Part 3

_Capheisias._ Indeed, Archidamus, since you are so kind as to press for the whole story, it would be my duty to make it, as Pindar[21] says, ‘a call before all business’ to come here to tell it; but as we are brought here on an embassy, and have nothing to do until we receive the answers of the people, I feel that any reluctance or embarrassment on my part towards so kind and good a friend might well wake up the old reproach against the Boeotians that they hate discussion. It was already fading [Sidenote: E] away, thanks to your Socrates; but our own care for Lysis,[22] of blessed memory, showed us true enthusiasts. But see whom we have present: is it convenient to them to listen to so long a story and to so many speeches? The narrative is not a short one, since you yourself bid me include the speeches.

_Archidamus._ You do not know these friends, Capheisias? No, but you should; sons of good fathers who were good friends to your people. This is Lysitheides, nephew of Thrasybulus; [Sidenote: F] this is Timotheus, Conon’s son; these are the sons of Archinus; the others are all of our brotherhood; so your story finds a friendly and congenial audience.

_Capheisias._ That is well. But what should you think a good point for me to start from, in view of what you know already?

_Archidamus._ We know fairly well, Capheisias, how things were at Thebes before the return of the exiles. We had heard at Athens how Archias and Leontides persuaded Phoebidas to [Sidenote: 576] seize the Cadmeia during a truce; how they expelled some of the citizens and terrorized others, and seized office for themselves in defiance of law. We were the personal hosts here of Melon and Pelopidas, and constantly in their company so long as they were in exile. Again, we had heard how the Lacedaemonians fined Phoebidas for seizing the Cadmeia, removed him from the command against Olynthus, and then replaced him at Thebes by Lysanoridas and two others, and kept a stronger garrison than before in the Citadel. We were aware, too, how Ismenias met an unworthy death, since, immediately after his trial, Gorgidas wrote the whole account in a letter to the [Sidenote: B] exiles here. Thus it remains for you to tell us about the actual return of our friends and the capture of the tyrants.

II. _Capheisias._ Well then, Archidamus, during those days, all of us who were concerned in the movement were accustomed to meet for conference when necessary in the house of Simmias, who was recovering from a wound in the leg; ostensibly passing the time in philosophical talk, into which, as a blind, we often drew Archias and Leontides, men not altogether strangers to [Sidenote: C] such discussion. For Simmias had spent much time abroad, and wandered among men of other lands, and had shortly before this returned to Thebes full of all sorts of stories and outlandish accounts. These stories Archias used to enjoy when he chanced to have leisure, taking his seat with the young men, and liking us to pass the time in talk rather than attend to their proceedings. On the day upon which the exiles were to reach the walls at dusk, a man came in from here, sent by Pherenicus, known to none of our party except Charon; he proceeded to explain that the younger exiles, twelve in number, had taken hounds to hunt the Cithaeron country, intending to reach Thebes towards evening. He had been sent, he said, in advance [Sidenote: D] to tell us this, and to find out who was to provide the house for their concealment on arrival, so that they might have notice and go straight to it. While we were puzzling it over, Charon agreed to provide his own house. So the man settled to return to the exiles as fast as he could.

III. Here the prophet Theocritus pressed my hand hard, and looking at Charon, who was walking in front, said: ‘This man is no philosopher, Capheisias; he has received no extraordinary training, as Epaminondas your brother has; yet you see how he is naturally drawn by the laws towards the nobler [Sidenote: E] course, volunteering to encounter the greatest danger for our country’s sake. Whereas Epaminondas, who claims to have been trained to virtue above all Boeotians, is dull and spiritless;[23] what better opportunity than this will he ever have to bring into play his fine gifts and training?’ I said: ‘Not so fast, [Sidenote: F] Theocritus the eager! We are carrying out what we ourselves resolved; but Epaminondas, failing to persuade us to drop the plan, as he thinks would be best, naturally resists when invited to a course of action which he dislikes and disapproves. Suppose a physician undertook to cure a disease without the use of knife or fire: you would not be using him fairly, to my thinking, if you compelled him to cut or burn.[24] Very well; my brother, as you know, will not have any citizen die without a trial, yet is eager to work with those who wish to free the city from internal bloodshed and slaughter. As, however, he fails to convince the majority, and as we have embarked on this course, he bids you let him stand out, clear and guiltless of murder, and free to watch opportunities; when justice and expediency [Sidenote: 577] meet, he will strike in. He feels that, work once begun, there will be no limitations; perhaps Pherenicus and Pelopidas will turn their attack against the greatest criminals, but Eumolpidas and Samidas, men of fire and passion, when night puts power in their hands, will not sheathe their swords before they have filled the city with murder from end to end, and dispatched many of our leading men.

