The last shall be first. The final in this series of trial essays also
concerns the earliest of the covered trials.

The trial before 500 male jurors began in the agora, in the center of
Athens, over 2,400 years ago with the reading by a herald of formal charges
accusing Socrates of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. The result
of the day-long trial is well known. Socrates would be convicted and soon
drink the fabled hemlock.

Much about the trial of Socrates remains a mystery. Although two accounts
of Socrates’ defense (or apology) survive, both come from disciples of his
and are therefore suspect. Still, the troubled history of Athens in the
years preceding the trial provides some important clues concerning the
decision to try a gadfly who had for so many years been left free to pursue
his philosophizing and teaching.

If all you know about the trial of Socrates comes from reading Plato’s
Apology in Philosophy 101, you’re likely to find some surprises as you read
the account of one of the world’s most famous trials.

Douglas Linder
University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law
linderd@umkc.edu

June 2002

The trial and execution of of Socrates in Athens
in 399 B.C.E. puzzles historians.  Why, in a society enjoying more
freedom and democracy than any the world had ever seen, would a seventy-year-old
philosopher be put to death for what he was teaching?  The puzzle
is all the greater because Socrates had taught–without molestation–all
of his adult life.  What could Socrates have said or done than prompted
a jury of 500 Athenians to send him to his death just a few years before
he would have died naturally?

Finding an answer to the mystery of the trial
of Socrates is complicated by the fact that the two surviving accounts
of the defense (or apology) of Socrates both come from disciples of his,
Plato
and Xenophon. 
Historians suspect that Plato and Xenophon, intent on showing their master
in a favorable light, failed to present in their accounts the most damning
evidence against Socrates.

What appears almost certain is that  the
decisions to prosecute and ultimately convict Socrates had a lot to do
with the turbulent history
of Athens in the several years preceding his trial.  An examination
of that history may not provide final answers, but it does provide important
clues.

Socrates,
the son of a sculptor (or stonecutter) and a midwife, was a young boy when
the rise to power of Pericles brought on the dawning of the “Golden Age
of Greece.”   As a young man, Socrates saw a fundamental power
shift, as Pericles–perhaps history’s first liberal politician–acted on
his belief that the masses, and not just property-owning aristocrats, deserved
liberty.  Pericles created the people’s courts and used the public
treasury to promote the arts.  He pushed ahead with an unprecedented
building program designed not only to demonstrate the glory that was Greece,
but also to ensure full employment and provide opportunities for wealth
creation among the unpropertied class.  The rebuilding of the Acropolis
and the construction of the Parthenon were the two best known of Pericles’
many ambitious building projects.

Growing to adulthood in this bastion of liberalism
and democracy, Socrates somehow developed a set of values and beliefs that
would put him at odds with most of his fellow Athenians.  Socrates
was not a democrat or an egalitarian.  To him, the people should not
be self-governing; they were like a herd of sheep that needed the direction
of a wise shepherd.  He denied that citizens had basic virtue necessary
to nurture a good society, instead equating virtue with a knowledge unattainable
by ordinary people.  Striking at the heart of Athenian democracy,
he contemptuously criticized the right of every citizen to speak in the
Athenian assembly.

Writing in the third-century C.E. in his The
Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes
Laertius reported that Socrates “discussed moral questions in the workshops
and the marketplace.” Often his unpopular views, expressed disdainfully
and with an air of condescension, provoked his listeners to anger. 
Laertius wrote that “men set upon him with their fists or tore his hair
out,” but that Socrates “bore all this ill-usage patiently.”

We get one contemporary view of Socrates from
playwright Aristophanes. 
In his play Clouds,
first produced in 423 B.C.E., Aristophanes presents Socrates as an eccentric
and comic headmaster of a “thinkery” (or “thoughtery”).  He is portrayed
“stalking the streets” of Athens barefoot,  “rolling his eyes” at
remarks he found unintelligent, and “gazing up” at the clouds.  Socrates
at the time of Clouds must have been perceived more as a harmless
town character than as a serious threat to Athenian values and democracy. 
Socrates himself, apparently, took no offense at his portrayal in Clouds. 
Plutarch, in his Moralia, quoted Socrates as saying, “When they
break a jest upon me in the theatre, I feel as if I were at a big party
of good friends.”  Plato, in his Symposium, describes Socrates
and Aristophanes engaged in friendly conversation.

