Socrates' trial

and that I consider the finest preparation for a defence.

But I have not made it a point to report the whole trial;

When the trial was over, Socrates (according to Hermogenes) remarked:

Again, when he was tried on the charge brought by Meletus, whereas it is the custom of defendants to curry favour with the jury and to indulge in flattery and illegal appeals, and many by such means have been known to gain a verdict of acquittal, he rejected utterly the familiar chicanery of the courts;

How then could he be guilty of the charges?

To me he seemed to deserve honour rather than death at the hands of the State.

But how about this?

Evenus, he said, Socrates, from Paros, five minae.

Well, once he went to Delphi and made so bold as to ask the oracle this question;

Did you not even hear about the trial and how it was conducted?

Well, then, said he, I will try to make a more convincing defence than I did before the judges.

It happened that the stern of the ship which the Athenians send to Delos was crowned on the day before the trial.

Led by these and like reasons, Socrates neither sought an advocate for his trial on a capital charge, nor was a suppliant to his judges, but maintained a free defiance springing from greatness of soul, not from pride;

And moreover even at your trial you might have offered exile as your penalty, if you wished, and might have done with the state’s consent what you are now undertaking to do without it.

So I am shamed both for you and for us, your friends, and I am afraid people will think that this whole affair of yours has been conducted with a sort of cowardice on our part—both the fact that the case came before the court, when it might have been avoided, and the way in which the trial itself was carried on, and finally they will think, as the crowning absurdity of the whole affair, that this …

Socrates.

Socrates.

Socrates.

Socrates, in the end, was condemned on that side where he had come closer to the truth, by destroying your gods.

For the rest, if we make our challenge on the score of chastity, I read a part of the Attic sentence pronounced against Socrates as a corrupter of youth.

" The same man, too, though he had some perception of the truth in denying the gods, yet at his end ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Aesculapius — in honour, I suppose, of his father, because Apollo had pronounced Socrates the wisest of all men.

For what clear knowledge could the soul of Socrates have at that time, when the sacred ship had already returned, the hemlock of his condemnation had already been drained, and death was already present — a soul certainly thrown into some agitation, if according to nature, or driven beside itself, if not according to nature?