CMS150 - Winter 2001
Trials of Conscience: Litigation
and the Rhetoric of Identity
Week 2, Class 1 Lecture Outline
1/16/01
Background Notes for the Apology
- The parties to the litigation
- Meletus was probably the son of a tragic poet of the 5th
century whom Aristophanes mocked for his dullness, immorality
and scrawny appearance (but remember, this is like Jay Leno
ridiculing a popular writer today (e.g., Stephen King &endash;
how accurate the humor is, is hard to say). He would have been
quite young at the time of Socrates's trial in 399 and was/was
not [??]the same person as the Meletus who accused
Andocides of impiety around the same time [nb &endash;
Andocides had been a member of an oligarch club accused of the
mutilation of the Hermes and profanation of the Mysteries; and
who ratted out his friends; Andocides was aquitted of the
charge [impiety]. The convential wisdom is that the
Meletus of Plato's Apology, was the tool of Anytus, Socrates'
real opponent.
- Anytus, was a wealthy Athenian and a leader of the
democratic party. He and Thrasybulus were the leaders who
restored democratic rule to Athens after the Thirty Tyrants. He
was fairly moderate in his beliefs and politics except for a
passionate hatred for sophists whom he believed had led to the
destruction of democracy in Athens. By prosecuting Socrates he
hoped to ensure that sophists would no longer harm the
democratic city. [nb &endash; whether or not you stayed in
or fled the city under the Thirty became a "loyalty test" for
some democrats]. Anytus was a tanner by profession and
apparently extremely successful at his job (i.e., a member of
the nouveau riche, not the traditional aristocracy).
[Alternatively, his father was the successful tanner and
his was the first generation of wealth and luxury in the
family). There are two stories about him: first, that his own
son was a devotee of Socrates for a while, to which Anytus
strongly objected; second that Anytus was rich enough to bribe
a jury in 410 when he was prosecuted for losing a battle. There
are hints in Plato's dialogue, The Meno, that there is some
basis in truth for the first story. The first instance of the
bribery story appears in a work titled the Athenian
Constitution which appears to have been written by students of
Aristotle (a student of Plato) in 329/8 BCE (i.e., 70 years
after Socrates' death). This story, however, is not mentioned
in Xenophon (who surely would have seized the opportunity to
impugn the integrity of Socrates' accusor), and should probably
be considered part of the "backlash" tradition that Plato
especially helped to create (the Romans had numerous stories
about how the accusers came to bad ends).
- Lycon - We don't know anything
- You tell me. For ideas, consult:
- The Charge of asebia
- The prosecutors brought a graphe asebias [a "written
charge of impiety"; = "indictment"] against Socrates.
Athenian law tends to define procedure more than it does
substance. In other words, the law of asebia says, "if a man
commits asebia, one may bring a graphe against him." Because
the definition of substance is left to each individual jury
[this conduct is asebia, that is not], juries had
extraordinary power in Athenian political life. Unlike modern
western systems there was no doctrine of precedent (i.e.,
courts consider themselves bound by what previous courts had
done in similar cases). While litigants knew and argued,
"juries have always considered this conduct to be asebia (or
theft, or murder, etc), and while juries were open to such
arguments, they were not required to do what a previous jury
had done.
- There was one type of asebia that Athenian law specifically
recognized &endash; stealing items from temples. We know from
law court speeches that Athenians also considered it an act of
asebia for a man to enter a temple if he was in a state of
atimia.
- Atimia was the partial or complete loss of civic rights
that juries could impose as a sentence. [see, e.g.,
30D] People who owed money to the government, for example,
were in a state of atimia until they paid off the debt. People
who were convicted of treason, bribery, cowardice in battle,
perjury (3 convictions required) were deprived of all civic
rights. Citizens could be deprived of some, but not all rights,
for failure to prosecute law suits they had brought,; failure
to win at least a fifth of the votes at trial; 3 convictions
for proposing unconstitutional laws in the Assembly; certain
moral offenses.
- Athenian religious belief
- Delphi was the site of an oracular shrine that was
extremely important to all Greeks. The god Apollo spoke there
through the Pythia. People (and this included everyone from
women who had trouble to conceiving to heads of state and the
Athenian assembly, went to Delphi or sent representatives
there, to ask the Pythia a question. After appropriate gifts
had been offered to the god, priests submitted the question to
the Pythia and she, in a trance like state, responded (often in
verse). What she said could be quite cryptic, or quite
straightforward.
- Religion in Greece and Rome, and most of the Mediterranean
world was a matter of ritual practice not private belief.
Ritual was how a community regulated its relationship with the
gods. Failure to properly maintain that relationship would be
disasterous for the community as a whole. Thus the community
had a strong incentive to police religious behavior, because
there was no guarantee that the gods wouldn't just punish the
impious. They might punish the community for tolerating them.
People who refused to participate in ritual or people who
brought in new religious practices that the community as a
whole did not review and approve, threatened the safety of
everyone. Socrates religious behavior was suspect because a)
the irony in his treatment of Delphi; b) the unusual nature of
his discussion of his daemon; and c) the fact that
Alcibiades was associated with the profanation of the
Mysteries, the mutilation of the herms, and the loss of the
Pelopponesean War.
- Socratic irony and elenchus
- Typically folks define irony as "say something, but mean
it's contrary." Under this definition, when Socrates says that
he is ignorant, he means he is wise; etc. According to Lloyd
Spenser, the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard defined
Socratic irony as his conversational ploy of pretending to be
ignorant about a subject. Rather than offer his own opinions on
a subject, he cross examines people who claim to know about the
subject (elenchus) about their ideas, demonstrates the
inconsistancies of their ideas, and thereby demonstrates how
pompous and foolish they are. Socratic irony, according to the
philosopher Nehamas, however, is even more complicated than the
"code" style definition of irony (i.e., Socrates says the
opposite of what he means). We can't really just reverse
everything Socrates says, and therefore assume we know what he
meant. Rather than the opposite of what is said, in ironic
statements we find Socratic silence; a silence that compels us
to try and fashion meaning.
