In the year 399 BC Socrates was convicted by a 501-member jury of his peers of corrupting the youth of Athens. The philosopher had been aggravating local citizens by hanging around the agora and probing young people with anti-democratic questioning. The jury sentenced him to death, forcing him to drink hemlock.
For Socrates’ pupil Plato, losing his mentor to what he surely perceived as a bunch of ignorant, illiterate fools was one of the formative experiences of his youth. After his teacher’s death he hopped on a boat and sailed abroad to do what many young people do – find his own definition of justice and meaning to life.
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