In what relation the “Apology” of Plato stands to the real defence of
Socrates, there are no means of determining. It certainly agrees in
tone and character with the description of Xenophon, who says in the
“Memorabilia” that Socrates might have been acquitted “if in any
moderate degree he would have conciliated the favour of the dicasts;”
and who informs us in another passage, on the testimony of Hermogenes,
the friend of Socrates, that he had no wish to live; and that the
divine sign refused to allow him to prepare a defence, and also that
Socrates himself declared this to be unnecessary, on the ground that
all his life long he had been preparing against that hour. For the
speech breathes throughout a spirit of defiance, “_ut non supplex aut
reus sed magister aut dominus videretur esse judicum_” (Cic. “de Orat.”
i. 54); and the loose and desultory style is an imitation of the
“accustomed manner” in which Socrates spoke in “the _agora_ and among
the tables of the money-changers.” The allusion in the “Crito” (45 B)
may, perhaps, be adduced as a further evidence of the literal accuracy
of some parts (37 C, D). But in the main it must be regarded as the
ideal of Socrates, according to Plato’s conception of him, appearing in
the greatest and most public scene of his life, and in the height of
his triumph, when he is weakest, and yet his mastery over mankind is
greatest, and his habitual irony acquires a new meaning and a sort of
tragic pathos in the face of death. The facts of his life are summed
up, and the features of his character are brought out as if by accident
in the course of the defence. The conversational manner, the seeming
want of arrangement, the ironical simplicity, are found to result in a
perfect work of art, which is the portrait of Socrates.
Yet some of the topics may have been actually used by Socrates; and the
recollection of his very words may have rung in the ears of his
disciple. The “Apology” of Plato may be compared generally with those
speeches of Thucydides in which he has embodied his conception of the
lofty character and policy of the great Pericles, and which at the same
time furnish a commentary on the situation of affairs from the point of
view of the historian. So in the “Apology” there is an ideal rather
than a literal truth; much is said which was not said, and is only
Plato’s view of the situation. Plato was not, like Xenophon, a
chronicler of facts; he does not appear in any of his writings to have
aimed at literal accuracy. He is not therefore to be supplemented from
the Memorabilia and Symposium of Xenophon, who belongs to an entirely
different class of writers. The Apology of Plato is not the report of
what Socrates said, but an elaborate composition, quite as much so in
fact as one of the Dialogues. And we may perhaps even indulge in the
fancy that the actual defence of Socrates was as much greater than the
Platonic defence as the master was greater than the disciple. But in
any case, some of the words used by him must have been remembered, and
some of the facts recorded must have actually occurred. It is
significant that Plato is said to have been present at the defence
(Apol.), as he is also said to have been absent at the last scene in
the “Phædo”. Is it fanciful to suppose that he meant to give the stamp
of authenticity to the one and not to the other?—especially when we
consider that these two passages are the only ones in which Plato makes
mention of himself. The circumstance that Plato was to be one of his
sureties for the payment of the fine which he proposed has the
appearance of truth. More suspicious is the statement that Socrates
received the first impulse to his favourite calling of cross-examining
the world from the Oracle of Delphi; for he must already have been
famous before Chaerephon went to consult the Oracle (Riddell), and the
story is of a kind which is very likely to have been invented. On the
whole we arrive at the conclusion that the “Apology” is true to the
character of Socrates, but we cannot show that any single sentence in
it was actually spoken by him. It breathes the spirit of Socrates, but
has been cast anew in the mould of Plato.
There is not much in the other Dialogues which can be compared with the
“Apology”. The same recollection of his master may have been present to
the mind of Plato when depicting the sufferings of the Just in the
“Republic”. The “Crito” may also be regarded as a sort of appendage to
the “Apology”, in which Socrates, who has defied the judges, is
nevertheless represented as scrupulously obedient to the laws. The
idealization of the sufferer is carried still further in the
“Georgias”, in which the thesis is maintained, that “to suffer is
better than to do evil;” and the art of rhetoric is described as only
useful for the purpose of self-accusation. The parallelisms which occur
in the so-called “Apology” of Xenophon are not worth noticing, because
the writing in which they are contained is manifestly spurious. The
statements of the “Memorabilia” respecting the trial and death of
Socrates agree generally with Plato; but they have lost the flavour of
Socratic irony in the narrative of Xenophon.
