Study guide
Apology
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Overview
- Author
- Plato (c. 428/427–348/347 BC), Athenian philosopher, follower of Socrates and founder of the Academy
- Written
- Probably in the 390s or 380s BC, some years after the trial; usually counted among Plato's early, 'Socratic' works
- Genre
- A courtroom speech (apologia, 'speech of defence') in Attic prose, with a short exchange of question and answer; strictly not a dialogue, though it is transmitted with the dialogues
- Occasion
- The trial of Socrates for impiety before a popular jury of about 500 Athenian citizens in spring 399 BC
- The charge
- That Socrates did not recognise the gods the city recognised, introduced other new divine beings (daimonia), and corrupted the young; the penalty proposed was death
- Structure
- Three speeches: the defence (17a–35d), the counter-proposal of a penalty after the verdict (35e–38b), and the last words to the jurors after the sentence (38c–42a)
- Main figures
- Socrates; his accusers Meletus, Anytus and Lycon; the jurors; friends in court, among them Crito, Apollodorus and Plato himself
- Companion works
- Euthyphro (before the trial), Crito (in prison) and Phaedo (the day of execution); Xenophon wrote his own Apology of Socrates and the Memorabilia
- Key ideas
- Socratic ignorance, the divine mission, the care of the soul, the examined life, obedience to god over men, death as no evil to the good man
- Quoted translation
- Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato (1871; 3rd edition 1892); references use the Stephanus pages and sections of the Greek text (17a–42a)
Context
Socrates was born in about 470 or 469 BC, the son of the sculptor or stonemason Sophroniscus and the midwife Phaenarete, and spent his whole life in Athens except for military service. He wrote nothing. He was famous, and to many infamous, for questioning people in public places about courage, justice, piety and the good life, and for showing that they could not defend what they claimed to know. He served as a hoplite at Potidaea, Delium and Amphipolis, sat once on the Council, and lived in poverty. What we know of him comes from others: the comic poet Aristophanes, who caricatured him in the Clouds (423 BC), and his followers Plato and Xenophon, who wrote after his death (Guthrie 1971) (Morrison 2011).
The trial took place in 399 BC, four years after the restoration of democracy. Athens had lost the Peloponnesian War in 404; a Spartan-backed oligarchy, the Thirty, had ruled by terror for eight months; and the returning democrats had passed an amnesty in 403 forbidding prosecution for acts committed before it. Several of Socrates' associates were notorious: Alcibiades, who had betrayed Athens to Sparta, and Critias and Charmides, leaders of the Thirty. Anytus, the most powerful of the three accusers, was a leading democrat who had fought to restore the democracy. Many historians think that this background, which the amnesty kept out of the formal charges, lies behind the prosecution (Hansen 1995) (Waterfield 2009).
The case was a public prosecution for impiety (graphē asebeias), brought before the magistrate called the King Archon (where Plato's Euthyphro places Socrates just before the trial) and tried in a single day before a jury of ordinary citizens chosen by lot. The wording of the indictment survives in Diogenes Laertius (2.40), quoting the second-century scholar Favorinus, who claimed to have seen it in the public archive. Prosecution and defence each spoke for a fixed time measured by a water-clock; the jury voted without deliberation, and since the law fixed no penalty, each side then proposed one and the jury chose between them. Socrates was convicted by a narrow margin, and after his counter-proposal sentenced to death by a larger one (Brickhouse 1989) (Hansen 1995).
Plato, then in his late twenties, says that he was present (34a, 38b); these are two of only three places in his dialogues where he names himself. The Apology is therefore the one work of Plato that claims to report a public event that hundreds of people witnessed. Yet it is also a carefully composed piece of writing, produced in a period when several followers of Socrates, and at least one hostile pamphleteer, Polycrates, were publishing rival accounts of him. How far the speech records what Socrates said, and how far it is Plato's portrait and defence of his teacher, is the first question every reader has to face (Kahn 1996) (Strycker 1994).
The Apology has been read for over two thousand years as the classic defence of the philosophical life and of conscience against the state. Its phrases, the unexamined life, the gadfly, the man who knows that he knows nothing, have entered common speech, and the figure it creates, a man who chooses death rather than abandon his calling, has been compared with Jesus by early Christian writers and taken up by Renaissance humanists, by Mill in On Liberty and by Martin Luther King in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. Emily Wilson's The Death of Socrates traces how each age has rewritten him (Wilson 2007) (Colaiaco 2001).
Plot overview
Socrates opens by warning the jurors that his accusers have spoken persuasively but falsely, and that he will speak plainly, as he does in the marketplace. He first answers the 'old accusers', years of rumour, fed by comedy, that he is a natural scientist who studies the heavens, a sophist who makes the weaker argument the stronger and teaches for money. These rumours, he explains, began when his friend Chaerephon asked the Delphic oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates and was told that no one was. Puzzled, Socrates tested politicians, poets and craftsmen, found that each thought he knew what he did not, and concluded that his own wisdom lay only in knowing his ignorance. His questioning, imitated by the young, has made him hated.
Turning to the formal charges, Socrates cross-examines Meletus, drawing him into absurd claims: that all Athenians improve the young except Socrates, that Socrates corrupts them deliberately though he would harm himself by it, and that he believes in divine things but in no gods. He then explains his life: like Akhilleus or a soldier at his post, he will not abandon the station god has given him for fear of death. If acquitted on condition that he stop philosophising, he would obey god rather than the jurors. He is a gadfly given by god to rouse the sluggish city; a divine sign has kept him out of politics; and he refuses to bring his weeping children into court to beg for mercy.
