Download Some Helpful Context to Socrates` Trial and Execution

Some Helpful Context to
Socrates’ Trial and Execution
The war that brought Athens low
The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was an ancient Greek war
fought in three phases, between Athens and its empire and Sparta
and its allies. Athens committed a series of devastating mistakes
late in the conflict, in particular a failed naval expedition to Sicily that
ended in the treason of a prominent, young Generals: Alcibiades.
Alcibiades defected to the Spartan side of the conflict.
Socrates’ trial came on the heels of social crisis.
In the final years of the 5th century—that is, just a couple of years
before Socrates’ execution—Ancient Athens was facing a severe
and multi-layered social crisis. The consequences of a devastating
military defeat were compounded by crippling economic turmoil and
violent civil strife, not to mention the spread of famine and disease
throughout the city. Not only was the Athenian empire in shambles
as a consequence of losing to Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, but
a murderous and tyrannical, pro-Spartan oligarchy, known as the
Thirty Tyrants, had taken absolute rule over the city in 404. The rule
of the Thirty, while short, could not have been crueler, as they
murdered over fifteen hundred innocent Athenians and exiled
countless more.
In 414, this failed military expedition along with the treason of
Alcibiades—who was also a former student of Socrates—contributed
to Athens’ defeat. In the last years of the war, Athens’ subject states
revolted, tearing the empire apart and destroying much of Athens’
economic base, which relied on the influx of tributes from its
colonies. Facing starvation and disease, Athens surrendered to
Sparta in 404. Once the strongest city-state in Greece prior to the
war's outset, Athens had been reduced to subjugation. The city-state
never regained its former prosperity. The loss of the war, and its
associated calamities, signaled the twilight of the Athenian Golden
Age. But—worse was to come:
Times like these, times of severe social crisis, are often marked by a
period of religious fundamentalism and reactionary politics—Athens
in the early 4th century would be no different. Perceptions among
common Athenians would have included the belief that the gods,
perhaps angered by the Athenian people, had abandoned the city to
its ruin. And as we know from some of its more elaborate religious
rituals, Athens was no stranger to sacrificial logic: the misguided
belief that a few people, or even a single individual, could be held
responsible for a social crisis.
The Thirty Tyrants
In the immediate aftermath of the war, Athens fell under the rule of a
pro-Spartan oligarchic regime known as the Thirty Tyrants. The
Thirty came from a group of Aristocratic Athenians who had long
despised Athens’ democratic constitution. The Thirty—whose leader
Critias was also former “disciple” of Socrates (as well an uncle of
Plato)—were eager to implement a Spartan-like political system: that
is, a system of central and militarized authority, where a few highly
educated, elite rulers would have nearly total control over the city’s
affairs. The Thirty controlled Athens for only a little over a year, but
their rule was as brutal as it was short. In fact, their rule was so cruel
Because of his reputation as a troublemaker (if not a conspirator), in
political and religious matters, Socrates might have very well
appeared to much of post-war Athens as an “impious cancer” which
had infected the city, angered the gods, and consequently
undermined the link between Athens and the divine patrons who
protected the city.
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that even some of Athens’ former enemies helped overthrow
oligarchy in 403 and restore the Athenian democracy.
A “scapegoat”
It is not possible to understand why Socrates was charged with
impiety and corrupting the youth unless we take into account the
turbulent aftermath of the Peloponnesian war. When we take into
account the failed war, the loss of Athenian life, wealth, and empire;
when we take into account the treason of the young Alcibiades, who
was beloved by many Athenians to be the next Pericles, the next
great leader and statesmen to lead Athens to glory; when we take
into account the spread of famine and disease at the end of the war;
but above all, when we take into account the loss of Athenian glory,
we begin to see that a blight had visited Athens. That is, everyday
Athenians would have interpreted this social crisis as having
religious significance. Why had the gods forsaken the city?
