Standing before the five hundred jurors, the king archon, the accusers, the witnesses, and a miscellaneous audience of onlookers,[1] Socrates began his defense speech. Although speakers in a trial, both accusers and defendants, usually gave memorized speeches composed by professional speech-writers, Socrates would have none of it.[2] He would speak extemporaneously as he did in the street. Only this conversation would be a monologue with a much larger audience than he had ever had. “You’ll hear from me the whole truth,” he promises, “not, by Zeus, in fancy words, my good Athenians, like the ones they use [looking at his accusers], embellished with fine words and phrases—but in plain speech in whatever words come to mind, for I depend only on the truth of what I say, so let none of you expect otherwise. For it wouldn’t be fitting, gentleman, for me to appear before you at my age making flowery speeches like a youth.”[3]
He goes on to beg the jurors’ indulgence if he does not observe appropriate courtroom decorum in his speech. “Here’s the situation: this is the first time I’ve ever appeared in court, now that I am seventy years old. The language of the courtroom is completely foreign to me.” He asks them to allow him to present his case in his own way, however different that may be from the usual defense.
Socrates is being a bit disingenuous, for though he had never been an accuser or a defendant before, he has surely been a juror in a number of trials. He was likely to have been asked to serve as a witness in trials of his friends. He was likely also to have been called up to serve as court arbitrator in several court cases in the last year of his military eligibility, his sixtieth year, when he was liable for such service.[4] In fact, he had also presided for a day over a meeting of the Assembly that constituted itself as a criminal court to try the generals of Arginusae (ch. 19*). It was true, however, that he had never been on trial before.
He outlines his defense. “It is reasonable for me to defend myself, gentlemen of the jury, first against my original accusers and their accusation, and only then against my later accusers and their accusation. Many accusers have arisen against me before you over many years, misrepresenting me, whom I fear more than Anytus and his associates, as if they weren’t bad enough. But the others are worse, gentlemen, who have taken you aside from childhood on, and have filled your ears with falsehoods about me: ‘There is this guy named Socrates, a wise man, who studies things above the earth and under the earth and makes the weaker argument the stronger.’ These, gentlemen, who disseminate this rumor, are the real threat to me. For people who hear these rumors assume that those who study these things don’t believe in the gods. … What’s most frustrating is the fact that I can’t even give any of their names, except perhaps that of a certain comic poet.”[5]
Realizing that he has his work cut out for him to disprove a slander that has been causing prejudice against him for years, Socrates frames the slanderers’ case as an imaginary legal complaint: “Socrates wrongfully meddles in things that don’t concern him by studying things below the earth and in the sky and making the weaker argument the stronger, and by teaching these things to others.”
He adds, “You yourselves have seen this accusation in the comedy of Aristophanes, with Socrates flying around there, claiming to walk on air and spouting a lot more nonsense concerning things about which I haven’t got the slightest idea. Not that I mean to malign such knowledge if anyone is wise in these things—may I not be accused of that by Meletus—but I just don’t involve myself in such things, men of Athens.” He invites members of the jury to tell each other if anyone has actually heard him talking about such things, to show that he does not.[6] Here, presumably, he pauses. Silence.