Convicted by a small majority, Socrates proposes as his 'penalty' free meals in the Prytaneum, the honour given to Olympic victors and benefactors of the city. He rejects prison and exile, explains that he cannot stay silent because the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being, and finally offers a fine of thirty minae guaranteed by Plato, Crito and other friends. The jury sentences him to death.
In his last words Socrates tells those who condemned him that it is harder to escape wickedness than death, and prophesies that younger critics will now rebuke them. To those who voted for acquittal he explains that his divine sign never opposed him that day, a sign that what has happened is good. Death is either a dreamless sleep or a journey to a place where he can question the heroes of the past, and either would be a gain. No evil can befall a good man. He asks them to treat his sons as he treated them, and leaves them with the words that he goes to die and they to live, and only god knows which is better.
Part by part
Part 1: The Opening and the Old Accusers
17a–20c
Summary
Socrates begins by turning the prosecution's warning against him. They told the jury to beware of his eloquence; but he is no orator, unless eloquence means telling the truth. He will speak in his ordinary way, as he does at the money-changers' tables, and asks the jurors, as if he were a foreigner speaking his own dialect, to attend not to his manner but to whether what he says is just. He is over seventy and has never been in court before.
He divides his accusers into two groups. The recent ones, Anytus and his associates, are dangerous, but the older ones are more so: the many anonymous people who have told the jurors since childhood that a certain Socrates studies the heavens and what lies beneath the earth and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger. Against these he must 'fight with shadows'. He sums up their charge as if it were a formal affidavit and points to Aristophanes' Clouds, which showed a 'Socrates' swinging in a basket in the air. He denies that he has anything to do with natural philosophy, calling on the jurors to tell each other whether they ever heard him discuss it. Nor does he teach for money like the famous sophists Gorgias, Prodicus and Hippias, or like Evenus of Paros, who charges five minae: he only wishes he had such knowledge.
Analysis
The opening is itself a piece of skilled rhetoric. The disclaimer of eloquence, the request for a hearing, and the appeal to old age and inexperience were standard moves of Athenian court speeches, and the speech as a whole follows the usual parts of a defence: introduction, statement of the case, refutation and conclusion. Socrates uses the conventions while claiming to reject them; the irony is that a man who says he cannot speak delivers one of the most admired speeches in Greek (Burnet 1924) (Strycker 1994).
The 'old accusers' allow Socrates to answer the prejudice behind the charge rather than the charge itself. He lumps together two figures that Athenians often confused: the natural philosopher, like Anaxagoras, suspected of denying the gods of the sky, and the sophist, the paid teacher of persuasion. The Clouds had fused both into one comic Socrates, and Plato's Socrates insists that he is neither. Whether the historical Socrates had ever been interested in natural science, as the Clouds and a passage in the Phaedo suggest, remains debated (Dover 1968) (Guthrie 1971).
they almost made me forget who I was—so persuasively did they speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth.
The first sentence sets truth against persuasion, the theme of the whole speech.
let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.
Socrates defines the virtue of speaker and juror; the jury's verdict will be measured by this standard.
I must simply fight with shadows in my own defence, and argue when there is no one who answers.
The old accusers are rumour itself: there is no one to cross-examine.
Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause
Socrates turns the gossip into a mock indictment: natural philosopher and sophist in one.
Part 2: The Oracle and Socrates's Mission
20c–24b
Summary
Why, then, does Socrates have such a reputation? Because of a certain human wisdom, he says, and he calls on the god of Delphi as his witness. His friend Chaerephon, an impetuous man and a democrat who shared the people's exile, once asked the oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the Pythia replied that no one was. Chaerephon is dead, but his brother is in court to confirm the story. Socrates, aware that he knows nothing great or small, could not believe the god was lying, and set out to refute the oracle by finding someone wiser.
He questioned a leading politician and found that the man thought he knew things he did not; Socrates was wiser at least in this, that he did not think he knew what he did not know. He went on to the poets, who could not explain their own poems and must compose by inspiration, like seers; and to the craftsmen, who did know their crafts but thought this made them experts on the greatest matters. Each encounter made him enemies. He concluded that the god meant that human wisdom is worth little or nothing, and used Socrates' name only as an example. Ever since, in service to the god, he has gone on testing anyone who seems wise, and lives in poverty. Rich young men imitate him and expose others, whose anger falls on Socrates; and so Meletus has attacked him on behalf of the poets, Anytus of the craftsmen and politicians, and Lycon of the orators.
Analysis
The oracle story turns the charge of impiety upside down. The man accused of not recognising the city's gods presents his whole way of life as obedience to Apollo, the most respected oracular god in Greece. Socrates also transforms the oracle's meaning: a statement about him becomes a statement about the limits of all human knowledge, and his 'wisdom' becomes the awareness of ignorance. Whether the oracle started the mission or merely confirmed a practice already under way is unclear, since Chaerephon could only have asked about a man who was already known for wisdom (Reeve 1989) (McPherran 1996).
