or Xenophontic Socrates than the gentleness and irony with which he meets and quiets the few opponents who lose their temper, and attack him with impolite vehe

mence.

We have indeed in the fragments of Aristoxenus, a very serious authority, grave charges against Socrates himself for this very infirmity of violence in temper. But though I have great faith in Aristoxenus' seriousness, it seems hard to reconcile his statements, which he bases on direct information from a friend of Socrates, with the evidence of Xenophon, whose realistic and historical account of Socrates agrees with Plato's ideal picture. However, the exact truth as to Socrates. really matters little from our point of view. There can be no doubt as to what Plato thought admirable, and what he required from a perfect gentleman in society. Whether attributed rightly to Socrates or not, the very prominence of these features in any ideal sketch shows the estimation in which they were held.

There is a very different point suggested by the life of Socrates, which proves the refined culture of the Athenians from another side. It is an universal contrast between civilised and semi-civilised societies (not to speak of barbarians), that the penalty of death, when legally incurred, is in the former carried out without cruelty and torture, whereas in the latter the victim of the law is farther punished by insults and by artificial pains. The punishments devised by kings and barons in the middle ages, the hideous torments devised by the Church for the bodies of those whose

souls were doomed to even worse for ever and everthese cases will occur to any reader, from the history of semi-civilised nations. It will not perhaps strike him that our own country was hardly better even in the present century, and that the formula now uttered by the judge in sentencing to death suggests by its very wording horrible cruelties threatened almost within the memory of living men. That you be hanged by the neck, till you are dead,' points to the form uttered in the courts of Dublin within this century, though not then literally carried out. It ran thus: 'It is therefore ordered by the Court that they and each of them be taken from the bar of the Court where they now stand, to the place from whence they came-the gaol: that their irons be there stricken off, that they be from thence carried to the common place of execution, the gallows; and that there they and each of them be hanged by the neck, but not until they be dead, for whilst they are yet alive, they are to be taken down, their entrails are to be taken out of their body, and whilst they are yet alive, they are to be burned before their faces; their heads are then to be respectively cut off their bodies to be respectively divided into four quarters; and their respective heads and bodies to be at His Majesty's disposal1.'

Let us now compare these formulæ, used by the most

1 I quote this from the original warrant issued for the execution (for high treason) of Henry and John Sheares in July 1798, now in the possession of my friend Mr. T. T. Gray, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. The same form was of course used in 1803, in the case of Emmett, and may be the legal form now, for all I know. I cannot ascertain when it was

cultivated and humane European nation in the nineteenth century, with the enactments of the Athenian democracy four hundred years before Christ. In the first place, there was no penalty permitted severer than a quiet and painless death. There were no antecedent insults and cruelties, no aggravations, no exhibitions before a heartless and ribald mob. In the next place, care had been taken to ascertain the most easy and gentle death, as Xenophon distinctly implies (Apol. Socr. § 7), and for this reason death by poisoning with hemlock was introduced at what exact period, we cannot say. Here again, the Athenians were in advance even of the present day, when death by hanging, in the hands of ignorant and careless officials, is often a slow death, and a death of torture 1. But all this is to my mind far less significant than the manner of Athenian executions, as compared with those even of our day. We have fortunately in Plato's Phado a detailed account of this scene, which however imaginary as to the conversations introduced, must have lost all its dramatic propriety and force to Plato's contemporaries, had not the details been reproduced from life with faithful accuracy.

There is I think in all Greek literature no scene which ought to make us more ashamed of our boasted

last carried out literally. In the Sheares' case the decapitation on the gallows was I think, the only addition to the hanging, for these men were buried in S. Michan's Church, and were to be seen, with their heads beside them, in good preservation about twenty-five years ago.

1 This has been shown by the researches of my friend Prof. Haughton, who has indicated the means of avoiding such results. Cp. his Animal Mechanics, p. 7, sqq.

Christian culture. The condemned, on the day of execution, was freed from his chains, and allowed to have his family and friends present in his cell, as they had already been during the nights of his imprisonment 1. I suppose the state would then have been slow to build great gloomy fortresses, whose massive walls and iron gates mock the prisoners' attempts, and render chains an idle precaution and an additional cruelty. At all events, the chances of escape, considering the many friends who visited the prisoners, were such as to render them necessary; yet I feel very sure that any one who could try both alternatives, would without hesitation choose the chains of the Athenian prison, in preference to the solitude and gloom of the modern cell.

The condemned then was left with his family and friends, to make his arrangements and bequests, to give his last directions, to comfort and to be comforted by those dearest to him. When the hour of death approached, the jailer came in, and left the cup of poison with the victim, giving him directions how to take it, and merely add ng that it must be done before a certain hour. He then retired and left the prisoner in his last moments to the care of his friends. They sat about him as life gradually ebbed away, and closed his eyes in peace. In the absence of contrary evidence, it is certain that his body was restored to his relatives, 1 This appears from Andocides, p. 20.

2 There is evidence in Lysias (pp. 67, 100) that escape from an impending sentence was openly recognised. It is evident that exile was in itself regarded a penalty sufficient for grave crimes, and one which most people would not accept, if there was any chance of an acquittal. However, the Eleven used to issue a Hue and Cry proclamation, when anyone escaped.

when death had been officially testified, and the funeral obsequies were decently and privately performed by his family. The omission of any direct mention of them in Socrates' case, shows that public and ostentatious mourning was not allowed, while on the other hand, had the body been buried without ceremony or cast into the barathrum Socrates would not have omitted to argue against the supposed injury which such treatment was held to inflict on the deceased, and show that the moral laws of God could not allow the dead to be punished for the acts of the living.

As this interesting question has not been discussed, so far as I know, by Greek antiquarians, I may observe that though in Socrates' case, (who speaks of saving the women trouble by taking a bath before his death) and in the case of several victims of the thirty tyrants, who were put to death merely for the sake of their property, the bodies of the executed were given back to their relatives, yet we have other cases mentioned by Lysias, when there was added to the sentence of death the refusal of funeral rites, and there was a place outside Athens, probably the barathrum, also called opvyμa, where the bodies were cast out. It appears that in cases of public indignation against a culprit this harsh sentence was carried out (below, p. 366), but I can find no trace of any law specifying the offences for which it should be inflicted. In fact, according to Demosthenes (In Lept. p. 505), it was not lawful to specify more than one penalty, and he makes this a special argument against Leptines' proposal. If this be so, we may suppose that the additional penalty was