COMMENTARY: SOCRATES' TRIAL, THE APOLOGY
(all quotations from Plato's Dialogues are taken from the translation of W.H.D. Rouse (© John Cline Graves Rouse), published as a Signet Classic, Great Dialogues of Plato; quotations from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War are taken from the translation of Rex Warner ©, published in a revised edition by Penguin Classics in 1972)

THE SETTING FOR THE TRIAL: MILITARY DEFEAT, POLITICAL STRIFE, AND MORAL CRISIS
     In 404 B.C., Athens capitulated to Sparta and her allies to end the long Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.). The last decade of war had seen the catastrophic defeat of a huge Athenian expedition to Sicily with the loss of thousands of men, and growing civil strife in Athens between the partisans of OLIGARCHY (a form of government in which power is concentrated in the few, typically through institutions dominated by the wealthy citizens) and the advocates of more democratic government in which power was exercised by a broad-based assembly of male citizens. As a result of the Athenian defeat, the city’s fortifications were dismantled, the Athenian fleet drastically reduced in size, and former allies linked to victorious Sparta through the establishment of oligarchic governments dominated by Spartan sympathizers. In Athens itself, a board of thirty, wealthy citizens came to power with Spartan support and abolished institutions of the Athenian democracy. Although their regime, known as the THIRTY TYRANTS, lasted barely a year, it represented a reign of terror with the execution of hundreds of political opponents, the banishment or self-exile of many others, and widespread confiscation of properties. In 403 B.C., the Thirty Tyrants were deposed by an army of exiles, and, through Spartan intervention and mediation, an amnesty was declared, and democracy restored to Athens.  
     The trial of Socrates, before a jury of 501 citizens chosen by lot, took place in 399 B.C., when Athenians were looking for the causes of their military and political failures. Socrates had close ties to individuals who had played a key part in the dramatic defeat of Athens and the political upheavals that followed. One follower, ALCIBIADES, had been the principal advocate of the Sicilian expedition, later joined the Spartan side, and meddled in the factional strife within the city to secure his own temporary return. CRITIAS, a relative of Plato, had been one of the most zealous - and hated - of the Thirty Tyrants, responsible for condemning and executing numerous political opponents.
     Questions about Socrates’ political leanings and doubts about his loyalty to the democratic regime help to explain why he mentions his military service to Athens at the battles of Poteidaia, Amphipolis, and Delion (p. 434), his conscientious and consistent refusal to carry out unjust and illegal orders issued by Athenian governments of both the democratic and oligarchic parties (p. 438), and his own relationships with members of the “people’s party”, those who supported the democracy.  He describes his lifelong friend, CHAIREPHON, for example, as “a friend of your people’s party,” and he reminds the jury of citizens that Chairephon had been banished with many of them, when the Thirty Tyrants ruled (p. 427).
     These narrower partisan concerns were only a part of Socrates’ problem, and, in any event, the amnesty declared after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants prevented his enemies from directly charging him with treason. Instead, the formal indictment (p. 430) said that “he corrupted the young, did not believe in the gods whom the state believed in, but in other new spiritual things instead.” Socrates rightly understood that these charges were motivated by deeply felt grievances against him and what he represented to the Athenian public, most notably his association - real or alleged - with those intellectuals whose teachings were believed to have contributed to the collapse of Athens. Therefore, he begins by highlighting what he describes as the earlier and false accusations of those who had gotten hold of the citizens when they were young, and he formulated those older charges as a “pretended affidavit” (p. 425):
“Socrates is a criminal and a busybody, prying into things under the earth and up in the heavens, and making the weaker argument the stronger, and teaching these same things to others.”

PLATO'S APOLOGY: HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OR FICTIONAL DRAMATIZATION?
     Before examining what lay behind these charges and the formal indictment, why both were so dangerous, and how Socrates sought to address them, it is worth considering the nature of this account of Socrates’ trial. It is written by his pupil, the philosopher, PLATO, who is named among those attending the trial  (p. 439), when Socrates points out members of the audience who had listened to him, and who could attest that he was not a “corrupter of youth”. Plato includes only part of the trial: he omits the speeches of the three prosecutors, MELETOS, ANYTOS, and  LYCON, which Socrates refers to at the beginning of his defense. Not an account of the trial, this is essentially a defense of Socrates, and the term, apology, must be understood in its ancient sense of a refutation or defense, with none of its modern connotations of repentance or remorse.