The tour of politicians, poets and craftsmen, which Socrates compares to the labours of Heracles, also explains the hostility the jury feels. Socratic examination (elenchus) humiliates its victims in public, and the young men who copy it spread the humiliation. The account is candid about this: Socrates does not pretend that his accusers have no motive, but locates it in wounded pride. The pairing of each accuser with a professional group is a neat piece of composition, perhaps more Plato's than history's (Brickhouse 1989) (Vlastos 1991).
he asked the oracle to tell him whether anyone was wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess answered, that there was no man wiser.
The famous oracle. Xenophon's version is different (see Debates).
What can the god mean? and what is the interpretation of his riddle?
Socrates treats the oracle as a riddle to be solved by inquiry, not simply accepted.
for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.
The core of 'Socratic ignorance': not knowledge, but the absence of false belief about one's knowledge.
not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration
A view of poetry developed in Plato's Ion and Phaedrus.
He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.
Socrates' reading of the oracle: he is a paradigm, not an exception.
Part 3: The Cross-Examination of Meletus
24b–28a
Summary
Socrates now turns to the formal indictment: that he does wrong by corrupting the young and by not believing in the gods of the city but in other new divine beings. He calls Meletus forward and questions him. Who improves the young? The laws, says Meletus; then the jurors, the audience, the councillors and the Assembly; in short, every Athenian except Socrates. Socrates replies with the analogy of horses, which are improved by one expert trainer and harmed by most people, and concludes that Meletus has never cared about the young at all. He then gets Meletus to agree that bad people harm those around them; no one would deliberately corrupt his neighbours and so harm himself. So Socrates corrupts either unintentionally, in which case he should have been instructed in private, not prosecuted, or not at all.
On the religious charge, Meletus declares that Socrates is a complete atheist who says the sun is stone and the moon earth. Socrates retorts that these are the doctrines of Anaxagoras, whose book anyone can buy for a drachma at most. Meletus, he says, has written a riddle into his own indictment: he accuses Socrates of believing in divine things (daimonia) and yet of believing in no gods. But no one believes in horsemanship and not in horses; anyone who believes in divine things must believe in spirits (daimones), who are gods or the children of gods. It would be like believing in mules but not in horses and donkeys. Socrates ends this section by saying that it is not Meletus who will destroy him but the envy and slander of the many.
Analysis
This is the only passage of the speech in the form of a dialogue, and it shows the elenchus in action: Socrates obtains a series of agreements and then shows that they contradict the opponent's original claim. Readers have often noted that the arguments are clever rather than decisive. Meletus is pushed into the absurd assertion that Socrates is a total atheist, which the indictment did not say, and Socrates refutes the exaggeration rather than the charge. The section shows his method, and perhaps also why it made people furious (Reeve 1989) (Brickhouse 1989).
The argument about intentional wrongdoing draws on a central Socratic doctrine: that no one does wrong willingly, because everyone wants what is good for himself, so that wrongdoing comes from ignorance and calls for teaching rather than punishment. The argument about the daimonia matters because it shows what the prosecution probably had in mind by 'new divine beings': Socrates' own divine sign, which he will describe in the next part (Vlastos 1991) (McPherran 1996).
It says that Socrates is a doer of evil, who corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in the gods of the state, but has other new divinities of his own.
Jowett's paraphrase of the indictment, close to the version preserved by Diogenes Laertius.
Then every Athenian improves and elevates them; all with the exception of myself; and I alone am their corrupter?
The reductio: Meletus' answers have made Socrates the city's only bad influence.
this court, which is a place not of instruction, but of punishment.
If wrongdoing is ignorance, the right response is teaching, not a trial.
Friend Meletus, you think that you are accusing Anaxagoras
Socrates separates himself from the natural philosopher prosecuted, it was said, for impiety some decades earlier.
Did ever any man believe in horsemanship, and not in horses?
The analogy that traps Meletus in his own indictment.
Part 4: The Gadfly and the Daimonion
28a–35d
Summary
Socrates imagines someone asking whether he is not ashamed of a life that has brought him into danger of death. A good man, he replies, considers only whether he acts rightly. Akhilleus, told by his mother that he would die soon after Hector, chose to avenge Patroclus rather than live in disgrace; and Socrates, who held his post at Potidaea, Amphipolis and Delium, will not desert the post god has given him. To fear death is to pretend to know what no one knows. If the jury offered to acquit him on condition that he stop philosophising, he would say that he loves them but will obey god rather than them, and go on asking every citizen whether he is not ashamed to care for money and reputation and not for the soul. Virtue does not come from wealth; wealth and every other good come from virtue.
If they kill him, he says, they will harm themselves more than him, for a worse man cannot harm a better. He is a gadfly given by god to the city, a great and sluggish horse, to wake it up; his poverty proves that he has never taken pay. Why then has he never entered public life? Because of a divine sign, a voice that has come to him since childhood and always holds him back, never urges him on. It has opposed his entering politics, since anyone who honestly resists injustice in a democracy will not survive long. He gives two proofs: in 406 he alone of the presiding councillors opposed the illegal mass trial of the generals after Arginusae; and under the Thirty he refused an order to arrest Leon of Salamis and simply went home.
He has never had pupils and never taught anything in private; anyone may listen. If he had corrupted the young, they or their families would accuse him, yet many are in court ready to support him: Crito and his son Critobulus, Adeimantus, whose brother Plato is present, Apollodorus' brother and others. Finally he refuses the usual appeal to pity. He has a family and three sons, but will not parade them in court; that would disgrace the city and ask the jurors to break their oath to judge by the law, and so would be impious in a man on trial for impiety.
