But when experience showed that those who thought themselves wise were unable to give any coherent account of their wisdom, he had to admit that he was wiser than others, just because he alone was aware of his own ignorance. This account is plainly tinged with the usual "irony." Socrates did not take Apollo and his oracle very seriously. But that he was quite serious in believing himself charged with a mission, not from "Apollo," but from God, to preach to his fellow men the supreme importance of knowledge of what is for the soul's good is proved by his declaration that he is more than ready to face instant death rather than to neglect his commission. The poverty in which this mission had involved him, and the austerity of the rule of 1:fe it entailed were notorious.
Summer and winter, his coat was the same ; he had neither shoes nor shirt. "A slave who was made to live so," the sophist Anti phon said, "would run away." This self-imposed life of hardships was the price of his spiritual independence. His message was variously received. Some of those whose false pretentions were exposed by his trenchant criticizing regarded him with ill-will; many thought him an officious busybody. Among the younger men, many merely thought it good sport to see their elders silenced. Others (Xenophon says that this was the case with Alci biades and Critias), deliberately attached themselves to him for a time "for private ends," believing that to learn the secret of so acute a reasoner would be the best preparation for success in the law courts, the council and the assembly. Others sincerely hoped by associating with him to become good men and true, capable of doing their duty by house and household, by relations and friends, by city and fellow-citizens.
Finally, there was an inner circle who entered more deeply into his principles and transmitted them to the next generation. But these were not "disciples" united by a common doctrine. Socrates finally repudiated all claim to have "disciples." The bond of union was a common reverence for a great man's intellect and character. It was, in the main, this group who were collected round Socrates in the day of his death ; many of them, e.g., 'This is also proved by the attachment to him shown by Eleatics from Megara and young pupils of the Pythagoreans from Thebes and Philius. These connections must have been founded before the Pelopon nesian War Eucleides from Megara, and the young Theban Pythagoreans, Cebes and Simmias, were foreigners from States which had been enemies of Athens in the Peloponnesian War.
tury later, the orator Aeschines reminds his audience that Socrates had been put to death because he was believed to have educated Critias. In point of fact, it was absurd to make Socrates respon sible for the ambitions of Alcibiades, and, as he reminded his judges, he had disobeyed an illegal order from Critias and his col leagues at the risk of his life. But it is natural that he should have had to suffer for the crimes of both men, the more that he was known to have been an unsparing critic of democracy, and of the famous democratic leaders. These suspicions would be made the more acute by the remembrance that Socrates had not, like the advanced democrats, withdrawn from Athens during the "Terror." He was, in fact, suspected of using great abilities and gifts to pervert his younger associates from loyalty to the principles of democracy, and the convinced democrats who had recovered the city in 403 were unwilling, as Burnet has said, "to leave their work at the mercy of reaction." That they took no steps for four years is probably explained by the state of complete confusion and congestion into which the disorders of 404 had thrown the law courts. The motives of Anytus, an upright, unintelligent democrat, are thus quite explicable. From his point of view, Socrates would be at the best a "whig," and democrats who re membered the career of Theramenes could not be expected to make a fine distinction between the "whig" and the traitor.
The real grounds for the attack could not be disclosed in the indictment, since the amnesty which terminated the struggle of and of which Anytus himself had been a main pro moter, covered all offences committed before the archonship of Eucleides (4o3). Hence the charge had to be couched in the form of a vague accusation of "corruption of the young." Probably for the same reasons Anytus was ashamed to appear as the prin cipal in the matter and put forward the obscure Meletus, who might venture on "indiscretions" more openly. If Meletus was the same person who also prosecuted Andocides in the same year on the same charge of "impiety," and if, as is not unlikely, he is the real author of the speech Against Andocides ascribed to Lysias, he must have been a half-witted fanatic, and this may explain why the charge of irreligion was added. The real nature of this "irre ligion" appears never to have been explained. Xenophon suggests that the allusion was to the "Divine sign" but this cannot be cor rect. It is clear from Plato's Apology that Meletus said nothing about the "sign" at the prosecution, and that Socrates is speaking with his "usual irony" when he pretends to guess that the mention of "religious novelties" in the indictment referred to it. In the Apology, Socrates says that the prosecution is, no doubt, relying on memories of Aristophanes' Clouds, where he had been made to talk "atheism" as part of the burlesque on men of science.