ABSTRACT
When he was 70 years old, the philosopher Socrates (469-399) was tried by the Athenians for being impious. At the trial’s end, he was convicted by a majority of a jury consisting of 500 of his fellow citizens. His punishment: death by poisoning. Although Socrates left no first-hand account of the proceedings, his associate Plato offers dramatic reconstructions in dialogue form of Socrates’ defense speech at his trial, of his period of imprisonment after the trial, and of his final conversations on the day of his execution.1 Although often at variance with the portrayals of Socrates offered by some others among his immediate contemporaries,2 the presentation of Socrates found in Plato’s writings is both captivating and complex: Socrates could be charming or unrefined; caustic or conciliatory; coy or transparently sincere; determined in his beliefs or avowedly agnostic. Through this complexity emerges an unmistakable portrait of a man with a formidable intellect and an uncompromising character.
