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Str. And then, in addition to all this, there will have to be a law that if anyone is found to be investigating the art of pilotage or navigation or the subject of health and true medical doctrine about winds and things hot and cold, contrary to the written rules, or to be indulging in any speculation whatsoever on such matters, he shall in the first place not be called a physician or a ship captain, but a star-gazer, This passage obviously refers to the trial of Socrates. The word μετέωρα was used by those who made all sorts of general accusations against Socrates (see Plat. Apol. 18 B, 19 B, with its reference to the Clouds of Aristophanes), and the reference of the words διαφθείροντα ἄλλους νεωτέρους to the accusation brought against him by Miletus, Anytus, and Lycon (Plat. Apol. 24 C: φησὶ γὰρ δὴ τοὺς νέους ἀδικεῖν με διαφθείροντα) is perfectly plain. a kind of loquacious sophist, and secondly anyone who is properly qualified may bring an accusation against him and hale him into court for corrupting the young and persuading them to attack the arts of navigation and medicine in opposition to the laws and to govern the ships and the sick according to their own will; and if he is found to be so persuading either young or old contrary to the laws and written rules, he shall suffer the most extreme penalties. Nothing, they say, ought to be wiser than the laws; for no one is ignorant of medicine and the laws of health or of the pilot’s art and navigation, since anyone who pleases can learn the existing written rules and ancestral customs. Now if these regulations which I speak of were to be applied to these sciences, Socrates, and to strategy and every part of the entire art of hunting and to painting or every kind of imitation and to carpentry including every kind of utensil-making, or even to husbandry and all the art that is concerned with plants, or if we were to see an art of horse-breeding conducted by written rules, or herdsmanship in general or prophecy or everything that is included in the art of serving, or draught-playing or the whole science of number, whether arithmetic or plane geometry or solid geometry or problems of motion—what would you think of carrying on all these in such a way, by written rules and not by knowledge?
