the Rotunda, and commanded us to fetch Leon of Salamis from that island, in order to put him to death: the sort of commands they often gave to many others, anxious as they were to incriminate all they could. And on that occasion {135} I showed not by words only, that for death, to put it bluntly, I did not care one straw--but I did care, and to the full, about doing what was wicked and unjust. I was not terrified then into doing wrong by that government in all its power; when we left the Rotunda, the other four went off to Salamis and brought Leon back, but I went home. And probably I should have been put to death for it, if the government had not been overthrown soon afterwards." But there was a third, and greater reason, for the condemnation of Socrates. These charges were brought against him because the popular mind confused him with the Sophists. This was entirely absurd, because Socrates in no respect resembled the Sophists, either in the manner of his life or in the tendency of his thought, which was wholly anti-sophistical. But that such a confusion did exist in the popular mind is clearly proved by "The Clouds" of Aristophanes. Aristophanes was a reactionary in thought and politics, and, hating the Sophists as the representatives of modernism, he lampooned them in his comedy, "The Clouds." Socrates appears in the play as the central character, and the chief of the Sophists. This was entirely unjust, but it affords evidence of the fact that Socrates was commonly mistaken for a Sophist by the Athenians. Aristophanes would not have ventured to introduce such a delusion into his play, had his audience not shared in it. Now at this time a wave of reaction was passing over Athens, and there was great indignation against the Sophists, who were rightly supposed to be overturning all ideals of truth and goodness. Socrates fell a victim to the anger of the populace against the Sophists. {136}