Encyclopedia of Philosophy: SOCRATES

Among those who served in the Athenian heavy infantry was Socrates the son of Sophroniscus, who was thirty-eight when the war began. He was present at three of the important battles in the earlier years of the war and won a reputation for bravery. Back in Athens in 406, he held office in the Assembly at a time when a group of generals was put on trial for abandoning the bodies of the dead at the sea-battle of Arginusae. It was illegal to try the generals collectively rather than individually, but Socrates was the only person to vote against doing so, and they were executed.    When the war ended in 404, the Spartans replaced the Athenian democracy with an oligarchy known as the Thirty Tyrants, who instituted a reign of terror. Socrates was ordered to arrest an innocent man, but disregarded the order. He would soon pay the price of the uprightness which had made him unpopular now with both democrats and aristocrats.