12 The Apology

The Apology is unique among Plato’s dialogues in that the dramatic exchanges occur inside the frame of a long speech. Whereas in other dialogues there may be an outer framing scene, here we find conversa­tional exchanges introduced in Socrates’ speech to the Athenian jury about to convict him of corrupting the young. It is important in reading all of the Platonic dialogues to keep in mind the historical facts of Socrates’ life and death and of the Athens in which he lived. It is absolutely critical in reading the Apology. Every word must be mea­sured against the knowledge that Socrates’ main speech to the jury resulted in conviction and that the speech proposing a penalty resulted in condemnation to death. It is impossible that Plato’s intended audi­ence would have been ignorant of these matters and that the author would not have planned every word with this awareness in mind.

It is perhaps easy to forget that an artistic representation of an event differs from the historically real event in several important ways. When the original event took place the participants did not know how it would turn out. For example, when Napoleon discussed with his generals the invasion of Russia, neither he nor the generals knew whether the attempt would succeed; thus an account of their actual comments has purely denotative meaning. A representation of the conversation by a literary artist, coming after the event, when the outcome is established and known, might well introduce on the part of important characters prophetic remarks or remarks bathed in irony, which the knowing reader would at once recognize. This ability is of course one of the reasons that art is lovelier than life, why Aeschylus’s Persae is art whereas a newspaper account of the Battle of Salamis (had there been such) would not be. When we study an artistic work we can ask several layers of questions; we can ask first, why does this particular character say what he does when he says it: what in the context of the story makes the comment dramatically appropriate? But we can also ask, since the work is an imaginative reconstruction, why did the author have the character give the speech in just this way; what is the author’s point? When we come to Plato’s Apology, it is too easy to forget that we do not have the actual speech that Socrates delivered to the court. Indeed, it is not the only version of Socrates’ defense that was produced. That it is by Plato undoubtedly suggests that it will be a great speech, but we should not for that reason assume it is more accurate than Xenophon’s version or than those that Lysias, or Theo­dectes, or Demetrius, or Theon are said to have composed.^[1] In reading Plato’s version, we must reflect constantly on why Plato has made it the way he has. Socrates, in whatever speech he actually delivered, must have had his own purposes. To the extent that Plato’s speech is different from that speech, historical accuracy cannot be Plato’s purpose.^[2]

Socrates’ defense is Plato’s accusation. Every argument Socrates presents in his own behalf, every foolishness Socrates exposes in the charges against him, every refusal to engage in rhetorical trickery to distract from the issues—all are charges against the Athenians who convicted him.

The speech begins with Socrates wondering what effect the accus­ers’ speech had on the jury. He says sarcastically that even he was almost carried away by it even though there was no truth in the charges. Of course, we know that the speech of the accusers, whatever it was, for all its want of truth, was more convincing than Socrates’ speech: Socrates was convicted. We can only imagine what the speech was like, for Plato presents no version of it.^[3] If Plato wanted to mitigate the error or crime of Athens in convicting Socrates, all he had to do was give Socrates a speech that failed to convince.^[4] The stronger Socrates’ speech, the better he answers the charges, the more solid his ­ arguments, the greater is Athens’ blame. Now Socrates is most dumb­ founded by the accusers’ claim that he is a clever speaker, for unless they meant one who says the truth, he denies being a clever speaker.^[5]

Exhorting the jury to consider only the truth (18A), Socrates intro­ duces the two classes of his accusers. The first are those from long before who say that Socrates investigates things below the earth and in the sky and goes whirling in the air, the kind of thing depicted in Aristophanes’ Clouds. But, Socrates challenges, find someone who has ever heard me discuss such things!

Nor does he get a fee, like a sophist. One day he talked to Callias, who spent more than anybody else on sophists. Socrates asked him whether he knew anyone who could perfect human qualities (20B). Yes indeed, replied Callias, Evenus of Paros, for a fee of five minas. In court, Socrates expresses his admiration for anyone who can perfect others. We may wonder whether these comments are not a rebuke to the Athenians, who condone spending large sums on sophists, listen to their bold claims, and yet indict Socrates, who talks to everyone for free and makes no bold claims about improving others.

