Trial of Socrates
The death sentence of Socrates was the legal consequence of asking politico-philosophic questions of his students, which resulted in the two accusations of moral corruption and impiety.
In the comic play, The Clouds (423 BC), Aristophanes represents Socrates as a sophistic philosopher who teaches the young man Pheidippides how to formulate arguments that justify striking and beating his father.
As philosophers, the Sophists were men of ambiguous reputation, "they were a set of charlatans that appeared in Greece in the fifth century BC, and earned ample livelihood by imposing on public credulity: professing to teach virtue, they really taught the art of fallacious discourse, and meanwhile propagated immoral practical doctrines.
Such representations of inter-generational social conflict among the men of Athens, especially in the decade from 425 to 415 BC, can reflect contrasting positions regarding opposition to or support for the Athenian invasion of Sicily.
[3] Many Athenians blamed the teachings of the Sophists and of Socrates for instilling the younger generation with a morally nihilistic, disrespectful attitude towards their society.
Alcibiades admitted this created an inner conflict, as Socrates' teachings inspired a shift in thinking toward focusing on one's inner character over their outward success.
Finally driven out of Athens after the defeat of the Battle of Notium against Sparta, Alcibiades was assassinated in Phrygia in 400 BC by his Spartan enemies.
Critias, who appears in two of Plato's Socratic dialogues, was a leader of the Thirty Tyrants (the ruthless oligarchic regime that ruled Athens, as puppets of Sparta and backed by Spartan troops, for eight months in 404–403 BC until they were overthrown).
The totalitarian Thirty Tyrants had anointed themselves as the elite, and in the minds of his Athenian accusers, Socrates was guilty because he was suspected of introducing oligarchic ideas to them.
In presenting such a prosecution, which addressed matters external to the specific charges of moral corruption and impiety levelled by the Athenian polis against Socrates, Anytus violated the political amnesty specified in the agreement of reconciliation (403–402 BC),[20] which granted pardon to a man for political and religious actions taken before or during the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, "under which all further charges and official recriminations concerning the [reign of] terror were forbidden".
The formal accusation was the second element of the trial of Socrates, which the accuser, Meletus, swore to be true, before the archon (a state officer with mostly religious duties) who considered the evidence and determined that there was an actionable case of "moral corruption of Athenian youth" and "impiety", for which the philosopher must legally answer; the archon summoned Socrates for a trial by jury.
Expressing surprise at the few votes required for an acquittal, Socrates joked that he be punished with free meals at the Prytaneum (the city's sacred hearth), an honour usually held for a benefactor of Athens, and the victorious athletes of an Olympiad.
After that failed suggestion, Socrates then offered to pay a fine of 100 drachmae – one-fifth of his property – which largesse testified to his integrity and poverty as a philosopher.
Therefore, faithful to his teaching of civic obedience to the law, the 70-year-old Socrates executed his death sentence and drank the hemlock, as condemned at trial.
At the request of Lysander, a Spartan admiral, the Thirty men, led by Critias and Theramenes, were to administer Athens and revise the city's democratic laws, which were inscribed on a wall of the Stoa Basileios.
As a result, he is remembered today, not only for his sharp wit and high ethical standards, but also for his loyalty to the view that, in a democracy, the best way for a man to serve himself, his friends, and his city – even during times of war – is by being loyal to, and by speaking publicly about the truth.
[34] Gatton asserts that the impiety charge against Socrates stemmed from his searing critique of Athens’ most hallowed religious ritual—the Mysteries of Eleusis.
