Was Socrates Guilty as Charged?

The events that started with the legal accusations against Socrates and that which resulted

in his execution were proceeded by the judicial practices of the supposedly democratic polis.

Meletus’ accused Socrates, saying that: “Socrates does criminal wrong by not recognizing the gods

that the polis recognizes, and by introducing new divinities, and he also does criminal wrong by

corrupting the youth”. However, an in-depth look into Socrates teachings and how he imposed it

on people prompts me to take the side that he was innocent of the charges imposed against him.

The first accusation against Socrates that, “Socrates is guilty of not recognizing the gods

recognized by the city, and of introducing new divinities”, could have been taken lightly by a

society that has a clearly defined and established religion, like that of medieval Europe. Notably,

classical Greece had various gods and goddesses, as well who changed throughout antiquity. For

instance, in Athens, slaves, non-citizens, and foreigners practised various religions and worshipped

unactioned gods even post citizenship. Athens’s populace quickly found and often accepted foreign

religions. Let us take into account the reactions of citizens after successive plague period when

there was the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens (Melchert and Morrow). The citizens

wanted to escape the gods’ wrath so much that they did not hide their acts of impiety like following

“ventriloquist prophets”, who were very popular in the bout before Socrates’ trial, and contributed

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significantly of the ambiguity to the meaning of piety. The religious culture of Athens tolerated

foreign divinities and was open-minded about religious ideas.

Similarly, the accusation of corrupting the youth in Athens is an uncorroborated and a

veiled attack on Socrates, which should not have led into his execution. This accusation was

primarily based on the idea that Socrates being a sophist. Ideally, sophists were teachers who

travelled from city to city supplying the basic skills of the then inadequate aristocratic education.

They were professionals who charged for their money (Melchert and Morrow). Sophists were

generally disliked as they used language deceitfully to strengthen weaker arguments. However,

Socrates does not seemingly have any trait that characterizes a sophist. As explained by Xenophon,

“Socrates lived ever in the open, for early in the morning he went to the public promenades and

training grounds, in the forenoon he was seen in the market, and the rest of the day he passed just

where most people were to be met” (Melchert and Morrow). He spoke t