The Last Days of Socrates

Summary

The Last Days of Socrates gathers four dialogues by Plato that together tell the story of Socrates' trial and death in Athens in 399 BCE: the Euthyphro, the Apology, the Crito and the Phaedo. In the Euthyphro, Socrates meets Euthyphro outside the court where Socrates must answer an indictment for impiety and corrupting the young. Euthyphro, a self-confident religious expert, is prosecuting his own father for the death of a labourer. Socrates asks him to define piety, and each definition collapses under questioning, most famously when Socrates asks whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because it is loved by the gods. The dialogue ends without an answer, as Euthyphro hurries away. The Apology is Socrates' defence speech before a jury of hundreds of Athenian citizens. He explains that his reputation comes from the oracle at Delphi, which declared no one wiser than he, and from his effort to test it by questioning politicians, poets and craftsmen, discovering that they thought they knew what they did not. He describes his mission as a gadfly stinging the sluggish horse of Athens and his divine sign, a voice that restrains him. He refuses to beg for mercy or to stop philosophizing, declaring that the unexamined life is not worth living. Convicted, he proposes free meals in the Prytaneum as his 'penalty', then a fine; the jury condemns him to death. He reflects calmly that death is either a dreamless sleep or a journey to meet the great dead, and that no evil can come to a good man. In the Crito, his old friend Crito visits him in prison before dawn with a plan of escape. Socrates argues that one should never do wrong, even in return for wrong, and imagines the Laws of Athens addressing him: having lived all his life under them, he cannot now destroy them by flight. He chooses to stay. The Phaedo, narrated by Phaedo to Echecrates, describes Socrates' last day. Surrounded by friends, he argues that philosophers should welcome death, since philosophy is a preparation for the separation of soul from body, and offers several arguments for the immortality of the soul, ending with the doctrine of the Forms and a myth of the afterlife. As evening falls he bathes, says farewell to his family, and drinks the hemlock calmly. He walks until his legs feel heavy, lies down, and the numbness rises toward his heart. His last words ask Crito to offer a cock to Asclepius, god of healing. Phaedo ends by calling him the wisest, justest and best of men.

Plot or Argument

• Euthyphro

  Outside the court, Socrates questions Euthyphro's definitions of piety, culminating in the dilemma of whether the pious is pious because the gods love it.

• Apology (17a–35d): the defence

  Socrates answers old and new accusers, explains the oracle and his mission of questioning, and refuses to abandon philosophy.

• Apology (35e–42a): sentence and farewell

  After conviction he proposes a counter-penalty, is sentenced to death, and reflects on death as sleep or a journey.

• Crito

  Socrates rejects Crito's escape plan, arguing that wrong must never be returned for wrong and voicing the speech of the Laws.

• Phaedo (57a–107b): arguments for immortality

  Philosophy as practice for dying; arguments from opposites, recollection, affinity, and the Forms; objections of Simmias and Cebes.

• Phaedo (107c–118a): myth and death

  A myth of the earth and the afterlife; Socrates bathes, drinks the hemlock and dies.

Characters

• Socrates, protagonist

  Athenian philosopher tried for impiety and corrupting the young, who faces death with serenity.

• Euthyphro, interlocutor

  Confident religious expert prosecuting his own father.

• Meletus, prosecutor

  Young accuser whom Socrates cross-examines in the Apology.

• Crito, old friend

  Wealthy friend who offers to arrange Socrates' escape.

• Phaedo, narrator of the Phaedo

  Young follower present at Socrates' death.

• Simmias and Cebes, interlocutors

  Theban students who raise objections to the arguments for immortality.

• Xanthippe, Socrates' wife

  Sent away weeping from the prison on the last morning.

• The servant of the Eleven, executioner

  Prison officer who weeps as he brings the poison and instructs Socrates how to take it.

Lessons

• The examined life

  Socrates claims his only wisdom is knowing that he does not know, and insists that questioning is the highest good. The dialogues model intellectual humility and persistent inquiry.

  • Is Socrates genuinely ignorant, or ironic?
  • Is the unexamined life really not worth living?

• Integrity under pressure

  Socrates refuses to flatter the jury or flee from prison. His consistency between belief and action is the model of philosophical integrity.

  • Are the Laws' arguments in the Crito convincing?
  • Can civil disobedience be reconciled with Socrates' choice?
  • Was Socrates' death a form of suicide?

• Facing death

  The Phaedo presents philosophy as rehearsal for dying and portrays a death without fear. It has shaped Western ideals of the good death for millennia.

  • Do the arguments for immortality persuade you?
  • What do Socrates' last words mean?
  • How do his friends' tears contrast with his calm?

Context

Socrates was tried in 399 BCE, five years after Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War and the brutal rule of the Thirty Tyrants, some of whom had been his associates. The restored democracy was wary of perceived threats to civic religion and order.

Composition

The four dialogues were written at different times: the Euthyphro, Apology and Crito are usually considered early, the Phaedo a middle-period work that develops Plato's own theory of Forms. Plato notes in the Phaedo that he was ill and absent from Socrates' death.

