Socrates’s Last Days

Credit: Eric Gaba, Wikimedia Commons user: Sting

I want to tell you a great story of heroism, bravery and tragedy. It is the story of Socrates’s last days, which took place about 2,300 years ago and remains an important touchstone for the history of philosophy today.

We know the story through three dialogues written by Plato, The Apology of Socrates, Crito and Phaedo. Socrates himself did not write anything, and Plato, one of his followers, is the one who wrote it all down. He is the reason why we know Socrates so well today. We do not know if the Socrates described by Plato is the actual Socrates, or did he embellish, romanticise or simply use Socrates as a character for his works. That debate continues still.


What we do know is that Plato’s works remain important, not only as a historic relic to be pored over by historians but because the questions posed in them are still the questions we continue to ask today. He tackles some of these questions in the three dialogues, but my aim is to recount the events leading up to Socrates’s demise so that listeners can get a sense of why his death is tragic. That will be my focus but we would need to engage with some of these philosophical enquiries to understand why Socrates was stoical in the face of death. I also am not trying to explain the text since these texts are not difficult ones. Indeed I hope that Socrates’s story will encourage you to read the texts directly, because they are indeed wonderful works of literature and philosophy, very accessible and also rather entertaining.

On that note, let’s turn to the trial of Socrates in The Apology written by Plato.

Apologia Sokrátous

Socrates was hauled to court on two charges brought by his accusers. He was accused of corrupting the young and of impiety, i.e., of not believing in the gods. He delivered his own defence, captured in The Apology by Plato. The word ‘apology’ in Greek, apologia, does not mean to be sorry but it means a defence. This dialogue, Apologia, is about the defence that Socrates puts up against his accusations.

Socrates told the court that he was aware he had enemies in Athens. One of his friends had visited the Oracle at Delphi. The Oracles were priestesses who predicted the future, and at that time, kings would not dare to start a war without first seeking their advice. A friend of Socrates had asked the Oracle if there was any man wiser than Socrates, to which she replied that there was none.

Socrates greeted this news with derision, saying that he knew “practically nothing” and hence could not possibly be the wisest man. However, he investigated this notion, as if in service to the gods, and sought out men considered to be wise people.

He questioned politicians, poets, writers, speech writers and craftsmen, who might be considered wise, and realised a flaw common to them all. While they may know their domain well, or be skilled in a specific way, they then thought that they hence knew also things outside their respective domains. Socrates at least recognised that he knew little and had the humility and presence of mind to admit it, and in that way, he could see why the Oracle was right. Another interpretation he had on the Oracle’s response was that since Socrates’s wisdom, which she said was the greatest, was in fact worthless, it meant that human wisdom meant little.

In this way, he offended a lot of powerful people, by showing them up. This was of course only one of the things he did to offend people. In the other Platonic dialogues, he often accosted people in the marketplace, known as the Agora in Greek, or at gatherings at the homes of others and interrogated them, his method being to reason through dialogue to get to a philosophical understanding. This might seem contrived but it was not as if Socrates already had a conclusion in mind, asking leading questions to finally arrive at his pre-determined conclusion. Instead, the dialogues often ended in a kind of stalemate, called aporia in Greek. It was as Socrates had said, there is much he did not know.

At the trial, Socrates addressed the accusations levelled at him, using the same kind of reasoning to demonstrate their untruth. On the charge of corrupting the youth, he declared that the young men who followed him around did so on their own volition. He was not a teacher and he did not charge them any money, unlike the Sophists who taught the art of argumentation for a fee. They were free to listen and speak with him though.

In addition, he made a curious argument, asking, is it important for the young to be as good as possible? If so, who does this work? According to his accuser, Meletus, all of Athens except Socrates were able to instruct the young to make them good men. Socrates suggested that if it was only one person who corrupted the youth while everyone else improved them, it would be a “happy state of affairs” for the city. In addition, if the youth was corrupted deliberately by Socrates, then he himself would be at risk of being harmed by them. If it was then not deliberate, then it must have been either that he did not corrupt the youth or that he did not do so deliberately. If it was not deliberate, then the appropriate action would be to instruct him on his wrong ways and not punish him through the courts.

For the charge of impiety, Socrates questioned whether it was atheism that Meletus was accusing him of, which Meletus confirmed to be the case. Socrates responded that one of the areas he often spoke about was the spiritual. Was it possible to believe in a lyre, an ancient zither-type musical instrument, without believing that there were lyre-players? Similarly, was it possible to speak of the spiritual but not believe in spirits, which in their time meant gods or the children of gods? Socrates in this way showed that the accusation itself was self-contradictory.

