My Precis of Plato’s Apology

Yasmine Kahly

Professor Carrico

Jerilyn Sambrooke

Rhetoric 103A

8 October 2016

My Precis of Plato’s Apology

            The passage of Plato’s “Apology” I will be focusing on in this precis is the first paragraph after the jury condemns Socrates to death. The argument Socrates ultimately makes in the passage is that sentencing him to death does nothing and means nothing for the Athenian government’s cause. In the first sentence, “Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name which you will get from the detractors of the city, who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man; for they will call me wise even although I am not wise when they want to reproach you”, Socrates makes an appeal to fear, a guiding motive for the prosecution of Socrates in the first place. In condemning Socrates to death, the Athenians believe they are obliterating his influence and ensuring compliance of the Athenian people. Socrates makes sure to refute this by illustrating the prospect of other free thinkers like himself roaming the city, thinking so freely that, perhaps for that reason or another, they don’t even admire Socrates’ wisdom but will say they do anyway in an act of defiance against the government. This challenges the soundness of condemning Socrates to death; if it can’t even be ensured that the “corrupted” youth the government is so concerned with protecting actually revere Socrates to begin with, what sanctity is being upheld here? The fear is that perhaps it isn’t enough to kill Socrates and that maintaining order is more complex than swatting one gadfly out of an entire swarm, as Socrates appears to imply. Additionally, this sentence demonstrates the rhetorical device of hypobole at play in that Socrates anticipates this particular argument the government would make in support of his death, a possible counterargument, and promptly refutes it. In the second sentence “If you had waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature. For I am far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death”, Socrates feigns ignorance, implying the Athenian government simply wants him dead in the abstract, not as a means of political violence or achieving a politically motivated goal. In this sense, Socrates downplays the severity of the action taken against him, making the Athenian government out to be a joke for putting a seventy-year-old man to death when he won’t be around much longer, theoretically. In noting that it is the government’s “desire” to see him dead, Socrates romanticizes the government’s violence against him as if it were a burning whim, seemingly defusing the bomb that is his condemnation to death. The next sentence, “And I have another thing to say to them: You think that I was convicted through deficiency of words - I mean, that if I had thought fit to leave nothing undone, nothing unsaid, I might have gained an acquittal. Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words - certainly not” demonstrates the rhetorical device of procatalepsis in that Socrates zooms in on one of the government’s objections first in order to begin his argument. What’s significant here is the direct contradiction between his feigned ignorance in the preceding sentence and the demonstration of his intelligence in this sentence, where he acknowledges that he knows what he did “wrong” and that he could’ve swayed the jury in his defense and spared his own life. In this, he further trivializes the trial as a game he knows the hack to and implies that even the imminence of death by the hands of the state couldn’t force him to betray his beliefs. In the sentence, “For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything”, Socrates uses the literary device of juxtaposition in his isolation of the human body and extensions of it. The surrendering of arms, which symbolize agency and stoudhardedness, is sharply contrasted with the imagery of knees on the ground, symbolic of futility and defeat. This works to metaphorize his circumstances with that of wartime combat and rationalize his perspective on being sentenced to death. This is explicit in the quote, “But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to address you, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I say, are unworthy of me. But I thought that I ought not to do anything common or mean in the hour of danger: nor do I now repent of the manner of my defence, and I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death.” Socrates employs the rhetorical device of polysyndeton, as demonstrated in the sentence, “But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination...”, to slow the pace down and emphasize what it is that Socrates will stop at in his defense, which would be kneeling and undignifying himself before the court. Additionally, in the quote as a whole, it is further established that Socrates uses the pride a soldier exemplifies in his undying sacrifice for his country and the core values that define it to parallel his own martyrdom. Here, with the evocation of sacrificing one’s life for one’s values, Socrates underscores his central argument yet again. By condemning Socrates to death, the Athenian government is actually lending itself to Socrates because he, much like a proud soldier, would rather die for his values, or die on his feet so to speak, than live on his knees, which would be to “address you as you would have liked me to address you, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others” and “speak in your manner and live.” In other words, sentencing Socrates to death doesn’t mean what the Athenian government thinks it means for their governance because, according to Socrates, it will not curtail the scorn and ruckus of future detractors nor will it deprive Socrates of anything he values, as as a life where he cannot question is not a life at all. The argument established is that condemning Socrates to death is a pointless endeavor in and of itself.