Analysis
This is the heart of the speech, and it moves from defence to positive declaration. The comparison with Akhilleus, the greatest hero of Greek poetry, claims heroic status for a life of conversation; the soldier at his post makes the same point in civic terms. The most famous sentence, 'I shall obey God rather than you' (29d), has been read as a charter of conscience against the state, and it sits uneasily with the Crito, where Socrates argues that one must obey the city's laws (see Debates) (Allen 1980) (Brickhouse 1989).
The divine sign (daimonion) is Plato's explanation of the 'new divine beings' in the charge. Here it only forbids and never commands, and it concerns small matters as well as great. Socrates treats it as a gift of the gods, but he does not allow it to replace argument: it tells him not to act, while reasoning tells him why. The evidence of Arginusae and Leon of Salamis shows him opposing both the democracy and the oligarchy, a reply to the suspicion, which the amnesty kept out of the charges, that he was an enemy of the people (McPherran 1996) (Vlastos 1991) (Waterfield 2009).
The refusal to bring his children into court completes the portrait. Appeals to pity were normal and expected; to refuse them was a risk, and Socrates justifies it by appeal to the jurors' oath and to piety. The speech ends where the charge began, with the gods: he believes in them 'in a sense higher' than his accusers do.
a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong
The principle that governs the rest of the speech.
Had Achilles any thought of death and danger?
Socrates claims the heroic choice of Akhilleus (Iliad 18) for the philosopher; the quotation keeps the translator's spelling.
For the fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing the unknown
Socratic ignorance applied to death itself.
Men of Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you
The refusal of any conditional acquittal; often compared with Acts 5:29.
I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private.
The care of the soul as the centre of Socrates' exhortation.
am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life.
The gadfly image: Socrates as a painful benefit to the city.
This sign, which is a kind of voice, first began to come to me when I was a child; it always forbids but never commands me to do anything which I am going to do.
The daimonion described.
when we came out of the rotunda the other four went to Salamis and fetched Leon, but I went quietly home.
Resistance to the Thirty, told with deliberate understatement.
Part 5: The Verdict and the Counter-Penalty
35e–38b
Summary
The jury has voted, and Socrates has been found guilty. He says he is not distressed and only surprised that the votes were so close: if thirty had gone the other way he would have been acquitted. Meletus alone, without Anytus and Lycon, would not even have won a fifth of the votes and would have been fined. Now Meletus proposes death, and Socrates must propose an alternative.
What does he deserve? He has neglected wealth, office and politics to do each citizen the greatest good, urging him to care for himself and his virtue before his possessions. The fitting reward for a poor benefactor is free maintenance in the Prytaneum, a greater honour than that given to Olympic chariot victors, who only make the city seem happy, while he makes it happy in fact. He will not propose a penalty he does not deserve: not prison, nor a fine he cannot pay, nor exile, since other cities would not tolerate his questioning if his own cannot. He cannot keep quiet, because that would be disobedience to the god, and because talking every day about virtue is the greatest good for a human being, and the unexamined life is not worth living. In the end he offers a mina, all he could pay, and then, at the urging of Plato, Crito, Critobulus and Apollodorus, thirty minae, with them as guarantors.
Analysis
This short speech has done more than anything else to make readers ask whether Socrates wanted to be acquitted. The proposal of free meals in the Prytaneum, made to jurors who have just convicted him, looks like defiance, and ancient tradition said that more jurors voted for death than had voted for conviction. Yet the argument is consistent: Socrates cannot, without lying, say that he deserves to be punished, and the thirty minae he finally proposes was a substantial sum, several years' wages for a skilled worker, so the offer was not merely contemptuous (Brickhouse 1989) (Reeve 1989).
The sentence on the unexamined life (38a) is Plato's most quoted line. It is not offered as a general maxim but as a reason why exile on condition of silence would be no life at all. Socrates' remark that a capital case should not be decided in one day is a pointed criticism of Athenian procedure, which other cities, he says, avoided (Colaiaco 2001).
had thirty votes gone over to the other side, I should have been acquitted.
The basis for estimating the vote: if the jury numbered 501, about 280 to 221.
There can be no reward so fitting as maintenance in the Prytaneum
Free meals at the city hearth, the honour of Olympic victors and public benefactors.
he only gives you the appearance of happiness, and I give you the reality.
The contrast of seeming and being that runs through the speech.
if there were a law at Athens, as there is in other cities, that a capital cause should not be decided in one day, then I believe that I should have convinced you.
A criticism of the one-day trial.
the unexamined life is not worth living
The most famous phrase in Plato; in Greek, 'the unexamined life is not livable for a human being'.
Part 6: The Last Words to the Jurors
38c–42a
Summary
Sentenced to death, Socrates speaks first to those who condemned him. They will gain little time and an evil name, for he is old and would soon have died anyway. He was convicted not for lack of words but because he would not weep and plead; he would rather die having spoken in his own way than live by speaking in theirs. The hard thing is not to escape death but to escape wickedness, which runs faster. He, old and slow, has been overtaken by the slower runner, death; his accusers, quick and clever, by the faster one, wickedness. He then prophesies that after his death younger and harsher critics, whom he has held back, will rebuke them; the way to escape criticism is not to silence others but to improve oneself.
