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Dr G's Hypertext Notes |
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First accusers: Socrates refers to the send up that he received on stage in Athens from the comedian Aristophanes in a popular play called The Clouds (423 and 419 BCE). The "Socrates" of this satiric comedy operates a phony "Think Store" where he invents new gods and misleads students by teaching them to win arguments by lying (making "the worse appear the better cause"). In the Apology, Meletus' affidavit against the real Socrates is based absurdly on the character in the play that the Athenians had seen twenty years or more before the trial. Anytus and his associates are the politicians who are charging Socrates with impiety. Anytus seems to have been the ringleader, although Meletus was the one who took the lead in formally pressed the complaint. Socrates is allowed only a short time to speak: Athenian law allotted him three hours. It's believed that in some other Greek cities, in capital cases, defendants were given up to a full day Is Socrates a teacher? The prosecutors claim that he takes money for teaching, so he must be a teacher. Socrates protests that he never charges tuition, but other dialogues of Plato make clear that Socrates' friends supported him (in his very frugal life style), at least in the last years of his life. His main benefactor seems to have been Crito, who gave his sons to be educated by Socrates. Sophists (Greek meaning "wise men") were the professional teachers who charged fees for their educational services. Five minae was a lot of money in those days, more than the cost of a year of college in the USA today. It would have taken an artesian or semi-skilled Athenian worker substantially more than a year's wages to pay so much tuition! Don't interrupt. The court is a noisy place as the jury shouts out its approval and disapproval, rather like the House of Commons when the Prime Minister tries to speak. When Socrates claims "wisdom" Anytus' friends in the jury try to shout him down, perhaps yelling about the divine inner voice that Socrates is is said to hear. As Socrates tries to explain that his wisdom is entirely human, his enemies drown his speech with noise. Chaerephon evidently had been exiled with some of Anytus' party at the end of the Peloponnesian War, but they later returned and seized control of the city from the puppet government set up by Sparta. By the dog: an oath that originated in ancient Egypt where the dog star Sirius was revered because its rise heralded the flood season that fertilized the Nile valley. The hero Herakles (later called "Hercules" by the Romans) was was hated by the queen of the gods, Hera, because he was an illegitimate son of her husband Zeus. She forced him to fight ferocious wild animals and monsters and to take on a variety of painful, nearly superhuman "labors," for which Zeus raised him up to heaven at his death. Socrates' reference to a future inquiry perhaps indicates that all or some parts of the Apology were written after Anytus and Meletus had been discredited. According to one ancient source, Meletus was put to death and Anytus was banished from Athens several years after Socrates' trial. Meletus refuses to play along with Socrates and get involved in a dialogue that he can't win. The sun is a stone. This belief belonged to the philosopher Anaxagoras, who was indicted for impiety in Athens some years before the trial of Socrates. Anaxagoras fled the city before his trial. The Athenians traditionally thought of sun and moon as parts of heaven, eternal and unchanging, unlike anything on earth. Demigods were the semi-divine offspring of one divine parent and one human parent. The hero Achilles, among many other heroes, was thought to be a demigod, as the son of a goddess (Thetis) and a mortal king (Peleus). Many other heroes, like Herakles, were the sons of the god Zeus and mortal women. Centuries after Plato, pagan Greeks thought of Jesus as demigod like Herakles, as the son of a heavenly father and mortal mother. The son of Thetis is Achilles. In Homer's Iliad, Achilles decides to join the battle at Troy even though he knows from a prophecy that if he fights he will die there. In spite of the prophecy, he joins the battle to kill Hektor who has killed his friend Patroklos. Socrates as servant of the democracy: Socrates points out that he has served Athens faithfully as a soldier both before and during the Peloponnesian War, in battles at Potidaea, Amphipolis and Delium. Some of Socrates' enemies had slandered him by saying that he favored the enemy, Sparta, in the war. Elsewhere, Plato mentions that Socrates was decorated for bravery in action for Athens. Socrates strikes a heroic pose (and he means it). He will die if necessary in the service of his god but he will not save his life by backing down, by turning away from inquiry and speculation. The great mission: Socrates has no poor opinion of himself. His determined belief in the great importance of his mission illustrates the power of positive thinking. The gadfly, Socrates' famous image of himself as a god-given pain. Socrates admits his "divine thing," which Meletus apparently has used to argue that Socrates believes in gods that are not officially approved by the city of Athens. The thing is what we would call Socrates' conscience; it speaks to Socrates only when he is about to do something that he shouldn't. On the day of the trial, it did not oppose his plan to die rather than beg for mercy. During the Peloponnesian War, Athenian politicians regularly brought military leaders to trial in an attempt to secure power by gaining control over the army and navy. Socrates blocked one such legal action when he prohibited the joint prosecution of the generals of the battle of Arginusae; they were charged with failing to bury the dead as Athenian law required. "The Thirty" were the rulers installed by Sparta to run Athens after the end of the Peloponnesian War. They eventually were overthrown with the return of the democrats, including some of Socrates' adversaries at his trial. Socrates makes the point that he did not bow to the power of "the Thirty" and he considered them to be hateful tyrants, a point that his democratic audience surely would have agreed with. Plato seems to have been ashamed that one of his uncles was one of the Thirty . "I have never yielded." Part of the character assassination against Socrates may have included gossip that he had attracted young boys in order to have sex with them. But this claim is not part of the formal charges in court, and Plato in several dialogues emphasizes that Socrates was not involved in the common Athenian practice of seduction of young boys by older men. Plato never speaks in any of the dialogues. He is mentioned only here, in connection with Socrates' trial, and once more in the Phaedo, when it is said that he was too ill to be with Socrates on the day of his death. Plato apparently was very careful to exclude himself and his own opinions from his writings. He perhaps may have feared that he would be censored or find himself under attack for his beliefs, as Socrates had been. The reference in the "Apology" is interesting in that Plato is not Socrates' student; Plato's brother Adeimantus is Socrates' student. Women's lib: Socrates was the first person on record to advocate the idea that women should be educated and could hold positions of the highest responsibility in the state. But he also makes stereotypical Greek statements about women's inclinations to be led by emotions rather than by reason. In The Last Days of Socrates, women are mentioned only as grievers who mourn for the deaths of the men on whom they depend. Sorry, ladies. Sentencing:. in Athenian trials at this time, once a defendant was convicted by the vote of the jury, then both the prosecutor and the defendant proposed what the punishment would be. The jury then voted on which of the two punishments to order. Socrates' proposed reward is that that he be given free lunch at public expense for the rest of his life--just like Athenian victors at the Olympic Games. Many commentators on Plato believe that this tactic is suicidal, that Socrates could have avoided the death sentence simply by proposing a reasonable penalty, such as exile. Thirty minae was a substantial sum, perhaps the equivalent of more than $120,000 US dollars today. Socrates' prophetic powers: it was customary in Greek literature for dying heroes to prophesy, as in death they gained knowledge of the future. Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus. In Greek myth, souls of the dead went to judgment before these impartial jurors of the afterlife. No evil can happen to a good person. This may be the most famous sound bite in all of Plato, that evil has no power over good.
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