ABSTRACT
As we all know, the proceeding formally employed by the leaders of the restored democracy to get rid of Socrates was a γραφὴ ἀσϵβϵίaς. The precise nature of the “impiety” alleged against the philosopher has, however, always been wrapped in a cloud of mystery, some part of which it is the object of the present essay to dispel. So far as I know, no one has as yet made it quite clear why Socrates should have been one of the earliest victims of the restored democracy, 1 nor why so influential and upright a person as Anytus should have lent the weight of his reputation to the prosecution. There is no evidence to show that Socrates, until the time of the prosecution, had been the object of popular dislike. The comedians, to be sure, had attacked him, but we must remember that comedy, at least so far as we may take Aristophanes as its representative, does not express the views of the democracy but of a group of literary men, whose bias is strongly against both the Periclean democracy and the Imperialistic policy with which the existence of the democracy was inseparably bound up. Its favourite butts were precisely the chosen statesmen of the democracy who set themselves to carry out the Periclean policy resolutely and with full consciousness of what they were doing. And we may add that, so far as we can judge, the attacks of the comedians on Socrates were as complete 2a failure as their attacks on Euripides. The Clouds was not a success on the stage; the actual condemnation of Socrates was the work of a very small majority of the voters; after his death, his reputation, like that of Alcibiades, was the subject of a regular literary warfare. If we turn to the Platonic dialogues, we find Socrates represented as an object of public curiosity, but there is no sign that he was regarded with dislike.
