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Megara, to the house of Euclid; where they staid till the storm blew over. Euripides, however, to reproach the Athe nians with the horrible crime they had committed, in condemning the best of men to die upon such slight grounds, composed his tragedy called Palamedes, in which, under the name of that hero, who was also destroyed by a black calumniation, he deplored the misfortune of his friend. When the actor came to repeat this verse,

"You doom the justest of the Greeks to perish,"

the whole theatre, remembering Socrates in so distinct an image of him, melted into tears, and a decree passed to prohibit speaking any more of him in public. Some believe Euripides was dead before Socrates, and reject this circumstance.

However it were, the people of Athens did not open their eyes till some time after the death of Socrates. Their hatred being satisfied, their prejudices expired, and time having given them opportunity for reflection, the notorious injustice of the sentence appeared in all its horrors. Nothing was heard throughout the city but discourses in favour of Socrates. The academy, the Lyceum, private houses, public walks, and market-places, seemed still to re-echo the sound of his loved voice. Here, said they, he formed our youth, and taught our children to love their country, and to honour their parents. In this place, he gave us his admirable lessons, and sometimes made us seasonable reproaches, to engage us more warmly in the pursuit of virtue. Alas! how have we rewarded him for such important services! Athens was in universal mourning and consternation. The schools were shut up, and all exercises suspended. The accusers were called to account for the innocent blood they had caused to be shed. Melitus was condemned to die, and the rest banished. Plutarch observes, that all those who had any share in this black calumny, were in such abomination among the citizens, that no one would give them fire, answer them any question, nor go into the same bath with them, and had the place cleansed where they had bathed, lest they should be polluted by touching it; which drove them into such despair, that many of them killed themselves.

*The Athenians, not contented with having punished his accusers, caused a statue of brass to be erected to him, of the workmanship of the celebrated Lysippus, and placed it in one of the most conspicuous parts of the city. Their respe ́t and gratitude rose even to a religious veneration; they dedicated a chapel to him, as to a hero and a demi-god, which they called Zangarov, that is to say, "the chapel of Socrates.”

* Diog. p. 116.

SECTION VIII.

REFLECTIONS UPON SOCRATES, AND THE SENTENCE PASSED UPON HIM BY THE ATHENIANS.

We must be very much surprised, when on the one side we consider the extreme delicacy of the people of Athens, as to what regards the worship of the gods, which ran so high as to occasion their condemning the most eminent persons upon the simple suspicion of their failing in respect for them; and on the other, when we see the exceeding toleration (to call it ne worse) with which the same people hear comedies every day, in which all the gods are turned into ridicule in a manner capable of inspiring the highest contempt for them. All Aristophanes's pieces abound with pleasantries, or rather buffooneries, of this kind; and if it is truc, that this poet did not know what it was to spare the greatest men of the republic, ît may be said also as justly, he was still less favourable to the gods.

Such were the daily entertainments in the theatre, which the people of Athens not only heard without pain, but with such joy, pleasure, and applause, that they rewarded the poct with public honours, who diverted them so agreeably. What was there in Socrates, that came near this excessive licence? Never did any person of the pagan world speak of the Divinity, or of the adoration due to him, in so pure, so noble, and so respectful a manner. He did not declare against the gods publicly received and honoured by a religion more ancient than the city he only avoided imputing to them the crimes and infamous actions, which the popular credulity ascribed to them, and which were only proper to depreciate and decry them in the sense of the people. He did not blame the sacri fices, festivals, nor the other ceremonies of religion; he only taught, that 'all that pomp and outward show could not be agreeable to the gods without uprightness of intention and purity of heart.

This wise, this illumined, this religious man, however, with all his veneration and noble sentiments in regard to the Divinity, is condemned as an impious person by the suffrages of almost an whole people, without his accusers being able to instance one single avowed fact, or to produce any proof with the least appearance of probability.

From whence could so evident, so universal, and so deter minate a contradiction arise among the Athenians? A people, abounding in other respects with wit, taste, and knowledge, must without doubt have had their reasons, at least in appear. ance, for a conduct so different, and sentiments so oppofite to their general character. May we not say, that the Athenians considered their gods in a double light? They confined their

real religion to the public, solemn, and hereditary worship, as they had received it from their ancestors, as it was established by the laws of the state, had been practised from immemorial time, and especially confirmed by the oracles, augurs, offering, and sacrifices. It is by this standard they regulated their piety; against which they could not suffer the least attempt whatso ever it was of this worship alone they were jealous; it was for these ancient ceremonies they were such ardent zealots ; and they believed, though without foundation, that Socrates was an enemy to them. But there was another kind of religion, founded upon fable, poetical fictions, popular opinions, and foreign customs; for this they were little concerned, and abandoned it entirely to the poets, to the representations of the theatre, and common conversation.

*What grossness did they not attribute to Juno and Verus? No citizen would have been satisfied that his wife or daughters should have resembled these goddesses. Timotheus, the famous musician, having represented Diana upon the stage of Athens, transported with folly, fury, and rage, one of the spectators conceived he could not make a greater imprecation against him, than to wish his daughter might become the likeness of that divinity. It is better, says Plutarch, to believe there are no gods, than to imagine them of this kind; open and declared impiety being less profane, if we may be allowed to say so, than so gross and absurd a superstition.

However it be, the sentence, of which we have related the circumstances, will, through all ages, cover Athens with infamy and reproach, that all the splendor of its glorious actions, for which it is otherwise so justly renowned, can never obliterate; and it shows at the same time, what is to be ex. pected from a people, gentle, humane, and beneficent at bottom (for such the Athenians really were), but warm, proud, haughty, inconstant, wavering with every wind, and every im pression. It is therefore with reason, that their assemblies have been compared to a tempestuous sea; as that element, like the people, though calm and peaceable of itself, is subject to be Frequently agitated by a violence not its own.

