his revenge,
conspired with three profligates named Melitus, Lycon, and Anytus,
orators and rhetoricians, to destroy that godlike being. Defended by the
reverence in which the people held him, Socrates was perpetually secured
from the feeble villany of these three associates, till Aristophanes
joining them, broke down by wit the barrier that protected him. In the
comedy of the Clouds he threw the venerable old man into such forcible
ridicule as overset all the respect of the mob for his character, and
all their gratitude for his services, and they no longer paid the least
reverence to the philosopher whom for fifty years Athens had regarded as
a being of a superior order. This accomplished, the conspirators stood
forth to criminate him; and the philosopher was summoned before the
tribunal of five hundred, where he was accused--first, of corrupting the
Athenian youth--secondly, of making innovations in religion--and
thirdly, of ridiculing the gods which the Athenians worshipped. To prove
these evident falsehoods, false witnesses were suborned, upon whose
perjuries and the envy and malice of the judges, the accusers wholly
relied. They were not disappointed. The judges expected from Socrates
that abject submission, that meanness of behaviour, and that servility
of defence which they were accustomed to receive from ordinary
criminals. In this they were deceived; and his firmness and uncomplying
integrity is supposed to have accelerated his fall.

The death of Socrates has always been considered one of the most
interesting and afflicting events in history--interesting as it exhibits
in that illustrious philosopher the highest dignity to which mere human
nature has ever attained, and afflicting as it displays in the Athenians
the lowest depth of baseness to which nations may sink. In the history
of the Grecian drama it is necessarily introduced, as it serves to throw
a light upon the effects produced by the dramatic poetry upon that
people, and because a consideration of the manner of that philosopher's
death is inseparably connected with the character of the first of their
comic poets, Aristophanes: this chapter therefore will conclude with a
circumstantial relation of that event, taken from a celebrated
historian:

"Lysias, one of the most celebrated orators of the age, composed an
oration in the most splendid and pathetic terms, and offered it to
Socrates to be delivered as his defence before the judges. Socrates read