Socrates: A Man for Our Times (13 page)

Though he financed the case, Anytus left its public presentation largely to a youngish man called Meletus. He was a religious fanatic, fond of using the crime of “impiety” as a stick to beat public figures he felt were lacking in right-thinking religious zeal. He had been involved in the prosecution of Andocides, an associate of Alcibiades in the Eleusinian Mysteries affair. His speech on this occasion has survived and would do credit to a Southern Baptist fundamentalist from Arkansas. A third party was joined to this private prosecution, a man called Lycon, about whom we know nothing except Socrates’ assertion he was a “professional orator.” In sum, the trio who took it upon themselves to accuse Socrates were an unimpressive collection of near nonentities. The charge, as given by Diogenes Laertius, who may have transcribed the court document still preserved in the second century A.D., was as follows:

Meletus, son of Meletus, of the deme of Pitthus, indicts Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, of the deme Alopecae, on his oath, as follows. Socrates is guilty, first, of not worshipping the gods whom the state worships, but introducing new and unfamiliar religious practices; and, second, of corrupting the young. The prosecutor demands the death penalty.

This prosecution, though we may judge it outrageous, should not be deemed unusual in fifth-century-B.C. Athens. Very few prominent citizens who achieved a high profile in war or politics or business escaped an entanglement with the law. Many of them paid with their lives. Here are some of the famous or infamous who were brought to book, in one way or another, and my list is far from complete.

Cleisthenes, usually regarded as the creator of Athenian democracy, was prosecuted and exiled by his rival, Isagoras. He made a comeback, but his last years are a blank, presumably because he was thrown out again. Cimon, an immensely successful Athenian statesman and general as well as a promoter of public works, was prosecuted for bribery but acquitted. Two years later he was successfully ostracized, and after four years in exile, he had to beg to be allowed back in his native city. Pericles was prosecuted and tried for embezzlement and fraud. Aristes, the founder of the highly successful Delian League, was banished in 483 B.C. Themistocles, another highly successful Athenian statesman, was ostracized and exiled in 471. More ostraca bear his name than that of any other (presumably) unpopular Athenian. But he in turn successfully used the law against Hipparchus, Megacles, Xanthippus, and Aristides. Of Pericles’ circle, the artist-architect Phidias was accused of impiety and of stealing ivory in decorating the Parthenon. He died in prison. Anaxagoras was also accused of impiety and took refuge in Lampedusa. Protagoras was twice in trouble with politically inspired prosecution. Aspasia, too, was prosecuted, but acquitted. The dramatist and poet Sophocles was prosecuted, also for impiety. So was Euripides. Pericles’ son by Aspasia, also called Pericles, was put to death after the battle of Arginusae in 406 B.C. Among other prominent Athenians who met violent ends was the statesman Ephialtes, murdered in 461 B.C.; the demagogue Cleon, killed at Amphipolis; Critias, who was twice exiled and died fighting; Alcibiades, who was assassinated; and Nicias, though in his case his execution was ordered by Athens’s Syra-cusan enemies. Persecution of the learned was by no means confined to Athens. Pythagoras was obliged to flee for his life from Samos to Croton, and later had to retire to Metapontum. Nor did it cease with the fifth century B.C. Aristotle had a charge of impiety brought against him and went into voluntary exile, “not wishing that Athens should commit a second crime against philosophy.”

The first crime, of course, was the trial, conviction, and death of Socrates. We have a full account, not of the whole trial, alas, but of his defense, of what happened afterward, and of his death, and for once we can trust our sources.

The trial and death of Socrates constitute one of the great moral events of antiquity, indeed of history, and although in some ways they are recorded with an amplitude unusual for ancient times, nevertheless our information is profoundly unsatisfying. It is a thousand pities that Thucydides was not still alive to give us a thoughtful, continuous, accurate, and penetrating account of the event. Instead, we have four books of Plato, written with his customary artistry—indeed, in his description of Socrates’ last hours, with surpassing genius—but with his usual combination of truth and transference (of his thoughts to Socrates) and his irritating
déformation professionelle
, the tendency to put ideas before persons. What is lacking is any general description of the trial and what Plato thought of it.

