Getting Started -- A Quick Thought on The Apology

Bear in mind that you enter the Apology in the middle of things, in media res.  

You have not heard the speeches by Socrates' accusers.  But the have spoken, as Socrates makes clear in his opening remarks.  It is important to imagine the scene correctly.

These are not lofty, dignified proceedings, carried out with a sober Jacobean air -- no, this is more carnival and spectacle, noise and shouts and dust.  (Less Perry Mason, more Survivor.)  Notice how often Socrates has to quiet the crowd, the jury.

Socrates knows that he had already been tried -- and effectually convicted -- in the court of public opinion.  He finds that court more dangerous to him than the one he is in; he finds those old accusers more worrisome than his new accusers.  Part of the trouble is that the court of public opinion convened unofficially long ago.  The charges brought against him there are nebulous.  He cannot simply name his accusers as such and he certainly cannot cross-examine them.  Yet, it is to them he must respond.

Pay close attention to the way that Socrates separates out his accusers, the charges against him.