Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Plato and the Trial of Socrates

Thomas C. Brickhouse, Nicholas D. Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN:
  9780415156820
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134729920
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

Socrates is one of the most influential philosophers in western civilisation, and Plato his most famous pupil. The Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito and the death scene from the Phaedo are Plato's account of Socrates' trial and execution, and together they provide the most important depiction of Socrates' ideas.

In this GuideBook, Brickhouse and Smith provide clear explanations of these texts for students coming to them for the first time. Situating the works in their historical context, the authors carefully go through each text, exploring the philosophical issues raised in an accessible way.

Plato and the Trial of Socrates is the ideal introduction to both the ideas of Socrates and the work of Plato.

1
THE EUTHYPHRO

1.1 INTRODUCTION TO THE EUTHYPHRO

1.1.1 The legal setting

Most legal cases in ancient Athens were initiated and litigated by private citizens.¹ This meant that the first thing a would-be prosecutor had to do was to write out an indictment and then get the one he was prosecuting to appear before the appropriate magistrate (or archon). In cases such as the one against Socrates, it would be the king-archon, whose job it was to make sure the charges were clear and legally appropriate, and whose decision it would be whether to forward the case to a trial by jury. In order to get the accused person to appear before the king-archon, a summons had to be issued. The summons was oral, not written, and would be delivered by the prosecutor himself. So, shortly before the scene we find in the Euthyphro, we can imagine Meletus going to Socrates, and before the required two witnesses, Meletus would have confronted Socrates and informed the latter that he was summoned to the king-archon’s office on such-and-such a date, and stated the offense, probably exactly as it appeared in the official indictment.

Then, both Socrates and Meletus would appear at the king-archon’s office, where Meletus would hand over a written copy of the indictment. Meletus may at that time also have been required to pay a fee (whose amount is not now known).

The king-archon would then set a date for a preliminary hearing on the charges, called an anakrisis. In the meantime, prior to the anakrisis, the king-archon posted a copy of the charge on a noticeboard in the marketplace (the agora). Then, the anakrisis would be held, at which the indictment would be read aloud, and Socrates would be required to enter his plea. Socrates would then have had to submit a formal statement to the effect that he denied the charge against him. Both sides of the legal case would then respond to questions from the king-archon, which would serve to clarify for all concerned what the issues were and what would be required as evidence at the trial. It appears to be the general rule that prosecutions would almost always be sent to trial, as long as the charges themselves were in appropriate legal order. Those who sought to abuse the courts by initiating frivolous or patently inappropriate charges were fined if they did not win at least one-fifth of the jurors’ votes. So, even if the king-archon had serious doubts about the merits of some prosecution, he would ordinarily send it to trial on the assumption that prosecutions lacking in merit would be dealt with this other way. At the end of the anakrisis, then, a trial date would be set, and the king-archon would determine what size of jury would be required. In Socrates’ case, 500 jurors were selected, chosen by lot from a list of volunteers.

The Euthyphro is set on the steps of the king-archon’s office. From the way the dialogue begins, Socrates has plainly already received the summons. It is not entirely clear, however, whether Socrates has perhaps come to the king-archon’s office for the first time – that is, to have a date for the anakrisis set – or whether he meets Euthyphro on the day of the scheduled anakrisis.² Euthyphro begins the dialogue expressing surprise at seeing Socrates at the king-archon’s office (see 2a1–b2). If Socrates were there for his anakrisis, the charge against him would already have been publicly posted, in which case one might expect Euthyphro to know about it. Socrates seems to know very little about Meletus (2b7–11), and also seems somewhat unclear about what the exact charges are and what Meletus actually means to be claiming in them (2c2–3a5, 3b1–4, 6a7–9). What Socrates does know seems compatible with his having only been summoned by Meletus, and not yet heard anything more about the charge or evidence to be presented against him than he would normally hear in being summoned. Moreover, at Euthyphro 5a3–b8 Socrates (no doubt ironically) proposes to become Euthyphro’s student, so that Socrates might become defter in his legal defense strategy. At 5a9–b2, he imagines one successful outcome of becoming Euthyphro’s student to be that he might persuade Meletus not to bring him to trial. If he was awaiting the anakrisis on the day he talks with Euthyphro, however, unless Socrates somehow thinks that all of his lessons might be completed while they wait in line at the king-archon’s office, such an outcome would be impossible – on this very day, if it is the day of the anakrisis, Socrates’ case will be bound over to trial, and it will be too late to persuade Meletus to desist from the prosecution. So Socrates’ playful suggestion that he become Euthyphro’s student strongly suggests that the legal proceeding for which Socrates has appeared is not the anakrisis, but is, rather, the first meeting in response to the summons.

