Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/517

REMARKS ON THE SENTENCE. 495 Here were a multitude of individuals, including men personalty the most eminent and effective in the city, prompted by special antipathies, over and above general convictions, to call into action the dormant state-principle of intolerance against an obnoxious teacher, if, under such provocation, he was allowed to reach the age of seventy, and to talk publicly for so many years, before any real Meletus stood forward, this attests conspicuously the efficacy of the restraining dispositions among the people, which made their practical habits more liberal than their professed principles. Thirdly, whoever has read the account of the trial and defence of Sokrates, will see that he himself contributed quite as much to the result as all the three accusers united. Not only he omitted to do all that might have been done without dishonor, to insure acquittal, but he held positive language very nearly such as Me- letus himself would have sought to put in his mouth. He did this deliberately, having an exalted opinion both of himself and his own mission, and accounting the cup of hemlock, at his age, to be no calamity. It was only by such marked and offensive self-exaltation that he brought on the first vote of the dikastery, even then the narrowest majority, by which he was found guilty : it was only by a still more aggravated manifesta- tion of the same kind, even to the pitcli of something like insult, that he brought on the second vote, which pronounced the capital sentence. Now it would be uncandid not to allow for the effect of such a proceeding on the minds of the dikastery. They were not at all disposed, of their own accord, to put in force the recog- nized principle of intolerance against him. But when they found that the man who stood before them charged with this offence, addressed them in a tone such as dikasts had never heard before and could hardly hear with calmness, they could not but feel disposed to credit all the worst inferences which his accusers had suggested, and to regard Sokrates as a dangerous man both relig- iously and politically, against whom it was requisite to uphold the majesty of the court and constitution. In appreciating this memorable incident, therefore, though th^ mischievous principle of intolerance cannot be denied, yet all the circumstances show that that principle was neither irritable nor predominant in the Athenian bosom; that even a larg-3 body of collateral antipathies did not readily call it forth against any indi-