One topic that notably does not get mentioned in the trial is politics. In fact the trial was surely all about politics. As one scholar of Athenian law has observed, “It is tempting to assert that Athenian religious trials were all about politics: a surprisingly high proportion of known impiety trials reveal, on examination, a surprisingly strong political agenda.”[49] There was a good historical reason, however, why politics remained invisible: at the time of Socrates’ trial, the Amnesty that accompanied the overthrow of the Thirty was still in force (see chs. 21, 23*). Political offenses committed before the restoration of the democracy could not be prosecuted, under pain of incurring a capital offense. From the political point of view, the situation looked very different than it did from the strictly legal point of view. Socrates’ crime was not his religious beliefs or his educational practices but his connections with enemies of the state, Critias and Alcibiades. Socrates was suspect because he stayed in Athens when the decent people fled to Phyle or Piraeus to join the rebellion, and he had reservations about democratic practices such as appointing government leaders by lot. If there was something suspect about his teachings, it was the possibility that he was sowing anti-democratic ideas among his followers.
The political issues burst into view with the publication of a pamphlet sometime around 392 BC, seven years after the trial. Polycrates the Sophist advertised his abilities as an orator by composing a piece called The Accusation of Socrates, purporting to be a speech by Anytus given at the trial of Socrates. In the list of wrongs committed by Socrates are his associations with the political bad boys of the era, Critias and Alcibiades. Polycrates’ pamphlet is lost, but we know about it from reactions by Xenophon, Isocrates, and others.[50] Plato himself reacted strongly to it, though indirectly, in several dialogues.[51] Polycrates accused Socrates of being politically subversive and dangerous to the state. While his attack was anachronistic, given the constraints on prosecutions during the Amnesty, the sophist did bring into the open the innuendos and suspicions that worked against Socrates in the actual trial.
A complete defense of Socrates would take into account Socrates’ political views. Thus, if Plato wished to use poetic license to exonerate Socrates, we would expect him to expose and refute the political biases against him. Yet the Apology does not address Socrates’ political position at all, and the monologue touches on politics only insofar as Socrates explains his avoidance of active participation in contemporary debates. In his speech Socrates sticks closely to the (non-political) charges brought against him in what thus remains a historically appropriate response to his prosecutors. For all this, Plato is not ignorant of the political dimension of the trial, but saves his reflections on Socrates’ politics for the Crito, a kind of sequel (see next chapter). Perhaps, one might object, Plato’s point was just to invent for Socrates a historically appropriate response. (Thucydides, indeed, explicitly grants himself that license in reporting speeches from the Peloponnesian war.[52] Yet the reason the historian allows himself the license is that he cannot remember exactly what was said on the several occasions—nor was he present for all the speeches he reports.) Plato, however, is dealing with only one very emotion-charged event in which he was present and took an active part.[53]
[49].Todd 1993: 308.
[50].Xenophon Memorabilia 1.2; Isocrates Busiris 4-6. On the date, see Diogenes Laertius 2.38-39, based on a nice piece of ancient scholarship by Favorinus in the second century AD. On the whole problem, see Chroust 1957.
[51].Plato Meno 89e-95a; Gorgias 503c, 516d, with Libanius Apology 155; Symposium 215a-222c.
[52].Thucydides 1.22.1.
[53].According to one ancient anecdote, Plato tried to address the jurors at the trial but was shouted down because of his youth, Diogenes Laertius 2.41.