An Athenian jury of 500 citizens convicted Socrates of impiety and corrupting the young, following a trial prompted by political anxieties in post-war Athens. Plato's account in the 'Apology' depicts Socrates defending his relentless philosophical questioning as a service to the city rather than a crime, and the trial's outcome ultimately led to his execution by hemlock, a defining moment in the history of philosophy.
Athens in 399 BC was a city still reeling from its defeat in the Peloponnesian War and the brief, bloody rule of the Thirty Tyrants, some of whom had been associated with Socrates's circle. Against this backdrop, Socrates's habit of questioning received wisdom and Athenian democracy itself made him a convenient target for prosecution.
The jury convicted him by a relatively narrow margin, but when asked to propose his own penalty as custom allowed, Socrates's defiant suggestion — that he deserved a reward, not punishment — so angered the jury that they sentenced him to death by a wider margin than the initial guilty verdict.
Socrates's calm acceptance of the sentence, as dramatized in Plato's dialogues, transformed him from a controversial gadfly into philosophy's great martyr. He spent his final weeks in prison in continued conversation before drinking the poison hemlock, surrounded by grieving students, in a scene that has been retold and reimagined for over two thousand years.
Key people: Socrates, Plato