As to Socrates, it must be allowed that the pagan world never produced any thing so great and perfect. When we ob serve to what an height he carries the sublimity of his sentiments, not only in respect to moral virtue, temperance, sobriety, patience in adversity, the love of poverty, and the forgiveness of wrongs; but what is far more considerable, in regard to the Divinity, his unity, omnipotence, creation of the world, and providence in the government of it; the immortality of the

Plut. de superstit. p. 170. VOL. IV. I

soul, its ultimate end and eternal destiny; the rewards of the good, and the punishment of the wicked; when we consider this train of sublime knowledge, we ask our reason whether it is a pagan who thinks and speaks in this manner, and can scarce persuade ourselves, that from so dark and obscure a fund as paganism, should shine forth such living and glorious rays of light.

It is true, his reputation was not without alloy, and it has been affirmed, that the purity of his manners did not answer those of his sentiments. This question has been discussed among the learned, but my plan will not permit me to treat it in its extent. The reader may see Abbé Fraguier's dissertation in defence of Socrates against the reproaches made him on account of his conduct. The negative argument he makes use of in his justification, seems a very strong one. He observes, that neither Aristophanes in his comedy of the Clouds, which is entirely against Socrates, nor his vile accusers in his trial, have advanced one word that tends to impeach the purity of his manners and it is not probable, that such violent enemies as these would have neglected one of the most likely methods to discredit him in the opinion of his judges, if there had been any foundation or appearance for the use of it.

I confess, however, that certain principles of Plato his disciple, held by him in common with his master, upon the nudity of the combatants in the public games, from which at the same time he did not exclude the fair sex, and the behaviour of Socrates himself, who wrestled naked man to man with Alcibiades, gives us no great idea of that philosopher's delicacy in point of modesty and bashfulness. * What shall we say of his visit to Theodota, a woman of Athens of indifferent reputation, only to assure himself with his own eyes of her extraordinary beauty, which was much talked of, and of the precepts he gave her for the attraction of admirers, and the retaining them in her snares? Do such lessons consist much with a philosopher? I pass over many other things in silence.

I am the less surprised, after this, that several of the fathers have censured him in regard to purity of manners, and that they have thought fit to apply to him, as well as to his disciple Plato, what St. Paul says of the philosophers; that God by a just judgment has abandoned them to a reprobate sense, and to the most shameful lusts for their punishment; in that, having clearly known there was but one true God, they had not honoured him as they ought, by publicly avowing their belief, and were not ashamed to associate him with an innumerablemultitude of divinities, ridiculous and infamous even in their own opinions.

Memoires de l'Académie des Inscrip. tom. iv. p. 372.

Xenoph. Memor. l. iii. p. 783-786. Rom. c.i. v. 17-82.

And in this, properly speaking, consists the crime of Socrates, who was not guilty in the eyes of the Athenians, but gave occasion for his being justly condemned by the eternal Truth. It had illuminated his soul with the most pure and sublime lights, of which the pagan world was capable; for we are not ignorant, that all knowledge of God, even natural, cannot come but from himself alone. He held admirable principles with relation to the Divinity. He agreeably rallied the fables upon which the ridiculous mysteries of his age were founded. He often spoke, and in the most exalted terms, of the existence of one only God, eternal, invisible, creator of the universe, supreme director and arbiter of all events, avenger of crimes, and rewarder of virtues: but he did not dare to give a public testimony of these great truths. He perfectly discerned the false and the ridiculous of the pagan system, and nevertheless, as Seneca says of the wise man, and acted himself, he observed exactly all the customs and ceremonies, not as agreeable to the gods, but as enjoined by the laws. Het acknowledged at bottom one only divinity, and worshipped with the people that multitude of infamous idols, which ancient superstition had heaped up during a long succession of ages. He held peculiar opinions in the schools, but followed the multitude in the temples. As a philosopher, he despised and detested the idols in secret ; as a citizen of Athens and a senator, he paid them in public the same adoration with others; by so much the more to be condemned, says St. Augustin, as that worship, which was only external and dissembled, seemed to the people to be the effect of sincerity and conviction.

And it cannot be said that Socrates altered his conduct at the end of his life, or that he then expressed a greater zeal for trath. In his defence before the people, he declared, that he' had always received and honoured the same gods as the Athenians; and the last order he gave before he expired, was to sacrifice in his name a cock to Esculapius. Behold then this prince of the philosophers, declared by the Delphic oracle the wisest of mankind, who, notwithstanding his internal conviction of one only divinity, dies in the bosom of idolatry, and with

* Quæ omnia (ait Seneca) sapiens servabit tanquam legibus jussa, non tanquam diis grata-Omnem istam ignobilem deorum turbam, quam longo ævo longa superstitio congessit, sic, inquit, adorabimus, ut meminerimus cultum ejus magis ad morem, quam ad rem, pertinere. Sed iste, quem philosophia quasi liberum fecerat, tamen, quia illustris senator erat, colebat quod reprehendebat, agebat quod arguebat, quod culpabat adorabat-eo damnabilius, quo illa, quæ mendaciter agebat, sic ageret, et eum populus veraciter agere existima ret. St. August. de civit. Dei. I. vi. c. 10.

† Eorum sapientes, quos philosophos vocant, scholas habebant dissentientes, et templa communia. Id. lib, de, ver. rel. c.-là

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