For himself, without making any such profession, he was content to believe that those who accepted his views would play their parts as good and true friends to himself and one another their lives long. Once more then: how should a man of this character corrupt the young? unless the careful cultivation of virtue be corruption. But, says the accuser, (2) by all that's sacred! did not Socrates cause his associates to despise the established laws when he dwelt on the folly of appointing state officers by ballot? (3) a principle which, he said, no one would care to apply in selecting a pilot or a flute-player or in any similar case, where a mistake would be far less disastrous than in matters political. Words like these, according to the accuser, tended to incite the young to contemn the established constitution, rendering them violent and headstrong. But for myself I think that those who cultivate wisdom and believe themselves able to instruct their fellow-citizens as to their interests are least likely to become partisans of violence. They are too well aware that to violence attach enmities and dangers, whereas results as good may be obtained by persuasion safely and amicably. For the victim of violence hates with vindictiveness as one from whom something precious has been stolen, while the willing subject of persuasion is ready to kiss the hand which has done him a service. Hence compulsion is not the method of him who makes wisdom his study, but of him who wields power untempered by reflection. Once more: the man who ventures on violence needs the support of many to fight his battles, while he whose strength lies in persuasiveness triumphs single-handed, for he is conscious of a cunning to compel consent unaided. And what has such a one to do with the spilling of blood? since how ridiculous it were to do men to death rather than turn to account the trusty service of the living. (2) {o kategoros} = Polycrates possibly. See M. Schantz, op. cit., "Einleitun," S. 6: "Die Anklagerede des Polykrates"; Introduction, p. xxxii. foll. (3) i.e. staking the election of a magistrate on the colour of a bean. See Aristot. "Ath. Pol." viii. 2, and Dr. Sandys ad loc. But, the accuser answers, the two men (4) who wrought the greatest evils to the state at any time--to wit, 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.