Trial of Socrates
The Trial of Socrates (399 BC) was held to determine the philosopher's guilt of two charges: asebeia (impiety) 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".
For the 2007 play, see Socrates on Trial.The Trial of Socrates
399 BCE
Plato; Xenophon; Diogenes Laertius
Socrates sentenced to death
500 +/- jury members in Athens
The death sentence of Socrates was the legal consequence of asking politico-philosophic questions of his students, which resulted in the two accusations of moral corruption and impiety. 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.
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, both of whom had been his students; modern interpretations include The Trial of Socrates (1988) by the journalist I. F. Stone, Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths (2009) by the Classics scholar Robin Waterfield,[1] and The Shadows of Socrates: The Heresy, War, and Treachery behind the Trial of Socrates (2024) by the scholar Matt Gatton.
A presentation of the possible appearance of the state prison in ancient Athens.
The site of the state prison in Ancient Athens.
The small cups found in the drains of the prison, believed to be used for administering the poison for executions.
The death of Socrates is presented in the Platonic diaologue the Phaedo, in which Socrates and his friends discuss the immortality of the soul before Socrates drinks the hemlock poison given to him for his execution.
Interpretations of the trial of Socrates[edit]
Ancient[edit]
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 13-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]