Note 2 — Chapter IX · APOLOGY OF SOKRATES.

See chapter lxviii. of my History of Greece.

The reader will find in that chapter a full narrative of all the circumstances known to us respecting both the life and the condemnation of Sokrates.

A very admirable account may also be seen of the character of Sokrates, and his position with reference to the Athenian people, in the article entitled Sokrates und Sein Volk, Akademischer Vortrag, by Professor Hermann Köchly; a lecture delivered at Zurich in 1855, and published with enlargements in 1859.

Professor Köchly’s article (contained in a volume entitled Akademische Vorträge, Zurich, 1859) is eminently deserving of perusal. It not only contains a careful summary of the contemporary history, so far as Sokrates is concerned, but it has farther the great merit of fairly estimating that illustrious man in reference to the actual feeling of the time, and to the real public among whom he moved. I feel much satisfaction in seeing that Professor Köchly’s picture, composed without any knowledge of my History of Greece, presents substantially the same view of Sokrates and his contemporaries as that which is taken in my sixty-eighth chapter.

Köchly considers that the Platonic Apology preserves the Sokratic character more faithfully than any of Plato’s writings; and that it represents what Sokrates said, as nearly as the “dichterische Natur” of Plato would permit (Köchly, pp. 302-364.)