At trial, the majority of the dikasts (male-citizen jurors chosen by lot) voted to convict him of the two charges; then, consistent with common legal practice, voted to determine his punishment, and agreed to a sentence of death to be executed by Socrates’s drinking a poisonous beverage of hemlock. For some, the execution of the man whom Plato called "the wisest and most just of all men" demonstrated the defects of democracy and of popular rule, for others the Athenian actions were a justifiable defense of the recently re-established democracy.[30]. Your browser may not be compatible with all the features on this site. Fowler, trans., Hervey M. Cleckley. Finally driven out of Athens after the defeat of the Battle of Notium against Sparta, Alcibiades was assassinated in Phrygia in 404 BC by his Spartan enemies. The fact that Critias, leader of the Thirty Tyrants, had been a pupil of Socrates was held against him. Unknown Primary-source accounts of the trial and execution of Socrates are the Apology of Socrates by Plato and the Apology of Socrates to the Jury by Xenophon of Athens, who had been his student; contemporary interpretations include The Trial of Socrates (1988) by the journalist I. F. Stone, and Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths (2009) by the Classics scholar Robin Waterfield. See what's new with book lending at the Internet Archive. Moreover, the legal and religious particulars against Socrates that Polycrates reported in The Indictment of Socrates are addressed in the replies by Xenophon and the sophist Libanius of Antioch (314–390). "[11]:183 Given the availability of a hospitable host outside of Athens, Socrates, at least in a limited way, chose to remain in Athens. (1988). on June 8, 2008. The philosopher Socrates remains, as he was in his lifetime (469–399 B.C.E. 34.8k Followers, 1 Following, 2,999 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Street One (@mystreetone) In the comic play, The Clouds (423 BC), Aristophanes represents Socrates as a sophistic philosopher who teaches the young man Pheidippides how to formulate arguments that justify striking and beating his father. Volume 7 – All about Athens. [8] Nevertheless, he does make the bold claim that he is a god's gift to the Athenians. It should be noted that Socrates was not the only one to be executed. At the request of Lysander, a Spartan admiral, the Thirty men, led by Critias and Theramenes, were to administer Athens and revise the city’s democratic laws, which were inscribed on a wall of the Stoa Basileios. The trial of Socrates (399 BC) was held to determine the philosopher’s guilt of two charges: asebeia against the pantheon of Athens, and corruption of the youth of the city-state; the accusers cited two impious acts by Socrates: "failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges" and "introducing new deities".. Robin Waterfield asserts that "Socrates would have been welcome in oligarchic Thebes, where he had close associates among the Pythagoreans who flourished there, and which had already taken in other exiles. Doubleday Books, 1990. According to the portraits left by some of Socrates' followers, Socrates himself seems to have openly espoused certain anti-democratic views, the most prominent perhaps being the view that it is not majority opinion that yields correct policy but rather genuine knowledge and professional competence, which is possessed by only a few. There were others too. Formal accusation was the second element of the trial of Socrates, which the accuser, Meletus, swore to be true, before the archon (a state officer with mostly religious duties) who considered the evidence and determined that there was an actionable case of "moral corruption of Athenian youth" and "impiety", for which the philosopher must legally answer; the archon summoned Socrates for a trial by jury.[24]. [16] Plato also portrays him as being severely critical of some of the most prominent and well-respected leaders of the Athenian democracy;[17] and even has him claim that the officials selected by the Athenian system of governance cannot credibly be regarded as benefactors, since it is not any group of many that benefits, but only "someone or very few persons". "[31], In Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths (2009), Robin Waterfield said that the death of Socrates was an act of volition motivated by a greater purpose; Socrates "saw himself as healing the City’s ills by his voluntary death". The extant, primary sources about the history of the trial and execution of Socrates are: the Apology of Socrates to the Jury, by Xenophon of Athens, a historian; and the tetralogy of Socratic dialogues — Euthyphro, the Socratic Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, by Plato, a philosopher who had been a student of Socrates. [19] Plato himself reinforced anti-democratic ideas in The Republic, advocating rule by elite, enlightened "Philosopher-Kings". In the Apology of Socrates (36a–b), about Socrates’s defense at trial, Plato said that if just 30 of the votes had been otherwise, then Socrates would have been acquitted (36a), and that (perhaps) less than three-fifths of the jury voted against him (36b). In the event, friends, followers, and students encouraged Socrates to flee Athens, action which the citizens expected; yet, on principle, Socrates refused to flout the law and escape his legal responsibility to Athens. Book digitized by Google from the library of Harvard University and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb. (See: Phaedo), In the time of the trial of Socrates, the year 399 BC, the city-state of Athens recently had endured the trials and tribulations of Spartan hegemony and the thirteen-month régime of the Thirty Tyrants, which had been imposed consequent to the Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). Several of the Thirty had been students of Socrates, but there is also a record of their falling out. "During a time of war, and great social and intellectual