Socrates of all mortals is the wisest.
In consequence of which answer he incurred great envy; and he brought envy also on himself, by convicting men who gave themselves airs of folly and ignorance, as undoubtedly he did to Anytus; and as is shown in Plato’s Meno. For he, not being able to bear Socrates’s jesting, first of all set Aristophanes to attack him, and then persuaded Meletus to institute a prosecution against him, on the ground of impiety and of corrupting the youth of the city. Accordingly Meletus did institute the prosecution; and Polyeuctus pronounced the sentence, as Phavorinus records in his Universal History. And Polycrates, the sophist, wrote the speech which was delivered, as Hermippus says, not Anytus, as others say. And Lycon, the demagogue, prepared everything necessary to support the impeachment; but Antisthenes in his Successions of the Philosophers, and Plato in his Apology, say that these men brought the accusation: Anytus, and Lycon, and Meletus; Anytus acting against him on behalf of the magistrates, and because of his political principles; Lycon on behalf of the orators; and Meletus on behalf of the poets, all of whom Socrates used to pull to pieces. But Phavorinus, in the first book of his Commentaries, says that the speech of Polycrates against Socrates is not the genuine one; for in it there is mention made of the walls having been restored by Conon, which took place six years after the death of Socrates; and certainly this is true.
But the sworn informations on which the trial proceeded were drawn up in this fashion; for they are preserved to this day, says Phavorinus, in the temple of Cybele: “Meletus, the son of Meletus, of Pithus, impeaches Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, of Alopece: Socrates is guilty, inasmuch as he does not believe in the Gods whom the city worships, but introduces other strange deities; he is also guilty, inasmuch as he corrupts the young men, and the punishment he has incurred is death.”
But the philosopher, after Lysias had prepared a defense for him, read it through, and said—“It is a very fine speech, Lysias, but is not suitable for me; for it was manifestly the speech of a lawyer, rather than of a philosopher.” And when Lysias replied: “How is it possible, that if it is a good speech, it should not be suitable to you?” he said: “Just as fine clothes and handsome shoes would not be suitable to me.” And when the trial was proceeding, Justus of Tiberias, in his Garland, says that Plato ascended the tribune and said, “I, men of Athens, being the youngest of all those who have mounted the tribune …” and that he was interrupted by the judges, who cried out καταβάντων, that is to say, “Come down.”
So when he had been condemned by two hundred and eighty-one votes, being six more than were given in his favor, and when the judges were making an estimate of what punishment or fine should be inflicted on him, he said that he ought to be fined five and twenty drachmas; but Eubulides says that he admitted that he deserved a fine of one hundred. And when the judges raised an outcry at this proposition, he said: “My real opinion is, that as a return for what has been done by me, I deserve a maintenance in the Prytaneum for the rest of my life.” So they condemned him to death, by eighty votes more than they had originally found him guilty. And he was put into prison, and a few days afterwards he drank the hemlock, having held many admirable conversations in the meantime, which Plato has recorded in the Phaedo.
He also, according to some accounts, composed a paean which begins—
Hail Apollo, King of Delos, Hail Diana, Leto’s child.
But Dionysidorus says that this paean is not his. He also composed a fable, in the style of Aesop, not very artistically, and it begins—
Aesop one day did this sage counsel give To the Corinthian magistrates: not to trust The cause of virtue to the people’s judgement.
So he died; but the Athenians immediately repented of their action, so that they closed all the palaestrae and gymnasia; and they banished his accusers, and condemned Meletus to death; but they honored Socrates with a brazen statue, which they erected in the place where the sacred vessels are kept; and it was the work of Lysippus. But Anytus had already left Athens, and the people of Heraclea banished him from that city the day of his arrival. But Socrates was not the only person who met with this treatment at the hands of the Athenians, but many other men received the same: for, as Heraclides says, they fined Homer fifty drachmas as a madman, and they said that Tyrtaeus was out of his wits. But they honored Astydamas, before Aeschylus, with a brazen statue. And Euripides reproaches them for their conduct in his Palamedes, saying—
Ye have slain, ye have slain, O Greeks, the all-wise nightingale, The favorite of the Muses, guiltless all.
And enough has been said on this head.
But Philochorus says that Euripides died before Socrates; and he was born, as Apollodorus in his Chronicles asserts, in the archonship of Apsephion, in the fourth year of the seventy-seventh Olympiad, on the sixth day of the month Thargelion, when the Athenians purify their city, and when the citizens of Delos say that Diana was born. And he died in the first year of the ninety-fifth Olympiad, being seventy years of age. And this is the calculation of Demetrius Phalereus, for some say that he was but sixty years old when he died.