Socrates next explains how he developed his reputation, and with great fanfare calls as a witness the god of Delphi, the most reliable of all gods. If the god of Delphi will testify in Socrates’ defense, surely, we think, he will have a good case. Who could be a better witness than a god, Apollo in particular? Chaerephon, a companion of Socrates, went to Delphi (21A) to ask whether there was anyone wiser than Socrates.^[6] The priestess replied that no one was wiser. Because the answer puzzled, Socrates began to test the oracle. We may wonder why Socrates felt it necessary to test the oracle. Did he believe it? If he did, why bother testing it? On the other hand, if he did not believe it, why was there a necessity to test it, why not just reject it out of hand?^[7] Here, in Socrates’ simultaneous belief and disbelief, we have a classic instance of tragic hamartia, tragic error.^[8] Are we to see Socra­tes as a tragic hero, whose hamartia led to a life with calamitous consequences? Socrates interprets the oracle as assigning him a mis­sion to prove the truth of the oracle: he is to test people who have a reputation for wisdom to learn whether they are in fact as wise as they think. He turns to poets, craftsmen, politicians and everywhere finds no one who is as wise as he pretends. They don’t know anything, nor does he, but at least he knows that he doesn’t know, and in this his wisdom is superior to the others’. In this way, he finds out the real meaning of the Delphic pronouncement. This questioning has created hostility towards him, hostility that increased when youngsters imi­tated him and questioned their elders; thus, Socrates’ three accusers have come against him—Meletus on behalf of poets, Anytus on behalf of professional men and politicians, and Lycon on behalf of orators (20-24A). 

The constituencies of the old accusers represent the various vices of Athenians—their unreflective love of poets, their passion for politics, their infatuation with oratory. In convicting Socrates the Athenians are proving that they, like Socrates’ interlocutors, think they are wise when they are not. The dialogue suggests that the Athenians are guilty of thinking they understand justice when they don’t, and Plato warns his present audience—his readers—to take more care to ascertain the truth.

The only dramatic exchange is with Meletus, Socrates’ principal accuser, with whom the old man first discusses the charge of corrupt­ing youth. Who, Socrates asks, is a good influence? Meletus’s initial silence shows that he hasn’t given much thought to the matter, and Socrates points out this failure. Upon intensive questioning, Meletus claims that everyone in Athens improves the youth except for Socra­tes. This claim is obviously ridiculous, since in every other case it is the few, not the many, who improve others (25A-C). Socrates argues that if he actually does corrupt the youth, he must do it unintentionally, since no one would seek to live in a state that was full of corrupt people. Of Meletus, Socrates asks how he corrupts the youth. The young man replies that Socrates corrupts by not believing in the gods of the state or in any gods and by inventing new ones. The charge is self-evidently contradictory, as Socrates points out (26C), for how could he believe in new gods if he believes in no gods at all? In addition, Meletus has confused Socrates with Anaxagoras and has attributed to the wrong man the belief that the sun is a rock and the moon a mass of earth. By the end of the examination of Meletus, Socrates has proven to the audience that Meletus didn’t know what he was talking about concerning the charge of corruption of the youth, that the charge of impiety was self-contradictory, and that the facts of Socrates’ belief were based on mistaken identity.

As Socrates concludes his examination of Meletus, the courtroom bursts with noise (27A-B), and Socrates begs them to be silent and to let him finish. The jury do not want to see Meletus refuted. Is not the jury Plato’s target? The Athenians are unwilling to follow the logic of the case, unwilling to listen to criticism. If we have been convinced by Socrates’ speech, why hasn’t the jury? In fact, the more we are persuaded, the more culpable the jury is for not being convinced.

Why has he exposed himself to such dangers, Socrates asks (28B- 29B)? His sense of duty required him to do so, his love for his city of Athens. And he adds that if the jury acquitted him on the condition that he stop questioning others, he would refuse the terms. He asks an imaginary Athenian (30D): aren’t you ashamed to belong to a city famous for its wisdom, but to go on making money and acquiring honor without giving any attention to truth and the improvement of your soul? He will talk to everyone in this way, he says, foreigner and citizen alike, but especially citizens, for they are closer to him by kinship (30A). He says that he will never alter his conduct, and again (30C) the courtroom roars with disapproval. After they hear the imaginary conversation with the intellectually lazy Athenian, after they are shown the public-spirited dimension of his conversations, the court continues to express its violent disapproval. Is not Plato portraying the unworthiness of Athens?

In arguments reminiscent of the Gorgias and the Republic, Socrates says that since it is impossible for a bad man to hurt a good one, the court can’t hurt him. He has been given to Athens as a gift of the god, a gadfly to wake up a lazy horse. If, says Socrates, the horse kills the fly, the horse will suffer (3lA).

To help the city, Socrates has neglected his own affairs and has become poor. He has also neglected the affairs of the city because of his spiritual sign (31D), but in so doing he was able to be a true champion of justice. If he had acted publicly, he would surely have been killed earlier. He cites as proofs his conduct when as a public official he risked death rather than commit injustice (32B-E). In a subdued and unnaming reference to Alcibiades, his notorious friend, Socrates says he never countenanced wrongdoing nor had any particular individuals as actual pupils: he talked to everyone. Those who have spent time with him, he says, have done so because it amuses them to see people shown up for not knowing things, and he names many of those who have enjoyed hearing him. Plato’s audience asks itself whether showing people that they don’t know what they think they know is a capital offense.

