The Execution of Socrates, 399 B.C.E.

Socrates, Athens’s most famous philosopher in the Golden Age, fell victim to the bitterness many Athenians felt about the rule of the Thirty Tyrants following the Peloponnesian War. Some prominent Athenians hated Socrates because his follower Critias had been one of the Thirty Tyrants’ most violent leaders. These citizens charged Socrates with impiety, claiming he rejected the city-state’s gods, introduced new divinities, and lured young men away from Athenian moral traditions. Speaking to a jury of 501 male citizens, Socrates refused to beg for sympathy, as was customary in trials, and repeated his dedication to goading his fellow citizens into examining how to live justly. He vowed to remain their stinging gadfly.

When the jurors narrowly voted to convict Socrates, Athenian law required them to decide between the penalty proposed by the prosecutors and that proposed by the defendant. The prosecutors proposed death. Socrates said he deserved a reward rather than punishment, but his friends made him propose a fine as his penalty. The jury chose death, requiring him to drink a poison concocted from powdered hemlock. Socrates accepted his sentence calmly, saying that “no evil can befall a good man either in life or in death.” Ancient sources report that many Athenians soon came to regret Socrates’ punishment as a tragic mistake and a severe blow to their reputation.