ABSTRACT
From the "Clouds" we learn that Socrates had become an object of suspicion and antipathy as a sophist and scientific student, as an unusually clever heretic who undermined the foundations of belief in the gods by his teaching. At a somewhat later day Aristotle can still say that what the populace love is the flatterer, and Isocrates that their ire is roused by those who dare to reprove and rebuke them. Socrates might try to do it very gently, he might even administer local anaesthetics during the operation, with that subtle skill which was characteristic of him. Socrates, like Carlyle, was a critic of democracy and an advocate of the aristocracy of talent. In 403 b.c. the oligarchical government of the Thirty came to an end, and Democracy took its place. There were those who so far misunderstood Socrates as to think that he despised the poor and mediocre commoner altogether.
