The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life

by Bettany Hughes

  In the fifth century BC this was believed to be a world fat with threats. Earth – in the minds of Socrates’ peers – was inhabited by spirits, typically malign, who resided in the swell of hills, the blister of a breaking wave, the mould in an ear of corn, the fetid breath of a dying man. Life was precarious. The Greeks did not need men to make it any harder for them by appearing to question and insult traditional gods. In Babylon or Egyptian Thebes or Macedonia the cities were orientated around the great might of a temporal leader. A king, pharaoh or emperor frequently appropriated to himself priestly powers, but it was his iron fist that ruled the state from inside tall palaces and golden gates. In Athens, though, it was the Acropolis with its cluster of temples, the home to many gods, that drew the eye. Proud democrats busied themselves in the Agora, the Areopagus, the Assembly and the warren of streets below. Even though kings and tyrants and despots had been done away with, there was no shadow of a doubt that in this odd new thing called a democracy, the Olympian gods still ruled. Life itself was thought to be a religious experience. Crimes against religion – such as those with which Socrates was charged – were fundamentally, desperately disturbing.

  The gravitas of the Stoa’s business was reflected in its marble and limestone dressings. Facing out onto the Agora, man-sized slabs, carved in wood and then stone, displayed the laws of Athens’ political godfather, the celebrated poet and law-giver of the sixth century, Solon.5 Inscribed laws such as these were a source of great pride for the Athenians – here was justice, literally, writ large. Recent excavations have shown how democracy was also built into the Stoa’s fabric: along the north wall are stone benches for citizen-jurors.6

  The intrinsic importance of the cases heard here – what could be of greater import than Athens’ relationship with its gods? – meant this was a spot where passions ran high. But today, when Plato tells us that Socrates has bumped into an old acquaintance called Euthyphro, the atmosphere is temperate. Socrates has just come from the gym, following a languid chat with a young man called Theaetetus, stepping through the Stoa Basileios, past the mesmeric light and shade that the columns create. It is a relaxed scene; both men, in a rather world-weary way, have come to the Agora for legal reasons.

  Socrates has been summoned to hear the serious charges against him:

  SOCRATES: … He [Meletus] must be a clever chap. Seeing my stupidity in corrupting his contemporaries, he goes off to accuse me to the State, as though he were running to his mother.7

  One can sense the irritation. An elderly man, a parent of both children and ideas, who has lived through regime change, war, plague, foreign invasion, is to be taken to court by three also-rans. We know their names: Anytus, Meletus and Lycon. Meletus was a poet, youngish, thirty-five or so. Anytus was a tanner, an industrialist and a politician who had become very popular with democrats (the democracy had been disbanded in 404 BC, and at the time of Socrates’ trial was only recently restored; Anytus was in favour with the new regime). Lycon spoke on behalf of the orators of the city. We know very little about him other than that his son had been murdered by pro-Spartan oligarchs during the Athenian civil war. Without the later notoriety of Socrates’ trial, it seems these are men with some clout, but who would, under normal circumstances, be only footnotes in history.8

  The primary charge brought against Socrates was that he was impious. The fact that he corrupted the young was a secondary matter. He was believed to have corrupted Athenian youths because he tempted them away from the city’s gods; he jarred the ritual tempo of society, he made young minds think independently. While chatting in the gymnasia, or in the dusty, noisy cottage-industries such as the workshop of Simon the Shoemaker, Socrates was accused of having sparked new, unorthodox thoughts in the youngsters’ developing minds. For the Athenians, this was deadly serious.

  And also make a law, by my order, that a man who is not capable of reverence and right shall be put to death, for he is a plague to the polis.9

  Despite the inference of some excitable modern-day historians, there was no suggestion of foul play, or of sexual interference, in Socrates’ ‘corruption’ of Athens’ young men. An Athenian court would have been the first to leap on such a weakness, if it had indeed been the case – in Athenian legislation a jury was expected to form an opinion of the defendant’s moral character from his past reputation; courts expected prosecutors to shake a few skeletons out of the cupboard. Sexual misdemeanour crops up in a number of court cases from the period – as a crime, it is never once mentioned in the case of Socrates. And yet – perverse as ever – Socrates concedes that Meletus (although missing the point entirely) has some basis to his fears: that he has hit on something when he flags up the importance of the idea that young men are being targeted.

  And he seems to me to be alone among the politicians to be starting in the right place. For he’s right to care first and foremost that the young be as good as possible, just like a good farmer is likely to make the young plants his first concern, and after them he turns to the others.10

  The young men of the city had a kind of totemic significance for Athens. Their heroisation is apparent in the statues that survive from the period. These were commodities that could not be tampered with. With charges that suggest the philosopher is perverting this golden youth, Socrates is in deep water.

