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The Apology: Ancient Wisdom for the Modern Search for an Examined Life
Paperback
PhilosophyAncient GreeceFiction Anthologies
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Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 52
Weight: 0.16
Height: 0.12 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
A seventy-year-old man stands in front of five hundred of his neighbours, on trial for his life, and refuses to apologise for anything.
In 399 BC an Athenian jury tried Socrates on two charges: that he did not believe in the city's gods, and that he corrupted the young. The penalty sought was death.
What he was actually on trial for was thirty years of asking people questions they could not answer.
He had gone about Athens - the market, the gymnasium, the dinner tables - stopping men who were confident they knew what justice was, or courage, or piety, and asking them to explain it. They could not. Their friends were watching. He did this to politicians, to poets, to craftsmen, to anyone with a reputation for wisdom, and he had been doing it for a generation. By the time they brought him to court, half the city had either been humiliated by him or had watched it happen to someone they respected.
He had one afternoon to save his life, and he used it to make things worse.
He does not beg. He does not bring his wife and children in to weep, which was standard practice and expected of him. He cross-examines the lead prosecutor in open court until the man contradicts himself in front of everybody. He tells the jury that if they acquit him on condition that he stop asking questions, he will refuse the condition. He compares himself to a horsefly biting a large and sluggish animal, and tells them that the god sent him to do it.
Then, convicted, invited to propose his own sentence, he suggests that Athens should give him free dinners at public expense for the rest of his life - the honour reserved for Olympic champions.
They voted for death by a wider margin than they voted for guilt.
What this edition is
An original modern rendering in clear English prose. It is not a word-for-word translation from the Greek and does not pretend to be one. Plato's speech, its argument, its order and its cross-examinations are all here; what is new is the English, written to be read at the speed the speech was delivered.
The standard Stephanus numbers are printed throughout, so any passage can be checked against another edition or against the Greek.
This edition includes:
- The complete speech - the defence, the counter-penalty, and the final address to the jurors after sentencing
- A foreword on what the Apology is and why it still reads like a transcript
- An introduction on Plato, the trial, and the political climate of Athens in 399 BC
- A closing essay on the unexamined life and what Socrates actually meant by it
- A dramatis personae - the accusers, the jury, Chaerephon, Plato himself
- A glossary of key Greek terms with pronunciations: arete, daimonion, elenchus, and the rest
Why read it
Because it is the founding document of intellectual courage, and because it is short enough to read in an evening and awkward enough to stay with you for years.
Socrates could have lived. The terms were available and everybody in the room knew it. He decided that a life spent not asking would not be worth the having, said so plainly to the people holding the vote, and drank what they gave him.
The line everyone quotes - that the unexamined life is not worth living - was not written in a study. It was said out loud, by a man who had just been sentenced to die, to the people who had sentenced him.
For readers of philosophy, ancient history and the classics - and for anyone who has ever wondered how much they would give up to avoid trouble.
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