     The key question is whether this is a historical record of Socrates' speeches or just Plato's own retrospective defense of his much admired mentor. In Plato's later dialogues, like the Republic, he freely uses Socrates as a character, whose ideas, more often than not, are Plato's own, and one may remember Thucydides' remarks on the speeches in his History of the Peloponnesian War:
"I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation" (I.22; p. 47)
Those comments have sparked much discussion over the latitude that the ancient historian allowed himself in reporting - or interpreting - historical events. In addition, public life in Athens - from the courtroom to the theatrical stage - provided numerous models for speeches, the art of rhetoric was widely taught, and the genre of writing rhetorical defenses flourished in pieces like the Praise of Helen composed by the sophist, Gorgias of Leontini. The picture is complicated by another account of Socrates' trial, written by the soldier, XENOPHON, who was not an eyewitness. In it, Socrates' defense is far less sophisticated, but that may reflect Xenophon's distance from the event and his limited grasp of Socrates' philosophical methods and arguments. The extent to which Plato accurately renders the substance - and style - of Socrates’ actual defense is debatable. Even if embellished, the Apology certainly captures key elements of Socrates’ method and teaching, as we know them from Plato's early dialogues - those most reflective of the historical Socrates - and other ancient sources. And, Plato was describing a public event which many contemporaries would have witnessed or heard about. Surely that would have limited his ability to invent or alter Socrates’ defense.

SOCRATES' RHETORIC
     What is clear is that Plato presents us with a masterfully crafted speech, addressing the charges - old and new - and offering a broader defense of Socrates' philosophical mission and service to the Athenian people. At the outset, Socrates claims that he is “not a bit of a clever speaker” (p. 423), and that the jury will hear him speak only the plain, unadorned truth in the everyday language he is accustomed to use in the streets of Athens. This denial of rhetorical sophistication is, itself, a clever rhetorical ploy, and his opening lines are full of conventional strategies to win the sympathy and trust of his listeners. He reminds the court that, at seventy years old, he is  “an old man” (p. 424). He notes that many in the audience have heard him speak in the public places of Athens, and he mentions that this is the first time he has been brought before a court. He cites these facts to excuse his own plain style of speaking, but, actually, he is beginning to argue his case in a powerful way, implicitly undermining the accusations against him: if his activity has been public for so long, why is he now being brought into court for the first time? What sense does it make to prosecute him at this age?
     Even more cleverly, Socrates uses his opening remarks to turn the charges upon his accusers. The indictment accuses him of corrupting the young, but he describes how they got hold of the citizens from when they were boys:
“Indeed I have had many accusers complaining to you, and for a long time, for many years now, and with not a word of truth to say; these I fear, rather than Anytos and his friends, although they, too, are dangerous; but the others are more dangerous, gentlemen, who got hold of most of you while you were boys, and persuaded you, and accused me falsely.” (p. 424)
Among these false accusations is the charge that he "makes the weaker argument the stronger", in other words, that he makes the worse case appear better through rhetoric. This, too, he had directed against his accusers in his opening words when he attacked the prosecutors, suggesting that they were the ones who used persuasive rhetoric to support arguments with “not one word of truth”.

THE "PRETENDED AFFIDAVIT" OR "OLD CHARGES": SCIENTISTS AND SOPHISTS
     When Socrates describes the older - and more dangerous - charges against him, he formulates them as a “pretended affidavit”:
“Socrates is a criminal and a busybody, prying into things under the earth and up in the heavens, and making the weaker argument the stronger, and teaching these same things to others.” (p. 425)
While he attributes these charges to many anonymous accusers, he does name one person, the comic poet, ARISTOPHANES, who spread these opinions. Aristophanes' play, THE CLOUDS, presented in 423 B.C., caricatured Socrates as running a school for the teaching of rhetoric in which he and his students investigate the heavens and the things under the earth. There, Socrates presents debates between characters representing the "Better" and "Worse" arguments, and the better argument is roundly defeated by the worse. Eventually, his teaching led the young man, Pheidippides, to beat his own father, to threaten to beat his mother, and to use his training in rhetoric to justify both. The play concludes with the youth's father, Strepsiades, burning Socrates' school to the ground.
