Socrates and democratic Athens: The story of the trial in its historical and legal contexts
Josiah Ober (Princeton University)
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: July (2006)
Abstract
Socrates was both a loyal citizen (by his own lights) and a critic of the democratic community’s way of doing things. This led to a crisis in 339 B.C. In order to understand Socrates’ and the Athenian community’s actions (as reported by Plato and Xenophon) it is necessary to understand the historical and legal contexts, the democratic state’s commitment to the notion that citizens are resonsible for the effects of their actions, and Socrates’ reasons for preferring to live in Athens rather than in states that might (by his lights) have had substantively better legal systems. Written for the Cambridge Companion to Socrates.
In 399 B.C. the Athenian citizen Socrates, son of Sophroniscus of the deme (township) Alopece, was tried by an Athenian court on the charge of impiety (asebeia). He was found guilty by a narrow majority of the empanelled judges and executed in the public prison a few days later. The trial and execution constitute the best documented events in Socrates’ life and a defining moment in the relationship between Greek philosophy and Athenian democracy. Ever since, philosophers and historians have sought to explain troubling aspects of the case: Why was Socrates, the philosophical model of a good man, charged with public wrongdoing? Why was he convicted and why on such a close vote? Was he guilty of impiety or other crimes? Why did he undergo trial and execution, rather than leaving Athens to pursue his philosophical investigations elsewhere? Were his loyalties owed to Athens, to himself, or to the world? And, perhaps most pressing: how did a democratic community, committed to the value of free speech and public debate, come to convict and execute its most famous philosopher-citizen? Because there are no simple answers to these questions the ancient tradition and modern scholarship on the trial and its aftermath are rich and of enduring interest.
Josiah Ober (Princeton University)
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: July (2006)
Abstract
Socrates was both a loyal citizen (by his own lights) and a critic of the democratic community’s way of doing things. This led to a crisis in 339 B.C. In order to understand Socrates’ and the Athenian community’s actions (as reported by Plato and Xenophon) it is necessary to understand the historical and legal contexts, the democratic state’s commitment to the notion that citizens are resonsible for the effects of their actions, and Socrates’ reasons for preferring to live in Athens rather than in states that might (by his lights) have had substantively better legal systems. Written for the Cambridge Companion to Socrates.
In 399 B.C. the Athenian citizen Socrates, son of Sophroniscus of the deme (township) Alopece, was tried by an Athenian court on the charge of impiety (asebeia). He was found guilty by a narrow majority of the empanelled judges and executed in the public prison a few days later. The trial and execution constitute the best documented events in Socrates’ life and a defining moment in the relationship between Greek philosophy and Athenian democracy. Ever since, philosophers and historians have sought to explain troubling aspects of the case: Why was Socrates, the philosophical model of a good man, charged with public wrongdoing? Why was he convicted and why on such a close vote? Was he guilty of impiety or other crimes? Why did he undergo trial and execution, rather than leaving Athens to pursue his philosophical investigations elsewhere? Were his loyalties owed to Athens, to himself, or to the world? And, perhaps most pressing: how did a democratic community, committed to the value of free speech and public debate, come to convict and execute its most famous philosopher-citizen? Because there are no simple answers to these questions the ancient tradition and modern scholarship on the trial and its aftermath are rich and of enduring interest.
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