Reception

Socrates' trial and death became the archetype of the philosopher martyred by the state, influencing Stoics, Christian martyr literature, and modern thinkers on conscience and civil disobedience. Jacques-Louis David's painting The Death of Socrates (1787) fixed the scene's image.

Comparisons

• phaedrus-and-letters-vii-and-viii

  The Phaedrus extends the Phaedo's psychology of the immortal soul, and the Seventh Letter describes Plato's response to Socrates' execution.

• the-death-of-ivan-ilyich

  Socrates' serene philosophical death contrasts with Ivan Ilyich's terror; both end with a kind of release.

• meditations

  Marcus Aurelius frequently invokes Socrates as a model of facing death and injustice calmly.

• twelve-angry-men

  Both show a jury deciding a man's fate; Rose's lone dissenting juror uses Socratic questioning to expose prejudice.

• the-bible

  The trial and death of Jesus and of Socrates have been compared since antiquity as executions of innocent teachers.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The setting of the Euthyphro on the porch of the King Archon, where Socrates has come to answer the charges against him and Euthyphro has come to prosecute his own father. Each man is in court over a question of piety, and the dialogue ends with Euthyphro hurrying off before a definition is reached.
• The story of the Delphic oracle in the Apology (20e-23c). Chaerephon asks whether anyone is wiser than Socrates, and Socrates explains his questioning of politicians, poets and craftsmen as an attempt to understand what the god meant.
• Socrates' counter-penalty after the verdict (36b-38b). He first proposes free meals in the Prytaneum, the honor given to Olympic victors, and only then a fine guaranteed by Plato, Crito and others. Ask whether he is mocking the jury or telling them what he honestly thinks he deserves.
• The moment in the Crito (50a) when Socrates stops arguing in his own voice and lets the Laws of Athens speak to him, asking what he owes the city that raised and educated him.
• The physical details at the end of the Phaedo: Xanthippe sent away, the bath, the servant of the Eleven weeping, the cold and numbness rising from the feet, and the last words about a cock owed to Asclepius.

Key terms and names

Piety (to hosion)

The virtue Euthyphro claims to understand and cannot define. His attempts include prosecuting wrongdoers, doing what the gods love, and a kind of trade between gods and men, each of which Socrates shows to be incomplete.

The Euthyphro dilemma

Socrates' question at Euthyphro 10a whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because it is loved by the gods. Euthyphro chooses the first, which means the gods' love cannot be the definition of piety.

The oracle at Delphi

Apollo's oracle, which told Chaerephon that no one was wiser than Socrates. Socrates concludes in the Apology that his wisdom is only that he does not think he knows what he does not know.

Gadfly

Socrates' image for himself in the Apology (30e): a stinging insect attached by the god to Athens, a large and sluggish horse, to keep it awake. Killing him, he warns, will let the city fall back asleep.

Daimonion (the divine sign)

The inner voice Socrates says he has had since childhood, which only ever turns him away from an action. He notes in the Apology that it did not oppose him on the day of his trial, and takes that as a sign that death is no evil.

The Laws of Athens

The speakers Socrates imagines in the Crito. They argue that he has accepted their protection for seventy years, could have left the city, and would now be destroying them by escaping an unjust verdict passed according to law.

Recollection (anamnesis)

The doctrine argued in the Phaedo that learning is remembering knowledge the soul had before birth, shown by our grasp of absolute equality, which no pair of equal sticks or stones ever perfectly displays.

Forms

In the Phaedo, the unchanging realities such as the Beautiful itself and the Equal itself that the soul knows apart from the senses. The final argument for immortality turns on the Form of Life, which cannot admit its opposite, death.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why is Euthyphro prosecuting his own father, and why does his family think the prosecution is itself impious?
2. Comprehension In the Apology Socrates distinguishes his old accusers from his new ones. Who are the old accusers, and why does he say they are more dangerous than Meletus?
3. Comprehension What reasons does Crito give for escaping, and which of them concern Socrates' reputation, his friends, and his children?
4. Interpretation Socrates says that his wisdom consists in knowing that he does not know. Is this humility, irony, or a weapon, and how would Meletus or Anytus have answered that question?
5. Interpretation In the Apology Socrates says he would disobey the jury if it ordered him to stop philosophizing, yet in the Crito he refuses to disobey the verdict by escaping. Can both positions be held consistently, and what distinction makes them fit together?
6. Interpretation Socrates' last words ask Crito to pay a debt of a cock to Asclepius, the god of healing. Given what he says in the Phaedo about the body and the soul, what might he mean by thanking the god of healing at the moment of death?
7. Big Question Socrates holds that it is never right to return wrong for wrong, even to those who have wronged us. Is he right, and does a citizen owe obedience to a law that is being used unjustly against him?
8. Big Question Is the unexamined life really not worth living, or is Socrates' standard too high for most people to meet?

