Although in none of Plato’s
dialogues is Plato himself a conversational partner or even a witness to a
conversation, in the Apology Socrates says that Plato is one of several friends
in the audience. In this way Plato lets us know that he was an eyewitness of
the trial and therefore in the best possible position to write about it. The
other account we have of the trial, that of Xenophon, a contemporary of
Socrates, is of a very different character. We know that Xenophon was not
present as a live witness. He tells his readers that he is reporting only a
portion of Socrates’ speech and that he learned about the trial from
Hermogenes, a member of the Socratic circle.
It is not surprising, then, that
there are significant differences between Plato’s and Xenophon’s accounts of
what was said at the trial. (Xenophon, for example, dwells on the troubles of
old age from which Socrates is escaping by being condemned to death, whereas
Plato barely alludes to Socrates’ age.) Of greater importance is the fact that
the two Apologys agree in many details. They agree about what the charges
against Socrates were: failing to acknowledge the gods recognized by the city,
introducing other new divinities, and corrupting the young. They also agree
that Meletus supported his accusation by referring to a divine voice or sign
that Socrates claimed as his personal guide; that Socrates acknowledged the
guidance of this divine sign in his speech; that part of Socrates’ defense
consisted of a cross-examination of Meletus; that Socrates referred to an
inquiry made by his friend, Chaerephon, to the Delphic oracle; that the
response of the oracle confirmed that a unique status had been conferred upon
Socrates by the gods; that, having been found guilty, Socrates refused to
propose a punishment that the jury would find acceptable; and that, after the
jury voted in favour of the death penalty, he once again addressed the jury and
expressed no regrets for his manner of living or the course of his trial. There
is no reason to suppose that Xenophon had learned of these aspects of the trial
from Plato. His agreement with Plato about these matters assures us that they
are not fabrications.
But can we go so far as to say that
in Plato’s Apology there is a word-for-word transcription (or something close
to it) of the speech Socrates gave in his defense? It would not have been
impossible for Plato to have managed such a feat by taking extensive notes,
comparing his memory with that of others, and gradually perfecting a rendition
that aimed at replicating the original as closely as possible. Unfortunately,
there is no way to prove that Plato was striving to achieve this kind and
degree of accuracy. Some scholars, in fact, have argued that Plato was engaged
in a much different project: his Apology, they have noted, is similar in many
respects to the works of contemporary orators and teachers of rhetoric—in
particular to a rhetorical exercise, “Defense of Palamades,” by Gorgias—and
they infer that in composing the Apology in this fashion Plato was not seeking historical
accuracy but instead striving to outdo or to parody the orators for whom he
felt disdain. But this hypothesis is just as speculative as the supposition
that Plato strove to record as accurately as possible the actual speech of
Socrates.
We cannot eliminate the possibility
that some parts of the speech Plato wrote were not actually delivered at the
trial or were expressed rather differently. Plato’s speech represents his
creative attempt to defend Socrates and his way of life and to condemn those
who voted to kill him. In fact, Plato’s motives in writing the Apology are
likely to have been complex. One of them, no doubt, was to defend and praise
Socrates by making use of many of the points Socrates himself had offered in
his speech. But, as any reader of the work can see, Plato is at the same time
using the trial and death of Socrates to condemn Athens, to call upon his
readers to reject the conventional life that Athens would have preferred
Socrates to lead, and to choose instead the life of a Socratic philosopher. In
the 4th century bce Athens had no norm of accurate reportage or faithful
biography, and so Plato would have felt free to shape his material in whatever
way suited his multiple aims. Because it was Socrates he wished to praise, he
had no choice but to make the Socrates of the Apology close to the original.
But he would not have felt bound merely to reproduce, as best he could, the
speech that Socrates delivered.
In any event, the historical
accuracy of Plato’s Apology should not be the only question on the reader’s
mind. Of equal importance is whether Plato’s Socrates really is guilty of the
charges brought against him, whether he is a wholly just and admirable person,
whether his manner of living is the one that is most worthwhile (or perhaps
even the only one that is worthwhile at all, as Socrates insists), and whether
there is any reason for a political community to be concerned about the harm
such a person might do. Surely the last thing Plato would have wanted his
readers to do with the Apology is to ignore its philosophical, religious, and
political dimensions in order to concentrate solely on its accuracy as a piece
of historical reportage.
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