Hence Socrates disarmed the accusations, but he knew that that was useless since they were simply premises to haul him to court. The true grounds behind the case were the “slander and envy of many people.” He said that such slender and envy had “destroyed many other good man and will […] continue to do so. There is no danger that it will stop” at him.

Socrates anticipated what some might be thinking, whether he regretted now that his actions as a philosopher had led him to this dangerous position. His answer was clear: “You are wrong […] if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.” He pointed to the Greek war heroes who would have been disgraced, if they had not fought the wars because they feared death. Socrates thought it was much worse to live like a coward for fear of harm that came from doing the right thing. But why couldn’t Socrates simply be quiet? He responded that it would mean that he was disobeying the mission God had given him to discuss virtue and to test others and himself, “for the unexamined life is not worth living for man.”

He claimed that he was not afraid of a death sentence since it was unknown if death was a bad thing. He said that it would either be like an eternal sleep or was a good thing for good people, which we would expand on when discussing the Phaedo. Nonetheless, if a condition of his acquittal was to not be allowed to philosophise anymore, he would not accept it, since he rather obeyed God than man in the task he believes was set to him by God, this task to philosophise. He would not stop being a “gadfly”, a kind of pest that troubles horses, on the backs of the Athenians, to ask them to take care of their souls rather than to pursue material success.

He also refused to stoop to what must have been the usual tactic of the accused then, to bring their friends, family and children to attend court so to arouse pity in the jurors. He refused to act in such a dishonourable way even when faced with possible death.

After listening to all these, the jury gave its verdict of guilty and Meletus asked for the death penalty. Socrates responded that for someone like himself who had benefitted the city, the appropriate punishment should instead be “free meals in the Prytaneum,” which is the townhall of Athens. Such a reward was given to victorious Olympic athletes. You can imagine how that kind of contemptuous reply would provoke sentiments to be against him even more.

He presented a mocking offer to pay a fine of one mina of silver, and then 30 which he believed his friends would willingly put up on his behalf. Some sources estimate that 30 minaes was about eight year’s salary, so it was not an insignificant amount. Nonetheless, the jury voted again and sentenced him to death. He was sent to prison to await his death.

Crito

Some time before Socrates’s final day, Crito, his friend and follower, came to the prison before dawn. Socrates was still asleep and Crito did not wake him since Socrates was sleeping “sweetly”. He wanted Socrates’s last days to be as pleasant as possible. He remarked that while he had always thought that Socrates had a “happy disposition,” seeing him sleep so well made him think that even more since he managed to bear his current misfortune “so easily and calmly.”

Socrates was 70 then, at an advanced age and he replied that given how old he was, that it would be absurd if he was troubled at the prospect of death.

Crito had brought sad news. The ship from Delos was imminent, and on the day of its return, Socrates must die. Readers of this dialogue might find this rather mysterious, but the explanation came in the Phaedo, the third dialogue surrounding Socrates’s last days. This ship was the ship which Theseus sailed to Crete to rescue fourteen youths and maidens, the infamous Ship of Thesus which is the source of a philosophical paradox concerning identity. The Athenians had vowed to Apollo to send a mission to Delos every year if the youths and maidens were saved. Since then, the mission was sent annually to honour Apollo and the law was that after the mission commenced, Athens must remain pure and no one was to be publicly executed until the ship’s return. This ship had sailed off the day before Socrates’s trial, and hence some time would have to pass between Socrates’s sentence and his impending death. This death will be by a poison called hemlock, which the convicted would drink to kill him.

Socrates however believed that it was not this day but the next that the ship would arrive since he had a dream, where similar to Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, he would arrive at Phthia on the “third day.”

Crito persuaded Socrates to save himself by escaping from prison to another state. If not, not only would Crito lose a dear friend, people would criticise him for not spending money to save Socrates, which would be a disgrace for him since it would suggest that he valued money more than his friends. Most people would not believe how Socrates’s friends were eager to help him escape but that Socrates refused.

Socrates responded that we should not care what most people think, but instead consider only the opinions of reasonable people who would think that things had to be done the right way. Crito said that it was precisely this lack of care towards the public’s opinion that landed Socrates in this sorry state. He said that the public was able to accomplish the greatest of evils. Socrates responded that if only this was true since if they indeed could accomplish the greatest evils then they might be also able to accomplish the greatest good. But instead, they could do neither, instead following wherever their inclinations led them.

Crito, demonstrating his sincerity, assured Socrates that he need not consider any troubles his escape might cause his friends, since they might be punished by being fined or having their property confiscated. He told Socrates to let go of any such concerns since it was only right for them to take such a risk or even greater risks in order to save him. He assured Socrates that he need not be afraid that he will not be welcomed in exile, since Crito had friends in Thessaly that would protect him.

