Hellenocrates was a Larissæan who had likewise been subservient to the king's pleasures.

P. 148. Sacrifices the most numerous.] The Athenians were remarkably sumptuous in their temples and public worship, beyond any other people. Two months in the year were taken up entirely in these solemnities. See Schol. on Aristoph. in Vesp. vs. 655, and Xenoph. Rep. Athen. p. 699.

πος,

P. 150. It is he of whose care you are the object.] Socrates may either mean the Divinity here, as in the former dialogue, Alcibiad. I. p. 122, § 37; for it was the character of Socrates to assume nothing to himself, but all to the demon, who directed him, whom he calls his,'Eriτ00“Guardian:” or Socrates may here mean himself, as I rather think. Some Christian writers indeed would give a very extraordinary turn to this part of the dialogue, as though Plato meant to prove the necessity of a Revelation. But I can see no such mysteries in it. Socrates has proved that we are neither fit to deal with mankind, till we know them by knowing ourselves; nor to address ourselves to the Divine power, till we know enough of his nature to know what we owe him: what that nature is, he defers examining till another opportunity, which is done to raise the curiosity and impatience of the young Alcibiades, and to avoid that prolixity, into which a disquisition so important would have naturally led him.

THEAGES.

DEMODOCUS of Anagyrus, an old Athenian who had passed with reputation through the highest offices of the state, and now, after the manner of his ancestors, lived chiefly on his lands in the country, employed in agriculture and rustic amusements, brings with him to Athens his son Theages, a youth impatient to improve himself in the arts then in vogue, and to shine among his companions who studied eloquence,' and practised politics, as soon as ever their age would permit them to appear in the popular assemblies.

Socrates, at the father's desire, enters into conversation with the young man, and decoys him by little and little into a confession that he wanted to be a great man, and to govern his fellow citizens.

1 Aristophanes ridicules in many places this turn of the age in which he lived. Reading, and the knowledge of the Belles Lettres, having more generally diffused itself through the body of the people, than it had done hitherto, had an ill effect on the manners of a nation naturally vain and lively. Every one had a smattering of eloquence and of reasoning, and every one would make a figure and govern; but no one would be governed: the authority of age and of virtue was lost and overborne, and wit and a fluency of words supplied the place of experience and of common sense.

After diverting himself with the naïveté of Theages, he proposes ironically several sophists of reputation, and several famous statesmen, who were fit to instruct him in this grand art: but as it does not appear that the disciples of those sophists, or even the sons of those statesmen, have been much the better for their lessons, both Demodocus and Theages entreat and insist that Socrates himself would admit him to his company and favour him with his instructions. The philosopher very gravely tells them stories of his demon, without whose permission he undertakes nothing, and upon whom it entirely depends, whether his conversation shall be of any use, or not, to his friends; but at last he acquiesces, if Theages cares to make the experiment.

The scene of the dialogue is in the portico, described by Pausanias, i. 3, of Jupiter the Deliverer, in the Ceramicus, the principal street of Athens; and the time Ol. 92, 3-4, during the expedition of Thrasyllus, in which he was defeated at Ephesus by the Persians and other allies of Sparta. Socrates was then sixty years old.

NOTE ON THE GREEK TEXT.

P. 125. Callicreté.] The poem of Anacreon on Callicreté the daughter of Cyane, is now lost. Dacier seriously imagines that she was a female politician, like Aspasia. But it is more agreeable to Anacreon's gallantry, that we should suppose the seat of tyranny was only in her face.

P. 129. Kλεróμaxov iρéolai.] This assassination of Nicias, the son of Heroscamander, by Philemon and Timarchus, and the condemnation of the latter with Euathlus, who had given him shelter, is not recounted in any other author.

EUTHYPHRO.

SOCRATES,' about the time that an accusation had been preferred against him for impiety in the court of the Baries,2 second Archon,

1 Ol. 95, 1.

2 Impeachments for murder were laid in the court of the Baσievs, but not tried till four months after in the court of Areopagus, where the Baoλeus had himself a vote. The cause was judged in the open air, for all such as were (oμopópio) under the same roof with the defendant were thought to partake of his guilt. The accuser gave him immediate notice not to approach the forum, the assembly, the temples, or the public games, and in that state he continued, till he was acquitted of the crime. See

called "king," meets while he is walking in the portico, where that magistrate used to sit in judgment, with Euthyphro, a person deeply versed in the knowledge of religious affairs, as sacrifices, oracles, divinations, and such matters, and full of that grave kind of arrogance which these mysterious sciences use to inspire. His father, having an estate in the isle of Naxus, had employed among his own slaves a poor Athenian who worked for hire. This man, having drunk too much; had quarrelled with and actually murdered one of the slaves. Upon which, the father of Euthyphro apprehended and threw him into a jail, till the EğŋynTai,' Interpreters, had been consulted, in order to know what should be done. The man, not having been taken much care of, died in his confinement: upon which Euthyphro determines to lodge an indictment against his own father for murder. Socrates, surprised at the novelty of such an accusation, inquires into the sentiments of Euthyphro with regard to piety and the service of the gods, by way of informing himself on that subject against the time of his trial, and by frequent questions, entangling him in his own concessions, and forcing him to shift from one principle and definition to another, soon lays open his ignorance, and shows that all his ideas of religion were founded on childish fables and on arbitrary forms and institutions. The intention of the dialogue seems to be, to expose the vulgar notions of piety, founded on traditions unworthy of the Divinity, and employed in propitiating him by puerile inventions and by the vain ceremonies of external worship, without regard to justice and to those plain duties of society, which alone can render us truly worthy of the Deity.

THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES.

PLATO was himself present at the trial of Socrates, being then about twenty-nine years of age; and he was one of those who offered to speak in his defence, though the court would not suffer him to proceed, and to be bound as a surety for the payment of his fine: yet we are not to imagine, that this oration was the real de

Antipho Orat. de cæde Herodis, and de cæde Choreutæ. Informations might also (as it seems) be laid in the court of Heliæa before the Thesmotheta.

The 'EnynTai at Athens, like the Pontifices at Rome, were applied to, when any prodigy had happened, or any violent death, to settle the rites of expiation, or to propitiate the manes of the dead.

fence which Socrates made. Dionysius Halicarnassus says, that it "never saw even the door of the Judgment-Hall, nor of the Agora, but was written with some other design;" and what that design was, he explains himself by saying, that, under the cover of an apology, it is a delicate satire on the Athenians, a panegyric on Socrates, and a pattern and character of the true philosopher. Nevertheless, it is founded on truth; it represents the true spirit and disposition of Socrates, and many of the topics used in it are agreeable to those which we find in Xenophon, and which were doubtless used by Socrates himself; as where he mentions his demon, and the reasons he had for preferring death to life, his account of the oracle given to Cherepho, and the remarkable allusion to Palamedes, &c., the ground-work is manifestly the same though the expressions are different. In one thing only they seem directly to contradict each other: Xenophon says, he neither offered himself any thing in mitigation of his punishment, nor would suffer his friends to do so, looking upon this as an acknowledgment of some guilt. If the word in the text, iπоrμiãoαi, means that he would not submit to ask for a change of his sentence into banishment, or perpetual imprisonment, so far it is agreeable to Plato, p. 37; but if it means, that he would not suffer any mulet himself, nor permit his friends to mention it, we see the contrary, p. 38, where he fines himself one mina, all he was worth, and where his friends Crito, Critobulus, Plato, and Apollodorus, offer thirty minæ, (£96 17s. 6d.,) which was, I suppose, all they could raise, to save him. Now this being a fact, at that time easily proved or disproved, I am of opinion that Plato never would have inserted into his discourse a manifest falsity, and, therefore, we are to take Xenophon's words in that restrained sense which I have mentioned.

Potter says, that from the nature of the crime 'AoBela, "Impiety," it is evident that the trial was before the court of Areopagus. But I take the contrary to be evident from the style both here and in Xenophon. He always addresses his judges by the name of " Avopes, "Men," or "Avèpes 'AOnvaïoi, "Men of Athens;" whereas the form of speaking either to the Areopagites or to the senate of Five Hundred was constantly & Bouλn, "Oh! thou the Council:" and in the courts of justice, "Avdoɛç Aikaσrai, "Jurymen," or sometimes "Avdoes Αθηναῖοι, "Men of Athens,” or “Avdρɛç, “ Men,” alone: he therefore was judged in some of these courts.

66

NOTES ON THE GREEK TEXT.

P. 32. 'Eẞovλevca de.] Socrates was in the senate of Five Hundred, Ol. 93, 3, being then sixty-five years of age. The Prytanes presided in the assemblies of the people, were seated in the place of honour,

and attended by the Togóra, who, by their orders, seized any persons who made a disturbance; they introduced ambassadors, gave liberty of speaking to the orators, and of voting to the people; and (as it appears) any one of them could put a negative on their proceedings, since Socrates alone, at the trial of the Erparnyoí, insisted, that the question was contrary to law, and would not suffer it to be put to the assembly.

P. 34. One still a youth, and two young children.] Socrates had three sons, (says Diogen. Laert. ii. 26,) Lamprocles, Sophroniscus, and Menexenus, the first by Xanthippe, the two others (as it is said) by Myrto, grand-daughter to the famous Aristides. Some say he married the latter first; but that is impossible, because he had Lamprocles, his eldest son, by Xanthippe; and she certainly survived him; therefore, if Myrto were his wife, he must have had two wives together. This is indeed affirmed in a treatise on nobility ascribed to Aristotle, and by Aristoxenus and Callisthenes his scholars, as well as by Demetrius Phalereus, and others. It is a very extraordinary thing, that such men should be deceived in a fact which happened so near their own time; yet Panætius, in his Life of Socrates, expressly refuted this story: and it is sure, that neither Xenophon, nor Plato, nor any other of his contemporaries, mentions any wife but Xanthippe.

PHEDO.

THIS famous dialogue was supposed by Panatius, in Antholog. Gr. i. 44, the Stoic, a great admirer of Plato, not to be genuine, or at least interpolated, rather, as it seems, from his own persuasion of the soul's mortality, than from any thing in the piece itself unlike the manner or the tenets of the philosopher, to whom it has always been ascribed. The whole course of antiquity has regarded it as one of his principal works; and what seems decisive, Aristotle himself cites it as a work of his master.

The historical part of it is admirable, and, though written and disposed with all the art and management of the best tragic writer, for the slightest circumstance in it wants not its force and meaning, it exhibits nothing to the eye but the noble simplicity of nature. Every intelligent reader will feel what those who were eye-witnesses are said to have felt, namely, "a certain unusual mixture compounded of pleasure and pain simultaneously." The innocence, the humanity, the cheerfulness, and the unaffected intrepidity of Socrates, will draw some tears from him, as it did many from them, as for the loss of a father; and will, at the same time, better than any arguments, show him a soul, which, if it were not so, at least deserved to be immortal.