Plato's Apology: the Trial of Socrates

Two consequences follow, and both are in the text. Socrates says that if there were a law at Athens, as there is in other cities, that a capital cause should not be decided in one day, he believes he would have convinced them. And because the court had to pick one of the two proposed penalties, the counter-penalty Socrates proposed was itself a decision about whether he lived.

The charge

Socrates has the affidavit read and states it.

Socrates is a doer of evil, who corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in the gods of the state, but has other new divinities of his own.

Break it into counts, as he does. First, corrupting the young. Second, not believing in the gods the city acknowledges. Third, introducing new divinities of his own. The second and third are in tension, and Socrates uses that tension to destroy Meletus in cross-examination.

The older accusers, which is the part students miss

Before he answers Meletus, Socrates says he must answer an older and more dangerous set of accusers: the reputation built up over many years, by people he cannot name and cannot cross-examine, that there is "one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause."

Why this matters. He is describing prejudice, and he says exactly why it is harder to fight than a charge: it began when the jurors were children, the case went by default because there was nobody to answer it, and he must "simply fight with shadows in my own defence, and argue when there is no one who answers."

The legal point. This is the clearest statement in ancient literature of something every lawyer meets: that the accusation on the paper is not always the accusation being tried.

What was really on trial

The Apology never says so, and a careful answer marks the difference between what the text states and what history supplies.

What the text gives. Socrates has made enemies by going to politicians, poets and artisans, showing each of them that they did not know what they thought they knew, and being hated for it.

What the background supplies. Athens had recently lost a war and endured an oligarchy, and men who had been close to Socrates had been prominent in the city's disasters. A prosecution on a charge of impiety was one of the few ways to reach a man whose real offence was influence.

How to use it. Say that the indictment charged impiety and the trial was about something else, and that Socrates himself points at the something else when he insists that his real accusers are old, anonymous and unanswerable.

Why a law syllabus sets it

It is the oldest surviving speech of defence. Everything on this paper about advocacy has a common ancestor here.

It poses the question of conscience against the State. Socrates says plainly that if the court offered to release him on condition that he stopped philosophising, he would refuse and obey God rather than them. That is civil disobedience stated at its source, and MU sets Gandhi two topics later.

It shows what a fair trial is by showing one that was not. No counsel, one day, no appeal, a jury of hundreds voting immediately, and a prejudice older than the charge.

And it is about a man who would not plead. He refuses to bring his family into court to weep, refuses to beg, and says he would rather die having spoken after his own manner than speak in their manner and live.

What beginners get wrong

They translate the title as an apology in the modern sense. It means a defence.

They think Socrates wrote it. He wrote nothing. Plato did.

They say he was tried for atheism. The charge as recorded has three counts, and the second and third contradict each other, which is the hinge of his cross-examination of Meletus.

They forget it is three speeches. Defence, counter-penalty, and last words, delivered at three different stages.

A worked answer

Question. "What was Socrates charged with, and was the charge the real reason for his trial?"

A model answer. The affidavit, as Socrates has it read in court, was that he is a doer of evil who corrupts the youth, and who does not believe in the gods of the state but has other new divinities of his own. That is a charge of impiety with a count of corrupting the young attached, and it is what the court formally tried. Socrates himself says that it was not the real reason. He devotes the first part of his defence to what he calls his older accusers: a reputation, built up over many years by people he cannot name and cannot cross-examine, that he speculated about the heavens and the earth and made the worse appear the better cause. Those accusers, he says, began when the jurors were children, and the case went by default because there was nobody to answer it, so that he must fight with shadows. Behind that lay the enmity he had earned by questioning politicians, poets and artisans in public until each was shown not to know what he claimed to know, and behind that again lay a city that had recently lost a war and suffered an oligarchy and had reason to distrust a man of his influence.

The sentence to close on. The indictment charged impiety; the trial was about a lifetime of asking people questions they could not answer, and Socrates is the first defendant on record to have said so in open court.

Quick revision

Apology means a defence, not an expression of regret.

Athens, 399 BC. Socrates is over seventy and in a court for the first time. Plato wrote the account and is named in it.

Accusers: Meletus, supported by Anytus and Lycon.

The charge: a doer of evil who corrupts the youth, does not believe in the gods of the state, and has other new divinities of his own.

The older accusers: an anonymous reputation that he searched the heaven above and the earth beneath and made the worse appear the better cause.

The court: a private prosecutor, a large citizen jury, no advocates, one day, no appeal, and a penalty chosen between the two proposed.

Three speeches: the defence, the counter-penalty, and the last words.

Test yourself

1. What does the word apology mean here? A defence, from the Greek apologia, meaning a speech made in answer to an accusation. Socrates expresses no regret at any point.

2. State the charge in the words Socrates has read out. That Socrates is a doer of evil, who corrupts the youth, and who does not believe in the gods of the state but has other new divinities of his own.

3. Who are the older accusers, and why does Socrates fear them more? The anonymous makers of his reputation, who told the jurors when they were children that there was one Socrates who speculated about the heaven above and searched the earth beneath and made the worse appear the better cause. He fears them more because he cannot name them or cross-examine them, and because the charge went unanswered for years.

4. Give three ways this trial differs from a modern criminal trial. The prosecutor was a private citizen rather than the State; the accused spoke for himself with no counsel; and the whole capital case was decided in a single day with no appeal, the penalty being chosen by the same jury between the two proposals put to it.

5. Why is this text on a law syllabus? Because it is the oldest surviving speech of defence, because it states the conflict between individual conscience and the authority of the State in its original form, and because it shows, from the inside, a trial in which prejudice older than the indictment decided the outcome.