Xenophon, too, records an Apology of Socrates, providing another perspective on the trial. Others, Xenophon points out, have portrayed Socrates’ megalēgoria or “talking big” at the trial; but they have not explained clearly how he came to prefer death to life.[29] Xenophon, who was away on campaign at the time, and indeed never returned to reside in his native Athens (ch. 22*), says he received word of the trial from Socrates’ friend Hermogenes. Finding Socrates spending his time before the trial carrying on the usual conversations, as Plato depicts in the conversation with Euthyphro, Hermogenes asks Socrates why he is not preparing for his trial. “Don’t you think I have spent my whole life preparing my defense? … For I have spent my life doing no wrong.”[30] Socrates explains that his divine sign has twice forbidden him to prepare a defense. He considers that in his old age his bodily powers will fail, while death will spare him these ills. He seems to contemplate suicide by jury, though he insists that he will not seek death, but only acquiesce in it and prefer death to groveling before the court and begging for life.[31]
Xenophon goes on to provide some (alleged) excerpts from Socrates’ defense speech, but not a complete account.[32] According to Xenophon, Socrates reminds the jury that they have seen him sacrificing at the public altars on holy days. He acknowledges his divine sign that communicates with him, which is no different in principle from other omens and signs the gods send to mortals. This sign has enabled Socrates to give unerring advice to his friends. The courtroom shouts out against him. He goes on to report Chaerephon’s experience. “Once when Chaerephon inquired about me at Delphi in the presence of many onlookers, Apollo answered that no man was more honest than I, nor more just nor prudent.”[33] The jury makes a bigger uproar. Socrates goes on to point out how by his self-control he avoids vice and wrongdoing.
When Meletus speaks up to accuse him of persuading the youth to listen to him rather than their parents, Socrates admits to trying to educate them so as to make them better, which should not be a crime.[34]
When Socrates is condemned, he refuses to name a counter-penalty or allow his friends to do so, lest he should be seen to admitting his own guilt.[35] After the trial he addresses the jury and refuses to mourn because of the verdict. Rather, he maintains, he has not been proved to have done anything unlawful. He compares himself to the legendary hero of the Trojan War, Palamedes, who was put to death on trumped-up charges.[36] To his friends who are weeping for him, Socrates says, “Why are you now crying? Have you not always known that from the moment I was born nature had condemned me to die?”[37] When Apollodorus bewails Socrates’ unjust condemnation, Socrates says, chuckling, “Would you rather have seen me put to death justly than unjustly?”[38] Socrates goes on to prophesy a bad end for the son of Anytus, who indeed, Xenophon tells us, later became an alcoholic.
Xenophon sums up the trial by saying, “By puffing himself up before the court Socrates created animosity and guaranteed his condemnation by the jurors. Yet to me he seems to have achieved a blessed fate, for he escaped the hardest part of life while gaining the easiest of deaths.”[39]
[29].Xenophon Apology 1.
[30].Xenophon Apology 3.
[31].Xenophon Apology 4-9.
[32].Xenophon Apology 22.
[33].Xenophon Apology 11-14; on the oracle, see ch. 11* above.
[34].Xenophon Apology 20-21.
[35].Xenophon Apology 23.
[36].Xenophon Apology 24-26.
[37].This is a rather tired literary trope; cf. Gorgias Defense of Palamedes DK 82B11a.1.
[38].Xenophon Apology 27-28.
[39].Xenophon Apology 32.