man, he says, is most pious who knows best how to propitiate their favour by prayer and sacrifice. Thus piety becomes a sort of business transaction, on the mutual benefit system, between gods and men; where worldly prosperity is bestowed on one side, and honour and gratitude are rendered on the other.
But Socrates is not satisfied. They have, he says, been arguing in a circle, and have got back to the definition they before rejected—that piety is "what is dear to the gods:" for the honour we thus pay to them by prayer and sacrifice is most dear to them. So they must again seek for the true answer; and Euthyphro must tell him, for if any man knows the nature of piety, it is evidently he. But Euthyphro is in a hurry, and cannot stay.
"If Socrates had thought like Euthyphro, he might have died in his bed." Such is the moral M. Cousin[1] draws from this Dialogue; and undoubtedly the subsequent impeachment of the philosopher might be attributed in part to the enmity of the Athenian priesthood—always jealous and intolerant of any new form of faith. Here the contrast is (as Plato probably meant it to be) a striking one between the augur Euthyphro—perfect in the letter of the law, but whose consistent "piety" is impelling him to be a parricide—and Socrates, even now about to be indicted for worshipping strange gods, yet proving a self-devoted martyr who refuses to save his life by tampering with his conscience, and who dies rather than
- ↑ Fragm. de Philos. Ane., 117.