Other plays of the time offer additional clues
as to the reputation of Socrates in Athens.  Comic poet Eupolis has
one of his characters say: “Yes, and I loathe that poverty-stricken windbag
Socrates who contemplates everything in the world but does not know where
his next meal is coming from.”   Birds, a play of Aristophanes
written six years after his Clouds, contains a revealing reference. 
Aristophanes labels a gang of pro-Sparta aristocratic youths as “Socratified.” 
Sparta–the model of a closed society–and Athens were enemies: the remark
suggests Socrates’ teaching may have started to be seen as subversive by
417 B.C.E.

The standing of Socrates among his fellow citizens
suffered mightily during two periods in which Athenian democracy was temporarily
overthrown, one four-month period in 411-410 and another slightly longer
period in 404-403.  The prime movers in both of the anti-democratic
movements were former pupils of Socrates, Alcibiades and Critias. Athenians
undoubtedly considered the teachings of Socrates–especially his expressions
of disdain for the established constitution–partially responsible for
the resulting death and suffering. Alcibiades, perhaps Socrates’ favorite
Athenian politician, masterminded the first overthrow.  (Alcibiades
had other strikes against him: four years earlier, Alcibiades had fled
to Sparta to avoid facing trial for mutilating religious pillars–statues
of Hermes–and while in Sparta had proposed to that state’s leaders
that he help them defeat Athens.)  Critias, first among an oligarchy
known as the “Thirty Tyrants,” led the second bloody revolt against the
restored Athenian democracy in 404.  The revolt sent many of Athen’s
leading democratic citizens (including Anytus, later the driving force
behind the prosecution of Socrates) into exile, where they organized a
resistance movement.

Critias, without question, was the more frightening
of the two former pupils of Socrates.  I.F.
Stone, in his The
Trial of Socrates, describes Critias (a cousin of Plato’s) as “the
first Robespierre,” a cruel and inhumane man “determined to remake the
city to his own antidemocratic mold whatever the human cost.”  The
oligarchy confiscated the estates of Athenian aristocrats, banished 5,000
women, children, and slaves, and summarily executed about 1,500 of Athen’s
most prominent democrats.

One incident involving Socrates and the Thirty
Tyrants would later become an issue at his trial.  Although the Thirty
normally used their own gang of thugs for such duties, the oligarchy asked
Socrates to arrest Leon of Salamis so that he might be executed and his
assets appropriated.  Socrates refused to do so.  Socrates would
point to his resistance to the order as evidence of his good conduct. 
On the other hand, Socrates neither protested the decision nor took steps
to warn Leon of Salamis of the order for his arrest–he just went home. 
While good citizens of Athens were being liquidated right and left, Socrates–so
far as we know–did or said nothing to stop the violence.

The horrors brought on by the Thirty Tyrants
caused Athenians to look at Socrates in a new light.  His teachings
no longer seemed so harmless.  He was no longer a lovable town eccentric. 
Socrates–and his icy logic–came to be seen as a dangerous and corrupting
influence, a breeder of tyrants and enemy of the common man.

A general amnesty issued in 403 meant that
Socrates could not be prosecuted for any of his actions during or before
the reign of the Thirty Tyrants.  He could only be charged for his
actions during the four years preceding his trial in 399 B.C.E.  
It appears that Socrates, unchastened by the antidemocratic revolts and
their aftermaths, resumed his teachings and once again began attracting
a similar band of youthful followers.  The final straw may well have
been an another antidemocratic uprising–this one unsuccessful–in 401. 
Athens finally had enough of “Socratified” youth.

In Athens, criminal proceedings could be initiated
by any citizen.  In the case of Socrates, the proceedings began when
Meletus, a poet, delivered an oral summons to Socrates in the presence
of witnesses.  The summons required

Socrates to appear before the legal magistrate,
or King Archon,  in a colonnaded building in central Athens called
the Royal
Stoa to answer charges of impiety and corrupting the youth.  The
Archon determined–after listening to Socrates and Meletus
(and perhaps the other two  accusers, Anytus
and Lycon)–that
the lawsuit was permissible under Athenian law, set a date for the “preliminary
hearing” (anakrisis), and posted a public notice at the Royal Stoa.

