Note 197 — Chapter XVIII

“Seeing Anytus pass by, he said, ‘In truth this man is self–important, as if he would have done some great and noble action, in having procured my death, because I said that it was not expedient that he should educate his son about hides, seeing that he himself was held in the highest esteem by the commonwealth.’”—Apol. Xen., § 29. In the Menon of Plato, Anytus is represented as taking great offence with Socrates, for showing that neither Aristides nor Pericles, nor other great statesmen, had been able to educate their sons so as to impart to them their own great abilities (he omits to mention Miltiades, who had a son more eminent than himself, Cimon): a ground of offence which seems odd enough, unless we suppose Anytus to have felt that Socrates was talking at him all the time. Anytus concludes his share in the dialogue with a caution to the philosopher against his freedom of speech, and a hint that in all places it is readier to do harm than good to a man, and of all places, most especially in Athens. ‘No wonder,’ Socrates replies, ‘that Anytus is angry, since he thinks that I am abusing men, of whom he esteems himself to be one’ (Ed., Bekker, part ii., vol. i., p. 378, § 34). These men are the πολιτικὸι (see § 42;) so that Anytus was both πολιτικὸς, and (as being a leather–dealer) δημιουργὸς; the two terms used in the passage quoted from the Apology, and in both capacities it would seem that Socrates had offended him. One of the commentators on Plato (Forster, Apol. as above) tells us that the tradesmen of Athens thought that Socrates corrupted the youth of Athens, because he disapproved of educating young men, as Anytus is said to have brought up his son solely to the lucrative crafts of their fathers, and because he led them into the idle habit of thinking and talking. It may be observed that the character of Anytus did not stand quite clear; since, according to Diodorus, having been sent with a fleet to relieve Pylos, and having failed to do so, as he alleged, from the badness of the weather, he was accused of treachery, “and, being in great danger, bought himself off, being the first of the Athenians, as it appears, who ever bribed a court of justice” (Diod., xiii. 64).