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trial was, that he inveighed against the Athenian practice of 

 appointing men to public offices by lot, alleging that the fittest 

 man ought in every case to be chosen, and asking how such a 

 mode of election would answer if applied to a pilot or a sur- 

 geon. Here, however, Socrates was joined by Aristophanes, 

 who ridiculed the same practice on the stage, and the reason- 

 ableness of the opinion is self-evident. We do not know what 

 provision Socrates would have made for securing the election 

 of the fittest men, and for superseding those who showed 

 themselves unfit. 



The effect of the teaching of Socrates, however excellent 

 and stimulating to the intellect could not fail, as Mr. Grote 

 remarks, to create towards him much personal dislike, espe- 

 cially among the worldly and narrow-minded. It is natural 

 to suppose that the young men, who took the greatest delight 

 in conversation with him, would carry home ideas and reason- 

 ing by no means palatable to the prejudices of their parents. 

 Thus, for instance, Anytus, the principal accuser, was incensed 

 against Socrates because he had endeavoured to dissuade him 

 from bringing up his son to his own trade, having observed in 

 him intellectual promise. Hence, too, was manufactured the 

 charge that he corrupted youth, which touched upon the weak 

 side of his theory of morals, in making too little account of 

 habits, dispositions and affections. Another cause of unpopu- 

 larity was the past connexion of Socrates to some extent with 

 Critias and Alcibiades, who had rendered themselves odious by 

 their insolence, ambition and treason to the state. Meletus, 

 the primary accuser, was a poet ; Lycon, who supported him, 

 was a rhetor, each belonging to a class of men who would 

 naturally be alienated by the unsparing dialectics of Socrates, 

 to which many of them had been exposed. The old calumnies 

 of the comic poets were revived, and their effects were still 

 enduring. After admitting that the charges brought against 

 Socrates at his trial were partly frivolous and mainly false, Mr. 

 Grote proceeds to prove that his condemnation, and still more 