IV. While I was thus conversing with Theocritus, Galaxidorus kept trying to check us;[25] Archias was near, and Lysanoridas the Spartan, both walking quickly from the Cadmeia, [Sidenote: B] apparently towards the same point as ourselves. So we broke off; Archias called Theocritus, and drew him towards Lysanoridas; then he talked a long time with them apart, having changed his direction a little towards the Amphion. Thus we were in an agony: had some hint or information reached them, upon which they were questioning Theocritus? In the meanwhile Phyllidas, whom you know, Archidamus, and who was at that time acting as clerk to Archias and the Polemarchs, and knew of the expected arrival of the exiles,[26] being privy to our scheme, pressed my hand as it was his way to do, and went on with bantering talk for every one’s benefit, about the gymnasia and the wrestling; then, having drawn me some distance from the others, he began to ask me about the exiles, and whether [Sidenote: C] they were keeping to their day. When I said that they were, he continued: ‘Then I have done right in preparing for to-day the party at which I mean to entertain Archias, and to deliver him into their hand in his cups.’ ‘Better than right, Phyllidas!’ I said; ‘and do you try to collect all or as many as you can of our enemies to the same place.’ ‘That is not easy;’ said he, ‘indeed, it is impossible; for Archias, expecting that a certain lady of high rank will come there to meet him, does not wish Leontides to be present. We must therefore mark [Sidenote: D] them down to separate houses. If Archias and Leontides are once captured, I think that the others will take themselves off, or else will remain quiet, glad to close with any offer of safety.’ ‘We will do so,’ I said, ‘but what can Theocritus have to talk about with these people?’ ‘I cannot answer clearly or from knowledge,’ said Phyllidas, ‘but I heard portents mentioned and prophecies disastrous to Sparta.’ [27][Meanwhile Theocritus rejoined us, and] Pheidolaus of Haliartus came up and said, ‘Simmias wants you to wait hereabouts a little. He is closeted with Leontides, interceding for Amphitheus to get his sentence of death commuted, if possible, to exile.’

V. ‘The very man!’ said Theocritus. ‘You might [Sidenote: E] have come on purpose, for I was longing to hear what the discoveries were, and about the general appearance of the tomb of Alcmena in your country when it was opened, if you were really present yourself when Agesilaus sent and removed the remains to Sparta.’ Pheidolaus answered: ‘I was not present; and vexed and indignant I was with my citizens for leaving me out. However, no vestige of a body was found, only a bracelet of brass, not a large one, and two earthenware jars containing [Sidenote: F] earth which had become solid as stone. Above the tomb lay a brass plate, with many letters wonderful for their great antiquity; they afforded no intelligible sense, though they came out clear to the eye when the brass was washed. The characters were of a peculiar and barbaric type, most closely resembling the Egyptian; and Agesilaus accordingly, as they said, sent copies to the king of Egypt, asking him to show them to the priests, on the chance of their understanding them. However, Simmias may, perhaps, have something to tell you about all this, as he was at that time in Egypt, and philosophy [Sidenote: 578] brought him much into the society of the priests. But the people of Haliartus believe that the great scarcity of crops and the advance of the lake were not accidental, but were an angry visitation because they allowed the tomb to be dug open.’ After a short pause Theocritus went on: ‘Nor yet are the Lacedaemonians themselves clear of the wrath of heaven, as is shown by the portents about which Lysanoridas was lately conferring with us. He is now off to Haliartus to fill in the [Sidenote: B] tomb again and to offer libations to Alcmena and Aleus, of course in accordance with some oracle, not knowing who Aleus was. When he comes back from there he intends to investigate the tomb of Dirce, which is unknown to the Thebans, except those who have acted as Hipparchs. The outgoing magistrate takes his successor in office, with no one else present, and shows it him at night; they perform certain fireless rites over the tomb, carefully obliterate all traces, and go off under cover of darkness by separate ways. And much chance, I think, they will have of finding it, Pheidolaus! For most of those who have served legally as Hipparchs are now in exile; I might say all, except [Sidenote: C] Gorgidas and Plato, whom they fear too much to examine. But the present magistrates receive the spear and the seal in the Cadmeia, and know absolutely nothing.’

