By strictly adhering to our intention of bringing down Greek history to the close of the Peloponnesian war, we should exclude from this volume an event which in all ages has commanded an unusual sympathy—the execution of the philosopher Socrates on the false charge of blaspheming the recognised divinities, and corrupting the young citizens of his country. But as the life and actions of this remarkable man belong almost entirely to the period included in this volume, though his death did not occur until the year B.C. 399, five years after the capture of Athens, it seems proper to give some account of him here. Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and himself gained a livelihood by working at his father’s profession. But he devoted himself at an early age to the study of philosophy, and by the extreme simplicity and frugality of his habits was enabled to give up a very large portion of his time to that pursuit. In youth he diligently sought instruction, as far as his means permitted, from the best teachers of those branches of education which were in repute. How soon he gained notoriety as a public teacher himself, is not determined: but he must have been known before the ‘Clouds’ of Aristophanes, in which he is a leading character, was acted, B.C. 423. His conduct, however, was very different from that of the professed teachers for pay, who, at the time of which we speak, were numerous, and if successful, wealthy and influential. He gave no regular lectures in stated periods and places, he required no money from those who attended upon him, and indeed accepted no reward, either from those who heard him in public or those with whom he familiarly associated: private instruction, as a paid teacher, he refused to give, though his conversation was habitually directed to the objects of his public teaching. According to Xenophon,[179] he was always in public; in the morning he was found in frequented walks, or in the _gymnasia_ or places of public exercise; he visited the agora, whenever it was likely to be fullest; he was seen in the evening, where–ever he was likely to meet with the greatest number of persons. Instead of saying that he gave no regular lectures, it would be more correct to say that he never lectured at all: his usual course was to entrap the person upon whom he chose to exercise his dialectic powers, into a conversation, in its outset probably of the most commonplace and unalarming description; and then, by a series of skilfully contrived questions, to lead him, if a pretender to knowledge, to expose his presumption, and ignorance of what he professed to know; or he would take a person confessedly ignorant of the things to be discussed, and lead him step by step in a succession of questions, until he obtained out of the respondent’s mouth the result at which he, the interrogator, wished to arrive.