Both he and Euripides were pupils of Anaxagoras; and Euripides was born in the first year of the seventy-fifth Olympiad, in the archonship of Calliades. But Socrates appears to me to have also discussed occasionally subjects of natural philosophy, since he very often disputes about prudence and foresight, as Xenophon tells us; although he at the same time asserts that all his conversations were about moral philosophy. And Plato, in his Apology, mentions the principles of Anaxagoras and other natural philosophers, which Socrates denies; and he is in reality expressing his own sentiments about them, though he attributes them all to Socrates. And Aristotle tells us that a certain one of the Magi came from Syria to Athens, and blamed Socrates for many parts of his conduct, and also foretold that he would come to a violent death. And we ourselves have written this epigram on him—
Drink now, O Socrates, in the realms of Jove, For truly did the God pronounce you wise, And he who said so is himself all wisdom: You drank the poison which your country gave, But they drank wisdom from your godlike voice.
He had, as Aristotle tells us in the third book of his Poetics, a contest with a man of the name of Antiolochus of Lemnos, and with Antipho, an interpreter of prodigies, as Pythagoras had with Cylon of Crotona; and Homer while alive with Sagaris, and after his death with Xenophanes the Colophonian; and Hesiod, too, in his lifetime with Cercops, and after his death with the same Xenophanes; and Pindar with Amphimenes of Cos; and Thales with Pherecydes; and Bias with Salarus of Priene; and Pittacus with Antimenides; and Alcaeus and Anaxagoras with Sosibius; and Simonides with Timocreon.
Of those who succeeded him, and who are called the Socratic school, the chiefs were Plato, Xenophon, and Antisthenes: and of the ten, as they are often called, the four most eminent were Aeschines, Phaedo, Euclides, and Aristippus. But we must first speak of Xenophon, and after him of Antisthenes among the Cynics. Then of the Socratic school, and so about Plato, since he is the chief of the ten sects, and the founder of the first Academy. And the regular series of them shall proceed in this manner.
There was also another Socrates, a historian, who wrote a description of Argos; and another, a peripatetic philosopher, a native of Bithynia; and another, a writer of epigrams; and another, a native of Cos, who wrote invocations to the Gods.
Xenophon, the son of Gryllus, a citizen of Athens, was of the borough of Erchia; and he was a man of great modesty, and as handsome as can be imagined.
They say that Socrates met him in a narrow lane, and put his stick across it, and prevented him from passing by, asking him where all kinds of necessary things were sold. And when he had answered him, he asked him again where men were made good and virtuous. And as he did not know, he said, “Follow me, then, and learn.” And from this time forth, Xenophon became a follower of Socrates.
And he was the first person who took down conversations as they occurred, and published them among men, calling them memorabilia. He was also the first man who wrote a history of philosophers.
And Aristippus, in the fourth book of his treatise on Ancient Luxury, says that he loved Clinias, and that he said to him: “Now I look upon Clinias with more pleasure than upon all the other beautiful things which are to be seen among men; and I would rather be blind as to all the rest of the world, than as to Clinias. And I am annoyed even with night and with sleep, because then I do not see him; but I am very grateful to the sun and to daylight, because they show Clinias to me.”
He became a friend of Cyrus in this manner: He had an acquaintance, by name Proxenus, a Boeotian by birth, a pupil of Gorgias of Leontini, and a friend of Cyrus. He being in Sardis, staying at the court of Cyrus, wrote a letter to Athens to Xenophon, inviting him to come and be a friend of Cyrus. And Xenophon showed the letter to Socrates, and asked his advice. And Socrates bade him go to Delphi and ask counsel of the God. And Xenophon did so, and went to the God; but the question he put was, not whether it was good for him to go to Cyrus or not, but how he should go; for which Socrates blamed him, but still advised him to go. Accordingly he went to Cyrus, and became no less dear to him than Proxenus. And all the circumstances of the expedition and the retreat, he himself has sufficiently related to us.
But he was at enmity with Menon the Pharsalian, who was the commander of the foreign troops at the time of the expedition; and amongst other reproaches, he says that he was much addicted to the worst kind of debauchery. And he reproaches a man of the name of Apollonides with having his ears bored.
But after the expedition, and the disasters which took place in Pontus, and the violations of the truce by Seuthes, the king of the Odrysae, he came into Asia to Agesilaus, the king of Lacedaemon, bringing with him the soldiers of Cyrus, to serve for pay; and he became a very great friend of Agesilaus. And about the same time he was condemned to banishment by the Athenians, on the charge of being a favorer of the Lacedaemonians. And being in Ephesus, and having a sum of money in gold, he gave half of it to Megabyzus, the priest of Diana, to keep for him till his return; and if he never returned, then he was to expend it upon a statue and dedicate that to the Goddess; and with the other half he sent offerings to Delphi. From thence he went with Agesilaus into Greece, as Agesilaus was summoned to take part in the war against the Thebans. And the Lacedaemonians made him a friend of their city.