Plato's Apology of Socrates: the defence speech of 399 BC

In the spring of 399 BC, in the month of Thargelion (May–June), Socrates, then about seventy, stood before a popular court in Athens. Meletus had brought a public indictment for impiety, ἀσέβεια, and Anytus and Lycon supported him. Plato has Socrates read out the sworn charge, the ἀντωμοσία (24b–c): he «does wrong by corrupting the young, and by not believing in the gods the city believes in, but in other new δαιμόνια». Diogenes Laertius (2.40) gives the same three points in a different order.

The Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους is not a court record. Plato names himself among those present (34a, 38b), but he wrote the work afterwards, and the prosecution speeches, the witnesses and the votes appear only through Socrates' words. Scholars disagree on how close it comes to what was actually said; most read it as Plato's portrait of his teacher, faithful in spirit rather than word for word. Xenophon, who had left Athens in 401 BC, wrote a shorter Apology of his own. In both titles ἀπολογία has its ancient sense: a defence speech, not an expression of regret.

The work, cited by Stephanus pages (17a–42a), falls into three speeches.

• The defence (17a–35d). Socrates first answers his «first accusers», years of rumour, and points to the Socrates of Aristophanes' comedy who «walks on air» (19c). He tells how his friend Chaerephon asked at Delphi whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the Pythia answered that no one was (21a). Testing the oracle, he finds men who think they know what they do not; he is wiser only in that he does not think he knows what he does not know (21d). He cross-examines Meletus, calls himself a gadfly, μύωψ, on the great horse of Athens (30e), says he will obey the god rather than the jurors (29d), and describes his δαιμόνιον, a voice that only ever holds him back (31c–d).
• The counter-penalty (35e–38b). Found guilty, he notes that thirty votes the other way would have freed him (36a). As his «penalty» he proposes free meals in the πρυτανεῖον (36d), then a fine of one mina, and finally thirty minae, guaranteed by Plato, Crito, Critobulus and Apollodorus (38b).
• The last words (38c–42a). Sentenced to death, he tells the jurors who voted to acquit that his sign did not oppose him, so death may be a good: either dreamless nothing or a change of home for the soul (40a–e).

The most quoted sentence of the work comes in the counter-penalty speech, when Socrates explains why he cannot simply go away and keep quiet. The greatest good for a man, he says, is to talk every day about virtue, ἀρετή, and the other things «about which you hear me conversing and examining myself and others», ἐμαυτὸν καὶ ἄλλους ἐξετάζοντος, «and the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being»: ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ (38a).

Two points help with the translation. ἀνεξέταστος is the negative verbal adjective of ἐξετάζω, the verb Socrates uses for his whole activity; at 23c the rich young men imitate him and try ἐξετάζειν others. βιωτός, from βιόω, means «livable», so «not worth living» is a fair rendering. Both words survive. In Modern Greek ανεξέταστος describes, for instance, witnesses not yet questioned, and εξετάζω is to examine or to question. The sense «to test a pupil», as in the εξετάσεις that end every Greek school year, is a later borrowing from the French examen.

The vocabulary of the trial is still the vocabulary of Greek justice, though several words have shifted. Socrates' accusers are κατήγοροι, and a κατήγορος today is anyone who brings a charge in court. The verdict was decided by ψῆφοι, originally pebbles; ψήφος is now simply a vote, at the ballot box or in parliament. The jurors were δικασταί, ordinary citizens chosen by lot. In his last words Socrates pointedly calls only those who voted to acquit him «ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί», saying that he would call them by that name rightly (40a). In Modern Greek a δικαστής is a professional judge.

Two shifts are worth knowing for translation. Τὸ ἔγκλημα at 24c is «the charge»; today έγκλημα means «crime», a sense modelled on the French crime. And the καινὰ δαιμόνια of the indictment have become a set phrase: «καινά δαιμόνια» are new ideas met with suspicion. The δαιμόνιο itself now means a demon, or a special gift, as in «το δαιμόνιο της φυλής».