| INTRODUCTION |
| APOLOGY |
In what relation the “Apology” of Plato stands to the real defenceof Socrates, there are no means of determining. It certainly agrees in tone andcharacter with the description of Xenophon, who says in the“Memorabilia” that Socrates might have been acquitted “if inany moderate degree he would have conciliated the favour of the dicasts;”and who informs us in another passage, on the testimony of Hermogenes, thefriend of Socrates, that he had no wish to live; and that the divine signrefused to allow him to prepare a defence, and also that Socrates himselfdeclared this to be unnecessary, on the ground that all his life long he hadbeen preparing against that hour. For the speech breathes throughout a spiritof defiance, “ut non supplex aut reus sed magister aut dominusvideretur esse judicum” (Cic. “de Orat.” i. 54); and theloose and desultory style is an imitation of the “accustomedmanner” in which Socrates spoke in “the agora and among thetables of the money-changers.” The allusion in the “Crito”(45 B) may, perhaps, be adduced as a further evidence of the literal accuracyof some parts (37 C, D). But in the main it must be regarded as the ideal ofSocrates, according to Plato’s conception of him, appearing in thegreatest and most public scene of his life, and in the height of his triumph,when he is weakest, and yet his mastery over mankind is greatest, and hishabitual irony acquires a new meaning and a sort of tragic pathos in the faceof death. The facts of his life are summed up, and the features of hischaracter are brought out as if by accident in the course of the defence. Theconversational manner, the seeming want of arrangement, the ironicalsimplicity, are found to result in a perfect work of art, which is the portraitof Socrates.
Yet some of the topics may have been actually used by Socrates; and therecollection of his very words may have rung in the ears of his disciple. The“Apology” of Plato may be compared generally with those speeches ofThucydides in which he has embodied his conception of the lofty character andpolicy of the great Pericles, and which at the same time furnish a commentaryon the situation of affairs from the point of view of the historian. So in the“Apology” there is an ideal rather than a literal truth; much issaid which was not said, and is only Plato’s view of the situation. Platowas not, like Xenophon, a chronicler of facts; he does not appear in any of hiswritings to have aimed at literal accuracy. He is not therefore to besupplemented from the Memorabilia and Symposium of Xenophon, who belongs to anentirely different class of writers. The Apology of Plato is not the report ofwhat Socrates said, but an elaborate composition, quite as much so in fact asone of the Dialogues. And we may perhaps even indulge in the fancy that theactual defence of Socrates was as much greater than the Platonic defence as themaster was greater than the disciple. But in any case, some of the words usedby him must have been remembered, and some of the facts recorded must haveactually occurred. It is significant that Plato is said to have been present atthe defence (Apol.), as he is also said to have been absent at the last scenein the “Phædo”. Is it fanciful to suppose that he meant to give thestamp of authenticity to the one and not to the other?—especially when weconsider that these two passages are the only ones in which Plato makes mentionof himself. The circumstance that Plato was to be one of his