The “Apology” or Platonic defence of Socrates is divided into three
parts: 1st. The defence properly so called; 2nd. The shorter address in
mitigation of the penalty; 3rd. The last words of prophetic rebuke and
exhortation.
The first part commences with an apology for his colloquial style; he
is, as he has always been, the enemy of rhetoric, and knows of no
rhetoric but truth; he will not falsify his character by making a
speech. Then he proceeds to divide his accusers into two classes;
first, there is the nameless accuser—public opinion. All the world from
their earliest years had heard that he was a corrupter of youth, and
had seen him caricatured in the “Clouds” of Aristophanes. Secondly,
there are the professed accusers, who are but the mouth-piece of the
others. The accusations of both might be summed up in a formula. The
first say, “Socrates is an evil-doer and a curious person, searching
into things under the earth and above the heaven; and making the worse
appear the better cause, and teaching all this to others.” The second,
“Socrates is an evil-doer and corrupter of the youth, who does not
receive the gods whom the state receives, but introduces other new
divinities.” These last words appear to have been the actual indictment
(compare Xen. Mem.); and the previous formula, which is a summary of
public opinion, assumes the same legal style.
The answer begins by clearing up a confusion. In the representations of
the Comic poets, and in the opinion of the multitude, he had been
identified with the teachers of physical science and with the Sophists.
But this was an error. For both of them he professes a respect in the
open court, which contrasts with his manner of speaking about them in
other places. (Compare for Anaxagoras, Phædo, Laws; for the Sophists,
Meno, Republic, Tim., Theaet., Soph., etc.) But at the same time he
shows that he is not one of them. Of natural philosophy he knows
nothing; not that he despises such pursuits, but the fact is that he is
ignorant of them, and never says a word about them. Nor is he paid for
giving instruction—that is another mistaken notion:—he has nothing to
teach. But he commends Evenus for teaching virtue at such a “moderate”
rate as five minæ. Something of the “accustomed irony,” which may
perhaps be expected to sleep in the ear of the multitude, is lurking
here.
He then goes on to explain the reason why he is in such an evil name.
That had arisen out of a peculiar mission which he had taken upon
himself. The enthusiastic Chaerephon (probably in anticipation of the
answer which he received) had gone to Delphi and asked the oracle if
there was any man wiser than Socrates; and the answer was, that there
was no man wiser. What could be the meaning of this—that he who knew
nothing, and knew that he knew nothing, should be declared by the
oracle to be the wisest of men? Reflecting upon the answer, he
determined to refute it by finding “a wiser;” and first he went to the
politicians, and then to the poets, and then to the craftsmen, but
always with the same result—he found that they knew nothing, or hardly
anything more than himself; and that the little advantage which in some
cases they possessed was more than counter-balanced by their conceit of
knowledge. He knew nothing, and knew that he knew nothing: they knew
little or nothing, and imagined that they knew all things. Thus he had
passed his life as a sort of missionary in detecting the pretended
wisdom of mankind; and this occupation had quite absorbed him and taken
him away both from public and private affairs. Young men of the richer
sort had made a pastime of the same pursuit, “which was not unamusing.”
And hence bitter enmities had arisen; the professors of knowledge had
revenged themselves by calling him a villainous corrupter of youth, and
by repeating the commonplaces about atheism and materialism and
sophistry, which are the stock-accusations against all philosophers
when there is nothing else to be said of them.
The second accusation he meets by interrogating Meletus, who is present
and can be interrogated. “If he is the corrupter, who is the improver
of the citizens?” (Compare Meno.) “All men everywhere.” But how absurd,
how contrary to analogy is this! How inconceivable too, that he should
make the citizens worse when he has to live with them. This surely
cannot be intentional; and if unintentional, he ought to have been
instructed by Meletus, and not accused in the court.
But there is another part of the indictment which says that he teaches
men not to receive the gods whom the city receives, and has other new
gods. “Is that the way in which he is supposed to corrupt the youth?”
“Yes, it is.” “Has he only new gods, or none at all?” “None at all.”
“What, not even the sun and moon?” “No; why, he says that the sun is a
stone, and the moon earth.” That, replies Socrates, is the old
confusion about Anaxagoras; the Athenian people are not so ignorant as
to attribute to the influence of Socrates notions which have found
their way into the drama, and may be learned at the theatre. Socrates
undertakes to show that Meletus (rather unjustifiably) has been
compounding a riddle in this part of the indictment: “There are no
gods, but Socrates believes in the existence of the sons of gods, which
is absurd.”
