What is socrates accused of

Share Flipboard Email. Table of Contents Expand. Aristophanes —ca BCE. Plato — BCE. Xenophon — BCE. Corrupting the Youth of Athens. Ancient History and Latin Expert. Gill is a Latinist, writer, and teacher of ancient history and Latin. Updated September 17, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Gill, N. What Was the Charge Against Socrates? Aristophanes, the Ancient Greek Comedy Writer. Most Important Figures in Ancient History.

Plato and Aristotle on Women: Selected Quotes. Even after democracy was restored, he continued to ridicule such centerpieces of Athenian democracy as the selection of leaders by majority vote. Plato's Meno offers some possible clues as to the animosity between Anytus and Socrates. In the Meno , Plato reports that Socrates's argument that the great statesmen of Athenian history have nothing to offer in terms of an understanding of virtue enrages Anytus.

Plato quotes Anytus as warning Socrates: "Socrates, I think that you are too ready to speak evil of men: and, if you will take my advice, I would recommend you to be careful. Socrates had a relationship with the son of Anytus. Plato quotes Socrates as saying, "I has a brief association with the son of Anytus, and I found him not lacking in spirit.

Anytus almost certainly disapproved of his son's relationship with Socrates. Adding to Anytus's displeasure must have been the advice Socrates gave to his son. According to Xenophon, Socrates urged his son not to "continue in the servile occupation [tanning hides] that his father has provided for him. Lycon, the Third Accuser. These older accusers levy two principal accusations against Socrates: first, that he does not believe in the gods, but rather teaches purely physical explanations for heavenly and earthly phenomena; and second, that he teaches how to make a weaker argument overcome a stronger argument by means of clever rhetoric.

Socrates complains that he is not even certain who these older accusers are, though he makes a passing allusion to Aristophanes the comic playwright who parodied Socrates in The Clouds.

As a result, he cannot cross-examine these accusers, and he must acknowledge that the prejudices they have lodged against him go very deep. All he can do is answer their accusations as best as he can. Socrates first addresses himself to the accusation that he "inquires into things below the earth and in the sky" 19b --that is, that he tries to provide physical explanations for matters that are normally considered to be the workings of the gods.

He refers here to Aristophanes' play, where Socrates is portrayed as floating about in the air and uttering all sorts of nonsense about divine matters. Socrates responds that he does not pretend to have any knowledge of these things, nor is he interested in them. He has no complaints against people who do claim to be experts in these affairs, but he is not one of them.

He asks the jury to consider whether any of them has ever heard him speak about any of these subjects. In it, he questions traditional arguments that Socrates was purely the victim of political in-fighting.

The corruption charge is seen as particularly important. Athens in BC had been hit by successive disasters — plague, internal political strife and a major military defeat by Sparta aided by Persian money.

According to Professor Cartledge, however, Socrates was not just the unfortunate victim of a vicious political vendetta, but a scapegoat used for an altogether more spiritual bout of self-purging within a culture very different in kind from our own.

Ancient Greeks were, after all, instinctively religious people, who believed that their cities were protected by gods who needed to be appeased. To many, it must have seemed as if these gods were far from happy after the years of disaster leading up to BC. Athenians probably genuinely felt that undesirables in their midst had offended Zeus and his fellow deities. Socrates, an unconventional thinker who questioned the legitimacy and authority of many of the accepted gods, fitted that bill.

And crucially, Professor Cartledge argues that these charges were entirely acceptable in a democracy of the Athenian type. If the prosecution could prove that a defendant was responsible for jeopardising the public good, he was likely to be found guilty.