1. THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES 399 BCE “apology” = defense

2. SOCRATES

3. Contemporary Sources for Socrates
Aristophanes, Clouds (423 and revised after 415 BCE)
Comedy on stage. mocks S. as a sophist and a scientist who investigates under the earth & in the heavens (= sky)
Question: What does S. say about this?
Xenophon, Memorabilia, Apology, etc.
Plato ( BCE): numerous dialogues of S.
Euthyphro: indictment; what is piety?
Apology of Socrates: defense-speech
Crito, Phaedo: in prison; death

4. Trial not an ostracism a graphē (indictment)
indictment is before the “king”-archon
S. meets Euthyphro at the Stoa of the “King”

6. Royal Stoa (Stoa Basileios = the king’s)

7. The 2 formal charges Plato, Apology 24b note: the “old charges” he talks about are not these!
Socrates corrupts the young
And
Socrates does not observe the gods the city believes in, but IN other new deities.

8. Political, is it? (399 BCE & earlier)
Peloponnesian War, : Athens lost to Sparta
Alcibiades: exiled from Athens, back, out again
Critias led the 30 Tyrants, 404-3
amnesty
“Athenians, did you not put Socrates the sophist to death because he was shown to have taught Critias?” Aeschines, Against Timarchus 173 (345 BCE)
 Question: What does S. say about politics & democracy?

9. Court building in NE of Agora (Athens)

10. water-clocks

11. ballots & ballot-box

12. Prison, in Athens

13. state prison

15. J.-L. David, The Death of Socrates (1787)

16. Plato’s summing-up
You can kill me, but you can’t kill my ideas. Worry about yourself and how you live.
Plato: “This was the end of our friend, who was, we may fairly say, the bravest and also the wisest and most just of all those whom we knew in our time.” Plato, Phaedo 118a

17. Xenophon summing up Socrates
“All who knew what manner of man Socrates was and who seek after virtue continue to this day to miss him beyond all others, as the chief of helpers in the quest for virtue. I have described him as he was: so religious that he did nothing without counsel from the gods; so just that he did no injury, however small, to any man, but conferred the greatest benefits on all who dealt with him; so self-controlled that he never chose the pleasanter rather than the better course; so wise that he was unerring in his judgment of the better and the worse …; masterly in expounding and defining such things; masterly in putting others to the test & convincing them of error & exhorting them to follow virtue and gentleness. To me then he seemed to be all that a truly good and happy man must be.”

18. The Legacy of Socrates