Faith Connections

• Acts 17:16-34 (Scripture)

  Paul debates daily in the Athenian agora, is accused of proclaiming foreign divinities, much as Socrates was charged with introducing new ones, and is brought before the Areopagus. His speech begins from the Athenians' own altar to an unknown god, a beginning Socrates' admission of ignorance had prepared the city to hear.

• Romans 12:17-21 (Scripture)

  Paul forbids repaying evil for evil and commands overcoming evil with good. The Crito (49b-d) reaches the first half of this teaching by argument alone, and Socrates admits that few people have ever agreed with him about it.

• 1 Corinthians 15 (Scripture)

  Paul grounds Christian hope in the bodily resurrection of Christ, while the Phaedo hopes for the soul's release from the body. Setting the two side by side shows both how much the early Church could borrow from Plato and where it parted from him.

• Justin Martyr, Second Apology 10 (Church Fathers)

  Justin, writing in Rome around AD 150, says that Socrates was accused of the same crimes as the Christians, introducing new divinities and not honoring the city's gods, and that he knew Christ in part through the reason (Logos) present in all people. Justin treats the Apology as a pagan foreshadowing of the Christian martyr's defense.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A good man cannot be harmed by a worse one, since the only real harm is harm to the soul, which comes from doing wrong; doing wrong is therefore worse than suffering it; so Socrates must neither give up philosophy to save his life nor escape his sentence by breaking the laws, and since death is either a dreamless sleep or a journey to the just dead, and the philosopher has spent his life practicing for the soul's separation from the body, he has no reason to fear it.

Rhetorical device: prosopopoeia. In the Crito (50a-54d) Socrates gives a voice to the Laws of Athens, who question him as a parent questions a child about to strike them. Putting the argument in their mouths lets Socrates answer Crito without claiming the authority for himself, and the speech closes with Socrates saying the words echo in his ears like the sound of flutes.

Debate: Resolved: Socrates was right to refuse Crito's offer of escape.

Memory Work

the unexamined life is not worth living

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt

Writing Prompts

Essay: Euthyphro, Meletus, the jury and Crito each think they know what is right, and Socrates questions each of them. Argue whether Socrates' death in the Phaedo is the natural end of the method he practices in the Euthyphro and the Apology, using at least one scene from each of the four dialogues.

Comparison with The Consolation of Philosophy: Socrates in his cell and Boethius in his prison both face execution, and both are consoled by philosophy rather than by escape. Compare how each understands what can and cannot harm a good man, and argue whether Boethius's Christian setting changes the meaning of the consolation Socrates offers his friends in the Phaedo.

Medical Lens

The Phaedo contains the most famous description of a poisoning in ancient literature: the executioner instructs Socrates to walk until his legs grow heavy, then lie down; numbness rises from the feet, and when it reaches the heart he dies. Toxicologists have debated whether this calm ascending paralysis is consistent with poison hemlock (Conium maculatum), which can produce ascending paralysis but also convulsions and vomiting; Plato may have idealized the scene. The Phaedo is also the classic text of soul–body dualism and of philosophy as practice for dying, central to the history of consolation and of the 'good death'. In the Crito Socrates compares listening to the many with following a trainer or physician who knows, an early statement of expert authority in health. The Phaedo opens with Socrates' discussion of suicide, holding that one must not take one's own life until the god sends a necessity, a passage much cited in debates on suicide and assisted death. His divine sign and his dream commanding him to make music invite reflection on voices and dreams.

• Apology 31c–d; 40a–c

  Socrates' divine sign, an inner voice that only ever restrains him, and its silence on the day of the trial.

  Altered States
• Apology 40c–41c

  Death as either a dreamless sleep or a journey to converse with the dead: neither is to be feared.

  Death DyingPhilosophy AS Therapy
• Crito 47a–48a

  Analogy of the trainer and physician: one should heed the expert, not the many, about health of body and soul.

  Physicians DoctorsAncient Medicine
• Phaedo 60e–62c

  Socrates' recurring dream telling him to make music, and his argument that suicide is wrong until the god sends necessity.

  Dreams NightmaresSuicide
• Phaedo 64a–68b

  Philosophy as practice for death: the soul's freeing from the body's distractions and diseases.

  Mind BodyPhilosophy AS Therapy
• Phaedo 116a–118a

  The bath, the farewell, the friends' weeping, the drinking of the hemlock and the ascending numbness until death.

  Pharmacology PoisonsDeath DyingGrief

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Does Phaedo 62 support or oppose the right to assisted dying? Analyse the argument.

• Dialogue

  Write a Socratic dialogue in which Socrates questions a modern physician about what 'health' means.

• Classroom

  Stage the Apology as a mock trial, with students as jurors deciding Socrates' fate.

Further Reading

• Memorabilia, Xenophon

  Xenophon's alternative portrait of Socrates.

• Clouds, Aristophanes

  Comic portrait of Socrates cited in the Apology.

• The Trial of Socrates, I. F. Stone

• Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, Gregory Vlastos