Litigation in Ancient Athens

Housekeeping: New extra credit opportunity:

Option 1: Read Xenophon's Apology. Write a three page (800-1000) word paper comparing Xenophon's account of Socrates' defense to Plato's. How are the alike and different? What is the significance of similarities and differences you discover.

Option 2: Read Aristophanes' Clouds. Consider the portrait of Socrates offered by Aristophanes in the Clouds. Is Socrates' complaint in the Apology about the "older" accusations against him fair? How has Aristophanes actually satirized Socrates? Why did Socrates so emphasize the Aristophanic portrait in his apologia?

• The sophists
  • term derived from Greek word for "wise" [sofoV]
  • period of influence: 450-330
  • usually not Athenian citizens (itinerant teachers)
  • taught for a fee
  • taught a variety of subjects, but in general claimed to offer an art or technique for mastering a particular subject that would lead to general success in life (cf. "for Dummies" books today).
  • A number claimed to offer techniques/knowledge necessary to become successful public speakers; thus as public speaking became an increasingly important skill for political life, sophists played an increasingly important part of public life in Athens during Socrates life time..
  • From the point of view of most Athenians, Socrates was a sophist.
  • eventually, sophists replaced by philosophical schools in Athens
    
    
  • more info at:
    • Dr. David Bradshaw's Sophists page
    • Prof. James Evans' The Sophists page
    • Internet Encyclopaidea of Philosophy entry for Sophists
    • Encylopaedia Britannica's entry for Sophists
    • Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Homer to Alexander (Perseus Project): The Sophists
    • An annotated bibliography on the Sophists of Classical Greece
      
      
• The crises of Athenian democracy
  • Peloponnesian War
    • Shortly after the Athenians established a democracy, they, as a naval power joined forces with the then leader of the Greek world (because of the might of its armies), Sparta in two confrontations (490 and 480-79 BCE) with Persia, the dominant imperial power of the day. The Athens and Sparta, against signficant odds, were successful in repelling Persian attempts to invade the Greek mainland.
    • Sparta was satisfied with this result and withdrew from active engagement with Persia. Athens, however, pursued the war and was able, by the middle of the 5th century, under the leadership of Pericles, to obtain a dominant position (quite frankly, an empire) in the affairs of Greek city-states.
    • Sparta (a conservative, militaristic, oligarchic society) and her allies felt deeply threatened by the growing prominence of Athens (a radical democracy which was exacting tribute from Greek city-states as payment for its protection against Persia) and the Peloponnesian War between the two city-states eventually broke out and lasted, on and off, from 431 until 404 bce when the Spartans decisively beat the Athenians.
    • Our best source for the Peloponnesian War is Thucydides, an Athenian general who was exiled by the assembly for losing an outpost and spent his forced retirement researching and writing the history of the Peloponnesian War (and creating the discipline of political history by so doing).
    • more info at:
      • Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Homer to Alexander (Perseus Project): The course of the Peloponnesean War
        
        
  • Oligarch revolutions
    • The Profanation of the Mysteries and the Mutiliation of the Hermes
      • Alcibiades, a political protege of Pericles, and a devotee of Socrates, convinced the Assembly to send him as a general of a great Athenian fleet against Sicily in 415. Shortly before the expedition left, Hermes were mutilated throughout Athens, and it was alleged, Alcibiades and his friends held mock rites denegrating the Eleusian Mysteries (a very important mystery cult in Athens).
        
        
    • The Sicilian Expedition
      • The Sicilian Expedition was thus initiated under a cloud of uncertainty. The Assembly quickly recalled Alcibiades to answer charges made against his conduct. Alciabiades instead deserted to the Spartans. Over the course of the next two years, the Athenians in Sicily were utterly defeated and their fleet (on which the Athenian empire depended) lost. Shortly thereafter, the Spartans, following the advice of Alcibiades, enjoyed several military victories which resulted in Athens losing control of its silver mines (on which its economy depended).
        
        
    • The revolution of the 400 (411 BCE)
      • In 413, the Athenians replaced the council of 500 citizens chosen annually by lot and charged with managing the city with a board of 10 overseers. Despite its set backs, Athens rebuilds its fleet.
      • Alcibiades, meanwhile, offered to come back to Athens and to help Athens win the support of Persia against Sparta, if aristocrats in Athens overthrew the democracy. In 411, aristocrats "persuaded" the Assembly to vote itself out of existence in favor of a council of 400 wealthy Athenians while the new the fleet (where most of the poorer and more radically democratic citizens served) was away.
      • The aristocrats almost immediately began fighting with each other, however, and by 410 had agreed to compromise with the democrats. The new constitution had stricter property requirements for participation in political life, but was far more democratic than the oligarch regime. The new government called home Alcibiades and the exiled aristocrats.
      • However the fleet enjoyed some important naval victories, returned home and demanded the restoration of the democratic constitution that had been in effect before 411.
      • The Spartans, funded by the Persians, eventually built a fleet that finally defeated the Athenians in 404. Athens fleet and the walls which protected the city were destroyed. She had lost half her population during the course of the war.
        
