The trial carries no mandatory sentence; the prosecutors proposed the death penalty in their complaint.[18] Socrates must now propose a counter-penalty. The prudent thing to do is to propose exile as a serious but less radical punishment for the now-convicted defendant.[19] But Socrates does not play the game. He reminds the jury that he has spent his life in service to the god and to Athens.
“So what do I deserve to receive for such a life? Something good, men of Athens, if the penalty should truly be assessed according to merit. … Nothing is more appropriate, gentlemen, for such a man than to be given free meals in the Prytaneum—much more appropriate than for any of you who has won an Olympic victory in the horse race, the two-horse chariot, or the four-horse chariot race.”[20]
Now, when the condemned should show remorse, Socrates continues to advertise his benefits to the city. The gift of free meals in the White House, as it were, is Athens’ reward for national heroes including Olympic victors and winning generals. Socrates’ benefactions, he implies, are much greater than any of these. Similarly the philosophical poet Xenophanes had argued for the superiority of philosophy to athletics—but not in front of a hostile jury.[21]
Socrates explains. “I am convinced that I have never willingly wronged any man, even if I didn’t convince you. … Since I am convinced I have never wronged anyone, I would never think of wronging myself by denouncing myself as meriting some evil and assessing a penalty for myself accordingly. What am I afraid of? That I should suffer the penalty Meletus proposes, concerning which I claim not to know whether it is good or bad? Instead shall I propose something that I know perfectly well is bad as my penalty?”[22]
Here Socrates applies his moral code to himself. He never wrongs anyone, and he will not wrong himself, by proposing some penalty that is harmful to himself and, as we shall see, his mission. As he made clear earlier, he does not take the threat of death as relevant to moral questions, only the operation of good or evil. To propose evil for himself would be to propose making someone worse, which a moral person can never will to do to another, let alone to himself. However (unadvisedly) playful Socrates was about the free meals, he is deadly serious now.
Socrates points out that he cannot give up his philosophical activities because the god commands him to pursue them. He does not expect the jury to believe him when he tells them his conviction: “This happens to be the greatest good for man: to hold conversations every day about virtue and the other topic concerning which you hear me speaking and examining myself and others; for the unexamined life is not worth living for man.”[23] Again he highlights his paradoxical tenets. It is his way of life that is the ultimate good, not just for himself, but for any human being, and anyone who fails to examine himself lives an inferior life.
Clearly Socrates has moved from the confusion he experienced on hearing the oracle to a confidence in the method he has employed at least since then, if not before, of examining himself and others. The method of examination is a positive good that benefits himself and others, and his service to his city is unique and divinely sanctioned.
He recognizes, however, that he must propose a counter-penalty. A fine would not harm him, since he regards money as insignificant in comparison with the state of the soul. He calculates that he could pay a fine of a mina, a pound of silver, which amounts to one hundred drachmas. At this point his wealthy friends, Plato, Crito, and Apollodorus, offer to set the fine at thirty pounds, or half a talent, which they will pay out of their own resources.
Now the jury votes again on the two penalties. They vote in favor of Meletus’ proposal by a larger majority than for his conviction, by thirty votes.[24] Evidently the jurors were offended by Socrates’ cavalier treatment of the assessment phase of the trial. Socrates’ joke about free meals in the Prytaneum won him new enemies, for he plainly showed no contrition before the court.
[18].Diogenes Laertius 2.40.
[19].Plato Apology 37c-d. But it is unclear whether exile was available as a recognized penalty except in certain murder cases (whereas going into voluntary exile before the trial was a common practice); see Todd 1993: 139-44, 274.
[20].Plato Apology 36d.
[21].Xenophanes B2.
[22].Plato Apology 37a-b.
[23].Plato Apology 38a.
[24].Plato Apology 36a. In 2.41 Diogenes Laertius states that 281 more votes were cast for the prosecution than the defense, apparently misstating the numbers. (See n. 17 above.)