Plato takes up the story again in the month of Thargelion (May-June), a month or two after Meletus’ initial summons, when Socrates’ trial occurred. Onlookers gathered along with the 500 or 501 jurors (Ap. 25a)11 for a trial that probably lasted most of the day, each side timed by the water clock. Plato does not provide Meletus’ prosecutorial speech or those of Anytus and Lycon; or the names of witnesses called, if any (Ap. 34a3-4 implies Meletus called none). Apology - the Greek ‘‘apologia’ means ‘‘defense’’ - is not edited as are the court speeches of orators. For example, there are no indications in the Greek text after 35d8 and 38b9 that the two votes were taken; and there are no breaks after 21a8 or 34b5 for witnesses, although Socrates may in fact have called Chaerecrates or the seven named men. Also missing are speeches by Socrates' supporters; it is improbable that he had none, even if Plato does not name them.
It is sometimes said that Socrates was the first person in the west to be convicted for his beliefs - for a thought-crime or crime of conscience; and not believing in the gods of the Athenians is exactly that. In classical Athens, however, religion was a matter of public participation under law, regulated by a calendar of festivals in honor of a variety of deities, with new ones introduced from time to time. The polls used its revenues to maintain temples and shrines, and to finance festivals; it mandated consultation with Apollo’s oracle at Delphi at times of important decisions or crises; generals conferred with seers before deploying troops; and the lottery system for selecting public officials left decisions to the gods. Prescribed dogma or articles of faith, however, were unknown, so compliance was measured by behavior; and it is very unlikely, based on extant Socratic works, that there would have been behavior to offer in evidence of Socrates’ beliefs, such as neglecting sacrifices or prayers, for Socrates continues his religious observance through his dying day. Moreover, unlike the case of the acquitted Anaxagoras a generation earlier (cf. Ap. 26d6-e2), there were no writings to present as evidence of unorthodox beliefs.
Socrates divides the accusations against him into old and new, addressed in that order. He had a reputation fueled by several comic poets from about 429 that conflated him with both natural scientists and sophists, often emphasizing his egregious effect on the young:12 he ‘‘busies himself studying things in the sky and below the earth’’ (Ap. 19b5). The single case Socrates mentions explicitly in Apology is Aristophanes’ Clouds (produced in 423, revised in 418). As clear as it is with hindsight that the character Socrates who introduces new gods, denies the old ones, and corrupts the young in the play is a composite of several different sophists, natural scientists, and philosophers (Dover 1968), the jury made no subtle distinctions. Besides, Aristophanes had made fresh attacks in Birds (in 414) and Frogs (in 405), both times emphasizing that the city’s young men imitated Socrates. In the latter, the Socrates imitators are accused of attacking the poets. Socrates says himself that the young men question and thereby anger their elders (Ap. 23c2-d2). Though Socrates denies outright that he is a natural scientist, his familiarity with their investigations and his own naturalistic explanations make it no surprise that the jury could not tell the difference (e. g., Tht. 152e, 153c-d, 173e-174a; Phd. 96a-100a). Those who had witnessed Socrates in philosophical conversation (Ap. 19d1-7), his respondents becoming angry or confused, were not likely to have appreciated fine distinctions between philosophical inquiry and sophistry. Socrates’ excuse for his strange behavior - the god makes me do it (20e-23b) - appears from the crowd’s reaction only to have exacerbated their misunderstanding.
Turning to the new charges, Socrates easily defeats Meletus in argument, demonstrating in turn that Meletus (1) has not thought deeply about the improvement and corruption of the young, (2) should have sought to instruct Socrates privately before hauling him into court, (3) confuses Socrates’ views with those of Anaxagoras, and (4) holds incompatible theses: Socrates is an atheist; and Socrates introduces new divinities. Yet the very exhibition of Socratic questioning, coupled with Socrates’ belittling of Meletus (26e6-27a7) may have boomeranged. The jury, riled again, may have found Socrates’ tactics indistinguishable from those of sophists: they saw, but they did not understand. Socrates’ relentless honesty, easily mistaken for arrogance, casts doubt on his every claim: he will do no wrong, even to avoid death; he is like Achilles; he has risked death in battle; he does not fear death; he will never cease to do philosophy, to examine himself and others, even for the promise of acquittal; he is
God’s greatest gift to the city; his accusers cannot harm him, and the jurors will harm themselves if they kill him.