Socrates concludes his speech with an explanation of why he has avoided emotional appeals even when he is aware that the simple fact that he has avoided them may cause people to vote against him (34C). They will remember their own emotional appeals in the courtroom and will resent him for not doing the same. He urges them and the rest of the jury to do their duty and vote according to the truth and justice of the charges and not on the basis of such superfluous matters as the lack of emotional appeals.^[9] If they act according to the truth, they will be doing their religious duty.

Socrates is of course convicted. We knew that he would be even as we heard his appeal to the jury not to convict him because he would not make emotional appeals. Plato seems to be telling us that such appeals are necessary when talking to Athenians; logic and truth matter much less than tearful accounts of children and mothers. Perhaps Plato’s intended audience for the Apology was the next generation, the children of those who convicted Socrates. What will they have thought of their fathers for convicting Socrates on such a flimsy basis? Surely they will be persuaded by Socrates’ refutation of the charges and will indict their elders. Such indictment will be beneficial if it inspires Plato’s own generation to act more judiciously and rationally—no doubt the dialogue’s purpose, a purpose that still lives when we assign the dialogue to our students.

Plato includes two more brief speeches by Socrates, one offering a substitute penalty, the other his last public comments upon the sen­tence of death. In the first speech Socrates adheres to his innocence with great force, suggesting as an appropriate punishment maintenance at the state’s expense. He is aware (37A) that his remarks may strike the jury as perverse, and indeed they are perverse. Despite their wonderful consistency, are they not inappropriate in a courtroom? Are such remarks likely to be received favorably by a jury that has just convicted the defendant? The inclusion of these remarks moves Plato’s readers; they see first that Socrates maintained his innocence and consistency of belief to the end, and second, that when Athens was given a chance to undo its former action, it refused. Socrates again asserts the piety of his actions, claiming that conversation with his fellows is a divine mission (37E). In the end, he suggests a fine of one mina, which he increases to thirty on the security of friends.

Condemned to death, he then delivers a speech of two parts, the first part to those who voted to convict, the second to those who voted to acquit. His speech to the members of the jury who voted to convict contains a very strong rebuke. They condemned him, he says, because he refused to engage in the impudence and effrontery they wanted (38D). His refusal to pander, to behave dishonorably simply to escape death, is what caused his ruin. It is far easier to escape death than wrongdoing, he says, and he predicts a stern vengeance upon them. They will have more critics; the way to put an end to criticism is not to kill the critics, but to become good. Now to the extent that we have been rooting for Socrates we see in his remarks a just attack on the Athenians who convicted him. We see the fulfillment of Socrates’ prophecy about greater critics in the very speech that Plato has composed: Plato is the critic and the Apology his critique.

To the part of the jury that voted to acquit him, Socrates declares first that he is not worried about death (41A-E).^[10] Who, after all, can say anything about it? To believe you know about death when you don’t is an example of thinking yourself wise when you’re not, a topic that forms the subject matter of the Phaedo. Then, in his final comments, he asks his true jury, the ones who voted for acquittal, to treat his sons as he has treated them, to plague his sons as he has plagued Athens.

In the Apology, then, we find a justification (apologia) of Plato’s own work. He reveals with what whole-hearted sincerity he wrote Socrates’ final speech to the jury: he is the critic of Athens his Socrates predicts. His criticism appears in many of the dialogues, where Athenian follies are portrayed, and he founds the Academy so that he can plague Socrates’ sons, Socrates’ literal sons perhaps, but, more importantly, the figurative sons, the youth of Athens. Like Socrates, the Academy educated foreigners too, but its location near Athens surely enabled it to cater to Athenians first. In the Apology, we have Plato’s declaration of his two-fold mission: to be a gadfly, to wake the lazy horse of Athens by chiding it when it does wrong and fails to deliberate about its actions with sufficient wisdom; and to be the educator of the young, to plague them as Socrates plagued him.

Dialogues are all that we have left of Plato’s work. But we must not forget that the major work of his life was the founding of and working in the Academy, that writing dialogues was a sideline. No doubt Plato wanted to memorialize and honor his friend Socrates. Why should we think that the dialogues are the primary memorial? Is it not far likelier that the true memorial to Socrates was the school to carry on with living people the work that Socrates had initiated? For it was in school, in argument with living, breathing, obstreperous students, that the true nurturing of souls could take place. The Apology is an admissions brochure. It says: if you want to go to a place where your soul will be challenged, where you can find the closest thing to Socrates, come to the Academy!