by Plato
EUTHYPHRO: Another time, Socrates; right now I have an urgent engagement somewhere, and it’s time for me to go.
SOCRATES: 16(a) Look what you’re doing, my friend! You’re going off and dashing me from that great hope which I entertained; that I could learn from you what was holy and what not and quickly have done with Meletus’s prosecution by demonstrating to him that I have now become wise in religion thanks to Euthyphro, and no longer improvise and innovate in ignorance of it – and moreover that I could live a better life for the rest of my days.53
Apology – Justice and Duty (i)
Socrates Speaks at his Trial
Introduction
THE CONTENT OF THE APOLOGY
The Apology purports to give us a version of what Socrates said in court when facing a public prosecution for impiety on the grounds that he was failing to acknowledge the city’s gods, introducing new divinities, and corrupting its youth. It gives his main defence speech, his epitimesis (estimation of the correct penalty) and his final address to the jurors after condemnation to death. It covers matters which had taken place in an open Athenian court before a very large jury (traditionally said to have been 500 or 501), matters which were therefore public knowledge. This placed restrictions on the extent to which Plato could have invented any of the principal themes of the speech, and Xenophon’s rival Apology (1.1) confirms that the tone of uncompromising aloofness was actually adopted by Socrates. Consequently it has sometimes been thought that in this work we have the most faithful picture of the real Socrates that we possess.
Nobody, however, neither Plato nor one of his readers, could remember every word spoken, and we might seriously question whether Plato wanted simply to reproduce what Socrates had said. He was undoubtedly concerned to ensure that Socrates was remembered in the best possible light, and the actual speech was not conspicuous for its success. The essence of what was said had to be turned to better use. Thus debate continues as to how accurate Plato’s picture of Socrates can be. It is very different from Xenophon’s picture, and it may have been just as different from that portrayed by other Socratic writers.
Two unknowns greatly complicate this question: the date of the Apology and Plato’s ‘publication intentions’. Though we can accept that the work is early, estimates do not always put it within a decade of Socrates’ death.1 The later it was written, the fainter men’s memories and the greater the likelihood that details were manipulated to suit a changed intellectual climate. Further, if for apologetic reasons Plato wanted to circulate a written version among literate Athenians, then he would be defeating his purpose if he did not visibly present the Socrates they had known; whereas if he intended the work for private readings in intellectual circles, (i) it is unlikely that the apologetic purpose was so important, and (ii) his audience might very well have been used to seeing a different side of Socrates from that which had been visible in court and in other public places.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE APOLOGY
The Apology is unusual in so far as the speaker actually draws attention to his delivery. Socrates is concerned that the jurors should accept quietly his conversational manner (17c–18a, 27b). Less unusual is his alleged unfamiliarity with the speech of the courts – in fact the prologue has seemed to most commentators to be a parody of forensic rhetoric, using device after device that we have come to associate with court speeches.2 Professions of inexperience in speaking were commonplace, and this profession, one suspects, might be another element in the parody. It is characteristic of Plato, when making Socrates resist or criticize the methods of others, to show in passing that Socrates did in fact have as much ability to utilize them himself if he wanted to.
Some passages of the Apology do sound somewhat rhetorical, others sound typical of Socrates’ familiar manner; there is a chunk of Socratic cross-examination, some story-telling and some lecturing. The work is thus something of a literary tour de force, giving plenty of scope for Plato to demonstrate a variety of skills. Works like the Phaedrus and Menexenus show that he enjoyed imitating the manner of the orators. No translation can match the changes of style.
THE TREATMENT OF MELETUS
No reader of the Euthyphro would expect Meletus to be well treated in the Apology, but it would be difficult to have anticipated the dismissive tone which is found here. The charges against Socrates were grave, and one would have expected him to take them seriously and to look upon his accuser as a serious opponent. He would have been expected to attack the accuser directly, doing his best to return like for like. This was not Socrates’ way. Rather he sneers at his opponent, suggesting not that he is lawless or lacking in public spirit, but rather that he is deficient as a moral being. Meletus undergoes the kind of Socratic cross-examination that so many Athenians had experienced, and it is not difficult to feel that he too has been unjustly treated – not difficult to imagine oneself in a similar situation. The cross-examination provides a vivid illustration of what Socratic interrogation could be like.
At various points (24c with note on the text, 24d, 25c, 26b) there is a crude play on Meletus’s name. He is ‘refuted’ by Socrates on the basis of Socratic thought, which seems somewhat counter-intuitive (25d–26a). He is led into denying that Socrates acknowledged any god at all (when taking the question to refer to any real god), and then shown that if Socrates introduces new divinities he acknowledges either (real or imagined) gods or other beings implying the existence of (real or imagined) gods. The jury will feel not that Meletus is lying, but rather that he is not sharp enough to be able to deal with Socrates’ sophistry.