The preliminary
hearing before the magistrate at the Royal Stoa began with the reading
of the written charge by

Meletus.  Socrates answered the charge. 
The magistrate questioned both Meletus and Socrates, then gave both the
accuser and defendant an opportunity to question each other.  Having
found merit in the accusation against Socrates, the magistrate drew up
formal charges. The document containing the charges against Socrates survived
until at least the second century C.E.  Diogenes Laertius reports
the charges as recorded in the now-lost document:

This indictment and affidavit is sworn
by Meletus, the son of Meletus of Pitthos, against Socrates, the son of
Sophroniscus of Alopece: Socrates is guilty of refusing to recognize the
gods recognized by the state, and of introducing new divinities. 
He is also guilty of corrupting the youth.  The penalty demanded is
death.

The trial of Socrates took place over a nine-to-ten
hour period in the People’s
Court, located in the agora,
the civic center of Athens.  The jury consisted of 500 male citizens
over the age of thirty, chosen by lot.  Most of the jurors were probably
farmers. The jurors sat on wooden benches separated from the large crowd
of spectators–including a twenty-seven-year-old pupil of Socrates named
Plato–by some sort of barrier or railing.

The trial began in the morning with the reading of the formal charges
against Socrates by a herald.  The prosecution presented its case
first.  The three accusers, Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon, had 
a total of three hours, measured by a waterclock, to present from an elevated
stage their argument for guilt.  No record of the prosecution’s argument
against Socrates survives.

Easily the best known and most influential of the three accusers,
Anytus, is widely believed to have been the driving force behind the prosecution
of Socrates.  Plato’s Meno offers a possible clues as to the
animosity between  Anytus, a politician coming from a family of tanners,
and Socrates.  In the Meno, Plato reports that Socrates’ argument
that the great statesmen of Athenian history have nothing to offer in terms
of an understanding of virtue enrages Anytus.  Plato quotes Anytus
as warning Socrates: “Socrates, I think that you are too ready to speak
evil of men: and, if you will take my advice, I would recommend you to
be careful.” Anytus had an additional personal gripe concerning the relationship
Socrates had with his son. Plato quotes Socrates as saying, “I has a brief
association with the son of Anytus, and I found him not lacking in spirit.” 
It is not known whether the relationship included sex, but Socrates–as
were many men of the time in Athens–was bisexual and slept with some of
his younger students. Anytus almost certainly disapproved of his son’s
relationship with Socrates.  Adding to the displeasure of Anytus must
have been the advice Socrates gave to his son.  According to Xenophon,
Socrates urged Anytus’s son not to “continue in the servile occupation
[tanning hides] that his father has provided for him.”  Without a
“worthy adviser,” Socrates predicted, he would “fall into some disgraceful
propensity and will surely go far in the career of vice.”

It is a matter of dispute among historians whether the accusers focused
more attention on the alleged religious crimes, or the alleged political
crimes, of Socrates.  I. F. Stone attaches far more significance to
the political crimes, while other historians such as James A. Colaiaco,
author of Socrates
Against Athens, give more weight to the charge of impiety.

I. F. Stone argues that “Athenians were accustomed to hearing the
gods treated disrespectfully in both the comic and tragic theatre.” He
points out that Aristophanes, in his Clouds, had a character speculating
that rain was Zeus urinating through a sieve, mistaking it for a chamberpot–and
that no one ever bothered to charge Aristophanes with impiety.  Stone
concludes:  “One could in the same city and in the same century worship
Zeus as a promiscuous old rake, henpecked and cuckolded by Juno or as Justice
deified.  It was the political, not the philosophical or theological,
views of Socrates which finally got him into trouble.”

Important support for Stone’s conclusion comes from the earliest
surviving reference to the trial of Socrates that does not come
from one of his disciples.  In 345 B.C.E., the famous orator
Aechines
told a jury: “Men of Athens, you executed Socrates, the sophist, because
he was clearly responsible for the education of Critias, one of the thirty
anti-democratic leaders.”

