The Apology: The Trial and Defence of Socrates

The Apology is Plato's account of the speech Socrates gave at his trial in 399 BCE, when he was tried before an Athenian jury on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, found guilty, and sentenced to death. The Greek word apologia means "defence speech," not "apology" in the modern sense. Socrates is not saying sorry. He is, in front of around 500 jurors and the assembled city, defending his life's work.

The dialogue is short — readable in an hour — and is one of the best places to begin reading Plato. It is also, unusually, almost certainly close to what Socrates actually said. Plato was present at the trial, and the speech was a public event many in his audience would have remembered.

"I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet... Are you not ashamed of caring for money, reputation, and honour, while you do not care for, or give thought to, wisdom and truth, and the perfection of your soul?" — Apology 29d

The Charges

The formal indictment, brought by Meletus with the political backing of Anytus and Lycon, contained two charges:

• Impiety — not believing in the gods of the city, and introducing new divine beings.
• Corrupting the youth — teaching young men to question authority and traditional values.

Both charges were vague by modern legal standards. There was no statute defining "impiety." The jury had wide discretion, and the trial was fundamentally political. The recent civil war — the Thirty Tyrants had ruled briefly and brutally just five years before, and several of Socrates' associates, including Critias and Charmides, had been among them — lay heavily over the proceedings, even though an amnesty technically prevented anyone from being prosecuted for offences committed during that period.

Structure of the Defence

The Apology divides into three speeches. Athenian trials were structured so that the defendant first answered the charges; if convicted, the prosecution proposed a penalty and the defendant proposed a counter-penalty; the jury then chose between them. Socrates speaks at each stage.

1. The defence speech

Socrates begins by distinguishing the formal charges from what he calls the "older accusers" — the long-running rumour, partly fed by Aristophanes' comedy Clouds, that he is a sophist who studies the heavens and makes the weaker argument the stronger. This reputation, he says, is what really endangers him.

He then tells the story of the Delphic oracle. His friend Chaerephon had asked the oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the oracle had replied that no one was. Puzzled, Socrates set out to refute the oracle by finding someone wiser. He questioned politicians, poets, and craftsmen. Each, he found, claimed to know things he did not actually know. Socrates concluded that he was wisest only in this respect: he did not falsely think he knew what he did not know. His public questioning of self-proclaimed experts has, predictably, made him many enemies.

He then turns to the formal charges. He cross-examines Meletus and exposes his accusations as incoherent: Meletus claims Socrates corrupts the youth deliberately, but no one harms their own associates deliberately, since you live among those you have corrupted. He claims Socrates is a complete atheist while also accusing him of believing in new divinities — you cannot have it both ways.

The most striking moment comes when Socrates rejects any plea-bargain. He will not propose to stop philosophising in exchange for his life. To do so, he says, would be to disobey the god. And he gives the line that has rung through Western thought ever since: the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.

2. The counter-penalty

Convicted by a relatively narrow margin (the vote was reportedly around 280 to 220), Socrates faces sentencing. The prosecution proposes death. Athenian custom expected the defendant to propose a serious counter-penalty — exile, a heavy fine, something the jury could accept as adequate punishment.

Socrates refuses to play. He first proposes that, since he has spent his life as a public benefactor, he should receive free meals at the Prytaneum — an honour reserved for Olympic victors. He proposes a tiny fine, then accepts a larger one only because his friends will pay it. The tone is unmistakable. The jury, predictably outraged, sentences him to death by an even larger margin than the conviction.

3. The speech after sentencing

The third speech is given to those jurors who acquitted him. Death, he tells them, is one of two things: either a dreamless sleep, in which case it is no harm, or a passage to another place where one might converse with the great souls of the past, in which case it would be a benefit. Either way, no evil can come to a good man, in life or in death.

He closes with the line: "The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows."

Why He Refused to Escape

Socrates was not executed immediately. By accident of the religious calendar, executions were suspended for about a month while a state ship made an annual pilgrimage to Delos. During that month, his friends — principally Crito — arranged for him to escape. The arrangements were straightforward; the guards could be bribed; he had wealthy friends ready to take him in.

He refused. Plato's Crito, the dialogue paired with the Apology, gives Socrates' reasoning: he has lived his entire life under the laws of Athens, accepted their benefits, and never left when he disagreed. To break them now, when they happen to fall on him, would be to harm the city that raised him, and to do harm in return for harm. He chose death.

What the Apology Means

• The founding scene of philosophy as a vocation. Socrates makes philosophy something one can be tried for, and chooses death rather than abandon it.
• An argument by demonstration. The Apology shows what a Socratic life looks like under maximum pressure. The arguments Socrates gave in the marketplace are the same ones he gives at his trial. He does not change his behaviour to save himself.
• The clearest statement of his core ethical claims. No one knowingly does wrong. Care of the soul matters more than any external good. It is better to suffer wrong than to do it.
• A founding text of conscience. The figure of the principled individual who refuses to obey what he believes is wrong — the figure that would later be re-described by Aquinas, Thoreau, Gandhi, and King — begins here.

How to Read It

The Apology is the right place to start with Plato. It is short, dramatic, biographical, and gives you the historical Socrates as Plato understood him. Read it together with the Crito, which immediately follows it in story-time, and the Phaedo, which describes Socrates' final hours and death.

Recommended translations: G.M.A. Grube (in the Hackett Five Dialogues volume) for accuracy and readability. C.D.C. Reeve's translation includes especially helpful notes. See our resources page for full recommendations.