The Apology

Before addressing the men who brought formal charges against him, Socrates turns to a more dangerous set of opponents: accusers he cannot name, cannot summon to court, and cannot cross-examine. These are the people who have been poisoning his reputation for decades — since the jurors were children — spreading the story that Socrates is a godless philosopher who walks in air, probes the heavens and the earth, and makes weak arguments appear strong. The formal indictment from Anytus and Meletus, he says, is less frightening than this ancient slander, because at least with named accusers you can argue back. Against rumors, you fight with shadows. What makes these old accusations particularly hard to refute is that many of those who spread them had first convinced themselves. They were not cynical liars — they genuinely believed what they said. And the charges went unanswered for years because there was no occasion to answer them. The jurors absorbed them in youth, when minds are most impressionable and there is no one present to offer a counterargument. The source of the slander, Socrates tells the jury, can be traced largely to Aristophanes' comedy The Clouds, where a character called "Socrates" is shown walking on air and speaking nonsense about the natural world. Socrates distances himself from this portrait completely. He has nothing to do with natural philosophy — and he invites anyone in the courtroom who has ever heard him speak on such matters to say so now. The silence, presumably, makes his point. The charge of being a paid teacher he dismisses with characteristic irony. If a man could genuinely teach virtue, he says, taking money for it would be entirely honorable — and he cites Gorgias, Prodicus, and Hippias as men who do exactly that, traveling from city to city and drawing paying students away from the free instruction of their own communities. He has heard of a Parian philosopher named Evenus who charges five minae for his wisdom. "Happy is Evenus," Socrates says to himself, "if he really has this wisdom." As for himself — he has no such knowledge, and therefore cannot charge for it. The chapter closes on a note of quiet resignation. Having laid out the difficulty of the task before him — clearing away decades of accumulated slander in the space of a single trial — Socrates leaves the outcome in God's hands and turns to the law.