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By Root 1780 0

’s demanding inbred dynasties of gods as assiduously as, if not harder than, the next man. This is a dedication not to be underestimated, for there were as many as 2,000 separate religious cults, all clamouring for attention in Attica in the fifth century BC. Socrates fought for his city too. Strapping on linen and leather armour, sharpening his short, stabbing sword, he travelled hundreds of miles to defend Athens’ interests. Although not one to join committees, or volunteer for jury service and neighbourhood watch, Socrates devoted limitless energy to making the polis work; in his own idiosyncratic way he was absolutely devoted to the political process. Those who did not participate usefully in Athenian life were labelled, in Greek, idiotai – laymen:18 these idiots, Socrates had no time for. On that May morning, however dangerous he had come to seem, there was no doubt that democratic Athenians were judging one of their own.

The varied accounts of Socrates’ life and philosophy make it clear: he was inspiring, exciting, maddening. He was brilliant and curiously naïve. He was impossible to ignore. Given that the philosopher was responsible for his own defence, this trial looked set to spark with verbal and intellectual fireworks.

MENO: Socrates! Even before I met you they told me that in plain truth you are a perplexed man yourself and reduce others to perplexity. At this moment, I feel that you are exercising magic and witchcraft on me and positively laying me under your spell until I am just a mass of helplessness … My mind and my lips are literally numb, and I have nothing to reply to you. Yet, I have spoken about virtue hundreds of times and held forth on the subject in front of large audiences, and very well indeed, or so I thought. Now I can’t even say what virtue is.19

Socrates might seem to us the North Star in Athens, the light by which others orientated themselves, but he was one in a galaxy. Walking through those jangling streets were many others who shone very bright. Here were familiar sun-worn faces, now familiar only as great names: the playwright Euripides, the historian Xenophon, the general-statesman Pericles (as well as his intriguing courtesan and soulmate, Aspasia – his ‘partner’ to her friends, his ‘whore’ to their enemies), the mane-haired, rippling aristocratic chancer Alcibiades, the witty Aristophanes, the ‘father-of-history’ Herodotus, the sculptor/designer Pheidias, whose genius had created the Parthenon, a young Plato. Fifth-century Athens supported a rare concentration of talent. It is for this reason that Socrates’ lifetime is nominated a ‘Golden Age’. Socrates witnessed the ‘Greek Miracle’ at first hand.

Yet on that spring morning in 399 BC, as the trickle of men into the law-court became a steady flow, Socrates’ alma mater, his beloved Athens, and the men who had made this city world-class, who had witnessed the rise of their home-town to the status of superpower and had generated a civilisation to match, now wanted their troublesome philosopher shamed, and some wanted him dead.

This is how Socrates’ story ends. But we are still at the beginning of a day that shook the world.

To understand the tenor of Socrates’ trial, its flavour, its taste, its smell, its surface tensions and its undercurrents, we must stand in the classical Agora, look around us, and see what Socrates would have seen as he made his journey through the streets and on into the hallowed space of the law-courts. Above him, behind him if he travelled with his back to the rising sun, perched on the Acropolis rock, stood the great temple, the Parthenon, sacred to Athena Parthenos – Athena the Maiden. There, too, the Temple of Athena Nike, this time dedicated to Athena the goddess of victory. In the Agora itself were the training grounds where Athens’ citizen-soldiers sweated day in, day out to ensure that they were fit to fight and to die for their city-state. All around were fine bronze and marble statues – so lifelike their rock-crystal eyes seemed to follow each and every passer-by. Their stone skin would have been