The Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato Grube G. M. A. Cooper John M

Author:Plato, Grube, G. M. A., Cooper, John M.
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Published: 2011-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

1. The word apology is a transliteration, not a translation, of the Greek apologia, which means defense. There is certainly nothing apologetic about the speech.

2. Jurors were selected by lot from all the male citizens thirty years of age or older who offered themselves on the given day for service. They thus functioned as representatives of the Athenian people and the Athenian democracy. In cases like Socrates’, they judged on behalf of the whole citizen body whether or not their interests had been undermined by the accused’s behavior. Hence Socrates can address them as if he were addressing the people of Athens at large, and in particular the partisans of the democracy against its oligarchic opponents (see, for example, 21a, 32d). Socrates addresses the jury as “men of Athens” rather than employing the usual mode of address, “gentlemen of the jury” (as Meletus does at 26d). At 40a he explains that only those who voted to acquit him deserved that honor.

3. The bankers or money-changers had their counters in the marketplace. It seems that this was a favorite place for gossip.

4. This is Aristophanes. Socrates refers below (19c) to the character Socrates in his Clouds (225 ff.), first produced in 423 B.C.

5. These were all well-known Sophists. Gorgias, after whom Plato named one of his dialogues, was a celebrated rhetorician and teacher of rhetoric. He came to Athens in 427 B.C., and his rhetorical tricks took the city by storm. Two dialogues, the authenticity of which has been doubted, are named after Hippias, whose knowledge was encyclopedic. Prodicus was known for his insistence on the precise meaning of words. Both he and Hippias are characters in Protagoras (named after another famous Sophist).

6. A mina equaled 100 drachmas. In Socrates’ time one drachma was the daily wage of a day-laborer. So Evenus’ fee was a considerable sum.

7. The god Apollo had a very famous shrine at Delphi, where his oracles were delivered through the mouth of a priestess, the “Pythian.”

8. A curious oath, occasionally used by Socrates, it appears in a longer form in Gorgias (482b) as “by the dog, the god of the Egyptians.”

9. Socrates here drops into his usual method of discussion by question and answer. This, no doubt, is what Plato had in mind, at least in part, when he made him ask the indulgence of the jury if he spoke “in his usual manner.”

10. The Council was a body of 500 men, elected annually by lot, that prepared the agenda for meetings of the assembly and together with the magistrates conducted the public business of Athens. (On the assembly, see note to Euthyphro 3c.)

11. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, born about the beginning of the fifth century B.C., came to Athens as a young man and spent his time in the pursuit of natural philosophy. He claimed that the universe was directed by Nous (Mind) and that matter was indestructible but always combining in various ways. He left Athens after being prosecuted for impiety.

12. The scene between Thetis and Achilles is from the Iliad (xviii.

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