To those who voted to acquit him, whom alone he calls 'judges', he explains a wonder: his divine sign, which often stopped him even in small things, did not oppose him once that day, not when he left home, nor on his way to court, nor during his speech. That shows that what has happened is good. Death is one of two things. Either it is nothing, like a dreamless sleep, which few nights in a life could match, and then all eternity is a single night; or it is a journey to another place where the true judges, Minos, Rhadamanthus, Aeacus and Triptolemus, give judgement, and where he could meet Orpheus, Hesiod and Homer, compare his fate with Palamedes and Ajax, who also died by unjust judgements, and go on questioning the great men of the past. Either would be a gain.
No evil can happen to a good man in life or death, and the gods do not neglect him. He bears his accusers no anger. He asks only that, when his sons grow up, the jurors should trouble them as he troubled the city if they care for money more than virtue. He ends: it is time to go, he to die and they to live, and which is better only god knows.
Analysis
The final speech, addressed to a court that had no procedure for it, is the most likely part of the work to be Plato's invention, though it may reflect words spoken while the magistrates completed their business. It turns the trial into a judgement on the jurors: Socrates is condemned by them, they are condemned by the truth. His prophecy of future accusers comes true in Plato's own writing, which carries on the examination of Athens (Hackforth 1933) (Kahn 1996).
The argument about death is strikingly undogmatic. Unlike the Phaedo, which offers proofs of the soul's immortality, the Apology leaves both possibilities open and argues that neither gives a reason for fear. This fits the Socratic claim of ignorance about the underworld (29b), and it is one reason many scholars treat the Apology as closer to the historical Socrates than the later dialogues. The vision of an afterlife spent cross-examining heroes is also gently comic: philosophy, not rest, is Socrates' idea of happiness (Vlastos 1991) (McPherran 1996) (Wilson 2007).
I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live.
Socrates' verdict on his own defence.
The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.
The race of death and wickedness.
the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves.
The moral of the prophecy to the condemning jurors.
either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another.
The two alternatives, neither of which is to be feared.
In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not.
A last irony: the afterlife as a place of free inquiry.
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.
The closing words, ending on ignorance and on god.
Characters
Defendant
- Socrates
- The Athenian philosopher, aged seventy, son of Sophroniscus of the deme Alopece. In the Apology he presents himself as a poor man with no special knowledge, who has spent his life obeying the god of Delphi by examining others and urging them to care for their souls. He is ironic, provocative, courteous and unbending; he refuses to plead, proposes a reward instead of a penalty, and meets his sentence with calm. Plato's portrait has become the image of the philosopher for the Western tradition.
Prosecution
- Meletus
- The formal prosecutor who brought the indictment, a young man (according to Plato's Euthyphro) with a hooked nose and lank hair, perhaps the son of a tragic poet of the same name. Socrates says he speaks for the poets. In the cross-examination he is made to look careless and confused, and Socrates suggests that he never thought seriously about the young at all.
- Anytus
- The most influential of the accusers: a wealthy owner of tanneries, a general in the war and a leader of the democrats who returned in 403. Socrates says he speaks for the craftsmen and politicians. He does not appear in the dialogue, but his argument that Socrates should never have been brought to trial unless he was to be put to death is quoted (29c). In Plato's Meno he warns Socrates against speaking ill of Athenians.
- Lycon
- The third accuser, said to speak for the orators. Little is known of him; he may be the Lycon whose son Autolycus appears in Xenophon's Symposium.
Friends of Socrates
- Chaerephon
- Socrates' friend since youth, an excitable man and a committed democrat who went into exile under the Thirty. He asked the Delphic oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates. He had died before the trial, and his brother is called to confirm the story. Aristophanes mocks him as Socrates' gaunt assistant in the Clouds.
- Crito
- A wealthy friend of the same age and deme as Socrates, present in court with his son Critobulus. He is one of the guarantors of the thirty minae, and in the Crito he tries to persuade Socrates to escape from prison.
- Plato
- The author, then about twenty-eight, named as present in court (34a) and as one of the guarantors of the fine (38b). He says nothing else about himself; the Apology is his account of an event he witnessed.
- Apollodorus
- A devoted and emotional follower, named among the guarantors of the fine. He narrates Plato's Symposium, and in the Phaedo he weeps uncontrollably at Socrates' death.
Athens
- The jurors
- About five hundred citizens chosen by lot, addressed throughout as 'men of Athens'. Socrates calls only those who voted to acquit him 'judges' (40a). They interrupt him with shouts at several points, which shows how provocative his speech was felt to be.
Divine
- The god of Delphi
- Apollo, whose oracle declared that no one was wiser than Socrates. Socrates calls him as his witness and describes his life of questioning as service to him; the god never speaks in the work except through Socrates' interpretation.
Themes
Human wisdom and Socratic ignorance
Socrates claims only 'human wisdom': the awareness that he does not know what others think they know. The oracle, he concludes, meant that god alone is wise and that human wisdom is worth little. This is not scepticism about everything. He also says that he knows that injustice and disobedience to one's better are evil (29b), and he speaks with complete confidence about how one should live.
Scholars have tried to reconcile the two claims, by distinguishing certain expert knowledge, which Socrates disclaims, from the fallible moral convictions he has tested in argument. Whatever the solution, the Apology makes intellectual honesty about one's own ignorance the beginning of philosophy (Vlastos 1991) (Reeve 1989).