The first book is a dialogue,
Euthyphro
, set before the trial, in which Socrates, suddenly becoming aware that he is shortly to be tried for impiety, realizes that he is not quite sure what impiety is, or piety for that matter, and seeks definitions. As usual, he is frustrated by his own methods of examination, and all he shows is the muddle and confusion that arise when humans, anxious to appease or gratify the gods by offering sacrifices, are unable to explain the practical value of these pious actions or why the gods should want them. Socrates was by instinct and reason a monotheist and could perfectly well have argued that a human soul does indeed please an omnipotent god by offering him a pure and virtuous life on earth, and that this is the only form of sacrifice (which involves dispensing with carnal pleasures and all forms of self-indulgence) that matters. But to argue on this line would merely give hostages to his legal opponents, so he does not take it.

There follows the
Apology
, a supposedly verbatim recollection of Socrates’ defense at his trial. Plato was present, so we must presume that the speech is, in general, accurately given. It also includes Socrates’ remarks after he was convicted by a small majority and his response to the sentence of death by putting forward, as was his legal right, an alternative punishment. Third comes a dialogue, in jail, with one of his closest friends, Crito, who is anxious to provide funds so that Socrates can escape the death sentence and live in exile for a time. It gives Socrates reasons for declining the offer and his determination to uphold the dignity and sovereignty of Athenian law by submitting to it. Finally there is a description of Socrates’ last hours, which includes an argument about the immortality of the soul and the nature of death. This is followed by his taking the penitential poison and his passing into the next world. Plato was not present but knew those who were, and his account has the ring, indeed the muffled thunder, of truth.

The absence of an account by Thucydides, that matchless analyst of motivation and historical settings, means that some aspects of Socrates’ end will forever remain enigmatic. The trial took place in the late spring or early summer of 399 B.C., when Athens was still shaken by the cruel and bloody events during the tyranny of the Thirty, the Quisling government made possible by the Spartan victory and occupation. The 1,500 prominent citizens killed under this ferocious regime formed a significant percentage of the entire male citizenry of Athens and a much higher proportion of those actively involved in public life. Although by the time of the trial the democracy and the rule of law had been restored for three years, the courts were still clogged with litigation arising out of the drastic events under the Thirty, including property confiscations, and the loss and restoration of citizenship rights. It is amazing that, in the circumstances, such a prosecution, which many must have seen as frivolous, was allowed to proceed. Unfortunately there was no attorney general in the Athenian democracy. In England and the United States, this official, the chieflaw officer of the state, has the right to veto a legal process he judges contrary to the public interest. Likewise, in an Athenian court, there was no presiding judge who after hearing the prosecution case, can, in England and America, throw out the case as unjustified, frivolous, or incoherent. Any investigation of the Socrates case is bound to reveal the Athenian legal system as profoundly flawed.

That may well have been Socrates’ view too. But his position throughout was that, as an Athenian citizen, he was fully subject to the laws and bound to abide by them. On many occasions he said, “I am grateful to God for making me a man, as opposed to a woman, a Greek as opposed to a barbarian, and an Athenian as opposed to a foreigner.” His love of Athens was boundless, and the value he attached to the privilege of being free to walk its streets and talk and argue with its people was the spring of his life and all its motions. He could not be without it, and therefore never considered exile. Athens to Socrates was life.

Socrates, then, accepted his trial as a perfectly valid expression of Athenian law and democracy. Many expected him to disappear before it could take place, and go abroad. But that to him was unthinkable. He did not make any preparations. He consulted nobody learned in the law and engaged no one to speak for him. His old rhetorical mentor, Diotima, was dead. Aspasia, that other friend and expert on persuasive rhetoric, may still have been alive, if elderly, but there is no evidence she was still part of Socrates’ life. He took no counsel that we know of. We have to accept that Socrates was a curious mixture of genuine humility and obstinate pride. He never made claims for himself as to knowledge or virtue. On the other hand, believing in justice as he did, he would not be unjust to himself. He believed he had a mission from God to examine and improve people. No power on earth, no threat to take away his freedom or his life, would deflect him from pursuing that God-ordained purpose.

