486 HISTORY OF GREECE. mythes were true, death would transfer him to a second life in Hades, where he would find all the heroes of the Trojan war, and of the past generally, so as to pursue in conjunction with them the business of mutual cross-examination, and debate on ethical progress and perfection. 1 There can be no doubt that the sentence really appeared to Sokrates in this point of view, and to his friends also, after the event had happened, though doubtless not at the time when they were about to lose him. He took his line of defence advisedly, and with full knowledge of the result. It supplied him with the fittest of all opportunities for manifesting, in an impressive man- ner, both his personal ascendency over human fears and weak- ness, and the dignity of what he believed to be his divine mission. It took him away in his full grandeur and glory, like the setting of the tropical sun, at a moment when senile decay might be looked upon as close at hand. He calculated that his defence and bearing on the trial would be the most emphatic lesson which he could possibly read to the youth of Athens ; more emphatic, probably, than the sum total of those lessons which his remaining life might suffice to give, if he shaped his defence otherwise. This anticipation of the effect of the concluding scene of his life, setting the seal on all his prior discourses, manifests itself in portions of his concluding words to the dikasts, wherein he tells them that they will not, by putting him to death, rid themselves of the importunity of the cross-examining elen- chus ; that numbers of young men, more restless and obtrusive than he, already carried within them that impulse, which they would now proceed to apply; his superiority having hitherto kept them back. 2 It was thus the persuasion of Sokrates, that his removal would be the signal for numerous apostles, putting forth with increased energy that process of interrogatory test and spur to which he had devoted his life, and which doubtless was to him far dearer and more sacred than his life. Nothing could be more effective than his lofty bearing on his trial, for inflaming the enthusiasm of young men thus predisposed ; and 1 Plato, Apol. Sok. c 32, p. 40, C ; p. 41, B.
- Plan., Apol. Sok. c. 30, p. 39, a
