A Life of Socrates by Dr. G. Wiggers [pp. 236-265]

.His Accusation and Trial.
termination of their power, would doubtless have soon fallen a
victim to their cruelty; but he carefully avoided civil honours
and offices after his senatorship.
But whatever were the employments of Socrates, whether
private or public, civil or military, from the time that he began
to converse with the Athenians on moral and practical subjects,
to the time of his death, he had one object in view, and he
steadily pursued that, viz: the improvement of his countrymen
in sound knowledge and practical virtue. In a good sense he
was a man of one idea. The most inexperienced youth, the
humblest citizen, as well as the sick, the gifted and the renowned,
were objects of his solicitude. For forty years he assiduously
and untiringly attempted the reformation of principles and
manners among his countrymen, but with how little success,
perhaps none have felt more than himself, till at last he died by
the cruelty and wickedness of those, who should have defended
and honoured him to the last.
Without entering at length into the controversy as to the
particular tribunal before which Socrates was accused and by
which he was tried, we yet freely give our opinion that it was
not the Areopagus, but an inferior court, either that of the
Heliastee or Dicastoe, the particular organization of which need
not now be explained. In the year 400 or 399 B. C., when
Socrates was, as he says on his trial, more than seventy years
old, he was arraigned. His accusers were Anytus, Lycon and
Melitus. The first was the mouth-piece of the artizans and
politicians, the second of the orators or rhetoricians, and the
third of the poets. These persons, so diverse in interests, tastes,
and pursuits, yet all agreed in hearty ill-will against the man,
who had so often exposed their folly and their arts. The accusation they brought was in substance that "he searches into
things in heaven and things under the earth, that he does not
believe there are gods, that he makes the worse appear the
better reason, and that he corrupts the youth by teaching them
the same things." It is not possible in the limits assigned to this
article, to give even a syllabus of his apology, as Plato calls his
defence. It is condensed beyond almost any address of the
kindwe have ever seen or heard. The ability displayed in it is
far beyond what we had even supposed it to possess, until we
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