Socrates, the great and good Athenian philosopher, lived (469-399 B. C.)
during a period covering much of the age of Pericles, and the whole time
of the Peloponnesian war. Though opposed to the oligarchical tyranny of
the Four Hundred and the Thirty, Socrates was even more adverse to the
unmixed democracy, with its election by lot and its payment for
political services. Accordingly, on the triumph of the demagogues, he
was in 399 B. C. accused of denying the gods and corrupting the young,
and being convicted by an overwhelming majority of the jury, was
sentenced to death. He passed thirty days before execution in the noble
discourses on the immortality of the soul, which are recorded in Plato’s
Phædo, drank the cup of hemlock, and died.