principles and sentiments with which he inspired them; on the one side a perfect submission to the laws and magistrates, in which ne made justice consist; on the other, a profound regard for the Divinity, which constitutes religion. In things surpassing our understanding, he advises us to consult the gods; and as they impart themselves only to those that please them, he recommends above all things the making of them propitious by a prudent and regular conduct. * . The gods are free,' says he, and it depends upon them either to grant what we ask, or to give us the directly reverse of it.' He cites an excellent prayer from a poet whose name has not come down to us; 'Great God, give us, we beseech thee, those good things of which we stand in need, whether we crave them or not; and remove from us all those which may hurtful to us, even though we implore them of thee.' The vulgar imagined, that there are things which the gods observe, and others of which they take no notice: but Socrates taught, that the gods observe all our actions and words: that they penetrate into our most secret thoughts; are present in all our deliberations; and that they inspire us in all our actions.

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SECT. V. SOCRATES APPLIES HIMSELF TO DISCREDIT THE SOPHISTS IN THE OPINION OF THE YOUNG ATHENIANS. WHAT IS TO BE Understood of THE IRONICAL CHARACTER ASCRIBED TO HIM.-Socrates found it necessary to guard the young people against a bad taste which had prevailed for some time in Greece. A sect of assuming men arose, who, ranking themselves as the first sages of Greece, were in their conduct entirely the reverse. For instead of being infinitely remote from all avarice and ambition, like Pittacus, Bias, Thales, and the others, who made the study of wisdom their principal occupation, these men were ambitious and covetous, entered into the intrigues and affairs of the world, and made a trade of their pretended knowledge. They called themselves† sophists. They wandered from city to city, and caused themselves to be

Plat. in Apolog. p. 19, 20.

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Ἐπὶ θεοῖς ἐστὶν, οἶμαι, ὥστε καὶ διδόναι ἅττ ̓ ἄν τις εὐχόμενος τυγχάνῃ, καὶ τἀναντία τέτων. Plat. in Alcib. ii. p. 148.

+ Sic enim appellantur hi qui ostentationis aut quæstûs causâ philosophantur. Cic. in Lascul. n. 129.

cried up as oracles, and walked about attended by crowds of their disciples, who, through a kind of enchantment, abandoned the embraces of their parents to follow these proud teachers, whom they paid a great price for their instruction. There was nothing these masters did not profess :-theology, physics, ethics, arithmetic, astronomy, grammar, music, poetry, rhetoric, and history. They knew every thing, and could teach every thing. Their greatest supposed skill lay in philosophy and eloquence. Most of them, like Gorgias, valued themselves upon giving immediate answers to all questions that could be proposed to them. Their young disciples acquired nothing from their precepts, but a silly esteem for themselves, and an universal contempt for every body else; so that not a scholar quitted these schools, but was more impertinent than when he first entered them.

It was necessary to decry the false eloquence and bad logic of these proud teachers in the opinion of the young Athenians. To attack them openly, and dispute with them in a direct manner, by a connected discourse, was what Socrates could well have done, for he possessed in a supreme degree the talents of elocution and reasoning; but this was not the way to succeed against great haranguers, whose sole aim was to dazzle their auditors with a vain glitter and rapid flow of words. He therefore took another course, and employing the artifices and address of irony, which he knew how to apply with wonderful art and delicacy, he chose to conceal, under the appearance of simplicity and the affectation of ignorance, all the beauty and great force of his genius. Nature, which had given him so fine a soul, seemed to have formed his outside expressly for supporting the ironic character. He was very ugly, and, besides that, † had something very dull and stupid in his physiognomy. The whole air of his person, which had nothing but what was very common and very poor in it, perfectly corresponded with that of his countenance.

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When he happened to fall into the company of some one of

* Socrates in ironiâ dissimulantiâque longè omnibus lepore atque humanitate præstitit. Cic. 1. ii. de Orat. n. 270.

Zopyrus physiognomon-stupidum esse Socratem dixit et bardum. Cic de Fat. n. 10.

↑ Socrates de se ipse detrahens in disputatione, plus tribuebat iis, quos volebat

these sophists, he proposed his doubts with a diffident and modest air, asked simple questions in a plain manner, and, as if he had been incapable of expressing himself otherwise, made use of trivial comparisons, and allusions taken from the meanest employments. The sophist heard him with a scornful attention, and instead of giving him a precise answer, had recourse to his common-place phrases, and talked a great deal without saying any thing to the purpose. Socrates, after having praised (in order not to enrage) his adversary, entreated him to adapt himself to his weakness, and to descend so low as him, by satisfying his questions in a few words; because neither his wit nor memory were capable of comprehending or retaining so many fine and exalted notions, and all his knowledge was confined to question and answer.

This passed in a numerous assembly, and the teacher could not recede. When Socrates had once got him out of his intrenchment, by obliging him to answer his questions succinctly, he carried him on from one to another, to the most absurd consequences; and after having reduced him either to contradict himself, or be silent, he complained that the learned man would not vouchsafe to instruct him. The young people, however, perceived the incapacity of their master, and changed their admiration for him into contempt. Thus the name of sophist became odious and ridiculous.

