most crowded hours, and thus spent the whole day in conversing with young and old, rich and poor,-with all in short who felt any desire for his instructions. There was, however, a certain set of persons who were in the habit of following him to hear his conversation, and these became known as his disciples.

From this public manner of life, he became one of the best known characters in Athens, and this circumstance was probably the reason why he was selected for attack, as the representative of the Sophists in general, by Aristophanes and the comic poets. But the picture of Aristophanes shows that he either did not know, or was not solicitous about, the real objects and pursuits of Socrates his only object seems to have been to raise a laugh. The dramatist represents Socrates as occupied with physical researches. But though in early life Socrates had paid some attention to natural philosophy, he soon abandoned the study in disgust, from reading a treatise of Anaxagoras, in which he found that the philosopher's hypotheses were not sustained by any basis of reasoning. This led Socrates to turn his attention to dialectics. In this pursuit there can be little doubt that he derived great assistance from the Eleatic school of philosophers, especially Parmenides and Zeno, who visited Athens when Socrates was a young man. He seems to have borrowed from the Eleatics his negative method; namely, that of disproving and upsetting what is advanced by a disputant, as a means of unmasking not only falsehood, but also assertion without authority, yet without attempting to establish anything in its place.

§ 13. We are now in a condition to see in what points Socrates differed from the ordinary teachers or Sophists of the time. They were these: 1. He taught without fee or reward, and communicated his instructions freely to high and low, rich and poor alike. 2. He did not talk for mere vain show and ostentation, but for the sake of gaining clear and distinct ideas, and thus advancing both himself and others in real knowledge. It was with this view that he had abandoned physics, which, in the manner in which they were then taught, were founded merely on guesses and conjectures, and had applied himself to the study of his fellow men, which opened a surer field of observation. And in order to arrive at clear ideas on moral subjects, he was the first to employ definition and inference, and thus confine the discourse to the eliciting of truth, instead of making it the vehicle for empty display. A contrary practice on these two points is what constituted the difference between Socrates and the Sophists.

The teaching of Socrates forms an epoch in the history of philosophy. From his school sprang Plato, the founder of the Academic philosophy; Euclides, the founder of the Megaric

school; Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic school; and many other philosophers of eminence.

§ 14. That a reformer and destroyer, like Socrates, of ancient prejudices and fallacies which passed current under the name of wisdom should have raised up a host of enemies is only what might be expected; but in his case this feeling was increased by the manner in which he fulfilled his mission. The oracle of Delphi, in response to a question put by his friend Chærephon, had affirmed that no man was wiser than Socrates. No one was more perplexed at this declaration than Socrates himself, since he was conscious to himself of possessing no wisdom at all. However, he determined to test the accuracy of the priestess, for though he had little wisdom, others might have still less. He therefore selected an eminent politician who enjoyed a high reputation for wisdom, and soon elicited by his scrutinising method of cross-examination, that this statesman's reputed wisdom was no wisdom at all. But of this he could not convince the subject of his examination; whence Socrates concluded that he was wiser than this politician, inasmuch as he was conscious of his own ignorance, and therefore exempt from the error of believing himself wise when in reality he was not so. The same experiment was tried with the same result on various classes of men; on poets, mechanics, and especially on the rhetors and sophists, the chief of all the pretenders to wisdom.

§ 15. The first indication of the unpopularity which Socrates had incurred is the attack made upon him by Aristophanes in the "Clouds” in the year 423 B.C. That attack, however, seems to have evaporated with the laugh, and for many years Socrates continued his teaching without molestation. It was not till B. C. 399 that the indictment was preferred against him which cost him his life. In that year, Meletus, a leather-seller, seconded by Anytus, a poet, and Lycon, a rhetor, accused him of impiety in not worshipping the gods of the city, and in introducing new deities, and also of being a corrupter of youth. With respect to the latter charge, his former intimacy with Alcibiades and Critias may have weighed against him. Socrates made no preparations for his defence, and seems, indeed, not to have desired an acquittal. But although he addressed the dicasts in a bold uncompromising tone, he was condemned only by a small majority of five or six in a court composed of between five and six hundred dicasts. After the verdict was pronounced, he was entitled, according to the practice of the Athenian courts, to make some counter-proposition in place of the penalty of death, which the accusers had demanded, and if he had done so with any show of submission it is probable that the sentence

would have been mitigated. But his tone after the verdict was higher than before. All that he could be brought to propose against himself by way of punishment was a fine of 30 mina, which Plato and other friends engaged to pay for him. Instead of a fine, he asserted that he ought to be maintained in the Prytaneum at the public expense, as a public benefactor. This tone seems to have enraged the dicasts, and he was condemned to death.