        
    • The Thirty Tyrants
      • After their victory, the Spartans installed a board of 30 Athenian aristocrats to govern the city. Athenians referred to these men as the Thirty Tyrants, and they weren't exaggerating. The year 404-403 was a reign of terror in Athens. A democratic resistance formed and succeeded in 403 in driving the aristocrats out of Athens. Then Spartans were having their own internal disputes, and did not intervene.
        
        
    • The amnesty
      • The new democratic government in Athens then declared an amnesty. No citizen, regardless of their political affiliation, could be sued over conduct during the period 404-403.
      • In 399, Socrates was sued.
        
        
    • more info at:
      • Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Homer to Alexander (Perseus Project): The oligarchic coup
        
        

•  The critics of Athenian democracy
  

  • Despite the modern tendency to idealize Athenian democracy, many ancient Greeks, both within and without Athens, were quite critical of it as a system of government. Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon and the Old Oligarch (all aristocrats), for example, all offer spirited critiques of the Athenian system of radical democratic government. Much of Plato's critique is put in the mouth of his teacher Socrates (who was not an aristocrat) in Plato's dialogues, written after the death of Socrates. How much the Socrates of Plato's dialogues corresponds to the "historical" Socrates is a question scholars have shed much ink on, and about which you will have to think as you read Plato's Apology (and Xenophon's).
    
    
  • The aristocrats had a number of reasons to be critical of Athenian democracy. One of these reasons was economic. Athens, rather than directly tax its citizens, required citizens of wealthy means to perform (expensive) services on behalf of the city. These services were called liturgies. The services a citizen might be required to provide could range from the cost of building and outfitting a warship for the fleet to producing a play at the city's dramatic festival. Citizens who performed liturgies were greatly honored for having done so. For wealthy Athenians who wanted to be active in politics, performing liturgies was a way to demonstrate to ordinary citizens that you cared deeply about the city and its welfare. Since there were few elections in Athens, but many lawsuits between political rivals which were judged by ordinary citizens, members of the political elite relied on their liturgies as a way of demonstrating their good character in their own defense at trial.
    
    
  • For wealthy Athenians who did not want to participate in politics, however, liturgies were simply taxes, and were as popular then as they are now. When the city was unified, liturgies were not too divisive an issue. But when the ordinary and wealthy were in opposition on political questions (or questions about foreign policy or the conduct of the war), Athenian aristocrats complained that they had no say in policy (since they were outnumbered in the Assembly) and furthermore, were compelled to pay for policy that they thought was stupid.
    
    
  • In the aristocrat authors, moreover, one can read a kind of intellectual and cultural disdain for ordinary Athenians. At its most blatant level, we find wealthy young aristocrats getting drunk in the afternoon and brawling through the shops of ordinary citizens. The next day, they would send a slave around with money to pay the shopkeeper for the damage and some extra so he wouldn't sue them in court. The shopkeepers couldn't afford to say no, and although they were made whole financially, the contempt the young aristo had shown no doubt rankled.
    
    
  • At a more theoretical level, a number of aristocrats felt (and this feeling was comon in the ancient world) that people who were so poor that they had to work for a living, were inherently less fit than wealthy people to run a government. Shopkeepers needed to keep shop, and thus did not have the time study up on foreign policy questions. A system of government that gave shopkeepers a say in policy was inherently weaker than one that relied solely on aristocrats, because the shopkeepers were inherently less well informed and thus inevitably made poor decisions. The aristocratic political philosophers, in fact, believed that the Athenian Assembly was little better than a "mob," easily manipulated by politicians, and prone to make quick, unreasoned decisions in anger. When Athens was blessed with great leaders (e.g. Pericles), whom the mob followed like a king, Athens flourished. But most politicians pandered to the mob, which led to horrible policy decisions (for which the rich inevitably would pay).
    
    
  • Some aristocrats went as far as to idealize the Spartan constitution in their writings and to affect a "Persian" lifestyle. This kind of behavior would have been viewed as extraordinarily bizarre by most Athenians, since their greatest enemies in the 5th century bce had been the Persians and the Spartans. It would not have been particularly threatening, however. The aristocratic critique of Athenian democracy was a minority opinion. It is an irony of history that it is so well represented in the writings that have survived to us from ancient Athens, while the writings of "pro-democratic" thinkers (if they existed - the democracy was so popular, few would have bothered to respond to the aristocrats) have been lost.
    