     In the Apology, Socrates has little trouble refuting these charges and dismissing the caricature that lies behind them. They show, however, how he was associated in the Athenian mind with ideas and groups of people who were blamed for the disastrous policies that had led Athens to war, defeat and political upheaval. The first charge ("prying into things under the earth and up in the heavens") suggests an interest in the natural world. The accusation linked Socrates with philosophers who sought natural explanations for natural phenomena that, in the popular view, were in the realm of the gods. The gods, after all, dwelt in the heavens, the heavenly bodies were associated with them, and the things under the earth belonged to the Underworld, the sacred realm of the dead. In fact, there is little evidence that Socrates concerned himself greatly with natural phenomena. Nonetheless, he clearly appreciated the dangerous implications of this accusation, for, as he says, "those who hear it believe that anyone who is a student of that sort of lore must be an atheist as well (p. 424). Thus, an alleged interest in natural science could easily lead to the charge of atheism (not believing in "the gods whom the state believes in") included in the formal indictment. In fact, when Meletos accuses him of atheism and claims that he "says the sun is a stone and the moon is earth" (p. 432), Socrates immediately attributes these beliefs to the natural philosopher, ANAXAGORAS of Clazomenae, and distances himself from these teachings.
     Socrates' inquiries were more squarely focused on man and society, and, in this respect, he was linked with a diverse group of itinerant teachers known as the SOPHISTS who typically took handsome fees for educating the sons of wealthy citizens in the arts of rhetoric that would bring success in politics. In fact, the charge that he makes "the weaker argument the stronger", "teaching these same things to others", is a way of describing him as one of the Sophists. In his defense, Socrates names several well-known Sophists: Gorgias of Leontini, Prodicos of Ceos, and Hippias of Elis (pp. 425-36). He contrasts himself with these men and easily refutes the charge, for his evident poverty made clear that he did not collect fees for teaching. Reciting these familiar names also reminded the audience that many individuals openly taught rhetoric for fees, without being hauled into court.
     While Socrates may convince his audience that he was neither a natural scientist nor a paid teacher, the seriousness of these accusations is clear. First, they lay the groundwork for the formal charges of atheism and corrupting the youth. A generation earlier, Anaxagoras' speculation about the natural world had made him the target of legislation against impiety, forcing him to flee the city. The teaching of rhetoric was more than a path to political success. For some of the Sophists, an emphasis on verbal dexterity and persuasive oratory went hand-in-hand with moral relativism, a denial of objective truth, and a cynical desire to prevail in a debate, whatever the merits of the position advocated. Young men used the rhetorical skills they learned to challenge and refute long-established moral principles, codes of conduct, and beliefs about the gods. As the Athenians reflected on the political and moral crises that had accompanied the war and their eventual defeat, they turned against the intellectuals who had weakened faith in the gods through their scientific speculation, and undermined moral standards through their wordplay. What's more, political leaders had used their rhetorical abilities to persuade the multitude to endorse policies that, eventually, led to disaster. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War and the plays of EURIPIDES are full of examples of the misuses of rhetoric that the Athenians regarded with suspicion, and accused Socrates of practicing and teaching.