The most damaging misrepresentation of Socrates is obviously The Clouds of Aristophanes, which the poet had published some years after staging it (see ch. 14*).[7] The imaginary accusation of his slanderers portrays him as both a philosopher of nature (in studying astronomy and geology, like most of the Presocratic philosophers) and a sophist (in studying how to win any argument)—as Aristophanes had in fact portrayed him. Even here, where it might be in his interest to attack these two intellectual movements, Socrates declines. Though conservatives in the jury suspect these movements as subversive of traditional values, Socrates bears no grudge against natural philosophy and sophistry. He does, to be sure, add the significant qualifier, “if anyone is wise in these things.” But however much Socrates challenges sophists such as Protagoras, Gorgias, and Hippias, he does not attack their projects as a whole but consistently maintains an attitude (or façade) of respect and even admiration for their work. Indeed, in the Meno we see him defending to sophists against the prejudice of Anytus (ch. 12).[8] Similarly, he largely ignores natural philosophy without disparaging it.[9]
The last point of the imaginary accusation is that he teaches argumentation—“logic,” we might say—to others. “Now if any of you has heard that I undertake to teach men and make money from doing so, this too is false. I think this is a good thing, if anyone should be able to teach men—for instance teachers like Gorgias of Leontini, Prodicus of Ceos, and Hippias of Elis. … There happens to be another wise man here from Paros, who I found out was in town. You see, I ran into a man who has paid more money to sophists that anybody else, namely Callias son of Hipponicus. So I asked him—he has two sons, you know—‘Callias,’ I said, ‘if your two sons were colts or calves, we would be able to hire a trainer for them who could instill in them the appropriate virtue. He would be a horseman or farmer. But since they are humans, whom do you have in mind to instruct them? Who is an expert in this virtue, this human or political art? I presume that you have looked into this for the sake of your sons.
Is there,’ I asked, ‘such an expert or not?’ ‘Absolutely,’ he replied. ‘Who,’ I asked, ‘and from where, and for how much does he teach?’ ‘Evenus, Socrates,’ he said, ‘of Paros, five pounds.’ And I envied Evenus if he truly had this art and taught it for so reasonable a price. I would puff myself up and strut around like he does if I had his knowledge. But I don’t, men of Athens.”[10]
Again the Craft Analogy, again a sophist’s claim to teach the political art, again a backhanded compliment from Socrates. Callias, host of the congress of sophists depicted in the Protagoras (chs. 5-6*), remains as champion and patron of sophistry.[11] Socrates desires the political art but does not profess to have it and doesn’t teach for money. But if Socrates isn’t a sophist, why has he become so notorious? “I, men of Athens, have acquired this reputation from nothing else but a kind of wisdom. What kind of wisdom? What is perhaps human wisdom. Actually I happen to be wise in that. Those fellows [the sophists] whom I mentioned just now are perhaps wise in a kind of superhuman wisdom, if anything. As for me, I don’t have that kind of knowledge, and whoever says I do is lying and trying to slander me. Now, men of Athens, don’t cause a commotion if what I’m about to say sounds conceited. For I’m not speaking for myself, but I will appeal to a reliable authority.”
[1].That there is an audience apart from the officials, principals, jurors, and witnesses, Plato Apology 24e-25a. See ch. 1 above.
[2].Diogenes Laertius 2.40-41 has Lysias writing a speech for Socrates, which the philosopher declines to give. Lysias was composing speeches at the time and was probably on friendly terms with Socrates as the brother of Polemarchus, portrayed in the Republic. The exchange Diogenes describes is, however, in all likelihood fictional, reflecting a speech Lysias wrote later in response to a posthumous attack on Socrates by Polycrates the Sophist (see below, ch. 32*). On Lysias, see ch. 21* and Nails 2002: 190-194. On the speech, see Chroust 1957: 20 and n. 88.
[3].Plato Apology 17b-c.
[4].Aristotle Constitution of Athens 53.
[5].Plato Apology 18a-d.
[6].Plato Apology 19b-d.
[7].Aristophanes revised the play, apparently intending to re-stage it, but evidently never did. The revised version was, however published, along with the original. The revision took place between 420 and 417 BC and was presumably published soon after; see Dover 1968: lxxx, xcviii. Aristophanes’ publication kept his criticisms of Socrates alive long after the performance of the play.
[8]. Plato Meno 91c-95a.
[9].Xenophon, however, shows him criticizing natural philosophy, Memorabilia 1.1.11-15; see ch. 5*.
[10].Plato Apology 19d-20c.
[11].Callias was still politically prominent and active at the time of the trial; see Nails 2002:68-74.