Finally, at the end of the cross-examination, Socrates declares that he doesn’t need to refute at length the actual charge brought by Meletus. He had devoted six pages (in the Stephanus edition) to defending the imaginary charges of the old accusers; he devotes only four to Meletus’s accusations. Another seven and a half pages follow in which little is said that has any direct bearing on the charges of Meletus.
Meletus, like the other two accusers, does not suffer the usual outright attack on his past and on his character, as if Socrates acknowledges that such matters ought not to be taken into consideration. But still Socrates has taken as unpleasant a line as possible, being unpleasant in an indirect manner, and he has made no attempt to see any redeeming features in what Meletus has done. It is typical that after the vote to condemn Socrates has been taken, he makes a jibe about Meletus’s not having earned one fifth of the votes himself.
DID SOCRATES REPLY TO THE CHARGES OR CONFIRM THEM?
In the second century ad Maximus Tyrius wrote a treatise entitled ‘Did Socrates do the right thing in not responding to the charges?’ Maximus’s sources are Xenophon, Aeschines and, above all, Plato. The title suggests that Socrates was acknowledged to have made no serious attempt to defend himself. There is much contemporary debate about how far this was correct, with I. F. Stone in The Trial of Socrates (Boston, 1987) taking the view that it was, and Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith in Socrates on Trial (Oxford, 1989) denying it. There is much that is left unsaid in Plato’s Apology, but we must bear in mind (with Brickhouse and Smith) the possibility that certain aspects of the defence were left to others, who spoke on his behalf. All the same, some things had to be said by Socrates if they were to be said at all, principally that he did in fact acknowledge the gods whom the city honoured, and that the oddities like his divine sign did not conflict with his basic acceptance of the religion sanctioned by the State. At no time did he state this. Frequently during his speech he makes claims relating to religion which would certainly have been at odds with Athenian views, and would have appeared to confirm that his beliefs had some other religious foundation.
By contrast the claim that he corrupted the young would seem to have been answered reasonably, except that we do not quite know what the accusers had based their claims upon. They may very well have regarded him as a considerable early influence on Charmides and Critias, both of whom participated in the discredited regime of th
e Thirty Tyrants. But they may not have openly said so, and Socrates was hardly going to mention such names. His blanket claim that he had never been the formal teacher of anybody, and could not be held responsible for any misapplication of his methods, would seem to answer any suspicions of his links with these two.
The curious thing about the Apology is that a very large part is given over to Socrates’ attempts to dispel the long-term prejudice against him, while the tactics adopted were most likely to increase that prejudice. The cross-examination of Meletus is not a good advertisement for the elenchus. The unyielding attitude to proposed illegal measures in the past might have stood in his favour but for the unyielding attitude he was now taking to a legitimate court of Athenian law. Socrates’ limited claims to wisdom might have been appreciated more had he not at the same time been suggesting a powerful ignorance among the rest of mankind. His mission in turning any conversation into a deep moral examination of the interlocutor would have looked better if he had not allowed his defence speech to change (some would say deteriorate) into a deep and critical examination of the Athenian courts themselves – and of juries in particular.
Could it not be that Socrates’ so-called divine mission was really subversive rather than corrective? What kind of an example was it to the young men of the city to be showing a respect for the authority of the courts which was less than the respect for a God which he, as an individual, believed was speaking to him? Could they not make appeals to their own private religious ideas, and exempt themselves from the authority of the democratic institutions too? Socrates’ very conduct in court could be taken as proof that his conduct in general promoted insubordination and a lack of respect for any authority. He had himself shown that he had no respect for the politicians, poets and skilled craftsmen, and one might readily guess that his followers would show no such respect either. Socrates was a problem; he did breed attitudes which were difficult for the city to handle. His exposure of ignorance had no positive results for the city’s ambitions, and might rather have been suspected of undermining people’s much-needed confidence during a critical period of reconstruction.
Socrates can be accused of convicting himself; likewise the jury can be accused of convicting an innocent man on false charges. Looked at from Socrates’ point of view, there was little he could do without surrendering his principles, and there was no reason why they should be surrendered. He thought himself called by God in a given direction, and nothing would persuade him to change. But if one did not accept the God of Socrates, only the gods of the city, then Socrates had produced no reason whatever why he should not submit to the good judgement of the court. Neither side was in any position to budge. We have the Classic situation of a Greek tragedy, where a person of high moral principle is confronted step by step with a situation from which there is no escape, often through conflict with some other person or persons whose principles are no less understandable, and may frequently – as in Sophocles’ Antigone – represent the perceived interests of the State. The tragic potential of the situation is unlikely to have been lost on Plato, a man of great dramatic capabilities.
Notes
1. See Gerard Ledger, Recounting, p. 223.
2. An important exception is now Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Socrates on Trial (Oxford, 1989), pp. 48ff.
APOLOGY
Socrates starts in rhetorical fashion, answering his opponent’s claim that he will try to mislead the jury. He promises the truth, and begs to be allowed to speak in his own conversational style, into which he now slips.
