The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [27]
Here there were shrines to Aphrodite, a Temple of Hephaestus, a colonnade named for Zeus the Liberator – Zeus Eleutherios. Statues commemorated the demigods and heroes who held a special place in Athens’ heart. And in the north-eastern corner, close to the Archon’s courtroom, stood the great Altar of the Twelve Gods: a massive stone block (the corner of which still survives) from which all distances in the known, Hellenic world were measured.
In the fifth century BC this was believed to be a world fat with threats. Earth – in the minds of Socrates’ peers – was inhabited by spirits, typically malign, who resided in the swell of hills, the blister of a breaking wave, the mould in an ear of corn, the fetid breath of a dying man. Life was precarious. The Greeks did not need men to make it any harder for them by appearing to question and insult traditional gods. In Babylon or Egyptian Thebes or Macedonia the cities were orientated around the great might of a temporal leader. A king, pharaoh or emperor frequently appropriated to himself priestly powers, but it was his iron fist that ruled the state from inside tall palaces and golden gates. In Athens, though, it was the Acropolis with its cluster of temples, the home to many gods, that drew the eye. Proud democrats busied themselves in the Agora, the Areopagus, the Assembly and the warren of streets below. Even though kings and tyrants and despots had been done away with, there was no shadow of a doubt that in this odd new thing called a democracy, the Olympian gods still ruled. Life itself was thought to be a religious experience. Crimes against religion – such as those with which Socrates was charged – were fundamentally, desperately disturbing.
The gravitas of the Stoa’s business was reflected in its marble and limestone dressings. Facing out onto the Agora, man-sized slabs, carved in wood and then stone, displayed the laws of Athens’ political godfather, the celebrated poet and law-giver of the sixth century, Solon.5 Inscribed laws such as these were a source of great pride for the Athenians – here was justice, literally, writ large. Recent excavations have shown how democracy was also built into the Stoa’s fabric: along the north wall are stone benches for citizen-jurors.6
The intrinsic importance of the cases heard here – what could be of greater import than Athens’ relationship with its gods? – meant this was a spot where passions ran high. But today, when Plato tells us that Socrates has bumped into an old acquaintance called Euthyphro, the atmosphere is temperate. Socrates has just come from the gym, following a languid chat with a young man called Theaetetus, stepping through the Stoa Basileios, past the mesmeric light and shade that the columns create. It is a relaxed scene; both men, in a rather world-weary way, have come to the Agora for legal reasons.
Socrates has been summoned to hear the serious charges against him:
SOCRATES: … He [Meletus] must be a clever chap. Seeing my stupidity in corrupting his contemporaries, he goes off to accuse me to the State, as though he were running to his mother.7
One can sense the irritation. An elderly man, a parent of both children and ideas, who has lived through regime change, war, plague, foreign invasion, is to be taken to court by three also-rans. We know their names: Anytus, Meletus and Lycon. Meletus was a poet, youngish, thirty-five or so. Anytus was a tanner, an industrialist and a politician who had become very popular with democrats (the democracy had been disbanded in 404 BC, and at the time of Socrates’ trial was only recently restored; Anytus was in favour with the new regime). Lycon spoke on behalf of the orators of the city. We know very little about him other than that his son had been murdered by pro-Spartan oligarchs during the Athenian civil