1.1.2 The charge against Socrates (2a1–3e7)

When Euthyphro first asks what charge is being brought against Socrates (2b12–c1), Socrates first replies that he is charged with corrupting the youth (2c2–3a5). Euthyphro then responds by asking what Meletus (presumably, in the indictment) claims that Socrates does to corrupt the youth, and Socrates responds,

Absurd things at first hearing, my wonderful friend. For he says that I’m a maker of gods, and because I make new gods but don’t believe in the old ones, he has indicted me, or so he says.

(3b1–4)

Euthyphro reacts to this by saying that it must be because Socrates claims to have a divine sign (3b5–9; see also Plato, Ap. 31c8–d1, 31d2–3, 40a4–6, 40c3–4, 41d6; Euthyd. 272e4; Phdr. 242b8–9, 242c2; Rep. VI.496c4). Socrates does not contradict Euthyphro’s hypothesis – although if we are right that Socrates is only just now appearing at the king-archon’s office in response to the summons, he may not be all that clear about exactly why he is being charged as he is. By the time he faces Meletus in court, however, which is what we find depicted in Plato’s Apology, Euthyphro’s surmise turns out to be exactly correct (see Ap. 31c7–d4), and this link between the charge of religious innovation and Socrates’ “sign” or daimonion (“divine thing”) is also corroborated by other ancient sources (see Xenophon, Ap. 12).

Diogenes Laertius (c. 250 C.E.) makes the incredible claim that the actual indictment against Socrates was still publicly posted over six hundred years after the actual trial:

The plaintiff’s oath in the trial was like this. It is still posted even now, so Favorinus says, in the Metroon. “Meletus, the son of Meletus, of the deme of Pitthos, has written down these things against Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, of the deme of Alopece, and swears to them. Socrates is guilty of not recognizing the gods that the city recognizes, and of introducing other new divinities, and he is guilty of corrupting the youth. The penalty is to be death.”

(2.40)

A much earlier source, Xenophon (Mem. 1.1.1), a contemporary of Plato’s, also provides the same wording as Diogenes Laertius’ version, with one word changed.³ But here in the Euthyphro, as we have noted, and also in Plato’s Apology, both the actual wording of the indictment and also the order of the three specifications of the charge are given differently. In both instances, Plato has Socrates list the corruption of the youth first, followed by the claims that he fails to recognize Athens’ gods and introduces new divinities (see Ap. 24b8–c1). It is not at all clear what to make of these differences. The substance of the accusation and its three specifications, however, is the same in all of the ancient reports.

1.1.3 Euthyphro’s case (3e8–4e3)

Euthyphro’s situation at first appears to be very different from Socrates’: Euthyphro proposes to be the prosecutor in his case, whereas Socrates is to be the defendant in his. Socrates is charged with impiety; Euthyphro’s charge is murder. A younger man is charging Socrates, now an old man; Euthyphro is indicting his own father, whom he describes as “quite old” (4a4). In fact, however, these contrasts almost certainly form part of the dramatic design of the dialogue, in order to situate the two men in the conversation in parallel, but opposite, circumstances. Despite the superficial differences in the charges, in fact both cases involve religious matters – it is plain from Euthyphro’s account of his reasons for the prosecution that he is interested in removing what he perceives as a religious pollution that his father’s “crime” caused. One of the specifications of the charge against Socrates is that he “corrupted the youth,” thereby turning them against their elders (and even, in Aristophanes’ comedy, The Clouds, against their own fathers) – a situation ironically called to mind by the young Meletus’ prosecution of the aged Socrates. At any rate, by this measure, the text seems to support the claim that Euthyphro has already been corrupted in some way, for he seeks to prosecute his own father for murder. After all, Socrates says no one would think of doing what Euthyphro is intent on unless the victim was another relative (4b5–6). Indeed, Plato has Socrates emphasize this point, by playfully proclaiming that Meletus should prosecute Euthyphro for corrupting his elders and father (5b2–6). So, Plato’s dialogue turns the accusation against Socrates on its head: how does Socrates interact with youths who are already corrupted – already turned against their elders and fathers?

