Apology: the Defence Speech

In one line

Socrates answers the old prejudice first, explains why he made so many enemies by taking an oracle seriously, destroys the prosecutor in three minutes of cross-examination, and then tells the court that he will not stop even if they order him to.

How the speech is built

Seven movements, in order. An answer that follows this order will not go wrong.

One. The apology for his manner. He is over seventy and in a court for the first time, a stranger to the language of the place, and he asks to be allowed to speak as he does in the marketplace. "Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think only of the truth of my words."

Two. The older accusers. Dealt with in the previous chapter: an anonymous reputation he cannot cross-examine.

Three. The oracle, and why he became unpopular.

Four. The cross-examination of Meletus.

Five. Why he will not stop, and the answer to the suggestion that he should be ashamed of a life that has brought him to this.

Six. The gadfly, and the refusal to plead for pity.

Seven. Commitment of the cause to the court and to God.

The oracle, which is the key to the whole defence

What happened. His friend Chaerephon went to Delphi and asked the oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the priestess answered that there was no man wiser. Socrates says he knew he had no wisdom, small or great, and could not understand what the god meant, since a god cannot lie.

What he did about it. He set out to find somebody wiser, so that he could go back to the god with a refutation in his hand. He went first to a politician of great reputation, and found that the man thought himself wise and was not, and said so, and was hated for it. Then to the poets, and found that they could not explain their own best passages, so that they write not by wisdom but by a sort of genius and inspiration. Then to the artisans, who did know many things he did not, but who, because they were good workmen, believed themselves wise in high matters too.

What he concluded. That in each case he was better off, because "he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know." The god's meaning was that human wisdom is worth little or nothing, and that the wisest man is the one who knows he does not know.

Why this is the centre of the speech. It explains, in one story, both what Socrates did with his life and why he was on trial for it. His whole method is an act of obedience to the god, and every enemy he made was made in the course of it. A candidate who can tell the oracle story properly has the spine of any answer on this text.