  Socrates has arrived here today at the well-proportioned Stoa because, a few days earlier, as he walked through his beloved Athens, he was pulled up short. Meletus, buttressed by two summoners (a cross between town-criers and community police), informed Socrates he was in trouble. In a theatrically loud voice his ‘crimes’ were broadcast; a date was agreed upon (in this case, probably about four days hence) when Socrates and his prosecutor should visit one of the state-funded magistrates of one of the state-funded courts to thrash out the proposed case in a pre-trial examination. Given the lack of a formal communication system in Athens, this episode has a rather sinister ring to it. Meletus must have lain in wait for Socrates at one of his preferred haunts – the Agora, perhaps, one of the city’s gymnasia or a favourite shrine – so that he could ambush the philosopher as he appeared round the corner.

  Not that Socrates was a stranger to controversy or aggression on Athens’ streets. By all accounts, his delight in needling men in order to prick closer to the truth, in his search for ‘the good life’, drove many to distraction. One later source describes how Athenians rained down blows on the philosopher, lashed out with clenched fists because of his interminable, irritating questions:

  He said that the objects of his search were –

  Whatever good or harm can befall man

  In his own house.

  And very often, while arguing and discussing points that arose, he was treated with great violence and beaten, and pulled about, and laughed at and ridiculed by the multitude. But he bore all this with great equanimity. So that once, when he had been kicked and roughed up, and had borne it all patiently, and someone expressed his surprise, he said, ‘Suppose an ass had kicked me, would you have me bring an action against him?’11

  What is good? How do we know that we know anything? Who is qualified to rule? What is love? Socrates was not a mollifying man. For more than fifty years he had dogged Athens with questions. He purported not to instruct, but to ‘un-teach’ men.

  And here we can understand why Socrates’ trial has such central importance – both for Athens and within world history. Come the year 399 BC, Socrates has, for the last forty (perhaps even the last fifty) years, encouraged those around him to think deeply, critically, about the meaning of life. He exhorts young men to do this, young women too, priests and priestesses, soldiers, seasoned citizens. He advocates thinking while men make shoes, row ships, break bread. He suggests that acquiescence to the status quo, to ‘the way things are’, is not just lazy, it is inhuman.

  And while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, s
aying: O my friend, why do you, who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this? And if the person with whom I am arguing says: Yes, but I do care; I do not depart or let him go at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less. And this I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren.12

  Despite the fact that the crimes now laid out in front of the philosopher are so serious they could incur the death penalty, Socrates does not appear over-bothered. For the next few days, if Plato has it right (and he was, at this stage in Socrates’ life, an eye-witness in Athens), Socrates does not choose to exile himself from the city – which would have been a legal option.13 Instead he has a chat in the gymnasium with some of these young men (those boys who, since birth, had known nothing other than war-years) and, only once sated with conversation, does he walk to the Archon Basileus, the ‘King Magistrate’, in the Stoa to make his plea.

  The charges – that he has denied Athens’ gods, introduced new ones and corrupted the city’s young men – are read out once again. Socrates, we know, accepts that Meletus’ accusation stands up, given the existing laws of the city.14 This is a skirmish, an uncomfortable situation, which – like so many in his life – the philosopher is not going to duck.15

  So some time in late March or early April the philosopher leaves the Archon’s court. Now the well-oiled bureaucracy of complaint, of justice, is in train. One of the distinctive traits of democratic Athens was its obsession with posting public notices. Papyrus chits, graffiti, stone-carved stelai communicating new laws, fines, religious summons, would have been found everywhere in the city. Democratic decisions have to be shared with fellow democrats. And therefore a man handy with a paintbrush is given a job; the Agora – a witness to Socrates’ ideas as he sat or strode up and down, asking one question after another – will now witness his defamation. Strapped to the railings outside the row of statues of ‘Eponymous Heroes’, possibly also painted on the white-plastered wall opposite, Socrates’ crimes are set out in outsize red letters. Here is a rude accusation; his disruptive influence noted down, marked into the minds of his fellow Athenians, and ours.

  In 1954 excavations uncovered white flakes deep in the ground in this south-east corner of the Agora: fragile fragments of marble-dust stucco. This find was not included in the excavation report, but just noted down on an inventory card. Recent investigation has, though, thrown further light.16 The ghosts of letters on the flakes were once bold, ½ inch across, 2½ inches high. Freshly painted, ruddy, there would have been no missing the message they spelt out. One eye-witness, from antiquity, writing centuries after Socrates’ death, said that shreds of his charges were still visible.17

  The position of the red letters could not have been more significant. When the democracy was first established, the reformer Kleisthenes realised that he would have to break old loyalties in order to strengthen fidelity to the new mono-democratic Athenian city-state. Ancient Greece was a tribal society, but now millennia-old tribes had been effectively disbanded and ten new, manufactured tribes put in their place. It was one of those moments in history when men draw straight lines on the map – to try to obliterate the past.

  The sociopolitical engineering was carefully thought through. Each tribe was given a hero. And each hero was given a fine, larger-than-life-sized statue in the heart of the Agora. This display of Eponymous Heroes was raised 15 feet above street level. At either end of the line-up giant flames burned. These bronze heroes had, at the time of Socrates’ trial, reminded Athenians morning, noon and night of the radical power of the democracy for the last twenty-five years.18 Here was street furniture with a message. Because beneath the statues, on wooden and plaster plaques, the charges of highend criminals were etched. Ideal men, idols and condemned democratic sinners side by side. It was in the vicinity of the Eponymous Heroes – either directly beneath the figures or on the wall opposite – that Socrates’ crimes were blazoned.