Philosophy as a divine mission
Socrates presents his questioning not as a private hobby but as a duty laid on him by the god, signalled by the oracle, by dreams, by his divine sign and 'in every way' (33c). This makes his defence against impiety an argument that he is more pious than his accusers. It also makes his vocation something he cannot give up, whatever the city commands.
The religious language is not decoration. Recent work has stressed that Socrates' rationalism and his piety belong together: he examines the oracle rather than simply obeying it, but he treats the god's goodness and truthfulness as fixed points (McPherran 1996) (Parker 1996).
The care of the soul
The positive message of the speech is an exhortation: care for the soul, for wisdom and truth, before money, reputation and the body. Virtue is not produced by wealth; all goods come from virtue. Socrates' questioning is meant to shame people into this re-ordering of their priorities, and his poverty and his refusal to beg for mercy are offered as evidence that he lives by it.
The theme connects the Apology with the whole of Plato's ethical thought, and with the Socratic claim that the good man cannot be harmed, since the only real harm is damage to one's soul by doing wrong (Vlastos 1991) (Brickhouse 1989).
The individual and the city
Socrates loves Athens and calls the citizens his brothers, but he will not obey it when it commands injustice or forbids philosophy. He resisted the democratic Assembly over Arginusae and the Thirty over Leon of Salamis. He argues that a just man must keep to private life to survive, and he uses his trial to criticise the procedures of the city's courts.
The Apology therefore became a founding text for ideas of conscientious objection and freedom of speech. The tension with the Crito, where Socrates refuses to escape because he must obey the laws, has kept the question of his political allegiance alive (Allen 1980) (Colaiaco 2001) (Stone 1988).
Death and courage
Fear of death, Socrates argues, is a form of false wisdom, since no one knows whether death is an evil. The good man considers only whether he acts rightly. In the last speech he offers two hopeful possibilities, dreamless sleep or a life of conversation among the dead, and concludes that no evil can happen to a good man.
His calm in the face of death, with the models of Akhilleus and the soldier at his post, makes philosophy a kind of courage. Later readers, from the Stoics to Montaigne, took his death as the model of how a wise man dies (Wilson 2007).
Truth against rhetoric
The speech opens by setting truth against persuasion and repeatedly contrasts Socrates' plain speech with the eloquence of his accusers and the emotional tricks of ordinary defendants. Yet it is a masterpiece of rhetoric, using the forms of forensic oratory while claiming to stand outside them. The Apology thus raises a question Plato pursued in the Gorgias and Phaedrus: whether there can be a rhetoric that serves truth rather than mere success (Strycker 1994) (Burnet 1924).
Motifs
The soldier at his post
Socrates recalls his service at Potidaea, Amphipolis and Delium and argues that he must stay at the post god has assigned him, as a soldier stays where his commander places him. The image returns when he says a man should not throw away his arms to escape death in battle (38e–39a).
Seeming and being
Politicians, poets and craftsmen seem wise but are not; the Olympic victor makes the city seem happy while Socrates makes it happy; those who think themselves something are nothing. The contrast between reputation and reality runs through every part of the speech.
Interruptions and noise
Socrates repeatedly asks the jurors not to make a disturbance (17d, 20e, 27b, 30c). The requests show the court reacting to his claims and remind the reader that this is a speech before a hostile crowd.
Poverty as evidence
His poverty proves that he took no fees (31c), that he serves the god (23b), and that he cannot pay a large fine (38b). Socrates turns a mark of low status into a witness for his defence.
Judges and true judges
Socrates addresses the court as 'men of Athens' and reserves the title 'judges' for those who voted to acquit him; in the afterlife he hopes to meet the 'true judges', Minos and Rhadamanthus. The Athenian verdict is set against a higher court.
Symbols
The gadfly
The insect that stings a great, sluggish horse into motion stands for Socrates' role in Athens: irritating, painful and necessary. The image admits that his questioning is unwelcome while claiming that it is a gift of the god.
The Delphic oracle
The oracle's riddling answer stands for the divine authority behind Socrates' life and for the method by which he lived it: a puzzling statement that must be examined rather than simply accepted or rejected.
The divine sign
The inner voice that only ever forbids is the most personal symbol in the work: a private religious experience that the city treated as a 'new divinity'. Its silence on the day of the trial becomes Socrates' proof that death is no evil.
The Prytaneum
The city hall where benefactors and Olympic victors were fed at public expense stands for the honour Socrates thinks the city owes him, and measures the gap between his own view of his life and the jury's.
The dreamless night
Death as a single night of undisturbed sleep, better than almost all the days and nights of a life, is the Apology's image of the most modest hope: even if there is nothing after death, there is nothing to fear.
Critical debates
How historical is the speech?
The Apology claims to report a public speech heard by hundreds of jurors and spectators, many of whom were still alive when Plato wrote. John Burnet argued that Plato could not have seriously misrepresented it before such an audience, and that the work is in substance what Socrates said; R. Hackforth, in a detailed study, concluded that it is a faithful record of the main lines of the defence, freely composed in its wording (Burnet 1924) (Hackforth 1933).