Leaving Meletus, who has had enough words spent upon him, he returns to
the original accusation. The question may be asked, Why will he persist
in following a profession which leads him to death? Why?—because he
must remain at his post where the god has placed him, as he remained at
Potidaea, and Amphipolis, and Delium, where the generals placed him.
Besides, he is not so overwise as to imagine that he knows whether
death is a good or an evil; and he is certain that desertion of his
duty is an evil. Anytus is quite right in saying that they should never
have indicted him if they meant to let him go. For he will certainly
obey God rather than man; and will continue to preach to all men of all
ages the necessity of virtue and improvement; and if they refuse to
listen to him he will still persevere and reprove them. This is his way
of corrupting the youth, which he will not cease to follow in obedience
to the god, even if a thousand deaths await him.
He is desirous that they should let him live—not for his own sake, but
for theirs; because he is their heaven-sent friend (and they will never
have such another), or, as he may be ludicrously described, he is the
gadfly who stirs the generous steed into motion. Why then has he never
taken part in public affairs? Because the familiar divine voice has
hindered him; if he had been a public man, and had fought for the
right, as he would certainly have fought against the many, he would not
have lived, and could therefore have done no good. Twice in public
matters he has risked his life for the sake of justice—once at the
trial of the generals; and again in resistance to the tyrannical
commands of the Thirty.
But, though not a public man, he has passed his days in instructing the
citizens without fee or reward—this was his mission. Whether his
disciples have turned out well or ill, he cannot justly be charged with
the result, for he never promised to teach them anything. They might
come if they liked, and they might stay away if they liked: and they
did come, because they found an amusement in hearing the pretenders to
wisdom detected. If they have been corrupted, their elder relatives (if
not themselves) might surely come into court and witness against him,
and there is an opportunity still for them to appear. But their fathers
and brothers all appear in court (including “this” Plato), to witness
on his behalf; and if their relatives are corrupted, at least they are
uncorrupted; “and they are my witnesses. For they know that I am
speaking the truth, and that Meletus is lying.”
This is about all that he has to say. He will not entreat the judges to
spare his life; neither will he present a spectacle of weeping
children, although he, too, is not made of “rock or oak.” Some of the
judges themselves may have complied with this practice on similar
occasions, and he trusts that they will not be angry with him for not
following their example. But he feels that such conduct brings
discredit on the name of Athens: he feels too, that the judge has sworn
not to give away justice; and he cannot be guilty of the impiety of
asking the judge to break his oath, when he is himself being tried for
impiety.
As he expected, and probably intended, he is convicted. And now the
tone of the speech, instead of being more conciliatory, becomes more
lofty and commanding. Anytus proposes death as the penalty: and what
counter-proposition shall he make? He, the benefactor of the Athenian
people, whose whole life has been spent in doing them good, should at
least have the Olympic victor’s reward of maintenance in the Prytaneum.
Or why should he propose any counter-penalty when he does not know
whether death, which Anytus proposes, is a good or an evil? And he is
certain that imprisonment is an evil, exile is an evil. Loss of money
might be an evil, but then he has none to give; perhaps he can make up
a mina. Let that be the penalty, or, if his friends wish, thirty minæ;
for which they will be excellent securities.
[_He is condemned to death._]
He is an old man already, and the Athenians will gain nothing but
disgrace by depriving him of a few years of life. Perhaps he could have
escaped, if he had chosen to throw down his arms and entreat for his
life. But he does not at all repent of the manner of his defence; he
would rather die in his own fashion than live in theirs. For the
penalty of unrighteousness is swifter than death; that penalty has
already overtaken his accusers as death will soon overtake him.
And now, as one who is about to die, he will prophesy to them. They
have put him to death in order to escape the necessity of giving an
account of their lives. But his death “will be the seed” of many
disciples who will convince them of their evil ways, and will come
forth to reprove them in harsher terms, because they are younger and
more inconsiderate.
He would like to say a few words, while there is time, to those who
would have acquitted him. He wishes them to know that the divine sign
never interrupted him in the course of his defence; the reason of
which, as he conjectures, is that the death to which he is going is a
good and not an evil. For either death is a long sleep, the best of
sleeps, or a journey to another world in which the souls of the dead
are gathered together, and in which there may be a hope of seeing the
heroes of old—in which, too, there are just judges; and as all are
immortal, there can be no fear of any one suffering death for his
opinions.