Under the rule of Thirty, the Citizen Assembly was, obviously,
suspended along with other democratic institutions. In fact, the
oligarchy’s primary goal was the revision or erasure of all the
democratic laws. Only 3,000 Athenians—who were perceived as
loyal to the new government—were allowed to retain the status and
rights of citizens. Many Athenians were exiled or fled to join the
resistance movement: a prominent leader of the democratic
resistance was Anytus, who would a few years later join (and most
likely orchestrate) the prosecutions of Socrates. Over their thirteenmonth rule, the Thirty killed five percent of the total Athenian
population, employed 300 "lash-bearers" to intimidate Athenian
citizens, confiscated the property of wealthy democrats, and exiled
anyone who appeared loyal to the democracy. Socrates was among
the 3,000 citizens who was allowed to remain in the city as a rightsbearing citizen.
The relevant Greek concept here is loimos. Commonly translated
“plague,” loimos indicated a whole complex of disasters which
resulted from divine anger or divine neglect. Not only were storms
and pestilences indicative of a loimos-crisis, but also civil wars,
communal strife, and even military defeat. At the end of the 5th
century, leading up to Socrates’ trial, it is quite possible that many
“common sense” Athenians believed that they were the victims of
divine punishment, that the gods had taken sides with Sparta
against the city (this sort of thinking is not so alien even to our time:
many evangelical leaders in the US argued that the spread of
homosexuality and other sins had resulted in God’s allowing the
9/11 terrorist attacks.)
Return of the democracy and the general amnesty
The extraordinary violence of the Thirty also produced, however, an
extraordinary resistance effort (in which Anytus, as said before,
played a major role). The oligarchy was overthrown in 403 BCE, and
the democracy restored. In order to bring some healing to Athens, a
general amnesty was passed, saving many Athenians from being
charged of sedition or treason to the city—this included the group
3,000 of which Socrates was a member. Thus, if politicians believed
that Socrates was, in no small way, guilty of treason by remaining in
Athens or by being a “teacher” to the tyrant Critias, the general
amnesty would have prevented Socrates from being charged with a
political crime. Some scholars argue that the charge of impiety was
simply a religious cover for what were, at bottom, political
animosities.
Some scholars argue that Socrates functioned as a scapegoat—a
single individual who could be identified as the source of a loimoscrisis. Exiling or putting to death the scapegoat—according to the
sacrificial logic of the time—would purify the city from his “pollution”
and hopefully reestablish the city’s harmony with the gods. If we take
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this approach to the trial, we can interpret Socrates’ execution as
having to do not only with “crime and punishment” but also
“communal crisis and communal redemption.” Socrates was perhaps
the clearest target for this “sacrificial thinking”; after all, he was
“teacher,” or at least associate, of both Critias and Alcibiades.
argument, before skipping town to the next city. The young
aristocrats sought out these sophists in order to improve their
rhetorical skills, so that they might make a name for themselves in
the citizen assemblies.
While the philosopher did not generally teach for money—the
philosopher and the sophist were not easily distinguished in the eyes
Athenians. This is because both the sophist and the philosopher
denied the absolute authority of nomos. And in this, the two may be
lumped together. From the perspective of most Athenians, the
sophists and the philosophers were two sides of the same coin, if
not the same side of the same coin. They were the movers of a
radical intellectual revolution that challenged the basic authority of
Athenian traditions and usurped the role of parents as meaningful
educators. Moreover, as far as Socrates is concerned, his was a
revolution that also promoted a sort of dangerous and hitherto
unseen ethical and religious individualism.
Sophistry and the “socratified youth“
This social crisis, or divine loimos, visiting Athens also had much to
do with the emergence of a cultural breakdown in the sphere of
education and traditional morality. The waning authority of Athenian
traditions, particularly its educational traditions, had signaled a
serious breakdown in the ability of one generation to transmit
cultural values to the next next. This crisis was spearheaded by an
intellectual and sophistical assault on the authority of nomos.
