Auteur(s) : David I. RANKIN (Newborough, Australie)
Titre : Sokrates, an Oligarch ?
Revue : L’Antiquité Classique
Volume : 56
Date : 1987
Pages : 68-87

Abstract:
In this article it is argued that the prime motive for the prosecution of Sokrates in 399 was the desire of the Athenian demos for some form of revenge on the perpetrators of the Terror of 44/3. Sokrates’ association with, and influence over, some of the leading members of the oligarchic movement of the time provided the immediate pretext for the trial. In the following decades, some Athenians, such as Plato and Xenophon, over whom the suspicion of oligarchic sympathies still hung, sought to rehabilitate their own reputations by a deliberate de-politicisation of their dead mentor’s memory.