Awareness of one's ignorance was a key first step towards true wisdom or virtue, he declared, emphasising that although he, too, was ignorant, he knew it. Socrates likened himself to a gadfly stinging the "lazy horse" of Athens and did this with zeal, believing his God-assigned purpose was to expose false wisdom as ignorance. Influencing young men with his idea that people needed direction from wise men rather than self-government, was likely perceived as a threat to the cherished Athenian republic. The verdict was guilty as charged, the penalty - death by poisoning.ĭespite growing up in Greece's "Golden Age" of liberalism and democracy, Socrates was not a democrat. In 399 B.C., Socrates was tried for religious and political crimes: refusing to recognise the gods of Athens, introducing new deities, and corrupting the youth.
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