Socrates is condemned

The story

The man who asked questions

Socrates was born in Athens in 470 or 469 BC. His father, Sophroniscus, was perhaps a sculptor, but this is not certain; his mother, Phaenarete, was a midwife. He married Xanthippe and had three sons. As a young man he served as a hoplite, the foot soldier with shield and spear: he took part in three campaigns of the Peloponnesian War, at Potidaea, Delium and Amphipolis. It is said that in war he stood out for courage and endurance.

He was not a teacher like the others. He did not give lessons for money and did not write books. He spent his days in the agora, the square of Athens, stopping all kinds of people, politicians, craftsmen, young men, and asking questions: what is justice? what is courage? what is virtue? When someone answered, Socrates asked another question, then another, until the other person realised he did not really know what he thought he knew.

Knowing that you do not know

Why did he behave like this? The most famous story comes from Plato. A friend of Socrates, Chaerephon, went to the sanctuary of Delphi and asked the oracle of Apollo, the Pythia, who was the wisest man in Athens. The answer was: Socrates. He was surprised, because he said he knew nothing. So he began to question the Athenians who passed for wise, to understand what the oracle meant. He concluded that the others thought they knew and did not, while he at least knew that he did not know. He was wise only in this.

The method he used is called “maieutics”, which means “the art of the midwife”, like his mother. As a midwife helps babies to be born, Socrates wanted to help people bring out the ideas they already had inside, by reasoning with their own heads. That is why he used short, simple questions, in contrast with the long speeches of the sophists, the teachers of rhetoric who taught how to persuade. He often used irony, that is, he pretended not to know in order to make people think.

An awkward citizen

What Socrates did did not please everyone. Showing before young people that the powerful did not know what they claimed to know could be very irritating. Moreover, some of his followers had played an ugly part in the history of Athens. Critias had been the head of the Thirty Tyrants, the oligarchic regime imposed by Sparta after the war, while Alcibiades had betrayed Athens by going over to Sparta. When democracy returned to power, many looked with suspicion on the man who had been the teacher of those men.

The trial

In 399 BC Socrates was accused before the people's court. The official charge was not recognising the gods of the city and corrupting the young. The formal accuser was a certain Meletus, but behind him stood Anytus and Lycon, figures of the democratic regime. The jury probably consisted of 501 citizens. Socrates defended himself with a speech that Plato has handed down to us, the “Apology of Socrates”. He did not ask for mercy and did not change his way of speaking.

He was declared guilty, but narrowly: according to Plato thirty more votes would have been enough to acquit him (a count of 280 against 221 has been reconstructed). At that point the penalty had to be decided: the prosecution asked for death; according to custom, the accused could also propose an alternative. Socrates proposed to be kept at the city's expense in the Prytaneion, then to pay a fine of one mina and finally, at his friends' insistence, of thirty minas. The judges did not accept: with about 360 votes against 140 (traditional figures) they chose the death penalty, which was carried out with a drink of hemlock, a poison.

The last days

His friends organised a plan to get him out of prison. Socrates refused. In the dialogue “Crito” Plato tells his reasons: he had lived all his life under the laws of Athens and did not want to break them now, even though he thought the sentence unjust. In the “Phaedo” Plato describes the last moments, with the disciples around him talking about the soul.

How we know about him

Since Socrates wrote nothing, the Socrates we know is the one described by his pupils. Plato devoted almost all his dialogues to him. Xenophon wrote about him in a different way, and the comic playwright Aristophanes put him on stage in the comedy “The Clouds”, as a strange teacher with his head in the clouds. The three images do not match, and it is hard to separate the real man from the character. What remains clear is his method: asking questions, checking the answers, not settling for common opinions.