  When Socrates came to the law-court of the Archon Basileus, a century’s worth of political crisis and political experimentation had come to a head. Athens had suffered the awful, abominable realities of stasis and civil war. Athenians were a brutalised polity. Twelve years before this trial, in 411 BC, a dreadful thing had happened, a nightmare that shook up courtroom dynamics.19 The democracy itself had been overturned by an Athenian cell of aristocratic men. This was Athens’ night of the long knives. Slaughter, torture, intimidation were companions of the political coup. Athenians spattered the streets with Athenian blood.

  Reliving the horror of its memory-bright civil wars, once again Athens had attempted to institutionalise fairness.

  When democrats repopulated the city squares from 410/9 BC, they were determined to do what they could to prevent cliques splitting the city apart a second time around. So now, to cauterise overt cronyism, the legally active in Athens on any one day – dikastes (the Athenian judge and jury) – have each been allotted to a different court that very dawn. The chance for tribal or political bloc-voting has been negated. Socrates’ own situation in March/April 399 BC is another example of state-sponsored fairness. What now awaits Socrates is a pre-trial examination – more fluid than the trial proper will be. Chaired by the Archon, genuine questions and answers try to flush out vested interests, coercion, downright illegality. The pre-trial examination is a carefully orchestrated safeguard of fair play.

  It is in democratic Athens that the sycophant is born: a man on the make who brings a trumped-up court case; someone who thinks he’ll be able to score off the very presence of a justice system. Sycophantai were the fifth-century legal equivalent of ambulance-chasers; citizens who brought cases on flimsy charges so that they could be paid for attending court, and might possibly even net damages. And so steep fines have been introduced – if you don’t succeed in getting any more than one-fifth of the votes, you have to pay the state back.20

  But in the trial of Socrates, a fine for sycophancy seems unlikely. For whatever reason, Meletus has been moved to make an example of Socrates. The young poet does not even have to pay court fees, because by bringing Socrates to justice, he is thought to be furthering important state business, delivering a public service. At this stage in Athens, irreverence for the gods had to be prevented – no charge. Emotions and religious sensibilities were raw. Every living adult at the time of Socrates’ trial has been traumatised. They would have seen their citizens limp home from attenuated foreign wars, would have heard their neighbours scream as they were exterminated for having the wrong kind of friends. These have been troubled times; dark days for the golden city. Athens needs its own catharsis, it needs someone to blame.

  And so we might expect Socrates to be more than a little nervous about his impending trial.

  Yet Xenophon reports that the old philosopher spends no time whatsoever fussing about what he will say to the jury. He accepts in the pre-trial examination that the charges are just (if not justified), and looks forward to the trial proper with an academic interest. Here’s the exchange between Socrates and a friend of his, Hermogenes, written in the form of a dramatic dialogue – as Plato might have set it down.

  HERMOGENES: Is it not necessary to consider, Socrates, something you can say to defend yourself?

  SOCRATES: Do I not seem to you to have spent my whole life preparing my own defence?

  HERMOGENES: How?

  SOCRATES: By going through life doing nothing unjust. I think that is the greatest defence.

  HERMOGENES: Do you not see how often the Athenian court is misled by a speech into putting to death one who has done no injustice, and how often one who has c
ommitted an injustice, has given a speech that moved the court to pity, or by speaking in a clever way, has been acquitted.

  SOCRATES: Yes, by Zeus, and twice now I have attempted to think about my defence but my divinity opposes me.21

  For weeks now Socrates himself, his friends, Crito, Phaedo and Plato amongst them, priests, traders, scampering low-born children (here illegally; remember you had to be over eighteen, a fully-fledged citizen to show your face in the Agora22) coming and going at their liberty – they would all have had the chance to see what Socrates was said to have done, the crimes he needed to defend himself against. Written in deep red on a plaster wall, Socrates’ full charges were set out:

  Under oath Meletos the son of Meletos of Pitthos has brought a public action against Socrates the son of Sophroniskos of Alopeke and charged him with the following offences: Socrates is guilty of not acknowledging the gods acknowledged by the state and of introducing other new divinities. Furthermore he is guilty of corrupting the young. Penalty proposed: capital punishment.23

  Shading their eyes to pick out the words as they headed for home, drinking in the cool of the evening air, Athenians must have tut-tutted at such a thing.

  And now, in May, six to eight weeks on from the pre-trial, at the Archon’s religious court, at the outset of the trial itself, with so many gathered in one place and with the sun climbing, the atmosphere would have been closer, fuggish, expectant. Socrates, we are given to understand, is walking unprepared into the packed courtroom. Even so, the philosopher must surely have read his publicly shaming charges, heard them whispered by the gossips of the city and bemoaned by his friends, and now he will hear them repeated again. The burning question Athens must have asked itself is: how will the philosopher choose to respond?