VI. While Theocritus was saying this, Leontides was going out with his friends. We entered, and began to pay our compliments to Simmias, who was sitting on the couch, having been unsuccessful in his petition, I think, for he seemed wrapped in thought and much annoyed. Looking hard at us all, ‘Hercules!’ [Sidenote: D] he said, ‘what savage barbarous manners! How right, and more than right, old Thales was, when he came home from a long absence abroad, and his friends asked what was his rarest discovery, “An aged tyrant”, he said! For every one, even if he have not been personally wronged, is disgusted at mere oppression, and harshness, and so is an enemy to lawless irresponsible dynasties. Well, the God will see to this, perhaps; now, Capheisias, about your newcomer, do you know who he is?’ ‘I do not know’, said I, ‘whom you mean.’ ‘Yet Leontides tells us’, he said, ‘that a man has been seen by the tomb of Lysis, rising to go when night was done. His retinue and [Sidenote: E] equipment were stately. He had bivouacked there on a rough bed, for piles of agnus castus and tamarisk were visible, and also remains of burnt sacrifices and libations of milk. At dawn he asked those who met him whether he should find the sons of Polymnis in the country.’ ‘But who can the stranger be?’ I said; ‘from what you tell us it must be some uncommon person, one in no private station.’

VII. ‘Certainly not’, said Pheidolaus. ‘However, when he comes we will see to his reception. Now, as to those characters, Simmias, about which we were puzzling just now. If you know more than we do, tell us; for it is said that the Egyptian priests have made out the letters on the plate which Agesilaus [Sidenote: F] took from us when he opened the tomb of Alcmena.’ Simmias remembered at once. ‘I know nothing of that plate, Pheidolaus;’ he said, ‘but Agenoridas the Spartan brought a number of characters from Agesilaus to Memphis, to Chonuphis the prophet, with whom Plato and I and Hellopion of Peparethus were staying to enjoy Philosophy together. He had been sent by the king, who desired Chonuphis, if he could make anything out of the inscription, to interpret and return it quickly. After spending three days in retirement, reading up characters from all countries in ancient books, he wrote his answer to the king. [Sidenote: 579] He explained to us that this inscription directs the holding of a competition in honour of the Muses. The characters belonged to the system of the reign of Proteus, the one learnt by Hercules the son of Amphitryon. The God therein directs and charges the Greeks to observe a time of peace and leisure, spending it in continuous philosophical debate, with the help of the Muses and of Reason, for the decision of points relating to Justice, all arms being laid aside. We thought at the time that what Chonuphis said was good, and we thought so still more when, in our journey from Egypt round Caria, we met certain Delians [Sidenote: B] who begged Plato, as a geometrician, to solve the problem propounded in a mysterious oracle of the God. The oracle was this: “The Delians and the other Greeks shall have respite from their present ills when they have doubled the altar at Delos.” The Delians were unable to guess the meaning, and, moreover, had brought themselves into a ludicrous difficulty about the construction of the altar. They had doubled each of the four sides,[28] and so unconsciously produced a solid figure eight times greater than the original, in ignorance of the factor which must be applied to the side, in order to double the solid. [Sidenote: C] So they appealed to Plato for help in the difficulty. Plato, remembering the Egyptian, said that the God was rallying the Greeks on their neglect of liberal studies, mocking our ignorance, and commanding us to take up geometry in real earnest; that it required no slight or dim-sighted intellect, but a first-rate training in linear geometry, to find two mean proportionals, the only method by which a solid in the form of a cube can be doubled, if all its dimensions are to be increased uniformly. Eudoxus of Cnidos, he said, or Helicon of Cyzicus, would work this out for them.[29] However, in his opinion, the God did not desire this; he was enjoining all the Greeks to cease from war [Sidenote: D] and trouble and devote themselves to the Muses, to soften their passions by discussions and Mathematics, and to associate profitably with one another.’