Euthyphro’s case has engendered a certain amount of scholarly controversy, because the case itself seems to be an extraordinary one. The facts, as Euthyphro presents them, are these: Euthyphro’s family hired a day-laborer to help with their farm on Naxos, a small island in the Aegean. This laborer got drunk, got in a fight, and killed one of Euthyphro’s family’s slaves. It is not clear that Euthyphro’s father did anything wrong by binding the killer, throwing him in a ditch, and sending a man to the Religious Counselor (called the exêgêtês) in Athens who is to inform him as to what should be done.

From the point of view of law, then, it is not at all clear that Euthyphro’s father would have any responsibility towards the killer. But from a religious point of view, the fact that the laborer had killed one of Euthyphro’s father’s household slaves – and the fact that the killing had presumably taken place on property allotted on Naxos by Athens to Euthyphro’s family – required some response. Bloodshed involved great risks of miasma or religious pollution, and as the one responsible for the two men and the land, Euthyphro’s father seemed to realize that some response was called for. His question was: what should he do? So, he sent to the appropriate religious authority to get some direction in the matter, in the meantime making sure the guilty party did not escape, and evade punishment. The length of time necessary to get a response from the Religious Counselor in Athens, however, was too long, and the prisoner in the meantime (who may also have been injured in the fight with the slave) was not sufficiently cared for. As Euthyphro puts it:

During this time, he [Euthyphro’s father] paid little attention to the captive and really didn’t care much if he did die because he was a murderer, which is just what happened. He died from hunger and cold and being bound up before the messenger got back from the Religious Counselor.

(4c9–d5)

It is for this death – the death of the man who had murdered Euthyphro’s family’s slave – that Euthyphro proposes to prosecute his own father for murder. It is also plain that some time has elapsed since these unfortunate events took place. Euthyphro says that all of this took place “when we were working our farm on Naxos.” Scholars generally agree that this reference shows that Euthyphro’s family had been allotted some land on Naxos (called a cleruchy) by the Athenian government. But the Athenians lost their cleruchies when the Peloponnesian War came to an end (in early 404 B.C.E), and so that meant that at least five years or so had elapsed since Euthyphro’s father had committed his alleged “crime.” Some scholars have found it so implausible that Euthyphro would wait so long to prosecute his father that they have found Euthyphro’s entire situation historically implausible.⁴ Others, however, have argued that the entire legal situation in Athens during the aftermath of the war would have been so tenuous that any such prosecution may well have not been possible earlier.⁵

And there is yet another puzzle about this case: the Athenian law on homicide seems to have stipulated that a relative of the victim should legally prosecute on such a charge. In Euthyphro’s case, however, it is the alleged murderer who is the relative of the prosecutor; the victim was only a day-laborer who worked on the farm Euthyphro’s family had at the island of Naxos.No doubt this is one of the reasons Plato has Socrates respond as he does when he hears that Euthyphro intends to prosecute his father for murder:

Surely the one killed by your father is a member of your family. Of course, that’s obvious. I suppose you wouldn’t prosecute him for the murder of someone outside the family.

(4b4–6)

Some scholars have argued that the law on homicide did not simply state a preference or presumption that the prosecutor be a relative of the victim; instead, they claim, the law was so restrictive that the prosecutor would have had to be a relative of the victim.⁶ Now, neither Euthyphro nor Socrates seem to react to Euthyphro’s legal situation as if the law were restrictive in this way, for if it were, Euthyphro’s case could not be made (or, at any rate, could not be made by Euthyphro himself). And since this passage in the Euthyphro is one of three ancient texts on which scholars have based their judgments about the degree of restrictiveness of the homicide law,⁷ and because, in our view, neither of the other two texts requires the more restrictive understanding of the law,⁸ we are inclined to believe that, however unusual Euthyphro’s case may be, it is not one that would have been legally impossible.

The first thing Euthyphro would have had to do is to make a proclamation in the Athenian agora, requiring the accused to “keep away from the things laid down by law,” which was intended to have the effect of minimizing the risk of pollution from the crime to the rest of Athens and its citizens.⁹ The prosecutor would then go to the king-archon and enter his charge, whereupon the king-archon would also make a proclamation reiterating that the accused should “keep away from the things laid down by law.” This proclamation would have the effect of a restraining order, preventing the accused from setting foot in any temple, from taking part in any public religious ceremony, from going to the agora or any of its buildings (including any court of law other than the one in which and only when his own case was tried), and any other public buildings. If the accused were found in any of these places, he would be summarily arrested and thrown in jail until his trial. The net effect, as MacDowell puts it,¹⁰ was ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1: THE EUTHYPHRO
• 2: THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES
• 3: THE CRITO
• 4: THE DEATH SCENE FROM THE PHAEDO
• BIBLIOGRAPHY