The Verdict Of 500 Jurymen Judged Socrates Essay - 2005 Words

The verdict of 500 jurymen judged Socrates as guilty with death as punishment. Who is to blame for his death? Some blames the Athenians for their ignorance killing a great philosopher who has contributed to the foundation of Western philosophy; while other blames Socrates for being the most arrogant human being ever to have existed in Athens. Socrates’ trial was written in the Apology of Socrates with exaggerations by his student, Plato, who was there at the trial. In the Apology Socrates diligently tried to prove his innocence and wished to guide the jurymen away from a deciding on a guilty verdict that would result in sleepless nights because they had lost a great philosopher (Apology 38c). However, many would agree that the loss or the tragedy may not be of the jurymen or even further, human-kind, but it is the tragedy of Socrate’s incapability of being Socrates. What does this even mean? It means that Socrates had it coming because he was being the annoying Socrates he was; Socrates procured his own tragedy in the trial thought his own hubris. Socrates seems to fit the definition of a tragic hero. What makes someone a tragic hero? Many agree that Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero is a good description. The description comes from Aristotle’s Poetic, â€Å"The tragic hero is a [great] man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the change to misfortune through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake† (Poetics). The mistake or