Socrates+Hemlock=Justice served or a deplorable miscarriage?

[Mega Fauna Blitzkrieg]

What do we think?

I mean it's tragic to lose someone that brilliant, especially for something so trivial as religious expression(quagmireeeeeeee), but he doesn't actually really defend himself.

He proves beyond a doubt that he is so much smarter than the feeble minded people accusing and prosecuting him, which is a good way to win fights on the internet, but he doesn't even attempt to prove his innocence, which is how you win in court.

Also, according to their seemingly insane (by our standards) laws, he was guilty as hell.

Sucks to be the only person in a society that is capable of seeing that society's flaws, dunnit?

[Cord Hurn]

It was a deplorable miscarriage.

[peter]

Tricky to say this, but wasn't part of the charge against him concerned with 'corruption of the youth of Athens'. I'm sure I've read that this was or was likely to have been a reference to homosexual activity - is this contained within the description of 'religious expression' you refer to above [and I'm not asking this out of feigned nievity because I genuinely know shit about what definitions they placed around different stuff, but I'm sure it was way different to ours.]

Irrespective of this - everything I've ever read about Socrates leads me to rate him as one of the worlds truely great figures and nothing of what I've read could ever have even justified his being tried in a court let alone being condemned to death. He must have been a serious thorn in someones side! What a tragedy we have to rely on second hand accounts of his thoughts rather than having actual writing produced by the great man himself.

[Edit; can anyone tell me why they actually felt they needed to have him dead. Did his death serve a 'greater purpose' in the state of Athens of the day. What was it that he was going that so agravated the authorities that they felt his influence so damning; was he for example preaching an anarchist message, a revolutionary one? Of course it was adeplorable miscarriage - but why did it occur and was it necessary?]