    
  • more info at:
    • Birgitta Kurtén Lindberg, "Problems of Democracy in Classical Athens: Ours As Well?"

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  • Plato and Xenophon
    • Plato (429-347 BCE) was the son of an aristorcratic Athenian family. He was a student and associate of Socrates in his youth and profoundly influenced by Socrates' teaching. Disgusted by the excesses of both the oligarchs and democrats in Athenian politics he went into voluntary exile after Socrates death and travelled extensively throughout the Mediterranean world for the next dozen years or so. He returned to Athens and founded the Academy (the first college), where he taught and wrote for the rest of his life.
      
      
    • All of Plato's published writings have been preserved (an unbelievable boon for modern scholars). His early writings portray Socrates and his life and set forth the philosophical argument that virtue is knowledge. His "middle" works tend to describe a conversation in which Socrates is a participant, and are probably less less concerned with biography as such than with using Socrates as a character to develop a philosophical theory (e.g., the theory of the forms). By Plato's "later" period, he uses the "dialogue" form less and less and Socrates becomes an increasingly subordinate character. How historically accurates the different Socrates of Plato's different periods were, is a question scholars argue about fiercely to this day. Generally speaking, people believe the Socrates of the early dialogues (e.g. Apology, Crito, Euthyphro) and perhaps the Phaedo (a middle period dialogue set on the last day of Socrates life) are reasonably accurate. However, even for these dialogues, you should remember that Plato was a great writer and philosopher as well as a passionately devoted student of Socrates, and it is virtually impossible to which motivations account for which details in Plato's description of Socrates.
      
      
    • It is impossible to underestimate the importance of Plato to the history of western philosophy (Whitehead, a great modern philosopher in his own right, wrote, "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929 ). It is also impossible to describe the extraordinary beauty and wit of Plato's prose style. That is why you should study Greek.
      
      
    • Xenophon (428/7 - 354 BCE) was the son of an aristocratic Athenian family who served in the Athenian cavalry and was a passionately devoted (if not particularly brilliant) student of Socrates. He left Athens after the restoration of the democracy in 401 and served as a mercenary for various kings in Asia Minor and eventually (396 BCE ), for Sparta. The Athenians had formally exiled him in 399 (the year of Socrates death). A generation later (368 BCE), when relations between Sparta and Athens had much improved, Athens revoked the exile, and Xenophon returned home where he lived until his death.
      
      
    • Xenophon wrote a number of different types of works. The Anabasis is an exciting memoire of his service as the general of a mercenary troop of Greek soldiers which had been abandoned by its Persian employers in the middle of enemy territory. Xenophon got his boys safely home and the book has been a classic war story since it was written. He also wrote works on the Spartan and Athenian constitution, dialogues and treatises on political philosophy, military treatises, a history of Greece and several works devoted to Socrates: the Apology - an account of the trial and explanation for Socrates' conduct at it; the Memorabilia - memoires of his association with Socrates; and the Symposium, the recollection of an imaginary party at which Socrates was a guest.
      
      
      
    • Unlike Plato, Xenophon is rather underrated today. His prose style is delightful (even exciting in the Anabasis) and for that reason alone you should learn Greek. Moderns tend to compare him to Plato as a philosopher and Thucydides as a historian and conclude that he was a an amiable, well-read rich man, who had the good fortune to keep company with the brilliant and happened to like to write a lot. In the ancient world, in contrast, he was greatly admired for his practicality, his accessible prose style, and his aristocratic politics. Unlike a lot of philosophers, Xenophon had muchh practical experience of the world and in his writings, was often happy to acknowlede when his theories failed (his comments on Sparta and tyranny, e.g.).
      
      
    • more info at:
      • Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Homer to Alexander (Perseus Project): Socrates
      • Encyclopaedia Britannica, Plato
      • Encyclopaedia Britannica, Xenophon

• • 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
      
      
    • Socrates: You tell me. For ideas, consult:
      • a bio of Socrates
      • Prof. Muhlberger's lecture on The Trial of Socrates
      • Prof. Armstrong's lecture on Socrates & His Trial
      • Prof. Rowe's lecture on The Uses and Disadvantages of Socrates
      • Prof. Washburn's lectures on SOCRATES: MISSION AND METHOD OF INQUIRY and SOCRATES: THE WELL-ORDERED SOUL AND THE MORAL PARADOXES
      • Dr. Luz's, The Historical Socrates page
      • University of Washington's Philosophy 101's Plato's Apology page
      • Dr. Siegal's Lecture on Socrates and the Apology
      • Alban Dewes Winspear with Tom Silverberg, Who Was Socrates
        
        
  • 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.