Stone's philosopher

Jasper Griffin

I F STONE The Trial of Socrata 282pp Cape £12 0224025910

Why was Socrates put to death The question has exercised many minds in two and a half thousand years I Stone the veteran American ican campaigner for civil liberties puts a slightly ly different one why was Socrates put to death by a liberal democracy As he puts it how could Athens have been so untrue to itself For in the year 399 bc Athens was a society committed ted to free speech and rational discussion The disastrous defeat of Athens in the great war against Sparta and her allies was immediately mediately followed in 404 and 403 bc by a violently reactionary regime backed by the Spartans The democracy was abolished a reign of terror was brought in and hundreds of people were murdered Finally the popular party managed to defeat the oligarchy and reestablish establish a democratic constitution With a forbearance bearance highly unusual in the ancient world - or the modern one - the triumphant democracy immediately passed a resolution giving amnesty ty to all except the actual leaders of the defeated feated oligarchy and forbidding prosecutions for actions done at that time Xenophon an aristocrat and no friend of the democracy who indeed spent most of his life in exile from Athens none the less records with admiration that people have kept their word Yet this city so admirable to us in many ways prosecuted secuted and killed the great moralist Socrates the teacher of Plato with whom the philosophical sophical tradition of Europe seems to begin How did it happen Socrates was charged with two offences that he did not practise the cults which the city practised and that he corrupted the young Those were peculiar accusations and it is not