Trial of Socrates
Socrates is tried and sentenced to death in Athens
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗A sacred ship had sailed for Delos the day before the trial. Athenian law barred executions until it returned — accidentally giving Socrates about another month.
One day in Thargelion
In the Athenian month Thargelion — approximately May or June of 399 BCE — Socrates appeared before a citizen jury in a trial that probably occupied most of a single day.
Meletus, supported by Anytus and Lycon, accused him of corrupting the young, of failing to recognise the gods the city recognised, and of introducing new divine beings. The charge was more specific than generic impiety.
This was a private prosecution decided by a citizen jury, not a sentence handed down by "the Athenian authorities" as an executive body.
The penalty phase
The jury convicted first, then heard a separate penalty phase. The prosecution proposed death; Socrates first suggested the free meals at the Prytaneum awarded to public benefactors before his friends persuaded him to offer a fine of 30 minae.
The jury chose death.
Lawful exile had been available as a possible penalty at this stage — a different thing from the escape offered later.
A month in prison, then the cup
He was not executed that day. A sacred ship had departed for Delos just before the trial, and no public execution could take place until it returned — 31 days, on Xenophon's figure, leaving Socrates alive roughly another month.
Near the end of that imprisonment Crito offered to finance and arrange an escape. Plato portrays Socrates refusing on the ground that an illegal escape would wrong the laws and void the court's decision.
After the ship returned he drank the state-administered poison in prison and died among his companions; Plato's Phaedo calls it poison without naming the plant.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Date corrected
How this was checked
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Date corrected. The research places this at -0399.
What the sources leave uncertain
- The year 399 BCE is secure, but no exact equivalent date in the modern calendar survives.
- Plato and Xenophon are literary portrayals by admirers rather than verbatim court transcripts; the prosecution speeches are lost.
- Exact jury totals and vote counts are reconstructed from later reports and disputed textual calculations, so they have been omitted from the verified numbers.
- Plato's Phaedo calls the drink poison rather than naming the plant. Identification with poison hemlock, Conium maculatum, is widely accepted but rests on the symptoms and knowledge of Athenian execution practice.