Trial of Socrates

Alcibiades was 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. He was a student and close friend of Socrates, and his messmate during the siege of Potidaea (433–429 BC). Socrates remained Alcibiades' close friend, admirer, and mentor for about five or six years.[3] During his career, Alcibiades famously defected to Sparta, Athens' arch-enemy, after being summoned to trial, then to Persia after being caught in an affair with the wife of his benefactor (the King of Sparta). 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). Finally driven out of Athens after the defeat of the Battle of Notium against Sparta, Alcibiades was assassinated in Phrygia in 400 BC by his Spartan enemies.

Another possible source of resentment was the political views that he and his associates were thought to have embraced. 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). Several of the Thirty had been students of Socrates, but there is also a record of their falling out.[11]

As with many of the issues surrounding Socrates' conviction, the nature of his affiliation with the Thirty Tyrants is far from straightforward. During the reign of the Thirty, many prominent Athenians who were opposed to the new government left Athens. 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."[3]^: 183 Given the availability of a hospitable host outside of Athens, Socrates, at least in a limited way, chose to remain in Athens. Thus, Waterfield suggests, Socrates' contemporaries probably thought his remaining in Athens, even without participating in the Thirty's bloodthirsty schemes, demonstrated his sympathy for the Thirty's cause, not neutrality towards it. This is proved, Waterfield argues, by the fact that after the Thirty were no longer in power, anyone who had remained in Athens during their rule was encouraged to move to Eleusis, the new home of the expatriate Thirty.[3] Socrates did oppose the will of the Thirty on one documented occasion. Plato's Apology has the character of Socrates describe that the Thirty ordered him, along with four other men, to fetch a man named Leon from Salamis so that the Thirty could execute him. While Socrates did not obey this order, he did nothing to warn Leon, who was subsequently apprehended by the other four men.[12]

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.[13] Plato also portrays him as being severely critical of some of the most prominent and well-respected leaders of the Athenian democracy;[14] and even has his 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".[15] Finally, Socrates was known as often praising the laws of the undemocratic regimes of Sparta and Crete.[16] Plato himself reinforced anti-democratic ideas in The Republic, advocating rule by elite, enlightened "Philosopher-Kings".

The totalitarian Thirty Tyrants had anointed themselves as the elite, and in the minds of his Athenian accusers, Socrates was guilty because he was suspected of introducing oligarchic ideas to them. Larry Gonick, in his "Cartoon History of the Universe"[17] wrote:

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".

Apart from his views on politics, Socrates held unusual views on religion. He made several references to his spirit, or daimonion, although he explicitly claimed that it never urged him on, but only warned him against various prospective actions.[18]

In the time of the trial of Socrates, the year 399 BC,[23] 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 consequently to the Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). 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. Their actions were to facilitate the transition of the Athenian government from a democracy to an oligarchy in service to Sparta.[24]

Moreover, the Thirty Tyrants also appointed a council of 500 men to perform the judicial functions that once had belonged to every Athenian citizen.[25][26] In their brief régime, the Spartan oligarchs killed about five percent of the Athenian population, confiscated much property, and exiled democrats from the city proper. The fact that Critias, leader of the Thirty Tyrants, had been a pupil of Socrates was held against him.[27][24]

The Death of Socrates (1787), by Jacques-Louis David

Plato's presentation of the trial and death of Socrates inspired writers, artists, and philosophers to revisit the matter. 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 defence of the recently re-established democracy.[28]

In The Trial of Socrates (1988), I. F. Stone argued that Socrates wanted to be sentenced to death, to justify his philosophic opposition to the Athenian democracy of that time, and because, as a man, he saw that old age would be an unpleasant time for him.

In the introduction to his play Socrates on Trial (2007), Andrew Irvine claimed that because of his loyalty to Athenian democracy, Socrates willingly accepted the guilty verdict voted by the jurors at his trial:

During a time of war, and great social and intellectual upheaval, Socrates felt compelled to express his views, openly, regardless of the consequences. As a result, he is remembered today, not only for his sharp wit and high ethical standards, but also for his loyalty to the view that, in a democracy, the best way for a man to serve himself, his friends, and his city – even during times of war – is by being loyal to, and by speaking publicly about the truth.[29]

In Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths (2009), Robin Waterfield wrote 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".[3]^: 204 Waterfield wrote that Socrates, with his unconventional methods of intellectual enquiry, attempted to resolve the political confusion then occurring in the city-state of Athens, by willingly being the scapegoat, whose death would quiet old disputes, which then would allow the Athenian polis to progress towards political harmony and social peace.[3]

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 levelled 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". Five judges voted guilty and five judges voted not guilty. Limiting themselves to the facts of the case against Socrates, the judges did not consider any sentence, but the judges who voted the philosopher guilty said that they would not have considered the death penalty for him.[30][31]

Rhetorical scholar Collin Bjork contended that Plato's depiction of the trial makes an important contribution to rhetorical theories of ethos, one that countered "prevailing notions of rhetoric as an art primarily concerned with making individual speeches and foreground[ed] instead the rhetorical impact of a lifetime of philosophical-cum-rhetorical activity" (258).[32]