VIII. While Simmias was speaking, our father Polymnis came in upon us. He sat down by Simmias and said: ‘Epaminondas invites you and all present, if you have no more pressing engagement, to wait hereabouts; he wants to introduce to you the stranger, a man noble himself, and brought here by a noble and generous errand. He comes from the Pythagoreans of [Sidenote: E] Italy, to pour offerings on the tomb of old Lysis, in accordance, as he says, with certain dreams and clear visions. He brings a large sum in gold, thinking that Epaminondas ought to be reimbursed for the care of Lysis in his old age, and on this he insists most keenly, though we neither ask nor wish assistance for our poverty.’ Simmias was pleased: ‘A really wonderful man,’ he said, ‘and worthy of Philosophy; but what is the reason that he has not come straight to us?’ ‘He passed the night, I think,’ said he, ‘near the tomb of Lysis; Epaminondas [Sidenote: F] was to take him on to the Ismenus to bathe, and then they will come on to us here. Before he met us, he had made his night’s lodging near the tomb, intending to take up the remains and convey them to Italy, unless prevented by some divine warning in the night.’ Having said this, my father was silent.

IX. Then Galaxidorus spoke: ‘Hercules! how hard it is to find a man quite free from vanity and superstition! Some are caught by these weaknesses against their will, owing to want of experience or of strength. Others, in order to appear singular and to be taken for friends of the Gods, bring the divine into all they do, making dreams and portents and such stuff a pretext for anything that enters their head. Now, to men in public [Sidenote: 580] stations, who are compelled to adapt their lives to a self-willed and petulant multitude, this may have its advantage; superstition is a bit wherewith to check a populace, and direct it to what is expedient. But to Philosophy such posturing is unbecoming in itself, and, moreover, it contradicts her professions; she undertakes to teach all that is good and expedient by the reason, and then, as though in despite of reason, goes back upon the Gods and away from the first principles of action; and, dishonouring demonstration, in which her own excellence is supposed to lie, turns to prophecies and visions seen in dreams, [Sidenote: B] things in which the weakest often have as great success as the strongest. This, I think, Simmias, is why your Socrates embraced a system of intellectual training which bore a more philosophical stamp, choosing that simple artless type as being liberal and most friendly to truth; and casting to the winds for the sophists, as a mere smoke from Philosophy, all pretentious nonsense.’ Theocritus broke in: ‘What, Galaxidorus, and has Meletus persuaded even you too that Socrates despised [Sidenote: C] what was divine, for that was the charge which he actually brought before the Athenians?’ ‘What was divine—no;’ he said, ‘but he received Philosophy from Pythagoras and Empedocles full of visions and myths and superstitions, and deeply dipped in mysteries; and trained her to look at facts, and be sensible, and pursue truth in soberness of reason.’

X. ‘Granted;’ said Theocritus, ‘but as to the Divine Sign of Socrates, good friend, are we to call it a falsity or what? To me, nothing recorded about Pythagoras seems to go so far towards the prophetic and divine. For, in plain words, as Homer has drawn Athena to Odysseus

_In all his toils a presence and a stay_,[30]

even so, apparently, did the spirit attach to Socrates, from the first, a sort of vision to go before and guide his steps in life, which alone

_Passing before him shed a light around_[31]

