—in mourning.48 Xanthippe came in tears, with their youngest child in her arms; he comforted her, and asked Crito to have her escorted home. “You die undeservedly,” said an ardent disciple; “Would you, then,” Socrates answered, “have me deserve death?”49
After he was gone, says Diodorus,50 the Athenians regretted their treatment of him, and put his accusers to death. Suidas makes Meletus die by public stoning.51 Plutarch varies the tale: the accusers became so unpopular that no citizen would light their fires, or answer their questions, or bathe in the same water with them; so that they were at last driven in despair to hang themselves.52 Diogenes Laertius reports that Meletus was executed, Anytus exiled, and a bronze statue put up by Athens in memory of the philosopher.53 We do not know if these stories are true.*
The Golden Age ended with the death of Socrates. Athens was exhausted in body and soul; only the degradation of character by prolonged war and desperate suffering could explain the ruthless treatment of Melos, the bitter sentence upon Mytilene, the execution of the Arginusae generals, and the sacrifice of Socrates on the altar of a dying faith. All the foundations of Athenian life were disordered: the soil of Attica had been devastated by the Spartan raids, and the slow-growing olive trees had been burned to the ground; the Athenian navy had been destroyed, and control of trade and the food supply had been lost; the state treasury was empty, and private fortunes had been taxed almost to extinction; two thirds of the citizen body had been killed. The damage done to Greece by the Persian invasions could not compare with the destruction of Greek life and property by the Peloponnesian War. After Salamis and Plataea Greece was left poor, but exalted with courage and pride; now Greece was poor again, and Athens had suffered a wound to her spirit which seemed too deep to be healed.
Two things sustained her: the restoration of democracy under men of judgment and moderation, and the consciousness that during the last sixty years, even during the War, she had produced such art and literature as surpassed the like product of any other age in the memory of man. Anaxagoras had been exiled and Socrates had been put to death; but the stimulus that they had given to philosophy sufficed to make Athens henceforth, and despite herself, the center and summit of Greek thought. What before had been formless tentatives of speculation were now to mature into great systems that would agitate Europe for centuries to come; while the haphazard provision of higher education by wandering Sophists was to be replaced by the first universities in history—universities that would make Athens, as Thucydides had prematurely called her, “the school of Hellas.” Through the bloodshed and turmoil of conflict the traditions of art had not quite decayed; for many centuries yet the sculptors and architects of Greece were to carve and build for all the Mediterranean world. Out of the despair of her defeat Athens lifted herself with startling virility to new wealth, culture, and power; and the autumn of her life was bountiful.