Imagine you are a juror in the trial of Socrates. The famous philosopher has been convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens. You expect him to beg for mercy. He does the exact opposite. He tells you and the other jurors he’s not sorry. He tells you he won’t debase himself by begging for mercy or bringing his family in. He proposes, as his punishment, that he be given a reward, to include free food and income provided by the state. He tells you that he is a necessary gadfly, that he provides a service to the community by questioning its values and received wisdom, and thereby encouraging people to really think, and become better and more moral versions of themselves. He warns you that if you kill him you won’t likely find another like him any time soon. He tells you that he doesn’t fear death, and that he won’t be worse off for the verdict, but that it is in fact you who will be the worse off for depriving society of its needed gadfly.
If you voted to convict, this probably outrages you. Here is a man who has been convicted of a serious crime by a jury of his peers and refuses to accept their verdict! Refuses to beg for mercy. “How dare you!” you might scream. Even if you voted to acquit, you are probably horrified. “No, no, no,” you might think, “don’t do this!” You would have known Socrates had just sealed his fate.
Seal his fate he had. He was sentenced to death and forced to drink poison. He died, at the age of 71, for the most dangerous crime in human history–the crime of speaking his mind to people who didn’t want to hear it.
Let’s close our eyes on this scene and go back to the beginning. Who was this man, and how did he get to this tragic moment?
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For more, listen to the Podcast episode and check out my book, History Stories for Everyone, where I dive deeper into this and some of history’s other most fascinating and relatable human stories:
