This passage will make it plain that Socrates was no mere idle speculator or subtle talker, such as might be found in ancient Athens or in any modern German university by scores--but a practical man, and an effective citizen of prominent merit. But if he showed courage in the field of battle not inferior to the stoutest and coolest professional soldier, he displayed a civic virtue on other occasions, which only the fewest on all occasions have been able to exhibit. This virtue was moral courage; a quality which, when exercised in critical circumstances, raises a man high above the average of his kind, whereas with mere physical courage he is only a more cool and calculating rival of dogs and cocks and tigers, and other ferine combatants. On that memorable occasion, when the whole of Athens was fretted into a fever-fit of indignation on account of the neglect of the dead and dying slain by the victors at Arginusæ (B.C. 406), and in the torrent of what appeared to them most righteous wrath, were eager to overbear all the customary forms of fair judicial trial, Socrates happened to be serving as one of the senators whose duty it was to put the question to the assembly of the people in the case of great public trials; and, a motion having been made that the generals who were guilty of the alleged neglect of pious duty should be condemned to drink the hemlock, and have their property {14} confiscated, it fell to the senators to perform the preparatory step in the prosecution. But as the proceedings in the case had been dictated by violent excitement, and were decidedly illegal, Socrates refused, in the face of violent popular clamour, to have anything to do with the matter, and lifted up his single protest--one amongst fifty--against violating the sacred forms of law at the dictation of an excited populace. On this, as on other similar occasions when he came into collision with the public authorities, he maintained a truly apostolic bearing, using in almost identical terms the language of the apostles Peter and John, when they were forbidden to preach by the Sanhedrim: “_Whether it be right in the sight of the gods to hearken unto you rather than to the gods, judge ye; but as for me, I have sworn to obey the laws, and I cannot forswear myself_.”