54) and the loose and desultory style is an imitation of the ‘accustomed manner’ in which Socrates spoke in ‘the agora and among the tables of the money-changers.’ The allusion in the Crito (45 B) may, perhaps, be adduced as a further evidence of the literal accuracy of some parts (37 C, D).

For the speech breathes throughout a spirit of defiance, ‘ut non supplex aut reus sed magister aut dominus videretur esse judicum’ (Cic. 8, 4), on the testimony of Hermogenes, the friend of Socrates, that he had no wish to live and that the divine sign refused to allow him to prepare a defence, and also that Socrates himself declared this to be unnecessary, on the ground that all his life long he had been preparing against that hour. 4, 4) that Socrates might have been acquitted ‘if in any moderate degree he would have conciliated the favour of the dicasts ’ and who informs us in another passage (iv. It certainly agrees in tone and character with the description of Xenophon, who says in the Memorabilia (iv. In what relation the Apology of Plato stands to the real defence of Socrates, there are no means of determining.

Scribner’s Sons, Īn Introduction to the Text by Benjamin Jowett This course re-examines the primary accounts of the trial and death – Plato's Apology and Phaedo and the Apology of Xenophon – but looks also at the reverberations of these events, and the image of Socrates arising from them, in later antiquity and the modern world.1 Plato, Defense of Socrates APOLOGY by Plato translated by Benjamin Jowett New York, C.

The trial and execution of the philosopher Socrates in 399 BC, on charges of religious eccentricity and corruption of the young, besides being a crucial event in the history of Greek philosophy and of Greek philosophical writing, remained a focus of controversy for the remainder of antiquity and beyond. Was this a case of a malevolent subversive receiving his just deserts, or a scandalous instance of the failure of a democracy to tolerate disturbing criticism and defend the rights of an individual? Did Socrates die as a martyr to his principled quest for truth, or as a victim of democratic failure and the misdeeds of his pupils?

Apology the trial and death of socrates