Book 1
2.31
Now Critias bore a grudge against Socrates for this; and when he was one of the Thirty and was drafting laws with Charicles, he bore it in mind. He inserted a clause which made it illegal to teach the art of words. It was a calculated insult to Socrates, whom he saw no means of attacking, except by imputing to him the practice constantly attributed to philosophers,i.e. the practice of making the worse appear the better argument. In Plato, Apol. 19b, Socrates makes Aristophanes (Clouds) author of this charge against him. Aristotle in the Rhetoric (B 24, 11) associates the practice with the name of Protagoras: cp. Diog. Laert. ix. 51. and so making him unpopular. For I myself never heard Socrates indulge in the practice, nor knew of anyone who professed to have heard him do so. The truth came out.
2.32
When the Thirty were putting to death many citizens of the highest respectability and were encouraging many in crime, Socrates had remarked: It seems strange enough to me that a herdsmanCyropaedia VIII. ii. 14. who lets his cattle decrease and go to the bad should not admit that he is a poor cowherd; but stranger still that a statesman when he causes the citizens to decrease and go to the bad, should feel no shame nor think himself a poor statesman.