Others are more sceptical. Ancient courtroom speeches were regularly rewritten for publication, and the Socratic writings of the 390s were a competitive literary genre, in which Plato, Xenophon and others offered differing portraits and even differing defences. Charles Kahn treats the Apology as the most historical of Plato's Socratic works but still as a literary creation; de Strycker and Slings show how carefully it is constructed on rhetorical models. Most scholars now hold that it preserves the substance and spirit of the defence, especially its unrepentant tone, while its arguments and phrasing are Plato's (Kahn 1996) (Strycker 1994) (Brickhouse 1989) (Morrison 2011).
Plato's Apology and Xenophon's
Xenophon's Apology of Socrates, which the archive also holds, is a short work by another follower who was not in Athens at the time of the trial (he was in Asia with the army of Cyrus) and who cites the report of Hermogenes. Xenophon says that everyone who has written about the trial has captured Socrates' 'lofty speech' (megalēgoria), but not his reason for it: Socrates had decided that it was better for him to die now than to suffer the infirmities of old age, and his divine sign twice stopped him when he tried to prepare a defence. In Xenophon's account the oracle says that no one is “more liberal, or more upright, or more temperate” than Socrates (in Dakyns’s rendering), not wiser; Socrates refuses to propose any counter-penalty and forbids his friends to do so; and the work ends with anecdotes about Anytus' son and the tearful Apollodorus.
The two works differ sharply in emphasis. Plato's Socrates explains his whole life as a philosophical mission and offers a penalty; Xenophon's defends himself chiefly as a conventionally pious man and has no wish to be acquitted. Some scholars think Xenophon's version is derivative and apologetic, written to correct Plato or to answer hostile pamphlets; others value it as independent evidence that Socrates' arrogance before the court was real. Gabriel Danzig reads both as competing apologetic constructions, each shaping 'our' Socrates (Danzig 2010) (Vander Waerdt 1994) (Brickhouse 2002) (Waterfield 2009).
Why was Socrates really prosecuted?
The indictment concerned religion, and some scholars take it at face value: Socrates' divine sign, his rationalising questions about the gods and his association with natural philosophers could genuinely alarm a city that had lately suffered war, plague and political collapse, and that had prosecuted others for impiety. Robert Parker and Mark McPherran stress that the religious charge had substance in Athenian terms (Parker 1996) (McPherran 1996).
Others see politics behind it. Socrates' associates included Alcibiades and Critias, and in 345 BC the orator Aeschines said that the Athenians put Socrates to death because he had taught Critias. I. F. Stone argued that Socrates was an enemy of democracy; Mogens Herman Hansen and Robin Waterfield argue, more cautiously, that the amnesty of 403 kept political grievances out of court, so that they surfaced as charges of impiety and corruption. Plato's Apology barely mentions this background, which may be part of its purpose (Stone 1988) (Hansen 1995) (Waterfield 2009) (Brickhouse 1989).
Did Socrates want to be acquitted?
The defence often seems designed to offend: Socrates refuses to plead, claims a divine mission, compares himself to Akhilleus, calls himself the city's greatest benefactor, and after conviction proposes free meals in the Prytaneum. Xenophon thought he deliberately invited death, and some modern readers have agreed, seeing the speech as a philosopher's provocation rather than a defence.
Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith argued in detail that Socrates offers a sincere defence, which seeks acquittal but only by truthful means; his refusals follow from his principles that he must not lie, flatter or ask the jury to violate its oath. C. D. C. Reeve similarly reads the speech as a serious philosophical argument. The narrow first vote suggests that many jurors were persuaded (Brickhouse 1989) (Reeve 1989) (Colaiaco 2001).
The Apology and the Crito: obedience or defiance?
In the Apology Socrates says that he would disobey a court order to stop philosophising and obey god rather than the Athenians (29d). In the Crito, set a month later, the personified Laws of Athens argue that a citizen must either persuade the city or obey it, and Socrates refuses to escape from prison. Readers have asked whether the two works contradict each other.
Some resolve the tension by noting that the hypothetical order in the Apology is one that the court could not legally have given, or that the Crito's demand to 'persuade or obey' leaves room for open, accepted disobedience. R. E. Allen treated the two works together as a theory of legal obligation; Gregory Vlastos and Brickhouse and Smith argued that Socrates would disobey only a command to do injustice, while still accepting the penalty (Allen 1980) (Vlastos 1991) (Brickhouse 1989).
The oracle and the origin of the mission
Did Socrates' questioning begin with the oracle? The story implies that Chaerephon asked about a man already known for wisdom, so the practice must have existed before. Some scholars suspect that the oracle story is Plato's invention, or at least that Socrates' interpretation of a simple answer as a lifelong command is his own creative act.
Reeve and McPherran argue that the story is central to the defence: it turns a puzzling answer into a religious duty and makes the elenchus a form of piety. Others note that Xenophon gives a different wording of the oracle and does not connect it with a mission at all, which suggests that the 'divine mission' is a distinctively Platonic theme (Reeve 1989) (McPherran 1996) (Danzig 2010).
Socratic ignorance and moral knowledge
Socrates insists that he knows nothing 'beautiful and good' (21d), yet he says he knows that injustice and disobedience to a better are evil (29b) and speaks with assurance about how to live. Is the disclaimer of knowledge ironic, sincere or inconsistent?