It is easy to judge that men of the sophists' character, of which I have now spoken, who were in high credit with the great, who lorded it amongst the youth of Athens, and had been long celebrated for their wit and learning, could not be attacked with impunity; and the rather, because they had been assailed in the two most sensible points, their fame and their interest. 8 Socrates, for having endeavoured to unmask their vices and discredit their false eloquence, experienced from these men, who were equally corrupt and haughty, all that could be feared or expected from the most malignant envy and refellere. Ita, cùm aliud diceret atque sentiret, libenter uti solitus est illâ dissimulatione quam Græci sigavsíav vocant. Cic. Acad. Quæst. 1. iv. n. 15.

Sed et illum quem nominavi (Gorgiam) et cæteros sophistas, ut è Platone intelligi potest, lusos videmus à Socrate. Is enim percontando atque interrogando elicere solebat eorum opiniones quibuscum disserebat, ut ad ea, quæ ii respondissent, si quid videretur, diceret. Cic. de Finib. 1. ii. n. 2.

Plat. in Apolog. p. 23.

the most envenomed hatred; to which it is now time to proceed.

A. M. 3602. Ant. J. C.

402.

SECT. VI. SOCRATES IS ACCUSED OF HOLDING BAD OPINIONS IN REGARD TO THE GODS, AND OF CORRUPTING THE ATHENIAN YOUTH. HE DEFENDS HIMSELF WITHOUT ART OR FEAR. HE IS CONdemned to DIE.-Socrates was accused a little before the first year of the 95th Olympiad, soon after the expulsion of the thirty tyrants out of Athens, in the sixty-ninth year of his life; but the prosecution had been projected long before. The oracle of Delphi, which had declared him the wisest of mankind; the contempt into which he had brought the doctrine and morals of the sophists of his time, who were then in high reputation; the liberty with which he attacked all vice; the singular attachment of his disciples. to his person and maxims, had all concurred in alienating people against him, and had drawn abundance of envy upon him.

'His enemies having sworn his destruction, and perceiving the difficulty of the attempt, prepared the way for it at a distance, and at first attacked him in the dark, and by obscure and secret methods. It is said, that in order to sound the people's disposition towards Socrates, and to try whether it would ever be safe to cite him before the judges, they engaged Aristophanes to bring him upon the stage in a comedy, wherein the first seeds of the accusation meditated against him were sown. It is not certain whether Aristophanes was suborned by Anytus and the rest of Socrates's enemies to compose that satirical piece against him. It is very likely that Socrates's declared contempt for all comedies in general, and for those of Aristophanes in particular, whilst he professed an extraordinary esteem for the tragedies of Euripides, might be the poet's true motive for taking his revenge of the philosopher. However it were, Aristophanes, to the disgrace of poetry, lent his pen to the malice of Socrates's enemies, or his own resentment, and employed his whole genius and capacity to depreciate the best and most excellent man that ever the pagan world produced. He composed a piece called The Clouds,' wherein he Elian. 1. ii. c. 13. Plat. in Apolog. Socrat. p. 19.

introduces the philosopher perched in a basket, and hoisted up amidst the air and clouds, from whence he delivers maxims, or rather the most ridiculous subtilties. A very aged debtor, who desires to escape the close pursuit of his creditors, comes to him to be taught the art of tricking them at law; to prove by unanswerable reasons that he owes them nothing; and, in a word, of a very bad, to make a very good, cause. But finding himself incapable of any improvement from the sublime lessons of his new master, he brings his son to him in his stead. This young man soon after quits this learned school so well instructed, that at their first meeting he beats his father, and proves to him by subtile but invincible arguments, that he has reason for treating him in that manner. In every scene where Socrates appears, the poet makes him utter a thousand impertinencies, and as many impieties against the gods, and in particular against Jupiter. He makes him talk like a man of the greatest vanity and highest opinion of himself, with an equal contempt for all others, who out of a criminal curiosity is desirous of penetrating into what passes in the heavens, and of diving into the abysses of the earth; who boasts of having always the means of making injustice triumph; and who is not contented with keeping those secrets for his own use, but teaches them to others, and thereby corrupts youth. All this is attended with a refined raillery and wit, that could not fail of highly pleasing a people of so quick and delicate a taste as the Athenians, who were besides naturally jealous of all transcendent merit. They were so much charmed with it, that without waiting the conclusion of the representation, they ordered the name of Aristophanes to be set down above all his competitors.

Socrates, who had been informed that he was to be brought upon the stage, went that day to the theatre to see the comedy, contrary to his custom; for it was not common for him to go to those assemblies, unless when some new tragedy of Euripides was to be performed, who was his intimate friend, and whose pieces he esteemed upon account of the solid principles of morality he took care to intersperse in them. It has, however, been observed, that he once had not patience to wait the conclusion of one of them, wherein the actor had advanced a