belief in the city's gods
The charges against Socrates seem to focus on his religious beliefs ('He does not believe in the city's gods'). From a post- classical perspective, it is tempting to define Socrates' crime as heresy. But it is quite unclear whether the main issue was religious belief or religious practice. The prosecution used a verb whose meaning was shifting in this period: nomizein. This word could mean 'to follow a custom' or 'to respect'; but it could also mean 'to believe'. The charge against Socrates could be read as a claim that he 'does not worship' the city's gods, or that he 'does not believe' in them. Most likely, the prosecutors and the jury did not distinguish sharply between the two. Greek religion was very largely a system of shared religious traditions and shared myths. The Athenians had no equivalent to a Christian creed.
Xenophon assumes that the prosecutors were accusing Socrates of lax religious practice, not unorthodox religious beliefs. He retorts that Socrates 'was always to be seen offer- ing sacrifices, both at home and in the city temples'. In fact, we have no evidence that Socrates' religious practice was in any way strange. In Plato's Phaedo, his last words are an injunction to make a traditional blood sacrifice to a named god: 'Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it, and do not forget.'
But it is very likely that Socrates questioned many of the traditional Greek myths about the gods. In Plato's Euthyphro, Socrates says he does not believe that Zeus chained up his father, Cronos, for eating his children, or that Cronos in turn had castrated his own father. Socrates is talking just before his trial, outside the courthouse, and he suggests that his religious doubts are the reason for the prosecution. He asks, 'Is not this the reason I am being prosecuted, because when people tell these stories about the gods, I find it difficult to believe them?'
It is possible that Socrates' prosecutors meant to accuse him of actual atheism. If so, the case would have been highly unusual. Almost nobody in the ancient world doubted the existence of any gods at all. The word atheos usually meant 'a person hated by the gods' - not 'atheist'. According to Plato, Socrates frequently referred to 'the god', who guided his whole career.
But it is also possible that the prosecution objected to Socrates' religious views, because he questioned the old traditional Greek stories about the gods. We tend to assume that Socrates was condemned to death unjustly. But this assumption depends on believing in the effective rhetoric used by the Platonic Socrates, who persuades us that it is more pious not to believe in anthropomorphic gods who eat, castrate, chain up, fight and cheat on one another. We should try to remember that this was a paradoxical position, not an obvious one. The changing currents of belief since Plato's time have helped make some of his religious ideas seem self- evidently true. Paganism is dead, and Socrates' refusal to accept traditional Greek religious beliefs has made him seem like a monotheist or even a Christian avant la lettre. History sided with Socrates.
But if Socrates did question the old myths, then the charge that he failed to respect 'the city's gods' was perfectly true. He was guilty as charged.
Scholars disagree about how radical Socrates' views were in the context of his time. Questioning the traditional myths about gods was nothing new for the Greeks. As long ago as the sixth century bc, Xenophanes had claimed that men make gods in their own image. In the fifth century bc rationalist approaches to religion were common among the sophists. Anaxagoras rejected the traditional account of the creation of the world by anthropomorphic Titans and gods, and substituted his own more scientific narrative, in which Mind brought about and rules the cosmos. By comparison, Socrates' doubts about the old stories seem relatively mild.
But Socratic religion may have seemed even more liable to corrupt the young, because it was more insidious. Socrates presented his own rationalised, highly moralised concep- tion of the gods as the 'true' religion of Athens. Socrates may have been seen as more impious even than Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, because he presented his religious radicalism as an ideal form of piety.
introducing new divinities
The prosecutors claimed not only that Socrates 'does not believe in the city's gods', but also that he 'introduces new divinities' (daimonia). This is a clear reference to the fact that Socrates believed in a special divine power (a daimonion), that guided his actions, warning him if he was on the point of doing something wrong and perhaps also (according to Xenophon) giving positive advice about what he ought to do.
Daimonion was a vague term that could be used to refer to the work of an unknown god or to some inferior spirit- ual power. Socrates' daimonion was a startling innovation in terms of traditional Athenian religion.
Xenophon tries hard to make the Socratic daimonion seem normal. He has Socrates ask, 'How could I be guilty of intro- ducing new deities just for saying that the voice of a god appears to me and shows me what I should do? Surely those who practise divination with birdsong or human utterances are also using voices .'
But the analogy does not hold. Ancient soothsayers, prophets and priests interpreted divine signs that were visible or audible to everybody - such as the flights or songs of birds. They interpreted public natural phenomena as signs of divine will. This is quite different from the claim that one can hear a divine voice inside one's own head that is acces- sible to nobody else. Socrates' belief in a personal deity was extremely unusual in the context of his time.
It is easy to see why the idea of a personal daimonion might have seemed dangerous. The deity authorised Socrates to cross-question even the most highly respected citizens of Athens. Any number of other people might hear divine voices too - or pretend to hear them. A city in which every citizen followed the instructions of his own divine sign could easily slip into anarchy.
For the Athenians, believing in the gods was - as one scholar, Mario Vegetti, has remarked - 'not so much a spir- itual act of faith or theological respect as a concrete sense of belonging to the political community'. It was shocking, in this context, that Socrates separated religion from com- munal life.
Plato presents Socrates as a man who believed that tradi- tion can never be a sufficient guide for moral action, since different elements in a tradition may come into conflict with one another. In such a case, we need to be willing to use our own minds to try to resolve the dilemma. Euthyphro, for example - the man to whom Socrates talks outside the courthouse before his trial - seems to assume that tradi- tion is sufficient to guide his moral conduct. He remembers the old Greek precept 'The guilty person must suffer', and he is therefore prosecuting his own father for murder. But Euthyphro seems to be unaware that an equally authorita- tive traditional precept suggests that you should 'Honour your father'. The two precepts, on their own, cannot pos- sibly explain what a man should do if he believes his father guilty of murder. What is needed, Socrates suggests, is a much more thorough understanding of the principle that should underlie all pious action ('holiness'). For Socrates, the only way to begin to behave in accordance with the will of the gods is to keep on thinking and talking about ques- tions of principle. He is willing to continue the conversation indefinitely, or until death comes.