James Colaiaco’s conclusion that impiety received more prosecutorial
attention than did political sins rests on Plato’s Apology. 
Colaiaco sees Plato’s famous account of the defense of Socrates as being–although
far from a verbatim transcription of the  words of Socrates–fairly
representative of the major points of his defense.  He notes that
Plato wrote the Apology within a few years of the trial and must
have expected many of his readers to have firsthand knowledge of the trial. 
Why, Colaiaco asks, would have Plato misrepresented the arguments of Socrates,
or hid key elements of the prosecution’s case, when his actions in doing
so could so easily be exposed?  Since the Apology seems to
give great weight to the charge of impiety–and relatively little weight
to the association of Socrates with the Thirty Tyrants–Colaiaco assumes
this must have been a fair reflection of the trial.  At the same time,
Colaiaco recognizes that because of the association of Socrates with Critias
“the prosecution could expect any Athenian jury to harbor hostile feelings
toward the city’s gadfly.”

Piety had, for Athenians, a broad meaning.  It included not
just respect for the gods, but also for the dead and ancestors.  The
impious individual was seen as a contaminant who, if not controlled or
punished, might bring upon the city the wrath of the gods–Athena, Zeus,
or Apollo–in the form of plague or sterility.  The ritualistic religion
of Athens included no scripture, church, or priesthood.  Rather, it
required–in addition to belief in the gods– observance of rites, prayers,
and the offering of sacrifices.

Any number of words and actions of Socrates may have contributed
to his impiety charge.  Preoccupied with his moral instruction, he
probably failed to attend important religious festivals.  He may have
stirred additional resentment by offering arguments against the collective,
ritualistic view of religion shared by most Athenians or by contending
that gods could not, as Athenians believed, behave immorally or whimsically. 
Xenophon indicates that the impiety charge stemmed primarily from the contention
of Socrates that he received divine communications (a “voice” or a “sign”)
directing him to avoid politics and concentrate on his philosophic mission. 
A vague charge such as impiety invited jurors to project their many and
varied grievances against Socrates.

Dozens of accounts of the three-hour speech (apologia) by Socrates
in his defense existed at one time.  Only Plato’s and Xenophon’s accounts
survive.  The two accounts agree on a key point.  Socrates gave
a defiant–decidedly unapologetic–speech.  He seemed to invite
condemnation and death.

Plato’s apology describes Socrates questioning his accuser, Meletus,
about the impiety charge.  Meletus accuses Socrates of believing the
son and moon not to be gods, but merely masses of stone.  Socrates
responds not by specifically denying the charge of atheism, but by attacking
Meletus for inconsistency: the charge against him accused him of believing
in other gods, not in believing in no gods.  If Plato’s account is
accurate, Socrates could have been seen by jurors offering a smokescreen
rather than a refutation of the charge of impiety.

Plato’s Socrates provocatively tells his jury that he is a hero. 
He reminds them of his exemplary service as a hoplite in three battles. 
More importantly, he contends, he has battled for decades to save the souls
of Athenians–pointing them in the direction of an examined, ethical life. 
He reportedly says to his jurors if his teaching about the nature of virtue
“corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.” He tells the jury, according
to Plato, he would rather be put to death than give up his soul-saving:
“Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than
you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice
and teaching of philosophy.”  If Plato’s account is accurate, the
jury knew that the only way to stop Socrates from lecturing about the moral
weaknesses of Athenians was to kill him.

If I. F. Stone is right, the most damaging accusation against Socrates
concerned his association with Critias, the cruel leader of the Thirty
Tyrants.  Socrates, in Plato’s account, points to his refusal to comply
with the Tyrants’ order that he bring in Leon of Salamis for summary execution. 
He argues this act of disobedience–which might have led to his own execution,
had not the Tyrants fallen from power–demonstrates his service as a good
citizen of Athens.  Stone notes, however, that a good citizen might
have done more than simply go home to bed–he might have warned Leon of
Salamis.  In Stone’s critical view, the central fact remained that
in the city’s darkest hour, Socrates “never shed a tear for Athens.” As
for the charge that his moral instruction provided intellectual cover for
the anti-democratic revolt of Critias and his cohorts, Socrates denies
responsibility.  He argues that he never presumed to be a teacher,
just a figure who roamed Athens answering the questions that were put to
him.  He points to his pupils in the crowd and observes that none
of them accused him. Moreover, Socrates suggests to the jury, if Critias
really understood his words, he would never would have gone on the bloody
rampage that he did in 404-403.  Hannah Arendt notes that Critias
apparently concluded, from the message of Socrates that piety cannot be
defined, that it is permissible to be impious–“pretty much the opposite
of what Socrates had hoped to achieve by talking about piety.”

