It has been remarked that the prophecy of a new generation of teachers who
would rebuke and exhort the Athenian people in harsher and more violent
terms was, as far as we know, never fulfilled. No inference can be drawn
from this circumstance as to the probability of the words attributed to him
having been actually uttered. They express the aspiration of the first
martyr of philosophy, that he would leave behind him many followers,
accompanied by the not unnatural feeling that they would be fiercer and
more inconsiderate in their words when emancipated from his control.

The above remarks must be understood as applying with any degree of
certainty to the Platonic Socrates only. For, although these or similar
words may have been spoken by Socrates himself, we cannot exclude the
possibility, that like so much else, e.g. the wisdom of Critias, the poem
of Solon, the virtues of Charmides, they may have been due only to the
imagination of Plato. The arguments of those who maintain that the Apology
was composed during the process, resting on no evidence, do not require a
serious refutation. Nor are the reasonings of Schleiermacher, who argues
that the Platonic defence is an exact or nearly exact reproduction of the
words of Socrates, partly because Plato would not have been guilty of the
impiety of altering them, and also because many points of the defence might
have been improved and strengthened, at all more conclusive. (See English
Translation.) What effect the death of Socrates produced on the mind of
Plato, we cannot certainly determine; nor can we say how he would or must
have written under the circumstances. We observe that the enmity of
Aristophanes to Socrates does not prevent Plato from introducing them
together in the Symposium engaged in friendly intercourse. Nor is there
any trace in the Dialogues of an attempt to make Anytus or Meletus
personally odious in the eyes of the Athenian public.