upheaval, Socrates felt compelled to express his views, openly, regardless of the consequences. Larry Gonick, in his "Cartoon History of the Universe"[20] writes, "The trial of Socrates has always seemed mysterious...the charges sound vague and unreal...because behind the stated charges was Socrates's real crime: preaching a philosophy that produced Alcibiades and Critias... but of course he couldn't be prosecuted for that under the amnesty (which had been declared after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants)... so his accusers made it "not believing the Gods of the city, introducing new gods, and corrupting the youth. For the painting, see, 399 B.C.E legal proceedings by the pantheon of Athens against Socrates, Association with Alcibiades and the Thirty Tyrants, Support of oligarchic rule and contempt for Athenian democracy, Stone, I.F. "Cartoon History of the Universe Vol 1-7". If the site you're looking for does not appear in the list below, you may also be able to find the materials by: Searching the Internet Archive for previously published materials. In the end, the sentence of death was passed by a greater majority of the jury than that by which he had been convicted. Athenian juries were drawn by lottery, from a group of hundreds of male-citizen volunteers; such a great jury usually ensured a majority verdict in a trial. 2013 Alcor Tour (16 minutes) with Nikola Danaylov (Socrates) of Singularity Weblog. In presenting such a prosecution, which addressed matters external to the specific charges of moral corruption and impiety levelled by the Athenian polis against Socrates, Anytus violated the political amnesty specified in the agreement of reconciliation (403–402 BC),[22] which granted pardon to a man for political and religious actions taken before or during the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, "under which all further charges and official recriminations concerning the [reign of] terror were forbidden".[23]. This year’s lecture, “The Arts as a Praxis of Liberation: Embodying Change and Transformation in a Time … [11], In The New Trial of Socrates (2012), an international panel of ten judges held a mock re-trial of Socrates to resolve the matter of the charges leveled against him by Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon, that: "Socrates is a doer of evil and corrupter of the youth, and he does not believe in the gods of the state, and he believes in other new divinities of his own"; by split decision, five judges voted "guilty" and five judges voted "not guilty", which acquitted Socrates of corruption of the young and of impiety against the Athenian pantheon. [1], Before the philosopher Socrates was tried for moral corruption and impiety, the citizens of Athens knew him as an intellectual and moral gadfly of their society. ), [] an enigma, an inscrutable individual who, despite having written nothing, is considered one of the handful of philosophers who forever changed how philosophy itself was to be conceived. Despite Socrates denying he had any relation with the Sophists, the playwright indicates that Athenians associated the philosophic teachings of Socrates with Sophism. In The Indictment of Socrates (392 BC), the sophist rhetorician Polycrates (440–370) presents the prosecution speech by Anytus, which condemned Socrates for his political and religious activities in Athens before the year 403 BC. During the reign of the Thirty, many prominent Athenians who were opposed to the new government left Athens. ", Apart from his views on politics, Socrates held unusual views on religion. The last discussion that Socrates held was immortalized in Crito. and tr. Alcibiades, an Athenian general who had been the main proponent of the disastrous Sicilian Expedition during the Peloponnesian Wars, where virtually the entire Athenian invading force of more than 50,000 soldiers and non-combatants (e.g., the rowers of the Triremes) was killed or captured and enslaved, was a student and close friend of Socrates, and his messmate during the siege of Potidaea (433–429 BC). Capital punishment has existed for millennia, as evident from ancient law codes and Plato’s famous rendition of Socrates’s trial and execution by democratic Athens in 399 B.C.E. The University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC) School of Law, This page was last edited on 14 January 2021, at 20:29. (Diogenes Laërtius, 2.42). He then defected back to Athens after successfully persuading the Athenians that Persia would come to their aid against Sparta (though Persia had no intention of doing so). [3] Many Athenians blamed the teachings of the Sophists and of Socrates for instilling the younger generation with a morally nihilistic, disrespectful attitude towards their society. Give two examples of why Socrates does not fear death. The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues about the So-Called Psychopathic Personality. As philosophers, the Sophists were men of ambiguous reputation, "they were a set of charlatans that appeared in Greece in the fifth century BC, and earned ample livelihood by imposing on public credulity: professing to teach virtue, they really taught the art of fallacious discourse, and meanwhile propagated immoral practical doctrines."[2]. Critias, who appears in two of Plato's Socratic dialogues, was a leader of the Thirty Tyrants (the ruthless oligarchic regime that ruled Athens, as puppets of Sparta and backed by Spartan troops, for eight months in 404–403 BC until they were overthrown). As a teacher, competitor intellectuals resented Socrates's elenctic examination method for intellectual inquiry, because its questions threatened their credibility as men of wisdom and virtue. Page 130 of the PDF begins the title for "THE APOLOGY", Page 132 begins title page for "CRITO" Page 128 of PDF indicates book page 31, It was natural that the trial and execution of Socrates in 399 BC proved to be a turning point in Plato’s life.
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