The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [28]
The primary charge brought against Socrates was that he was impious. The fact that he corrupted the young was a secondary matter. He was believed to have corrupted Athenian youths because he tempted them away from the city’s gods; he jarred the ritual tempo of society, he made young minds think independently. While chatting in the gymnasia, or in the dusty, noisy cottage-industries such as the workshop of Simon the Shoemaker, Socrates was accused of having sparked new, unorthodox thoughts in the youngsters’ developing minds. For the Athenians, this was deadly serious.
And also make a law, by my order, that a man who is not capable of reverence and right shall be put to death, for he is a plague to the polis.9
Despite the inference of some excitable modern-day historians, there was no suggestion of foul play, or of sexual interference, in Socrates’ ‘corruption’ of Athens’ young men. An Athenian court would have been the first to leap on such a weakness, if it had indeed been the case – in Athenian legislation a jury was expected to form an opinion of the defendant’s moral character from his past reputation; courts expected prosecutors to shake a few skeletons out of the cupboard. Sexual misdemeanour crops up in a number of court cases from the period – as a crime, it is never once mentioned in the case of Socrates. And yet – perverse as ever – Socrates concedes that Meletus (although missing the point entirely) has some basis to his fears: that he has hit on something when he flags up the importance of the idea that young men are being targeted.
And he seems to me to be alone among the politicians to be starting in the right place. For he’s right to care first and foremost that the young be as good as possible, just like a good farmer is likely to make the young plants his first concern, and after them he turns to the others.10
The young men of the city had a kind of totemic significance for Athens. Their heroisation is apparent in the statues that survive from the period. These were commodities that could not be tampered with. With charges that suggest the philosopher is perverting this golden youth, Socrates is in deep water.
Socrates has arrived here today at the well-proportioned Stoa because, a few days earlier, as he walked through his beloved Athens, he was pulled up short. Meletus, buttressed by two summoners (a cross between town-criers and community police), informed Socrates he was in trouble. In a theatrically loud voice his ‘crimes’ were broadcast; a date was agreed upon (in this case, probably about four days hence) when Socrates and his prosecutor should visit one of the state-funded magistrates of one of the state-funded courts to thrash out the proposed case in a pre-trial examination. Given the lack of a formal communication system in Athens, this episode has a rather sinister ring to it. Meletus must have lain in wait for Socrates at one of his preferred haunts – the Agora, perhaps, one of the city’s gymnasia or a favourite shrine – so that he could ambush the philosopher as he appeared round the corner.
Not that Socrates was a stranger to controversy or aggression on Athens’ streets. By all accounts, his delight in needling men in order to prick closer to the truth, in his search for ‘the good life’, drove many to distraction. One later source describes how Athenians rained down blows on the philosopher, lashed out with clenched fists because of his interminable, irritating questions:
He said that the objects of his search were –
Whatever good or harm can befall man
In his own house.
And very often, while arguing and discussing points that arose, he was treated with great violence and beaten, and pulled about, and laughed at and ridiculed by the multitude. But he bore all this with great equanimity. So that once, when he had been kicked and roughed up, and had borne it all patiently, and someone expressed his surprise, he