Nothing evil can happen to the good man either in life or death, and
his own death has been permitted by the gods, because it was better for
him to depart; and therefore he forgives his judges because they have
done him no harm, although they never meant to do him any good.
He has a last request to make to them—that they will trouble his sons
as he has troubled them, if they appear to prefer riches to virtue, or
to think themselves something when they are nothing.
“Few persons will be found to wish that Socrates should have defended
himself otherwise,”—if, as we must add, his defence was that with which
Plato has provided him. But leaving this question, which does not admit
of a precise solution, we may go on to ask what was the impression
which Plato in the “Apology” intended to give of the character and
conduct of his master in the last great scene? Did he intend to
represent him (1) as employing sophistries; (2) as designedly
irritating the judges? Or are these sophistries to be regarded as
belonging to the age in which he lived and to his personal character,
and this apparent haughtiness as flowing from the natural elevation of
his position?
For example, when he says that it is absurd to suppose that one man is
the corrupter and all the rest of the world the improvers of the youth;
or, when he argues that he never could have corrupted the men with whom
he had to live; or, when he proves his belief in the gods because he
believes in the sons of gods, is he serious or jesting? It may be
observed that these sophisms all occur in his cross-examination of
Meletus, who is easily foiled and mastered in the hands of the great
dialectician. Perhaps he regarded these answers as good enough for his
accuser, of whom he makes very light. Also there is a touch of irony in
them, which takes them out of the category of sophistry. (Compare
Euthyph.)
That the manner in which he defends himself about the lives of his
disciples is not satisfactory, can hardly be denied. Fresh in the
memory of the Athenians, and detestable as they deserved to be to the
newly restored democracy, were the names of Alcibiades, Critias,
Charmides. It is obviously not a sufficient answer that Socrates had
never professed to teach them anything, and is therefore not justly
chargeable with their crimes. Yet the defence, when taken out of this
ironical form, is doubtless sound: that his teaching had nothing to do
with their evil lives. Here, then, the sophistry is rather in form than
in substance, though we might desire that to such a serious charge
Socrates had given a more serious answer.
Truly characteristic of Socrates is another point in his answer, which
may also be regarded as sophistical. He says that “if he has corrupted
the youth, he must have corrupted them involuntarily.” But if, as
Socrates argues, all evil is involuntary, then all criminals ought to
be admonished and not punished. In these words the Socratic doctrine of
the involuntariness of evil is clearly intended to be conveyed. Here
again, as in the former instance, the defence of Socrates is untrue
practically, but may be true in some ideal or transcendental sense. The
commonplace reply, that if he had been guilty of corrupting the youth
their relations would surely have witnessed against him, with which he
concludes this part of his defence, is more satisfactory.
Again, when Socrates argues that he must believe in the gods because he
believes in the sons of gods, we must remember that this is a
refutation not of the original indictment, which is consistent
enough—“Socrates does not receive the gods whom the city receives, and
has other new divinities”—but of the interpretation put upon the words
by Meletus, who has affirmed that he is a downright atheist. To this
Socrates fairly answers, in accordance with the ideas of the time, that
a downright atheist cannot believe in the sons of gods or in divine
things. The notion that demons or lesser divinities are the sons of
gods is not to be regarded as ironical or sceptical. He is arguing “ad
hominem” according to the notions of mythology current in his age. Yet
he abstains from saying that he believed in the gods whom the State
approved. He does not defend himself, as Xenophon has defended him, by
appealing to his practice of religion. Probably he neither wholly
believed, nor disbelieved, in the existence of the popular gods; he had
no means of knowing about them. According to Plato (compare Phædo;
Symp.), as well as Xenophon (Memor.), he was punctual in the
performance of the least religious duties; and he must have believed in
his own oracular sign, of which he seemed to have an internal witness.
But the existence of Apollo or Zeus, or the other gods whom the State
approves, would have appeared to him both uncertain and unimportant in
comparison of the duty of self-examination, and of those principles of
truth and right which he deemed to be the foundation of religion.
(Compare Phaedr.; Euthyph.; Republic.)
The second question, whether Plato meant to represent Socrates as
braving or irritating his judges, must also be answered in the
negative. His irony, his superiority, his audacity, “regarding not the
person of man,” necessarily flow out of the loftiness of his situation.