Gregory Vlastos distinguished certain knowledge, which Socrates disclaims, from the 'elenctic' knowledge of propositions that have survived every test so far, which he can claim; others propose different distinctions, between expert knowledge of virtue and particular moral truths. The debate goes to the heart of what Socratic philosophy is (Vlastos 1991) (Reeve 1989) (Ahbel-Rappe 2006).
The divine sign: reason and religion
Socrates' daimonion seems an odd companion for the most rational of philosophers. Some interpreters have reduced it to intuition or conscience; others take it as a genuine religious experience, which Socrates trusts as a sign from the gods while subjecting everything else to argument.
McPherran argues that Socrates' rationalism and his piety are integrated: the sign gives warnings, but Socrates interprets them by reason, as he interpreted the oracle. The sign also mattered at the trial, since it was the most likely target of the charge of 'new divinities'; Xenophon makes the same connection (McPherran 1996) (Vlastos 1991) (Parker 1996).
Key passages
let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.
Socrates defines the duties of both parties at the start. The speech will hold to the first standard; the verdict will fail the second.
for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.
The definition of Socratic wisdom, drawn from his first encounter with a politician. His advantage is not knowledge but freedom from the illusion of knowledge.
He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.
Socrates' interpretation of the oracle turns a compliment into a lesson about the limits of all human wisdom and makes him an example rather than an exception.
a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong
The ethical principle behind his refusal to compromise, illustrated at once by the example of Akhilleus.
Men of Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you
His answer to a hypothetical offer of acquittal on condition of silence. The sentence has become a classic statement of conscience before authority, and it sets up the tension with the Crito.
am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God
Socrates admits his questioning is irritating but claims it is a divine gift to a city that would otherwise sleep. Killing him would mean losing the gift.
it always forbids but never commands me to do anything which I am going to do.
The description of the divine sign, which explains both the charge of 'new divinities' and Socrates' avoidance of politics.
the unexamined life is not worth living
The reason he cannot accept exile on condition of silence. Daily discussion of virtue is, for Socrates, the greatest good of human life.
The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.
Spoken to those who condemned him. Death has caught the slow old man; wickedness, the faster runner, has caught his quick accusers.
I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.
The last words of the work end on the theme of human ignorance with which the defence began.
Questions for study
Socrates says he is no orator. Is the Apology an anti-rhetorical speech, or a brilliant use of rhetoric?
Compare the opening (17a–18a) with the conventions of Athenian court speeches, and consider the refusal to appeal to pity (34b–35d).
Why does Socrates spend so long on the 'old accusers' before answering the formal charges?
Think about Aristophanes' Clouds, the confusion of philosophers and sophists, and what prejudice the jury brought into court.
What does Socrates take the oracle to mean, and is his interpretation convincing?
Look at 21b–23b, and consider whether he obeys the oracle or tests it.
How effective is the cross-examination of Meletus as a refutation of the charges?
Notice what Meletus is led to claim (that Socrates is a complete atheist) and whether that is what the indictment said.
Is Socrates' comparison of himself with Akhilleus apt?
Consider 28b–d, the soldier at his post, and the different kinds of courage involved.
How can Socrates say both that he knows nothing and that he knows injustice is evil?
Compare 21d with 29b, and look at the debate on Socratic ignorance.
What role does the divine sign play in the defence?
See 31c–d and 40a–c, and think about the charge of 'new divinities'.
Was proposing free meals in the Prytaneum an act of arrogance, honesty or both?
Read 36b–38b, and consider his principle that he will not say he deserves harm.
Can the Apology's 'I shall obey God rather than you' be reconciled with the Crito's argument for obeying the laws?
Think about the difference between a command to stop philosophising and a punishment already imposed.
How does Xenophon's Apology change our picture of the trial?
Compare its account of the oracle, its explanation of Socrates' 'lofty speech', and its treatment of the counter-penalty with Plato's.
Further reading
- Ahbel-Rappe, Sara, and Rachana Kamtekar, eds. A Companion to Socrates. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.
- Allen, R. E. Socrates and Legal Obligation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980.
- Brickhouse, Thomas C., and Nicholas D. Smith. Socrates on Trial. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.
- Brickhouse, Thomas C., and Nicholas D. Smith. The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources and Controversies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- Burnet, John, ed. Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates and Crito. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924.
- Colaiaco, James A. Socrates against Athens: Philosophy on Trial. New York: Routledge, 2001.
- Danzig, Gabriel. Apologizing for Socrates: How Plato and Xenophon Created Our Socrates. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010.
- Dover, K. J., ed. Aristophanes: Clouds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968.
- Guthrie, W. K. C. Socrates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.
- Hackforth, R. The Composition of Plato's Apology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933.
- Hansen, Mogens Herman. The Trial of Sokrates: From the Athenian Point of View. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 1995.
- Kahn, Charles H. Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- McPherran, Mark L. The Religion of Socrates. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
- Morrison, Donald R., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Socrates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
- Parker, Robert. Athenian Religion: A History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
- Reeve, C. D. C. Socrates in the Apology: An Essay on Plato's Apology of Socrates. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989.
- Stone, I. F. The Trial of Socrates. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988.
- Strycker, E. de, and S. R. Slings. Plato's Apology of Socrates: A Literary and Philosophical Study with a Running Commentary. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
- Vander Waerdt, Paul A., ed. The Socratic Movement. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.
- Vlastos, Gregory. Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
- Waterfield, Robin. Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.
- Wilson, Emily. The Death of Socrates. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-21.