The Trial of Socrates: The Third Man
Socrates was brought to trial by three accusers: Meletus, a young and relatively unknown figure, the official accuser, assisted by Lycon, an aggrieved father who had lost a son to the regime of the Thirty Tyrants, and Anytus.
The role of the third accuser, Anytus, is often minimized. Yet Socrates seems to recognize him as the leader of the prosecution,[1] and speculates that he is present on behalf of the craftsmen and politicians.[2] He, however, was in the courtroom for reasons other than personal. As one of the prime movers behind the restored democracy, he had a mission to re-establish government by the people in Athens. He was a man of influence. Indeed, a contemporary calls Anytus, along with Thrasybulus, the leader of the rebellion against the Thirty, “the most powerful men of the city” during this time period.[3] Lycon may have had dozens of supporters, but Anytus had thousands.
Anytus, son of the wealthy tanner Anthemion of Euonymon, had been a general in 409 BC.[4] When Athens fell, he supported Theramenes’ efforts to establish a moderate government.[5] Exiled by the Thirty, he became a leader of the democratic rebels at Phyle.[6] After the fall of the Thirty, he had supported the Amnesty, which protected citizens from reprisals for what they had done during the oligarchy and promoted a reunification of the state (ch. 21*). And indeed, Anytus himself was scrupulously faithful to the terms of the Amnesty, refusing to go after an enemy who had confiscated his own property under the oligarchy.[7] But he judged Socrates to have anti-democratic leanings, and he knew perfectly well that there was more than one way to get rid of a political liability.
Polycrates, in a pamphlet he published some seven years after the trial, exposed the reality behind the pretext: the trial was about Socrates’ politics, not his religion, not his educational practices.[8] He composed a speech attacking Socrates as a subversive who undermined the democracy, and attributed it to Anytus in Socrates’ trial. Anytus was the éminence grise behind the trial, the political architect who saw Socrates’ growing influence as an obstacle to the restored democracy. The philosopher had to go.[9] In his version of Anytus’ speech, Polycrates called attention to Socrates’ connections with personae non gratae, including Critias the tyrant and Alcibiades the traitor.[10] Guilt by association. Socrates’ friends and followers brought about the downfall of the democracy. Socrates was not so much a blasphemer and a corrupter of youth as a political subversive, undermining the democracy and corrupting the system.
Polycrates’ speech was composed ex post facto, after the trial, and in that sense it was pure fiction. But it revealed something vital about the trial. Why should we believe Polycrates’ insinuations? Because Anytus was there, on the prosecution team. It wasn’t an accident that this premier leader had showed up supporting Meletus, the political nobody. Anytus was the mastermind of the restored democracy. He was the brains of the new regime, who, with Thrasybulus as the muscle, the commander of the rebel army, overthrew the Thirty Tyrants and rebuilt the democracy. The fact that Anytus was on the team ensured that Anytus was the moving force behind the whole proceeding.
Meletus was present at the table not as the master but as a hired gun. The fact that Anytus was not the accuser of record indicated that he had arranged for this trial to be “non-political.” Which meant that his political agenda was to be carefully disguised. While Anytus might have pursued Socrates on political grounds (Socrates’ alleged subversions were not limited to the time of the oligarchy),[11] the restored democracy was fragile and it was necessary to keep up the appearance of an era of good feelings between liberals and conservatives. Consequently the elimination of Socrates could not look like the start of a political purge. Religion provided a safe grounds for attacking intellectuals, a topic on which the Many could be stirred up, as they apparently had been to go after Anaxagoras, and as they had been by Aristophanes in the Clouds. This situation presupposed a strong distinction between the cognoscenti and the ignoranti, which is regularly missed by commentators on the trial.
Given that the official charges focused on religious and pedagogical issues, Socrates would have no reason to bring up his own political objections to the democracy. Plato, in his re-creation of Socrates’ defense would not have wanted to introduce inflammatory political issues that had been suppressed by the prosecution. So there may have been a kind of conspiracy of silence around the political stance of Socrates for both parties to case.
When Polycrates wrote the speech for Anytus, he made him reveal what he had concealed in the trial: having rid the Athenian state of the Thirty Tyrants, he now saw Socrates as Public Enemy Number One.
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[1]. Plato Apology 18b.
[2]. Plato Apology 23e.
[3]. Isocrates 18.23.
[4]. Aristotle Constitution of Athens 27.5; Diodorus Siculus 13.64.6.
[5]. Aristotle Constitution of Athens 34.3.
[6]. Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.42; Lysias 13.78–79.
[7]. Isocrates 18.23–24: Loening 1987: 34, cf. 44, 68.
[8]. Finley 1977: 64–65 takes the religious motive seriously, but this seems naïve. No doubt some citizens would take the issue seriously, but that is the point of a pretext or cover story.
[9].On the political undercurrents of the trial, see Wolpert 2002: 63–65; cf. Waterfield 2009: 193–195.
[10].Xenophon Memorabilia 1.2.12.
[11].As Brickhouse and Smith note (1989: 73–75).