The circumstances of his trial were unfavorable to him. He had to speak, in the open, to a jury of 500 members, enlarged by a crowd of onlookers composed of his friends and the merely curious, those with nothing better to do. One of the most difficult things we have to do, in the early twenty-first century, is to transport ourselves back 2,500 years, to a city of not many more than 150,000 people, with huge cultural and political pretensions but in many ways with the narrow outlook of a medium-size provincial town. Most Athenians knew one another, at least by sight. That knowledge was flavored by gossip, rumor, superstition, and prejudice. Most people in Athens had heard of Socrates, and many had seen him pottering about. He was thought to be “clever.” Now as Socrates himself remarked on more than one occasion, Athenians did not like people merely because they were clever. It was a term, if not exactly of abuse, at least of suspicion. So Socrates was clever, was he? Then why does he wander about, with no shoes, almost in rags? Something wrong there, eh?

In physical terms, we have to try to imagine Socrates addressing a town meeting in the Midwest in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The issue was capital, in that the man’s life was theoretically at stake, but probably nothing would come of it. In other respects, it was a routine affair, nothing special. Socrates was used to talking, but always to small gatherings. He did not have a seasoned orator’s powerful voice. I have spoken to gatherings of five hundred or more in various parts of the world and had no problems. But then I have always had amplification. Socrates had nothing but his voice. He was not speaking, either, in the theater at Epidaurus, with its superb acoustics, but merely in an uncomfortable open space in a dusty corner of the Acropolis.

His audience would have been roughly of three parts. One third knew him, had actually met and talked to him, knew the kind of things he said—and what he did not say—and felt there was no harm in him. They would have voted to acquit him without much regard for the procedures in court. Another third of the jury also knew him or of him, but at one remove. They had seen or knew of Aristophanes’ play about him,
Clouds
, first performed twenty-five years before, but probably revived from time to time. Its hostility and lies created lasting prejudice against Socrates as a nuisance and troublemaker. Very clever: oh yes, very clever indeed. There had been other theatrical attacks on him, including an entire comic play, whose text has disappeared. Such mud sticks, and plenty of mud had been thrown in Socrates’ direction over many years. A third portion of the jury, in any likelihood, had no views at all about Socrates. But they probably disliked him, as being “clever,” or reputedly so. And why was he of such importance as to occupy the attention of the court, when there was so much more of genuine importance to be dealt with? These people would not have listened hard, and in any case it was clearly not too easy to hear everything that he said: He complained several times of interruptions.

Nor was the substance of Socrates’ defense calculated to win over either those prejudiced against him or to attract the indifferent. His strongest argumentative virtue, a sinuous and sinewy subtlety, could not work with a mass audience. His habitual flavor of irony was a positive handicap. His best strategy, and one that a professional advocate would certainly have recommended, was to bring forward a succession of witnesses of impeccable character to testify, first, to his observance of the outward forms of Athenian religion and, second, to his having instructed them in ways that had led to their strong affection for virtuous civic principles. This would not have been difficult to do. But Socrates would not do it. It was against his principles in that it gave a misleading view of what he had been trying to do in his life for the best part of half a century. He was not in the least interested in the outward observance of religion, but in its inner content. Nor did he instruct young men—or old ones, either—in civic virtue or in anything else. His object was to help, not teach, by his examining method—teach people to think for themselves.

Socrates’ attempt to explain to his dull Athenian mass jury what he was trying to do was dangerous in two ways. First, it involved telling them about his inner voice from God, which ordained him to conduct philosophy as he understood it. This in itself was sufficient proof he was not an atheist as such. His cross-examination of Meletus elicited that the young fanatic did indeed accuse him of atheism, and to that extent the first part of the indictment was refuted. But the jurors were probably not much interested by this point. What did impress them, and far from favorably, was Socrates’ claim to be guided by a special divine command. Ordinary people who have had no such experience do not like to hear about those who claim to have a private line to the divinity. They scent presumption and arrogance. They feel that such persons are liable to make public nuisances of themselves, especially if, as Socrates appeared to be saying in his defense, this special divine voice gave him commands that took precedence over any others, including, presumably, the standing orders of the civic deities. Here, indeed, Socrates appeared to be confirming the indictment, that he had substituted new gods, or god, one specially devoted to him, for the traditional gods of Athens.