re than any other man without turning a hair. In the
"Banquet" of Plato, Socrates is depicted sitting all night long
drinking and talking philosophy with his friends. One by one the
guests succumbed, leaving only Socrates and two others, and at last,
as the dawn broke, these two also fell asleep. But Socrates got up,
washed himself, and went down to the market place to begin his daily
work.

In his seventieth year he was tried on three charges: (1) for denying
the national gods, (2) for setting up new gods of his own, (3) for
corrupting the youth. All these charges were entirely baseless. The
first might well have been brought against almost any of the earlier
Greek thinkers with some justice. Most of them disbelieved in the
national religion; many of them openly denied the existence of the
gods. Socrates, almost alone, had refrained from any such attitude. On
the contrary, he always enjoined veneration towards the gods, and
urged his hearers, in whatever city they might be, to honour the gods
according to the custom of that city. According to Xenophon, however,
he distinguished between the many gods and the one creator of the
universe, who controls, guides, and guards over the lives of men. The
second charge appears to have been based upon the claim of Socrates to
be guided by a supernatural inner voice, but whatever we may think of
this claim, it can hardly constitute good ground for a charge of
introducing new gods. The third charge, that of corrupting the youth,
was equally baseless, though the fact that Alcibiades, who had been a
favourite pupil of Socrates, afterwards turned traitor to Athens, and
{133} led, moreover, a dissolute and unprincipled life, no doubt
prejudiced the philosopher in the eyes of the Athenians. But Socrates
was not responsible for the misdeeds of Alcibiades, and his general
influence upon the Athenian youth was the very opposite of corrupting.

What then were the real reasons for these accusations? In the first
place, there is no doubt that Socrates had made many personal enemies.
In his daily disputations he had not spared even the most powerful men
in Athens, but had ruthlessly laid bare the ignorance of those who
pretended to be wise. There is, however, no reason to believe that the
three men who actually laid the charges, Melitus, Lycon, and Anytus,
did so out of any personal animosity. But they were men of straw, put
forward by more powerful persons who remained behind the scenes. In