A defendant is wise to refute what he can, and Socrates does address some of the evidence against him directly. (5) He admits he has had, since childhood, the spiritual monitor that Meletus ridicules, but he defends it. He attributes to it his inability to ‘‘yield to any man contrary to what is right, for fear of death, even if I should die at once for not yielding’’ (32a6-7), and offers two instances of his defiant behavior in proof of it: presiding (as prytanis) over the Council ( boule) in 406, he opposed the Assembly’s unlawful denial of separate trials to six generals who were tried and executed as a group. As a citizen under the lawfully elected but corrupt government of the Thirty, he refused the order to seize a fellow citizen, a general allied with the democrats in exile.13 In both cases Socrates cites, crediting his spiritual monitor, the Athenians had later come around to Socrates' view. (6) He denies being anyone's teacher, receiving a fee for conversing, teaching or promising to teach, and is thus unwilling to answer for the conduct of others (33a-b). (7) The Athenian god Apollo (‘‘the god’’), he says, ordered him to question wise guys - which the youths of Athens enjoy (33c); and he says oracle-like that he believes in the gods ‘‘as none of my accusers do’’ (35d7). (8) Socrates three times takes up the charge that he corrupts the young, twice in the same hypothetical way: ‘‘Either I do not corrupt the young or, if I do, it is unwillingly.’’ If unwillingly, he says he should be instructed because ‘‘if I learn better, I shall cease to do what I am doing unwillingly’’ (25e6-26a4). Later: ‘‘if by saying this I corrupt the young, this advice must be harmful, but if anyone says that I give different advice, he is talking nonsense’’ (30b5-7). He also argues that many of his former and current young companions are present with their guardians, but that none of them have testified to his corrupting influence (33d-34b). Anytus had warned the jury that Socrates should perhaps not have been brought to trial but, since he was, must be executed or else the sons of the Athenians will ‘‘practice the teachings of Socrates and all be thoroughly corrupted’’ (29c3-5). Can this 70-year-old who insists he will continue to philosophize possibly yield to instruction? Socrates claims his advice is that the soul is more important than the body or wealth (30a-b), but there has also been testimony that he teaches the young to despise the gods of the city and to question their elders disrespectfully. Even Socrates could not blame the jury for finding him guilty, for it is mistaken about what is truly in the interest of the city (cf. Tht. 177d-e). So the gadfly is swatted. The verdict is guilty, and the trial passes into the penalty phase.
Socrates blames one of Athens’ laws: ‘‘If it were the law with us, as it is elsewhere, that a trial for life should not last one but many days, you would be convinced, but now it is not easy to dispel great slanders in a short time’’ (Ap. 37a7-b2). This isolated complaint in the Apology is supported by the running criticism of the court in the Theaetetus noted earlier, for example, ‘‘is what’s true to be determined by the length or shortness of a period of time?’’ (158d11-12; cf. Grg. 455a). And it stands opposed to the remark of the personified laws that Socrates was ‘‘wronged not by us, the laws, but by men’’ ( Cri. 54c1).
Socrates goes on to describe himself as the city's benefactor; to maintain that he mistreats no one and thus deserves a reward, not punishment; to insist that he cannot and must not stop philosophizing, for ‘‘the unexamined life is not worth living’’ (Ap. 38a5-6) - confirmation to some that incorrigible Socrates opposes the will of the city. In a last-minute capitulation to his friends, he offers to allow them to pay a fine of 30 minae, six times his net worth. He is sentenced to death and reflects that it may be a blessing: either a dreamless sleep, or an opportunity to converse in the underworld.
Socrates’ trial was no evil conspiracy against an innocent, but something more profound and at the same time more tragic - a catastrophic mistake, a misunderstanding that could not be reconciled in the time allowed by the law.
World History
