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Articles

Socrates Revisited: The Jurors Speak

Steven Goldberg reveals the musings of those who condemned Socrates to drink his Hemlock.

This recently discovered fragment reveals that the polling of juries was introduced by Socrates at his trial in 399 BCE. Having tried Socrates for crimes against the state religion and corruption of the youth, the jury, composed of 501 citizens, found him guilty by a margin of sixty votes.

Socrates: Fellow Athenians, unaccustomed as I am to the rhetorician’s craft, I have tried to put my case plainly before you and speak the truth as I know it. You have listened patiently and, after careful deliberation, now find me guilty of crimes against the city. I shall honour your verdict but before proposing a counter-penalty to death, I cannot help but note that your decision against me is carried by a small majority; if thirty of you had voted the other way, I would have been acquitted.

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