The Greek concept of Nomos signified the traditions, customs, and
laws—in short, the “accepted way of doing things”—that held
together Athenian life. Now, up until the middle of the 5th century
one’s parents and society generally had been seen as the proper
educators of the youth. Nomos along with one’s parents were
sources of authority regarding religious and political matters.
Now, whatever else it might mean to say that Socrates trained
individuals to “think for themselves,” the primary implication is that
Socrates taught others to place the autonomy of individual reflection
above the established authority of “King Nomos.” It seems Socrates
made no secret of this either. So, just imagine the Athenian
perspective when the Socratic ethos of individual reflection and nonconformism begins to take root among the wealthy aristocrats of the
city—members of an upper class who were inherently feared by the
larger public in times of social instability. (In Athens, there would
have always been, on some level, an unconscious mistrust that
powerful aristocrats would attempt an oligarchic coup and overthrow
the democracy.) Unfortunately some of Socrates’ young associates
will become the worst traitors and tyrants Athens will ever know.
The young followers of Socrates were labeled the “socratified youth”
by the playwright Aristophanes.
But gradually (and peaking around the year 420) professional
teachers began to encroach on this site of authority—generating
something of a felt crisis for the social institution of traditional,
parental education. It is no surprise that in both Plato’s and
Xenophon’s account of Socrates’ defense speech, Meletus places a
great deal of significance on parental education, and he likely
targeted Socrates as a sophistical agitator during his prosecution
speech. Sophists were paid teachers who began flooding Athens in
the middle of the 5th century. They were widely distrusted and seen
as deceptive. Sophists would travel around Greece, making good
money by training young aristocrats on the art of rhetoric and
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Impiety and sources of impiety (sources of pollution) offended, even
harmed, the gods such that they were not likely to participate in the
religious economy—which, again, was about making ritual sacrifices
in the right way in order to entreat divine rewards and avoid divine
punishments.
Greek religion
Greek piety, or religious duty, consisted in a sort apotropaic (“black
magic or white magic”) economy. That is, there was something of an
economic “bartering” mechanism that governed the relations
between gods and mortals. Being skilled in this economy was a
matter of knowing how to entreat divine rewards and how to avoid
divine scorn. More often than not, this is the general conception
(even if it’s a tad reductionist) of Athenian religion as such. This
economy between mortals and gods consisted of the offerings of
private and public sacrifices in exchange for divine favor.
Vindictive gods
As far as Athenian religious traditions go, the gods would not only
meddle in human affairs (often violently) but they were also, like the
city-states of which they were patrons, in constant turmoil with one
another, feuding among themselves and often going to war. And
offended gods would repay that offense by bringing famine or
military disaster upon the impious community. The gods were
exemplars of vindictiveness.
Broadly speaking, Athenian religious customs were not so much
about the production of theological dogma, but more about the
production of attitudes of reverence, in other words: piety. As the
Platonic character Euthyphro says of piety: “it’s the kind of care that
slaves take of their masters”.
One of Socrates’ major philosophical principles was that it is always
wrong to return a wrong for a wrong. Yet, this principle of retaliation,
the principle of exchanging one wrong for another, was in many
ways at the basis of Greek religion; it was a core political and
religious value. Socrates believed that within the existing framework
of Athenian religious and political traditions, it was impossible for a
rational—that is, non myth-based—conception of justice to flourish.
In his probing the sources of religious and political authority in
Athens, Socrates exposes the impossibility of mythos to account for
the logos (organizing principle) of piety, or justice, or the good, or the
beautiful. The myths and stories often held contradictory lessons.
That is, the gods and the heroes (upon which Greek education was
based) contained contradictory lessons concerning “what was good,”
“what was pious,” “what was just.” In exposing the baselessness at
the core of Athenian values, Socrates exposes a veritable abyss at
the heart of Athenian life. And though the philosopher did not yet
possess logos concerning these matters, he was inviting Athenians
to be courageous, to be awake, and to join hands with him, as they
The “pious” Athenian always takes care not to insult or bring harm to
the gods—because the pious Athenian knows, as Euthyphro says,
what the god loves and what the god hates. But the primary
religious concern here is not about maintaining piety for the sake of
simply honoring the the god, but for the sake maintaining the
bartering game between the two:
This is important because “impiety” was often understood as
activities that exposed the gods to harm, to insult, “to pollution.”
