Abstract

Since the appearance of Plato’s Apology and Crito during the former half of the fourth century BCE, up to and including today there seems to have persistently prevailed an implicit consensus among students of (Western) philosophy, namely, that the Athenian jury convicted and executed an innocent and decidedly harmless man, Socrates — and that this reckless action was grounded in exaggerated and even false charges. A closer reexamination of the known evidence, however, ought to reveal that Socrates was probably entirely correctly charged and declared guilty. While, granted, we might nowadays look upon him as, essentially, an innocuous eccentric, in the light of the social and cultural standards of his time, he could not but be taken as a rebel of the first order. Indeed, more than this, his in-jail behavioral changes we read about in the Phaedo, may well be interpreted as intimating that while awaiting execution, Socrates probably came to see himself as the criminal he was accused of being, and, correspondingly, deserving of the capital punishment recommended by the jury.