It happened that the vessel which proceeded to Delos on the annual deputation to the festival had sailed the day before his condemnation; and during its absence it was unlawful to put any one to death. Socrates was thus kept in prison during 30 days, till the return of the vessel. He spent the interval in philosophical conversations with his friends. Crito, one of these, arranged a scheme for his escape by bribing the gaoler; but Socrates, as might be expected from the tone of his defence, resolutely refused to save his life by a breach of the law. last discourse, on the day of his death, turned on the immortality of the soul, and has been recorded, and probably embellished, in the Phado of Plato. With a firm and cheerful countenance he drank the cup of hemlock amidst his sorrowing and weeping friends. His last words were addressed to Crito :Crito, we owe a cock to Esculapius ;* discharge the debt, and by no means omit it."

His

Thus perished the greatest and most original of the Grecian philosophers, whose uninspired wisdom made the nearest approach to the divine morality of the Gospel.

* In allusion to the sacrifice usually offered by sick persons to that deity on their recovery.

THE EXPEDITION OF THE GREEKS UNDER CYRUS, AND RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND.

§ 1. Causes of the Expedition. § 2. Cyrus engages an army of Greek mercenaries. Their character. § 3. March to Tarsus. § 4. Discontent of the Greeks. March to Myriandrus. § 5. Passage of the Euphrates, and march through the desert. § 6. Battle of Cunaxa, and death of Cyrus. § 7. Dismay of the Greeks. Preparations for retreat. 8. Retreat of the army to the Greater Zab. Seizure of the generals. 9. Election of Xenophon and others as generals. § 10. March from the Zab to the confines of the Carduchi. March across the mountains of the Carduchi. § 11. Progress through Armenia. § 12. March through the country of the Taochi, Chalybes, Scythini, Macrones, and Colchi to Trapezus on the Euxine. § 13. March along the coast of the Euxine to Chrysopolis. Passage to Byzantium. § 14. Proceed

ings at Byzantium. § 15. The Greeks enter the service of Seuthes. § 16. Are engaged by the Lacedæmonians. Last exploits of the army, and retirement of Xenophon.

§ 1. THE intervention of Cyrus in the affairs of Greece, related in the preceding book, led to a remarkable episode in Grecian history, which strongly illustrates the contrast between the Greeks and Asiatics. This was the celebrated expedition of Cyrus against his brother Artaxerxes, in which the superiority of Grecian to Asiatic soldiers was so strikingly shown. It was the first symptom of the repulsion of the tide of conquest, which had in former times flowed from east to west, and the harbinger of those future victorious expeditions into Asia which were to be conducted by Agesilaus and Alexander the Great.

It has been already mentioned, in the account of the death of Alcibiades, that Cyrus was forming designs against the throne of his brother Artaxerxes. The death of their father, Darius Nothus, took place about the beginning of the year B.C. 404, shortly before the battle of Ægospotami. Cyrus, who was present at his father's death, was charged by Tissaphernes with plotting against the new monarch. The accusation was believed by Artaxerxes, who seized his brother, and would have put him to death, but for the intercession of their mother, Parysatis, who persuaded him not only to spare Cyrus, but to confirm him in his former government. Cyrus returned to Sardis, burning with revenge, and fully resolved to make an effort to dethrone his brother.

§ 2. From his intercourse with the Greeks Cyrus had become aware of their superiority to the Asiatics, and of their usefelness in such an enterprise as he now contemplated. The peace which followed the capture of Athens seemed favourable to his projects. Many Greeks, bred up in the practice of war during the long struggle between that city and Sparta, were now deprived of their employment, whilst many more had been driven into exile by the establishment of the Spartan oligarchies in the various conquered cities. Under the pretence of a private war with the satrap Tissaphernes, Cyrus enlisted large numbers of them in his service. The Greek, in whom he placed most confidence, and who collected for him the largest number of mercenaries, was Clearchus, a Lacedæmonian, and formerly harmost of Byzantium, who had been condemned to death by the Spartan authorities for disobedience to their orders.

It was not, however, till the beginning of the year B.C. 401, that the enterprise of Cyrus was ripe for execution. The Greek levies were then withdrawn from the various towns in which they were distributed, and concentrated in Sardis to the number