The Memorabilia | Page 7

Critias and Alcibiades--were both companions of Socrates--Critias the oligarch, and Alcibiades the democrat. Where would you find a more arrant thief, savage, and murderer[5] than the one? where such a portent of insolence, incontinence, and high-handedness as the other? For my part, in so far as these two wrought evil to the state, I have no desire to appear as the apologist of either. I confine myself to explaining what this intimacy of theirs with Socrates really was.
[4] See "Hell." I. and II. passim.
[5] Reading {kleptistatos te kai biaiotatos kai phonikotatos}, or if {pleonektistatos te kai biaiotatis}, translate "such a manner of greed and violence as the one, of insolence, etc., as the other?" See Grote, "H. G." viii. 337.
Never were two more ambitious citizens seen at Athens. Ambition was in their blood. If they were to have their will, all power was to be in their hands; their fame was to eclipse all other. Of Socrates they knew--first that he lived an absolutely independent life on the scantiest means; next that he was self-disciplined to the last degree in respect of pleasures; lastly that he was so formidable in debate that there was no antagonist he could not twist round his little finger. Such being their views, and such the character of the pair, which is the more probable: that they sought the society of Socrates because they felt the fascination of his life, and were attracted by the bearing of the man? or because they thought, if only we are leagued with him we shall become adepts in statecraft and unrivalled in the arts of speech and action? For my part I believe that if the choice from Heaven had been given them to live such a life as they saw Socrates living to its close, or to die, they would both have chosen death.
Their acts are a conclusive witness to their characters. They no sooner felt themselves to be the masters of those they came in contact with than they sprang aside from Socrates and plunged into that whirl of politics but for which they might never have sought his society.
It may be objected: before giving his companions lessons in politics Socrates had better have taught them sobriety.[6] Without disputing the principle, I would point out that a teacher cannot fail to discover to his pupils his method of carrying out his own precepts, and this along with argumentative encouragement. Now I know that Socrates disclosed himself to his companions as a beautiful and noble being, who would reason and debate with them concerning virtue and other human interests in the noblest manner. And of these two I know that as long as they were companions of Socrates even they were temperate, not assuredly from fear of being fined or beaten by Socrates, but because they were persuaded for the nonce of the excellence of such conduct.
[6] {sophrosune} = "sound-mindedness," "temperence." See below, IV. iii. 1.
Perhaps some self-styled philosophers[7] may here answer: "Nay, the man truly just can never become unjust, the temperate man can never become intemperate, the man who has learnt any subject of knowledge can never be as though he had learnt it not." That, however, is not my own conclusion. It is with the workings of the soul as with those of the body; want of exercise of the organ leads to inability of function, here bodily, there spiritual, so that we can neither do the things that we should nor abstain from the things we should not. And that is why fathers keep their sons, however temperate they may be, out of the reach of wicked men, considering that if the society of the good is a training in virtue so also is the society of the bad its dissolution.
[7] In reference to some such tenet as that of Antisthenes ap. Diog. Laert. VI. ix. 30, {areskei d' autois kai ten areten didakten einai, katha phesin 'Antisthenes en to 'Rraklei kai anapobleton uparkhein}. Cf. Plat. "Protag." 340 D, 344 D.
To this the poet[8] is a witness, who says:
"From the noble thou shalt be instructed in nobleness; but, and if thou minglest with the base thou wilt destroy what wisdom thou hast now";
And he[9] who says:
"But the good man has his hour of baseness as well as his hour of virtue"--
to whose testimony I would add my own. For I see that it is impossible to remember a long poem without practice and repetition; so is forgetfulness of the words of instruction engendered in the heart that has ceased to value them. With the words of warning fades the recollection of the very condition of mind in which the soul yearned after holiness; and once forgetting this, what wonder that the man should let slip also the memory of virtue itself! Again I