Free About 1 hr1 learner Rev. 2026-10-13 0

Five hundred citizens, one day, a jar of draining water to keep time. That was all the machinery Athens needed in 399 BCE to sentence its most famous thinker to death. Socrates had been invited to propose his own punishment, and he suggested free dinners for life at public expense.

Why would a democracy kill a seventy-year-old man for asking questions? You will walk through the city's recent nightmare of war and tyranny, sit in on the trial as Plato and Xenophon remembered it, and weigh the arguments he gave his friend Crito for refusing to escape. By the end you will have your own view on a question that has never gone away: what a free people owes to the person who annoys them most.

Levels

  1. 1 1. Athens in 399 BCE: War, Tyranny and a Fragile Democracy 5-question quiz
  2. 2 2. Who Was Socrates? 5-question quiz
  3. 3 3. The Charges 5-question quiz
  4. 4 4. How an Athenian Trial Worked 5-question quiz
  5. 5 5. The Defense: Plato's Apology 5-question quiz
  6. 6 6. Why Was Socrates Really Tried? 5-question quiz
  7. 7 7. Prison, Crito and Death 5-question quiz
  8. 8 8. The Legacy: Free Inquiry, Majorities and Conscience 5-question quiz

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