He told Socrates that his not escaping from prison was not right, since it was a self-betrayal. It would be fulfilling the wishes of his enemies. He would also be abandoning his three children, two of whom were young and one of whom was older. He would lose the chance to raise them and educate them. Remaining in jail to await his death seemed to Crito to be a lazy way instead of what a good and brave man in Socrates’s shoes would do, which seemed to contradict Socrates’s ethos of virtue. In fact, Crito felt that it was the cowardice of Socrates and his friends that had allowed things to come to such a head since the trial could have been altogether avoided. If not, then for the conduct of the trial to be more favourable and finally, Socrates could simply escape his sentence. Crito pressed Socrates to decide quickly since it was necessary that any escape be made that very night.

Socrates calmed Crito and said that they had to use reason, as they had always done, to evaluate the situation. Just because bad circumstances were upon them was no cause to abandon reason and as far as he saw it, reason remained ever necessary. Socrates refused to give in to fear and terror. He believed they should re-examine what they had previously concluded and see if there was any reason to change their minds.

They agreed that there was no need to pay attention to the opinions of the multitude – they ought to esteem good opinions and neglect bad ones. Just like how an athlete should not pay attention to everyone’s praise and blame but only to his coach’s since harm might come to him if he considered the opinions of the many who had no special knowledge of his sport while neglecting the advice of the one who did have the necessary knowledge to advise him.

Besides, it was not simply living but living well that should concern them. Living well was about living “rightly.” Hence the question they should consider was whether it was right for Socrates to escape from jail. He thought the earlier points that Crito raised about reputation, money and his children were frivolous since the only valid considerations should be moral ones.

Since it was never right and honourable to do wrong at all times, even if the circumstances seemed dire like in Socrates’s case, regardless of what the world thought, wrongdoing remained an evil and a disgrace. Even if wrong was visited on us, it remained ethically wrong to “requite wrong with wrong […] since we must do no wrong at all,” even if the world might find it permissible.

Having established this principle, Socrates considered his own specific case. In running away, he would be defying the state and its laws since he would demonstrate that the decisions of the court had no force and could be invalidated by private persons, hence destroying the (credibility of the) state. He alluded to a social contract that the people had made with the state to abide by verdicts of the state. He acknowledged that it was the state that made his life possible to begin with since the marriage of his parents was made through the laws of the state. His care and his education were made possible by the state. Even if the state sought to destroy him rightfully, he was still not doing the right thing by seeking to undermine the state since the state was superior to him. One still needed to show the state “reverence [,] obedience and humility when she is angry,” more so even than to one’s parents. Either one should do what was commanded of him by the state, be it to be punished or to fight and be killed in a war, or convince the state otherwise through persuasion, “for [the state] brought you into the world, nurtured you, and gave a share of all the good things we could to you and all the citizens.” In addition, anyone not satisfied could have taken his belongings and left. If however, one chose to remain, having observed how justice was administered and how the state was governed, they had implicitly entered a social contract to obey or to convince the state that it was wrong.

Besides, Socrates could have offered to be exiled as his penalty. He would then have effectively been doing what he was now considering doing by escaping but with the state’s consent. In addition, the states that he escapes to would view him with suspicion, he would endanger his friends who had helped him flee and by fleeing, he would lose his moral integrity. “If you do this [,] will your life be worth living? Or will you go to them and have the face to carry on – what kind of conversation, Socrates? The same kind you carried on here, saying that virtue and justice and lawful things and the laws are the most precious things to men?” he asks himself rhetorically. He noted that even the judges in the afterlife would not look kindly on him if he broke the law by running away. Crito had no further arguments to make and so Socrates said that they should “let it be, and let us act […] in this way that God leads us.”

Here the dialogue Crito ends but the story is continued in the Phaedo which likewise is set in the prison, where Socrates communes with his friends for the last time.

Phaedo

His friends had been visiting him daily but now that the ship was arriving from Delos, it meant that it was Socrates’s last day. He had been released from his fetters by the authorities and was with his wife and one young son. When his friends arrived, his wife was overcome by grief since she recognised that it was their last meeting. Socrates asked Crito to get his people to bring her home so that he could discuss philosophy with them. She left “wailing and beating her breast” while Socrates remained unmoved, only musing how pain and pleasure were intertwined now that his fetters had been removed.

In addition to being with his visitors, he had spent his time in prison composing verses on the myths of Aesop, in obedience to a repeated dream he had been having.

Phaedo, who narrated this dialogue, explained the “strange emotions” he felt on this last day. He was not filled with pity as one might be at the impending death of a friend since Socrates appeared happy in his behaviour and speech, “meeting death so fearlessly and nobly.” They continued to be “occupied with philosophy” as they had been prior to these events. However, the group was torn between pleasure at the conversation but also pain at the thought of Socrates’s impending death, “sometimes laughing and sometimes weeping.”

