What matters here, however, is only the accusation of atheism which he made against Socrates. It is a little difficult to handle, in so far as Aristophanes, for dramatic reasons, has equipped Socrates with a whole set of deities. There are the clouds themselves, which are of Aristophanes’s own invention; there is also the air, which he has got from Diogenes of Apollonia, and finally a “vortex” which is supposed to be derived from the same source, and which at any rate has cast Zeus down from his throne. All this we must ignore, as it is only conditioned partly by technical reasons—Aristophanes had to have a chorus and chose the clouds for the purpose—and partially by the desire to ridicule Ionic naturalism. But enough is left over. In the beginning of the play Socrates expressly declares that no gods exist. Similar statements are repeated in several places. Zeus is sometimes substituted for the gods, but it comes to the same thing. And at the end of the play, where the honest Athenian, who has ventured on the ticklish ground of sophistic, admits his delusion, it is expressly said:
“Oh, what a fool I am! Nay, I must have been mad indeed when I thought of throwing the gods away for Socrates’s sake!”
Even in the verses with which the chorus conclude the play it is insisted that the worst crime of the sophists is their insult to the gods.
The inference to be drawn from all this is simply that the popular Athenian opinion—for we may rest assured that this and the view of Aristophanes are identical—was that the sophists were atheists. That says but little. For popular opinion always works with broad categories, and the probability is that in this case, as demonstrated above, it was in the wrong, for, as a rule, the sophists were hardly conscious deniers of the gods. But, at the same time, at the back of the onslaught of Aristophanes there lies the idea that the teaching of the sophists led to denial of the gods; that atheism was the natural outcome of their doctrine and way of reasoning. And that there was some truth therein is proved by other evidence which can hardly be rejected.
In the indictment of Socrates it is said that he “offended by not believing in the gods in which the State believed.” In the two apologies for Socrates which have come down to us under Xenophon’s name, the author treats this accusation entirely under the aspect of atheism, and tries to refute it by positive proofs of the piety of Socrates. But not one word is said about there being, in and for itself, anything remarkable or improbable in the charge. In Plato’s _Apology_, Plato makes Socrates ask the accuser point-blank whether he is of the opinion that he, Socrates, does not believe in the gods at all and accordingly is a downright denier of the gods, or whether he merely means to say that he believes in other gods than those of the State. He makes the accuser answer that the assertion is that Socrates does not believe in any gods at all. In Plato Socrates refutes the accusation indirectly, using a line of argument entirely differing from that of Xenophon. But in Plato, too, the accusation is treated as being in no way extraordinary. In my opinion, Plato’s _Apology_ cannot be used as historical evidence for details unless special reasons can be given proving their historical value beyond the fact that they occur in the _Apology_. But in this connexion the question is not what was said or not said at Socrates’s trial. The decisive point is that we possess two quite independent and unambiguous depositions by two fully competent witnesses of the beginning of the fourth century which both treat of the charge of atheism as something which is neither strange nor surprising at their time. It is therefore permissible to conclude that in Athens at this time there really existed circles or at any rate not a few individuals who had given up the belief in the popular gods.