Socrates on trial May 22 at the Harris Theater

UPDATE 5/17/23: Per email received, this event now offers one hour of MCLE credit.

Charged with impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates will be on trial for his life (again) on Monday, May 22, at the Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph. The trial begins at 7:00 p.m.; doors open at 6:30.

The National Hellenic Museum is sponsoring the trial. John Kapelos will portray Socrates. Illinois Supreme Court Justice Joy V. Cummingham, U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Alonzo, and Circuit Court Judges Anthony Kyriakopoulos and Anna H. Demacopoulos will preside at the trial.

Representing the City of Athens will be Patrick Collins, Tinos Diamantatos, and Julie Porter. Representing Socrates will be Bob Clifford, Dan Webb, and Sarah King.

Members of the audience and a 12-person jury composed of members of the local media, legal scholars, and the arts will decide the philosopher's fate. Tickets for the trial are $100 each (student tickets are available for $50) and are available at this link.

It may seem easy to assume that Socrates will beat the rap this time, even though, of course, he was condemned to death in 399 B.C. After all, if the perpetrators of TikTok have not been made to quaff the hemlock on account of their corruption of today's youth, surely Socrates should have nothing to fear from a modern jury.

But don't bet on it: When the National Hellenic Museum put Socrates on trial in 2013, Socrates lost.

Plato -- and perhaps our own history teachers in junior high -- may have dangerously oversimplified, even falsified, the case against Socrates. The 'youth' he allegedly corrupted did not do weird dances and post them to the Internet; rather some of Socrates' students, Alcibiades and Critias in particular, were among the Thirty Tyrants who overthrew the Athenian democracy in 411-410 and again in 404-403. I.F. Stone referred to Critias, a cousin of Plato's, as the first Robspierre. A summary of Socrates' trial prepared by University of Missouri-Kansas City Professor Douglas O. Linder says the oligarchy under Critias "confiscated the estates of Athenian aristocrats, banished 5,000 women, children, and slaves, and summarily executed about 1,500 of the most prominent democrats of Athens."

In this 1979 interview (reproduced on Linder's Famous Trials site) charges that Plato (in his Apology) tries to leave the reader with "the impression that this wonderful old philosopher was condemned simply because he had spent his life exhorting his fellow citizens to be virtuous," but that, really, "the charge of corrupting the youth was based on a belief – and considerable evidence – that [Socrates] was undermining their faith in Athenian democracy."

History can be complicated. That's what makes it interesting.