Trial and Execution of Socrates

1
Trial and Execution of Socrates

• Democracy on Trial

2
Events in Athens

• 411 BCE Aristocratic Reaction Council of 400
  (Oligarchy)
• 410 BCE Restoration of Democracy (Alcibiades)
• 404 BCE Athens defeated by Sparta Tyranny of 30
  (Critias)
• 403 BCE (September) Fall of 30 Restoration of
  Democracy
• 399 BCE Socrates charged with corrupting the
  young and not believing in the gods convicted by
  a narrow margin

3
Bust of Socrates
4
Daniel Nicholas ChodowieckiThe Death of
Socrates (?)18th-19th century
5
Johann Friedrich GreuterSocrates (?) and His
Students 17th century
6
Pietro TestaThe Symposium (1648)
7
Jean-Louis DavidThe Death of Socrates (1748)
8
Impiety Trials

• Reactionary Athenian Mainstream Culture?

9
Plutarch, Pericles, 32

• About this time also Aspasia was put on trial
  for impiety, Hermippus the comic poet being her
  prosecutor, who alleged further against her that
  she received free-born women into a place of
  assignation for Pericles. And Diopeithes brought
  in a bill providing for the public impeachment of
  such as did not believe in gods, or who taught
  doctrines regarding the heavens, directing
  suspicion against Pericles by means of
  Anaxagoras. The people accepted with delight
  these slanders, and so, while they were in this
  mood, a bill was passed, on motion of
  Dracontides, that Pericles should deposit his
  accounts of public moneys with the prytanes, and
  that the jurors should decide upon his case with
  ballots which had lain upon the altar of the
  goddess on the acropolis. But Hagnon amended this
  clause of the bill with the motion that the case
  be tried before fifteen hundred jurors in the
  ordinary way, whether one wanted to call it a
  prosecution for embezzlement and bribery, or
  malversation.

10
Bad Press on the Sophists

• Platos Republic, Protagoras, and Gorgias
• Aristophanes Clouds (first production in 423 BCE)

11
Aristophanes, BirdsGreat Dionysia 414 BCE

• And yet, only yesterday, before your
  dispensation in the skies became a fact, the
  Spartan craze had swept the faddish world. Why,
  men went mad with mimicry of Socrates, affected
  long hair, indifferent food, rustic walking
  sticks, total bathlessness, and led, in short,
  what I can only call a Spartan existence.Lines
  1280-1285, trans. W. Arrowsmith

12
Aristophanes, CloudsGreat Dionysia 423 BCE

• SOCRATES You see, only by being suspended
  aloft, by dangling my mind in the heavens and
  mingling my rare thought with the ethereal air,
  could I ever achieve strict scientific accuracy
  in my survey of the vast empyrean. Had I pursued
  my inquiries from down there on the ground, my
  data would be worthless. The earth, you see,
  pulls down the delicate essence of thought to its
  own gross level.
• W. Arrowsmith,pg. 25

13
Was Socrates A Sophist?
14
Oracle at Delphi

• Socrates proclaimed the wisest man. Socrates
  questions are in the service of Apollo he is
  testing this statement, because he cannot believe
  it to be true. He finds it to be true insofar as
  the rest know nothing but think they know
  something, whereas Socrates knows nothing but
  also knows that he knows nothing.

15
Anti-Democratic Socratic Ideas?
16
Socrates in Platos Republic

• Horse Analogy Horses are benefited by one or by
  a few (horse trainers), not by everyone

17
Compare Socrates in Platos Crito

• Body Athlete Analogy the trainer-expert
  benefits the body the common man corrupts the
  body
• Soul Philosophers benefit the soul common men
  corrupt the soul

18
Plato on Democracy(Dion of Syracuse)

• Dion intended to put a curb upon unrestrained
  democracy, which he did not regard as a
  constitution at all, but rather as a kind of
  supermarket of constitutionsto use Platos
  phraseand to introduce a blend of democracy and
  monarchy on the Spartan and Cretan model.
  Plutarch, Dion, 53

19
Selected Passages from Platos Republic
20
Then it follows, Polemarchus, that it is just
for the many, who are mistaken in their judgment,
to harm their friends, who are bad, and benefit
their enemies, who are good. (334d-e)
21
That certainly wouldnt be surprising, for, even
as you were speaking it occurred to me that, in
the first place, we arent all born alike, but
each of us differs somewhat in nature from the
others, one being suited to one task, another to
another. (370b)
22
Then, a whole city established according to
nature would be wise because of the smallest
class and part in it, namely, the governing or
ruling one. And to this class, which seems to be
by nature the smallest, belongs a share of
knowledge that alone among all the other kinds of
knowledge is to be called wisdom. (428e-429a)
23
Now the members of this small group the
philosophers have tasted how sweet and blessed a
possession philosophy is, and at the same time
theyve also seen the madness of the majority and
realized, in a word, that hardly anyone acts
sanely in public affairs and that there is no
ally with whom they might go to the aid of
justice and survive, that instead theyd perish
before they could profit either their city or
their friends and be useless both to themselves
and to others, just like a man who has fallen
among wild animals and is neither willing to join
them in doing injustice nor sufficiently strong
to oppose the general savagery alone. (496c-d)
24
Socrates Disciples

• Alcibiades
• Critias