SOCRATES' METHOD: THE ELENCHUS AND THE SEARCH FOR VIRTUE AND KNOWLEDGE
     Socrates frees himself of the charge of being a natural scientist or paid teacher of rhetoric, and, in fact, his own views on virtue and knowledge could hardly be further from the moral relativism espoused by some of the Sophists. In answering these accusations, Socrates explains why he believes that he aroused the hostility of so many people.  He tells (pp. 426-27) how a friend had gone to Delphi to ask whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the priestess answered that no one was wiser.  Socrates found this to be a riddle: “What in the world does the god mean?  What in the world is his riddle?”  To try to understand what the riddle meant, he began to question those who appeared to be wise - statesmen, poets and craftsmen - and, to his surprise, he found, over and over again, that he was wiser in one small respect: that what he did not know, he did not think he knew.  In other words, he was wise in that he knew his own ignorance, while others thought themselves - wrongly - to be wise about things of which they knew little. Not surprisingly, Socrates made many enemies as he publicly exposed the ignorance of those who thought themselves to be wise. 
     What Socrates is describing is his characteristic question and answer method of cross-examination, known as the ELENCHUS. Plato's earliest dialogues provide several examples of this method, portraying Socrates testing definitions of moral terms like piety or courage, and it is well-illustrated by the discussion of the definition of justice in the first book of the Republic. Typically, speakers propose simple, commonsense definitions, only to be forced into contradictions and refuted. By the end of the discussion, several definitions have been discarded, and the question remains unanswered. In short, it is an essentially negative method that leads to questions rather than answers, revealing a person's ignorance and highlighting the gap between commonplace opinions and true knowledge. As Socrates says at the end of the Euthyphro, a dialogue dedicated to the question, "What is piety?", "So we must investigate again from the beginning what piety is..."
     Socrates provides an example of the ELENCHUS in the trial itself, when he addresses the formal indictment and cross-examines Meletos, one of his accusers, concerning the charge that he has corrupted the youth (pp. 430-31). After he led an obliging Meletos to the absurd conclusion that all the Athenians improve the youth and only he, Socrates, corrupts them, he shifted to an analogy - a common Socratic tactic used in the first book of the Republic as well. He compared the education of youth with the training of horses, and he concluded that, just as only a small number of experts could train horses successfully, only a small number of experts could truly improve the youth. This, of course, is another rhetorical ploy: it doesn’t address Meletos’ charge at all - he doesn’t answer the question of whether he has, in fact, corrupted the youth. Instead, he attacks the credibility of his accuser by exposing him as ignorant of all matters concerning the education of youth, the very issue around which he had framed his indictment. In this, Socrates demonstrates the activities he had engaged in after hearing of the Delphic oracle: he questioned individuals to prove them ignorant of precisely the matters in which they claim expertise.
     This short exchange, however, also reveals key elements of Socrates’ thought that would have an impact upon Plato. The education of the youth which he describes involves their education in virtue, a good upbringing in sound moral principles. This moral knowledge, the knowledge of right and wrong, is like any other kind of knowledge for Socrates: despite his repeated protestations of ignorance, he evidently believes that there can be certainty about moral principles and that this knowledge can be acquired and taught by experts. Nor is this certainty the product of divine revelation or inspiration, it is something that can be explained, argued and demonstrated rationally. What's more, virtuous behavior or good conduct is fundamentally a question of knowledge: if we properly knew what was good, we would act accordingly. This conviction underlies one of the "Socratic paradoxes": no one does wrong willingly, we only do wrong out of ignorance of what is right.
     These ideas are further developed by Plato, and their implications are explored in some of the discussions in the Republic. The belief that virtue is a matter of knowledge underlies his contention "that cities will have no end to their miseries until philosophers rule in them" (p. 284), and it leads to Plato's description of the SHIP OF STATE, a parody of democratic government (p. 285). On this ship, "everyone thinks he ought to be pilot, although he knows nothing of the art, and cannot tell us who taught him or where he learnt it...They fail to understand that (the true pilot) must devote his attention to year and seasons, sky and stars and winds, and all that belongs to his art, if he is really to be anything like a ruler of the ship." It is no wonder, perhaps, that views like these would have brought Socrates into conflict with a state in which laws and political decisions were made by a broad assembly of citizens. If, like horses trained by expert horse-trainers, the youth are to be made good citizens by experts in virtue, can we trust the citizens of a democracy to make laws? Can we trust parents to raise their children well? The implications of Socrates' views strike at the heart of the basic institutions of the family and city, and they lay the foundation for the radical reconstruction of society that Plato undertakes in the Republic.

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