[Sidenote: D] in matters of uncertainty, too hard for the wit of man to solve; upon these the spirit used often to converse with him, adding a divine touch to his own resolutions. For more, and more important, instances you must ask Simmias and the other companions of Socrates. But I was myself present, having come to stay with Euthyphron the prophet, when Socrates, as you remember, Simmias, was going up to the Symbolum and the house of Andocides, asking some question as he walked and playfully cross-examining Euthyphron. Suddenly he stopped and closed his lips tightly[32] and was wrapt in thought for some time. Then he turned back and took the way through the [Sidenote: E] Trunkmakers’ Street, and tried to recall those of our friends who were already in advance, saying that the Sign was upon him. Most of them turned in a body, amongst whom was I, keeping close to Euthyphron. But some young members of the party, no doubt to put the Sign of Socrates to the test, held on, and drew into their number Charillus the flute-player, who had come to Athens with myself, staying with Cebes. Now as they were going through the street of the Statuaries near the Law Courts, they were met by a whole herd of swine loaded with mud and hustling one another by press of numbers. There was no [Sidenote: F] getting out of the way; on they charged, upsetting some, bespattering others. At any rate, Charillus came home with his clothes full of mud and his legs too, so that we always laugh when we remember Socrates and his Sign, and wonder that this divine presence of his should never fail him or forget.’

XI. Then Galaxidorus said: ‘Do you think then, Theocritus, that the Sign of Socrates possessed a special and extraordinary power, not that some fragment of the ready wit which we all share determined him by an empiric process, turning the scale of his reasoning in cases which were uncertain and incalculable? For as a single weight does not by itself incline the balance, but, if added to one scale when the weights are even, sinks the whole of that one on its own side, so [Sidenote: 581] a cry, or any such feather-weight sign, will fit[33] a mind already weighted, and draw it into action; and when two trains of thought are in conflict, it reinforces one, and solves the difficulty by removing the equality, so that there is a movement and an inclination.’ My father broke in: ‘Well, but I have myself heard, Galaxidorus, from a certain Megarian, who had it from Terpsion, that the Sign of Socrates was a sneeze, proceeding either from himself or from other persons; if some one else sneezed on his [Sidenote: B] right, whether behind or in front, it encouraged him to the action; if on the left, it warned him off it. Of his own sneezings there was one kind which confirmed his purpose when he was still intending to act; another stopped him when he was already acting and checked his impulse. The wonder to me is that if he made use of a sneeze he did not so call it to his companions, but was in the habit of saying that what checked or commanded him was a Divine Sign. For that would be like vanity and idle boasting, not like truth and simplicity, in which lay, as we suppose, his greatness and his superiority to men in general, to be disturbed by a sound from outside or a casual sneeze, and so be diverted from acting, and give up what he had resolved. [Sidenote: C] Now the impulses of Socrates, on the other hand, show firmness and intensity in every direction, as though issuing from a right and powerful judgement and principle. Thus for a man to remain in voluntary poverty all his life, when he might have had plenty, and the givers would have been pleased and thankful, and never to swerve from Philosophy in the face of all those hindrances; and at last, when the zeal and ingenuity of his friends had made his way easy to safety and retreat, not to be bent by their entreaties, nor yield to the near approach of [Sidenote: D] death—all this is not like a man whose judgement might be changed by random voices or sneezings; it is like one led to what is noble by some greater and more sovereign authority. I hear also that he foretold to some of his friends the disaster which befell the power of Athens in Sicily. At a still earlier time, Pyrilampes, the son of Antiphon, when taken prisoner in the pursuit near Delium, after having received from us a javelin wound, as soon as he had heard from those who had arrived from Athens to arrange the truce that Socrates had returned home in safety by The Gullies[34] with Alcibiades and Laches, often called upon him by name, and often on friends and comrades of [Sidenote: E] his own who had fled with him by way of Parnes, and been slain by our cavalry; they had disobeyed the Sign of Socrates, he said, in turning from the battle by a different way instead of following his lead. This, I think, Simmias too must have heard.’ ‘Often,’ said Simmias, ‘and from many persons. For there was no little noise at Athens about the Sign of Socrates in consequence.’

XII. ‘Well, then, Simmias,’ said Pheidolaus, ‘are we to allow Galaxidorus in his jesting way to bring down this great fact of divination to sneezings and cries, which plenty of common [Sidenote: F] ignorant persons apply to trifles in mere sport, whereas, when grave dangers overtake them, or more serious business, we may quote Euripides:[35]

_These follies have a truce when steel is near_‘?