Their conversation revolved around why philosophers need not fear death. Socrates said that “those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but dying and being dead” anyway, so now that death was at his door, it would be absurd for him to fear it since it was something he had been preparing for his entire life.

Socrates explained that a willingness to die was rational because the soul was immortal. He began with an argument from analogy that just as generation proceeds from opposites, life proceeds from death as death from life. He next moved on to a central pillar of Plato’s metaphysics of forms, showing how knowledge was recollection. Briefly, objects that we sense can be referred to ideal forms, for e.g. to know that this is a horse, we refer to an ideal horse or the form of a horse. These forms must have been known to us already before we can refer objects to them and so we must have seen them before our lives began. This proves the existence of the soul prior to birth. The ideas or forms are the causes of all things; for e.g. a beautiful thing participates in the form or idea of beauty. Socrates proved that the soul is immortal and indestructible, by considering how the idea inherent in soul is life. Since a particular soul cannot admit what is opposite to its form, which is death, the soul cannot admit death and hence, the soul must be immortal.

However, in the quest for truth and wisdom by the soul, the soul is bogged down by the body, through the deception of its senses, through its bodily needs, desires, appetites and illnesses. Socrates believed that our senses deceive us and the way to get to the truth was through pure reason to discover the pure essence of the forms. Hence death, which was a separation of the soul from the body, is something that a true philosopher should welcome, since the immortal soul could then ascend to the world of the forms and there gain the truth. However, suicide to hasten death would be wrong because it would be impious. He reasons that “the gods are our guardians and […] we men are one of the chattels [or property] of the gods. [...] If one of your chattels should kill itself when you had not indicated that you wished it to die, would you be angry with it and punish it if you could?”

Socrates weaved an elaborate tale of an afterlife with reward, punishment and reincarnation, based on the idea of an absolute justice. The possibility of death as an eternal sleep that he alluded to in The Apology was no longer on the table. With such an expectation of a good afterlife, we could understand why death was not a bad thing and in fact something to be welcomed for Socrates. He admitted that his account of the afterlife was by no means certain, but there was a great hope that to live in a virtuous way in pursuit of wisdom would place one in a strong position to have a good afterlife.

Socrates saw that the time was coming and wanted to take a bath before drinking the poison, so that “the women may not have the trouble of bathing the corpse.” Crito asked Socrates how he wished to be buried. Socrates replied that they could do it however they wished since he would no longer be there. He realised from Crito’s question that Crito might not have believed what they had been discussing, instead taking it as idle talk by Socrates that was only meant to encourage them all.

While waiting for Socrates to finish bathing, the friends spoke among themselves, lamenting the “great misfortune that had befallen” them since they felt like they would be losing a father. Socrates’s three children were brought to him and the women in his family had also arrived. He spoke to them and then told the women to go so he could spend time with his friends.

The prison guard in charge of administering the poison came to bid Socrates farewell. He told Socrates that he was the “noblest and gentlest and best man” who had ever come to the prison, bursting into tears as he left. Socrates wanted to obey the guard and told Crito to ask the guards to bring the poison. Crito responded that the time was still early since the sun had not yet set, and others took the poison long after the order came, eating and drinking and enjoying their last moments with their loved ones. “Do not hurry; for there is still time,” he said.

Socrates said that those who did that were right since they thought they could gain by it, but he himself would gain nothing by taking the poison just a little later. He said: “I should only make myself ridiculous in my own eyes if I clung to life and spared it, when there is no more profit in it.”

The guard came and Socrates asked him kindly how he should go about taking the hemlock. He replied that after drinking it, Socrates should walk around until his legs felt heavy and then lie down, letting the poison take effect.

Socrates offered a prayer to the gods and then “cheerfully and quietly drained” the hemlock. His friends began weeping, and Phaedo realised that he cried not for Socrates but for his own misfortune at losing a friend. Socrates reprimanded them. He told them that he had sent the women away because he wanted to avoid such a scene of tears, for he “heard that it is best to die in silence.” He commanded them to be quiet and brave.

Socrates walked around and finally laid down. As the effect of the poison reached the middle of his body, he said his last words: “Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius. Pay it and do not neglect it.” Aesculapius was the god of healing and this sacrifice was to thank him for ‘healing’ Socrates with the hemlock (Emily Wilson, 2008). In this way, Socrates considered his death a blessing. Phaedo ended his narration with these words: “Such was the end […] of our friend, who was […] of all those of his time whom we have known, the best and wisest and most righteous man.” 

Bibliography

Plato. Apology, trans. G.M.A. Grube. Pp. 112.130 in Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: from Thales to Aristotle, 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000.

___. Plato. Translated by H. N. Fowler. London: William Heinemann, 1913.