"Death of Socrates" redirects here. For the painting, see The Death of Socrates.
399 B.C.E legal proceedings by the pantheon of Athens against Socrates
The Trial of Socrates
Decided
399 BCE
Verdict
Guilty
Charge
Failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges
Corruption of the Youth
Citation(s)
Plato; Xenophon; Diogenes Laertius
Case history
Subsequent action(s)
Socrates sentenced to death
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting
500 +/- jury members in Athens
Case opinions
280 jurors found the defendant guilty while 220 found him innocent
The Trial of Socrates (399 BC) was held to determine the philosopher's guilt of two charges: asebeia (impiety) against the pantheon of Athens, and corruption of the youth of the city-state; the accusers cited two impious acts by Socrates: "failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges" and "introducing new deities".
The death sentence of Socrates was the legal consequence of asking politico-philosophic questions of his students, which resulted in the two accusations of moral corruption and impiety. At trial, the majority of the dikasts (male-citizen jurors chosen by lot) voted to convict him of the two charges; then, consistent with common legal practice voted to determine his punishment and agreed to a sentence of death to be executed by Socrates's drinking a poisonous beverage of hemlock.
Primary-source accounts of the trial and execution of Socrates are the Apology of Socrates by Plato and the Apology of Socrates to the Jury by Xenophon of Athens, both of whom had been his students; modern interpretations include The Trial of Socrates (1988) by the journalist I. F. Stone, Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths (2009) by the Classics scholar Robin Waterfield [1], and The Shadows of Socrates: The Heresy, War, and Treachery behind the Trial of Socrates (2024) by the scholar Matt Gatton.
^Stone, I.F. (1988). The Trial of Socrates. New York: Little, Brown. Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths by Robin Waterfield, Norton, 2009
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Socrates (/ˈsɒkrətiːz/; Greek: Σωκράτης; c. 470–399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among...
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Collin (2021). "Plato, Xenophon, and the Uneven Temporalities of Ethos in the TrialofSocrates". Philosophy & Rhetoric. 54 (3): 240–262. doi:10.5325/philrhet...
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Collin (2021). "Plato, Xenophon, and the Uneven Temporalities of Ethos in the TrialofSocrates". Philosophy & Rhetoric. 54 (3): 240–262. doi:10.5325/philrhet...
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