Note 193 — Chapter XVIII

It would seem to be, in reference to this sort of feeling, that Plato puts these words into the mouth of Socrates, after sentence passed on him near the end of the Apology: “For now you have done this, thinking that you should be liberated from the necessity of giving an account of your life;” a necessity which, to take Socrates’ own account of his conduct, they may have been very glad to be liberated from. “For if you should put me to death, you will not easily find such another (though the comparison is ridiculous) whom Divinity has united to this city as to a generous and great horse; but sluggish through his magnitude, and requiring to be excited by some fly. In like manner, Divinity appears to have united me, being somewhat like this (i. e., the fly) to the city, that I might not cease exciting, persuading, and reproving each of you, and everywhere settling on you all day long.”—Apol. ed., Bekk., part i., vol ii., chap. 18, p. 118. Nobody, however, ever heard that the horse was grateful to the fly. Again, “As to what I before observed, that there is great enmity towards me amongst the vulgar, you may be well assured that it is true. And this it is which will condemn me, if I should be condemned—the hatred of the multitude, and not Melitus or Anytus.”—Part i., vol. ii., chap. 16, p. 112, ed., Bekk.