What is strikingly absent from the defense of Socrates, if Plato’s
and Xenophon’s accounts are to be believed, is the plea for mercy typically
made to Athenian juries.  It was common practice to appeal to the
sympathies of jurors by introducing wives and children.  Socrates,
however, did no more than remind the jury that he had a family.  Neither
his wife Xanthippe nor any of his three sons made a personal appearance.  
On the contrary, Socrates–according to Plato–contends that the unmanly
and pathetic practice of pleading for clemency disgraces the justice system
of Athens.

When the three-hour defense of Socrates came to an end, the court
herald asked the jurors to render their decision by putting their
ballot disks in one of two marked urns, one for guilty votes and one
for votes for acquittal.  With no judge to offer them instructions
as to how to interpret the charges or the law, each juror struggled for
himself to come to an understanding of the case and the guilt or innocence
of Socrates.  When the ballots were counted, 280 jurors had voted
to find Socrates guilty, 220 jurors for acquittal.

After the conviction of Socrates by a relatively close vote, the
trial entered its penalty phase.  Each side, the accusers and the
defendant, was given an opportunity to propose a punishment.  After
listening to arguments, the jurors would choose which of the two proposed
punishments to adopt.

The accusers of Socrates proposed the punishment of death. 
In proposing death, the accusers might well have expected to counter with
a proposal for exile–a punishment that probably would have satisfied both
them and the jury.  Instead, Socrates audaciously proposes to the
jury that he be rewarded, not punished.  According to Plato, Socrates
asks the jury for free meals in the Prytaneum, a public dining hall in
the center of Athens.  Socrates must have known that his proposed
“punishment” would infuriate the jury.  I. F. Stone noted that “Socrates
acts more like a picador trying to enrage a bull than a defendant trying
to mollify a jury.”  Why, then, propose a punishment guaranteed to
be rejected?  The only answer, Stone and others conclude, is that
Socrates was ready to die.

To comply with the demand that a genuine punishment be proposed,
Socrates reluctantly suggested a fine of one mina of silver–about one-fifth
of his modest net worth, according to Xenophon.  Plato and other supporters
of Socrates upped the offer to thirty minae by agreeing to come up with
silver of their own.  Most jurors likely believed even the heftier
fine to be far too slight of a punishment for the unrepentant defendant.

In the final vote, a larger majority of jurors favored a punishment
of death than voted in the first instance for conviction.  According
to Diogenes Laertius, 360 jurors voted for death, 140 for the fine. 
Under Athenian law, execution was accomplished by drinking a cup of poisoned
hemlock.

In Plato’s Apology, the trial concludes with Socrates offering
a few memorable words as court officials finished their necessary work. 
He tells the crowd that his conviction resulted from his unwillingness
to “address you as you would have liked me to do.”  He predicts that
history will come to see his conviction as “shameful for Athens,” 
though he professes to have no ill will for the jurors who convict him. 
Finally, as he is being led off to jail, Socrates utters the memorable
line: “The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways–I to die,
and you to live.  Which to the better fate is known only to God.” 
It is likely that this last burst of eloquence comes from Plato, not Socrates. 
There is no records suggesting that Athenian practice allowed defendants
to speak after sentencing.

Socrates spent his final hours in a cell in the Athens jail. 
The ruins
of the jail remain today.  The hemlock that ended his life did
not do so quickly or painlessly, but rather by producing a gradual paralysis
of the central nervous system.

Most scholars see the conviction and execution of Socrates as a deliberate
choice made by the famous philosopher himself.  If the accounts of
Plato and Xenophon are reasonably accurate, Socrates sought not to persuade
jurors, but rather to lecture and provoke them.

The trial of Socrates, the most interesting suicide the world has
ever seen, produced the first martyr for free speech.  As I. F. Stone
observed, just as Jesus needed the cross to fulfill his mission, Socrates
needed his hemlock to fulfill his.