ACT EIGHT
50
Religious court of the Archon Basileus, 399 BC
He was the first person who really talked about human life; and he was also the first philosopher who was condemned to death and executed.
Diogenes Laertius,
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Socrates, V1
SO WE ARRIVE AT THAT MAY morning in 399 BC. Socrates stands in front of 500 of the few remaining Athenian citizens and is charged with disrespect for the city’s gods, with introducing new divinities and with the corruption of the young. We cannot imagine the philosopher in a religious court on that day in 399 BC without recalling the heady, dreadful history that has been played out in the streets, the theatres and the homes all around the law-court. And knowing that bloody, disrupted history, we should be shocked by the apparent coolness with which Socrates treats his own trial.2
The philosopher is insouciant, apathetic. Standing there in the packed courtroom in his shabby clothes (no flaxen linen for him, although this would have been available), woven, almost certainly, in one of the gynaikeia of the city,3 the master of words appears diffident, as if he has no taste for this particular drama, as if he perceives it all to be a sham.
His naïvety is distasteful – it seems to mask some kind of misplaced superiority. Athens has prided itself on its legal system, on its ability to bring men to justice in front of their peers. But Socrates confesses that he has had no time for such legalities. Not only that, but the Athenians also know that he has cast aspersions on the lot-selection system itself – the very apparatus that has been the envy of the known world and has kept the democracy a democracy for so long.
‘But, by god,’ the accuser said, ‘he made his companions despise the established law, saying that it was foolish to establish the rulers of the city by lot, and that no one would want to make use of a captain chosen by lot, or a builder, or a flute-player, or any other arts, any of which do far less damage when their practitioners make a mistake than do those who make a mistake about affairs of the city.’ And such arguments, the accuser said, raised up young men to look down on the established constitution, and made them violent.4
In the heads of the Greeks, this disdain was doubly offensive. They believed it was the power of the gods that had guided those white and black balls in the kleroterion to their slot. Nothing happened during this age and in this land without the gods’ say-so. Thekleroterion machine was not just an agent of random selection, but of potent kleromancy – a divine, magical process that should not be mocked.
And then, despite the fact that Socrates has spent more than sixty years in Athenian society, the philosopher, in Plato’s version of events, informs the court of a peculiar anomaly:
The fact is that this is the first time I have come before the court, even though I am seventy years old. I am therefore an utter foreigner as far as courtroom speaking goes. So now I make what I think is a fair request of you: disregard my manner of speaking. Pardon me as I speak in that manner in which I have been raised, just as you would if I really were a foreigner.5
Gallingly, this cocky philosopher doesn’t seem to take the privilege of a fair trial seriously.6 The man who is accused of poisoning democracy with words has the chance to use words in self-defence, yet he acts the dolt, the innocent. He refuses to play word-games. Socrates’ professed ignorance of typical democratic activity might have been endearing to start off with, but by this stage in his life, and with the troubled back-story of Athens, it has become intensely infuriating.7 Here were clod-footed deme-men, who for the first time in human history had been given the chance to be proactive politicians, and someone like Socrates cracks a gag about not knowing how to vote when he serves a term on the Boule, the council.8 Here were men who had lost fathers, brothers, sons in the recent civil wars when oligarch death-squads had roamed Athena’s city. Athena’s citizen-children – who since the age of three have been earning their stripes to become mechanics in the engine-room of democracy – have traipsed to court this morning to keep their democracy clean.
And Socrates seems to be laughing at them.
For certain, there was much this philosopher did that sparked real pain in the hearts of democrats. Athens liked things cut and dried, as black and white as the balls in the kleroterion machine. Actions were either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, gods were either officially introduced to the city or they were the demons of Athens’ enemies. This nebulous, knowing, exploratory, open-ended questioning that Socrates insisted on pursuing was just too troubling. It is perhaps because of this sense of discomfort, this aggravating, literally eccentric attitude, and not because of any ‘crimes’ he committed, that Athens’ antipathy towards Socrates mushroomed. Every juror here, don’t forget, has seen an empire won and lost, has crouched trembling in his mud-brick home as brother kills brother, has put all trust in this brilliant and burning new idea of ‘democracy’, and has watched as the hope of a commonly run city-state has wasted into personal ambition, blood-lust, arrogance, cynicism, tyranny. The gods are clearly enraged. Athena despises her own children. The milk-and-honey moment of the democracy has curdled. Athens has been brutalised.
Yet Socrates keeps about him an air of optimism, a sense of proportion, a moral certainty, an infuriating otherworldliness.
Meletus, Anytus and Lycon accuse Socrates of two abstract but fundamentally serious crimes:
Under oath Meletos the son of Meletos of Pitthos has brought a public action against Socrates the son of Sophroniskos of Alopeke and charged him with the following offences: Socrates is guilty of not acknowledging the gods acknowledged by the state and of introducing other new divinities. Furthermore he is guilty of corrupting the young. Penalty proposed: capital punishment.9
Perhaps we should not be surprised that a city-state that we laud for its commitment to democracy, liberty and freedom of speech chooses to punish a maverick in their midst.
The verdict of the court is not directly recorded, but Plato has given us his version of Socrates’ response:
Many things contribute to my not being angry at what’s happened – that you voted against me – and the result was not unexpected by me, but I was much more surprised by the total number of votes on each side. For I didn’t think it would be such a small majority. I thought it would be much larger. Now it seems, if only thirty votes had gone the other way, I’d have been acquitted … So the gentleman [Meletus] asks that the penalty be death. Well, what shall I propose for you as a counter-penalty? Isn’t it clear that it should be what I deserve? So, what would that be, what do I deserve to suffer or to pay for not having led an inactive life and for not caring about what most people care for – making money, managing my affairs, being a general or a political leader and any of the different offices and factions in the city? I believe that I was really too good to go down that path and survive. I didn’t go where I would have been no help at all to you or to me, but went, instead, to each one of you in private to do the greatest good. As I say, I went there, undertaking to persuade each of you not to care about your possessions before you care about how you will be the best and wisest you can be, nor to care about what the city has, before you care about the city itself, and to care about other things in just the same way. Being this sort of person, what do I deserve to suffer? Something good, Athenians!10
The Athenians disagree. In the courtroom that May day, 399 BC, the jurors of Athens find Socrates guilty as charged.