- Elenchus was the method Socrates used to "cross-examine"
his interlocutors who claimed to have some sort of wisdom.
Claiming to possess no wisdom in their field (Socratic irony),
he asked them to define in general terms what their wisdom was.
They offered examples, and Socrates would insist that examples
weren't good enough. The interlocutor would then offer a
general definition of his field of expertise, or, more
commonly, Socrates would offer a general definition which he
would accept. Socrates would then ask them a series of yes/no
questions which would lead inevitably to the conclusion that
the general definition was wrong. This would lead to an
aporetic state (aporia - "no way through") which would either
frustrate and annoy the interlocutor or cause him to recognize
that his assumptions had been false, and that he (like
Socrates) was really ignorant. This state, in which one
abandons his/her assumptions and preconceptions and recognizes
his/her own ignorance, is the precondition to the pursuit of
wisdom, according to Socrates.
- The Trial of the Generals of the Arginusae
- In 406 BCE the Athenian navy fought and won a significant
naval victory over the Spartans called the Battle of the
Arginusae. The 8 generals (the title was the same whether you
commanded soldiers or sailors) present (2 were not there)
decided to split the fleet, some ships sailing home, others
picking up wounded and dead Athenians (for burial). After the
fleet split, a great storm arose preventing the rescue and
recovery of dead and wounded Athenians. When news reached
Athens of the number of Athenians who had not been recovered or
rescued a political cause celebre arose which some politicians
manipulated for their own immediate political ends. Some
politicians, supported by the people who had reached a furious
outrage, insisted that six of the generals be tried and judged
collectively (two had fled when they heard what was happening).
This was absolutely against Athenian law and precedent
(individuals charged with capital offenses had a right to have
their cases heard individually). The generals were found guilty
and killed. Subsequently the people realized that they had been
manipulated by their leaders and found against those who had
proposed the illegal procedures against the generals.
- Socrates became involved in this issue by a fluke. The
duties of organzing matters (e.g., setting agendas) to be
considered at Assembly meetings rotated among the citizens.
Socrates happened to have been chosen to be among the group of
organizers (prytanes) for the month when the Trial of
the Generals was opposed. It appears that he refused to perform
the ministerial duty of announcing the agenda item (trying the
generals collectively) to the Assembly and walked out of the
meeting of the prytanes. Someone else did and the
generals were subsequently executed.
- The arrest of Leon of Salamis
- After the Thirty Tyrants came to power in Athens, the asked
Sparta to install a garrison of soldiers in the city to give
them military support. They then took to killing their
opponents without a trial. Within eight months they had
executed 1,500 citizens and banished 5,000 others. The Thirty
liked to implicate other Athenians in their actions.
- In the case of one famous execution, for example, they
brought the defendant, Theramenes, before a council of 500
citizens. The Thirty typically insisted that each member of
the council publicly vote on their requests for executions.
Those who refused to vote with them were identified as
potential enemies. Those who did vote with them became a
part of their unconstitutional activities. At the trial of
Thereamenes (who himself had originally been a member of the
Thirty, but alienated Critias, Plato's uncle and leader of
the radical oligarchs, by opposing the frequency of
executions) the Thirty took the precaution of filling the
council chamber with Spartan soldiers and young aristocratic
thugs who supported the Thirty. When Theramenes spoke well
in his own defense and appeared to have won the sympathy of
council of 500, Critias informed the council that Theramenes
had lost all his civic rights (including the right to a
trial) and that the Thirty condemned him to death. The thugs
then dragged Theramenes from an altar, where he had claimed
sanctuary, and forced him to drink hemlock.
- The case of Leon of Salamis is another example of the
Thirty attempting to implicate other Athenians in their
unconstitutional methods. They summoned five citizens to
their chambers and ordered them to arrest Leon of Salamis (a
wealthy metic, i.e., resident alien, who lived in a suburb
of Athens). Those summoned knew that Leon would be executed
without trial (and his money confiscated by the Thirty).
- The court in which Socrates was tried
- Religious matters were tried in courts under the
jurisdiction of the King Archon. Athens had nine important
magistracies (administrative offices) of which the King Archon
was one. One of the duties of the King Archon was to supervise
courts which heard charges of homicide and sacrilege. Before
the democracy, archons actually heard and judged cases. Under
the democracy, however, their role was purely administrative.
Prosecutors brought their cases to the archons who decided in
which court it was to be heard. The archons supervised
pre-trial administrative matters and assigned the trial to a
jury panel to be heard. They had no substantive role in the
trial itself.
- Socrates trial was held in the heliastic court, most likely
before a jury of 501. The Heliaia were established by Solon and
clearly important in the development of democracy at Athens.
The word heliaia linguistically means assembly, but it may have
meant in use, an assembly which hears judicial appeals (and
thus limits the authority of the archons to decide lawsuits).
It is very difficulty to distinguish between the functions of
the heliaia and the dikasterion during the democratic period.
Dikasterion is the ordinary Athenian word for "lawcourt." Each
board of archons in the democracy had its own court, and the
court of the archons called thesmothetai (who supervised trials
of political cases) was called the heliaia. However, the word
is occasionally used simply to mean, "the people's court," i.e.
as a synomnym of dikasterion.
- The archons managed a jury panel of 6,000 citizens which he
divided up into smaller panels to hear cases. A typical jury
was 501, but there is evidence of juries as small as 201 and as
large as 1,001.