ties of his own; secondly, for corrupting the youth. The penalty due is Death."
His three accusers were Anytus, a wealthy tradesman; Meletus, an obscure poet; and Lycon, a rhetorician. Socrates himself seems to have been little moved by the danger of his position, and to have hardly wished for an acquittal. He felt that he had done his work, and that "it was no wonder that the gods should deem it better for him to die now than to live longer."[1] Certainly the tone of his Defence, as we have it from Plato, is more like a defiance than an apology; and the speaker seems, as Cicero said, not so much a suppliant or an accused person, as the lord and master of his judges.[2]
He begins by disclaiming any resemblance to that Socrates whom they had seen on the stage—the stargazer and arch-Sophist—for he knows nothing of science, and had never taken a fee for teaching. His life has been passed in trying to find a wiser man than himself, and in exposing self-conceit and pretentious ignorance. To this mission he has devoted himself, in spite of poverty and ill-repute.
Next he turns upon Meletus, his accuser, and cross-examines him in open court. "How can you," he asks, "call me the corrupter of the youth, when their fathers and brothers would bear witness that it is not so? How can you call me the worshipper of strange gods, when the heresies of Anaxagoras are declaimed on the stage, and sold in our streets?"