He is not acting a part upon a great occasion, but he is what he has
been all his life long, “a king of men.” He would rather not appear
insolent, if he could avoid it (ouch os authadizomenos touto lego).
Neither is he desirous of hastening his own end, for life and death are
simply indifferent to him. But such a defence as would be acceptable to
his judges and might procure an acquittal, it is not in his nature to
make. He will not say or do anything that might pervert the course of
justice; he cannot have his tongue bound even “in the throat of death.”
With his accusers he will only fence and play, as he had fenced with
other “improvers of youth,” answering the Sophist according to his
sophistry all his life long. He is serious when he is speaking of his
own mission, which seems to distinguish him from all other reformers of
mankind, and originates in an accident. The dedication of himself to
the improvement of his fellow-citizens is not so remarkable as the
ironical spirit in which he goes about doing good only in vindication
of the credit of the oracle, and in the vain hope of finding a wiser
man than himself. Yet this singular and almost accidental character of
his mission agrees with the divine sign which, according to our
notions, is equally accidental and irrational, and is nevertheless
accepted by him as the guiding principle of his life. Socrates is
nowhere represented to us as a freethinker or sceptic. There is no
reason to doubt his sincerity when he speculates on the possibility of
seeing and knowing the heroes of the Trojan war in another world. On
the other hand, his hope of immortality is uncertain;—he also conceives
of death as a long sleep (in this respect differing from the Phædo),
and at last falls back on resignation to the divine will, and the
certainty that no evil can happen to the good man either in life or
death. His absolute truthfulness seems to hinder him from asserting
positively more than this; and he makes no attempt to veil his
ignorance in mythology and figures of speech. The gentleness of the
first part of the speech contrasts with the aggravated, almost
threatening, tone of the conclusion. He characteristically remarks that
he will not speak as a rhetorician, that is to say, he will not make a
regular defence such as Lysias or one of the orators might have
composed for him, or, according to some accounts, did compose for him.
But he first procures himself a hearing by conciliatory words. He does
not attack the Sophists; for they were open to the same charges as
himself; they were equally ridiculed by the Comic poets, and almost
equally hateful to Anytus and Meletus. Yet incidentally the antagonism
between Socrates and the Sophists is allowed to appear. He is poor and
they are rich; his profession that he teaches nothing is opposed to
their readiness to teach all things; his talking in the marketplace to
their private instructions; his tarry-at-home life to their wandering
from city to city. The tone which he assumes towards them is one of
real friendliness, but also of concealed irony. Towards Anaxagoras, who
had disappointed him in his hopes of learning about mind and nature, he
shows a less kindly feeling, which is also the feeling of Plato in
other passages (Laws). But Anaxagoras had been dead thirty years, and
was beyond the reach of persecution.
It has been remarked that the prophecy of a new generation of teachers
who would rebuke and exhort the Athenian people in harsher and more
violent terms was, as far as we know, never fulfilled. No inference can
be drawn from this circumstance as to the probability of the words
attributed to him having been actually uttered. They express the
aspiration of the first martyr of philosophy, that he would leave
behind him many followers, accompanied by the not unnatural feeling
that they would be fiercer and more inconsiderate in their words when
emancipated from his control.
The above remarks must be understood as applying with any degree of
certainty to the Platonic Socrates only. For, although these or similar
words may have been spoken by Socrates himself, we cannot exclude the
possibility, that like so much else, _e.g._ the wisdom of Critias, the
poem of Solon, the virtues of Charmides, they may have been due only to
the imagination of Plato. The arguments of those who maintain that the
Apology was composed during the process, resting on no evidence, do not
require a serious refutation. Nor are the reasonings of Schleiermacher,
who argues that the Platonic defence is an exact or nearly exact
reproduction of the words of Socrates, partly because Plato would not
have been guilty of the impiety of altering them, and also because many
points of the defence might have been improved and strengthened, at all
more conclusive. (See English Translation.) What effect the death of
Socrates produced on the mind of Plato, we cannot certainly determine;
nor can we say how he would or must have written under the
circumstances. We observe that the enmity of Aristophanes to Socrates
does not prevent Plato from introducing them together in the Symposium
engaged in friendly intercourse. Nor is there any trace in the
Dialogues of an attempt to make Anytus or Meletus personally odious in
the eyes of the Athenian public.