200 HISTORY OF GREECE. other similar statements, not expressly mentioned to us, bringing to view the same fact in other ways, and all contributing to aggra- vate the violence of the public manifestations ; which at length reached such a point, that Euryptolemus was forced to withdraw his notice of indictment against Kallixenus. Now, however, a new form of resistance sprung up, still pre venting the proposition from being taken into consideration by the assembly. Some of the prytanes, or senators of the pre- siding tribe, on that occasion the tribe Antiochis, the legal presi- dents of the assembly, refused to entertain or put the question ; which, being illegal and unconstitutional, not only inspired them with aversion, but also rendered them personally open to penal- ties. Kallixenus employed against them the same menaces which . Lykiskus had uttered against Euryptolemus : he threatened, amidst encouraging clamor from many persons in the assembly, to include them in the same accusation with the generals. So in- timidated were the prytanes by the incensed manifestations of the assembly, that all of them, except one, relinquished their opposi tion, and agreed to put the question. The single obstinate prytanis, whose refusal no menace could subdue, was a man whose name we read with peculiar interest, and in whom an impregnable adherence to law and duty was only one among many other titles to reverence. It was the philosopher Sokrates ; on this trying occasion, once throughout a life of seventy years, discharging a political office, among the fifty senators taken by lot from the tribe Antiochis. Sokrates could not be induced to withdraw his protest, so that the question was ultimately put by the remaining prytanes without his concurrence. 1 It should be observed that his resistance did not imply any opinion as to the guilt or inno- cence of the generals, but applied simply to the illegal and uncon- stitutional proposition now submitted for determining their fate 1 Xenoph. Hellen. i, 7, 14, 15 ; Plato, Apol. Socr. e. 20; Xcnoph. Memor i, 1, 18; iv, 4, 2. In the passage of the Memorabilia, Xenophon says that SokratCs was epi- states, or presiding prytanis, for that actual day. In the Hcllenica, he onlj reckons him as one among the prytanes. It can hardly be accounted cer tain that he ivas epistates, the rather as this same passage of the Memora- bilia is inaccurate on another point : it names nine generals as having been condemned, instead of eight.
