Note 171 — Chapter III · * OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES. (continued 2)

We see from the first two chapters of the Memorabilia of Xenophon (as well as from the subsequent intimation of Æschines, in the oration against Timarchus, p. 173) how much stress was laid by the accusers of Sokrates on the fact that he had educated Kritias and Alkibiades; and how the accusers alleged that his teaching tended to encourage the like exorbitant aspirations in others, dangerous to established authority, traditional, legal, parental, divine. I do not doubt (what Xenophon affirms) that Sokrates, when he conversed with Kritias and Alkibiades, held a very opposite language. But it was otherwise when he talked with men of ease and indulgence without ambition, such as Aristippus. If Melêtus and Anytus could have put in evidence the conversation of Sokrates with Aristippus, many points of it would have strengthened their case against Sokrates before the Dikasts. We read in Xenophon (Mem. i. 2, 58) how the point was made to tell, that Sokrates often cited and commented on the passage of the Iliad (ii. 188) in which the Grecian chiefs, retiring from the agora to their ships, are described as being respectfully addressed by Odysseus — while the common soldiers are scolded and beaten by him, for the very same conduct: the relation which Sokrates here dwells on as subsisting between οἱ ἀρχικοὶ and οἱ ἀρχόμενοι, would favour the like colouring.