Miasma (or pollution) was a Greek religious concept that implied
religious defilement; it was a metaphysical stain that was incurred
either by doing something “impious” or coming into contact with a
person who was already polluted.
Impiety—and its stain of
“miasma”—jeopardized the economy between gods and mortals,
which established the very link between the polis and the divine.
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confronted that abyss together. Socrates had faith—which he based
in a divine calling—that if Athenians persisted in philosophy, a logos
would be forthcoming. And even if not, this persistence was an ethic
in itself, a new value that should be substituted for the toxic Athenian
traditions which, themselves, were ruining and corrupting Athenians.
If there were to be any moral progress in Athens, then the traditions
must be abandoned.
cause of evil to anyone, man or god. To heirs of the
Hebraic and Christian traditions this will hardly seem
a bold conclusion. For those bred on Greek beliefs
about the gods it would be shattering.
It would obliterate that whole range of divine activity
which torments and destroys the innocent no less
than the guilty. What would be left of Hera and of
other Olympians if they were required to observe the
stringent norms of Socratic virtue that require every
moral agent, human or divine, to act only to cause
good to others, never evil, regardless of provocation.
Socratic gods
In demonstrating the impossibility of mythos to account for logos,
Socrates, re-evaluates the values of Athenian life and culture. Part
of this re-evaluation include Socrates’ unorthodox interpretation of
the Greek gods.
And more:
Socrates rejects the traditional stories told about the gods. As
Socrates sees matters, if there were gods—and all the evidence
points to the fact Socrates believed there were—then they were,
above all else, rational and moral beings, subjected to the same
ethical standards to which humans are subjected. In the Apology,
Socrates argues that it would be illegitimate for the god to lie. But—
Why? In the myths, the gods lie and deceive humans all the time,
often for the most questionable of reasons (to make love to those
human beings they found beautiful). The gods mislead one another,
and often go to war for the most petty of reasons. Socrates rejected
all this.
If required to meet these austere standards, the city’s
gods would have become unrecognizable. Their
ethical transformation would be tantamount to the
destruction of the old gods, the creation of new
ones—which is precisely what Socrates takes to be
the sum and substance of the accusation at his trial.
This is, in fact, how Socrates relates to Euthyphro the
charges brought against him: “Meletus says that I am
the maker of gods, and on the ground that I create
new gods while not believing in the old gods, he has
indicted me for their sake, as he puts it.”
An important Plato scholar, Gregory Vlastos, in his article “Socratic
Piety,” goes so far as to suggest that Socrates is indeed guilty of the
charge of impiety—because of his alternative view on the divinities.
This is what Vlastos has to say:
The central Socratic principle that it is never right to return a wrong
for a wrong not only conflicts with the traditional stories told about
vengeful gods, but this principle directly contradicts the whole
function of Greek religion itself.
For Socrates, since god can only be good, never evil,
god can only cause good, and can never be the
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So, perhaps Vlastos doesn’t actually go far enough in proposing the
extent of the Socratic “obliteration.” That is, while it does obliterate
the traditional conception of the divinities, Socrates’ principle against
retributive violence implicitly undermines the very logic governing the
religious rituals (of sacrifice) that formed so much of Athenian life
and custom. City-wide application of the Socratic virtue of “never
returning a wrong for a wrong” would bring a direct halt to the
system of bartering and trading between god and mortals that
established the most basic link between the polis and its divine
protectors; this was a link that was based on an economy of
reciprocity, a bartering systems predicated on the threat of divine
scorn and the promise of divine protection and even divine rewards.
Little would have been more foreign to a Greek than the ethical, and
morally principled, Socratic gods, gods who were incapable of
retribution or any divine activity that would cause harm to human
beings.
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