17(a) What effect my accusers have had upon you, gentlemen, I do not know, but for my own part I was almost carried away by them; their arguments were so convincing. On the other hand, scarcely a word of what they said was true. I was especially astonished at one of their many misrepresentations: the point where they told you that you must be careful not to let me deceive you, implying that I am a skilful speaker. (b)I thought that it was peculiarly brazen of them to have the nerve to tell you this, only just before events must prove them wrong, when it becomes obvious that I have not the slightest skill as a speaker – unless, of course, by a skilful speaker they mean one who speaks the truth. If that is what they mean, I would agree that I am an orator, and quite out of their class.
(c)My accusers, then, as I maintain, have said little or nothing that is true, but from me you shall hear the whole truth; not, I can assure you, gentlemen, in flowery language like theirs, decked out with fine words and phrases; no, what you will hear will be improvised thoughts in the first words that occur to me, confident as I am in the justice of my cause; and I do not want any of you to expect anything different. It would hardly be suitable, gentlemen, for a man of my age to address you in the artificial language of a student exercise. (d)One thing, however, Ido most earnestly beg and entreat of you: if you hear me defending myself in the same language which it has been my habit to use, both around the trading stalls of the market-place (where many of you have heard me) and elsewhere, do not be surprised, and do not make a fuss because of it. My situation, you see, is as follows: this is my first appearance in a court of law, at the age of seventy; and so I am a complete stranger to the language of this place. 18(a) Now if I were really from another country, you would assuredly excuse me if I spoke in the manner and dialect in which I had been brought up; and so in the present case I make this request of you, which I think is only reasonable: to disregard the manner of my speech – it doesn’t matter how it compares – and to consider and concentrate your attention upon this one question, whether my claims are just or not. That is the first duty of the juryman, and it is the pleader’s duty to speak the truth.
Ignoring the court charges for the moment, Socrates talks of the origins of his unpopularity in people’s belief (i) that he is one of those who seek physical explanation rather than divine ones for everyday phenomena (i.e. a typical Presocratic philosopher), and (ii) that he is adept at pleading the poorer case more powerfully than the better one (i.e. a typical sophist).
(b) The proper course for me, gentlemen of the jury, is to deal first with the earliest charges that have been falsely brought against me, and with my earliest accusers; and then with the later ones. I make this distinction because I have already been accused in your hearing by a great many people for a great many years, though without a word of truth; and I am more afraid of those people than I am of Anytus and his colleagues,1 although they are formidable enough. (c) But the others are still more formidable; I mean the people who took hold of so many of you when you were children2 and tried to fill your minds with untrue accusations against me, saying, ‘There is a clever man called Socrates who has theories about the heavens and has investigated everything below the earth, and can make the weaker argument defeat the stronger.’3 It is these people, gentlemen, the disseminators of these rumours, who are my dangerous accusers; because those who hear them suppose that anyone who inquires into such matters does not also believe in gods.4 Besides, there are a great many of these accusers, and they have been accusing me now for a great many years; and what is more, they approached you at the most impressionable age, when some of you were children or adolescents; and they literally won their case by default, because there was no one to defend me. (d) And the most problematic thing of all is that it is impossible for me even to know and tell you their names, unless one of them happens to be a playwright.5 All these people, who have tried to stir up convictions against me out of envy and love of slander – and some too merely passing on what they have been told by others – all these are very difficult to deal with. It is impossible to bring them here for cross-examination; one simply has to conduct one’s defence and argue one’s case against an invisible opponent, because there is no one to answer. (e) So I ask you to accept my statement that my critics fall into two classes: on the one hand my immediate accusers, and on the other those earlier ones whom I have mentioned; and you must suppose that I have first to defend myself against the latter. After all, you
heard them accusing me at an earlier date and much more vehemently than these more recent accusers.
Very well, then; I must begin my defence, gentlemen, and I must try, in the short time that I have,6 to rid your minds of a 19(a) false impression which is the work of many years. I should like this to be the result, gentlemen, assuming it to be for your advantage and my own; and I should like to be successful in my defence; but I think that it will be difficult, and I am quite aware of the nature of my task. However, let that turn out as God wills; I must obey the law and make my defence.7
Let us go back to the beginning and consider what the charge is that has made people so critical of me, and has encouraged Meletus to draw up this indictment. (b) Very well; what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers. (c)‘Socrates is committing an injustice, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example.’8 It runs something like that. You have seen it for yourselves in the play by Aristophanes, where Socrates is lifted around, proclaiming that he is walking on air, and uttering a great deal of other nonsense about things of which I know nothing whatsoever.9 (d)I mean no disrespect for such knowledge, if anyone really is versed in it – I do not want any more lawsuits brought against me by Meletus10 – but the fact is, gentlemen, that I take no interest in these things. What is more, I call upon the greater part of you as witnesses to my statement, and I appeal to all of you who have ever listened to me talking (and there are a great many to whom this applies) to reassure one another on this point. Tell one another whether any one of you has ever heard me discuss such questions briefly or at length; and then you will realize that the other popular reports about me are equally unreliable.11