observable (especially in his manner
of disputing), as transmitted by these two scholars of Socrates, is a
certain proof of the method which he followed.

It will be difficult to conceive how a person who exhorted all men to
honor the gods, and who preached, so to speak, to the young to avoid and
abandon every vice, should himself be condemned to death for impiety
against the gods received at Athens, and as a corrupter of youth. This
infamously unjust proceeding took place in a time of disorder and under
the seditious government of the thirty tyrants. The occasion of it was
as follows:

Critias, the most powerful of these thirty tyrants, had formerly, as
well as Alcibiades, been a disciple of Socrates. But both of them being
weary of a philosophy the maxims of which would not yield to their
ambition and intemperance, they, at length, totally abandoned it.
Critias, though formerly a scholar of Socrates, became his most
inveterate enemy. This we are to trace to that firmness with which
Socrates reproached him for a certain shameful vice; and to those means
by which he endeavored to thwart his indulging in it. Hence it was that
Critias, having become one of the thirty tyrants, had nothing more at
heart than the destruction of Socrates, who, besides, not being able to
brook their tyranny, was wont to speak against them with much freedom.
For, seeing that they were always putting to death citizens and powerful
men, he could not refrain from observing, in a company where he was,
that if he to whom the care of cattle was committed, exhibited them
every day leaner and fewer in number, it would be very strange if he
would not himself confess that he was a bad cow-herd.

Critias and Charicles, two of the most powerful of the thirty tyrants,
feeling the weight of the allusion fall upon themselves, first enacted
that no one should teach in Athens the art of reasoning. Although
Socrates never had professed that art, yet it was easy to discover that
he was aimed at; and that it was intended thus to deprive him of the
liberty of conversing as usual, on moral subjects, with those who
resorted to him.

That he might have a precise explanation of this law, he went to the two
authors of it; but as he embarrassed them by the subtlety of his
questions, they plainly told him that they prohibited him from entering
into conversation with young people.

But, seeing Socrates' reputation was so great that to attack him and
serve him with an