43 pages • 1 hour read
PlatoA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Although Socrates was formally charged with impiety and corrupting the youth, the historical context surrounding his trial suggests that these are proxy crimes for more serious offenses. Between 431 and 404 BCE, Athens fought the costly Peloponnesian War against neighboring Sparta. Upon Sparta’s victory in 404 BCE, Spartan admiral Lysander installed a puppet government of Spartan sympathizers to lead Athens. These oligarchs came to be known as the Thirty Tyrants due to their brutal tactics, which included massacring 5% of the Athenian population, exiling countless others, and unlawfully seizing property.
Most ardent supporters of the old Athenian democracy—that is, those who weren’t executed or forced into exile—opted to exile themselves as they plotted to retake their government. Socrates, however, chose to remain in Athens during the Tyrants’ eight-month reign of terror, causing many to label him complicit in the oligarchy’s atrocities. In part, this is why Socrates is quick to point out that he explicitly refused the Tyrants’ orders to retrieve General Leon of Salamis for an unjust execution, an act that could have gotten him killed. Nevertheless, many still held Socrates responsible for the bloodshed caused by the Tyrants, in large part because one of the group’s leaders, Critias, was a student of Socrates’s.
In 403 NCE, after the Tyrants were deposed and supporters of democracy regained control of Athens, a reconciliation agreement was struck preventing citizens like Socrates from being charged for political crimes carried out before or during the Tyrants’ reign. This lends support to the argument that the charges leveled at Socrates were merely an excuse for his accusers to put him on trial for crimes for which he had immunity. Further supporting this is the fact that Lycon, one of the three accusers, believed Socrates was complicit in the death of his son Autolycus at the hands of the Tyrants.
Few texts demand greater consideration of authorial context than Plato’s Socratic dialogues. Because Socrates left behind no writings of his own, everything scholars and historians know about the man is conveyed through secondhand sources, the most famous of which were written by Plato. Plato clearly had great respect for his mentor, having devoted much of his writing to conveying Socrates’s ideas and techniques. Yet readers must be careful not to conflate the historical figure of Socrates with the fictional character who appears in Plato’s work. Particularly in his later writings, Plato tended to convey his own original ideas through Socrates’s voice, borrowing on his mentor’s growing legacy—which Plato himself helped burnish—to give credence to his views.
Yet according to classicist and translator G.M.A. Grube, there are compelling reasons to believe that Plato’s depiction of Socrates in Apology is one of the more faithful portraits of the man. In his preface to his translation of Apology, Grube argues that the historical record suggests Plato wrote Apology not long after the trial concluded. And given that the trial was a matter of great public discussion for Socrates’s supporters and detractors alike, Plato had little to gain by misrepresenting his mentor’s testimony. Grube writes, “Some liberties could no doubt be allowed, but the main arguments and the general tone of the defense must surely be faithful to the original” (21).
By Plato