MONTAIGNE AND THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES Author(s): Eric MacPhail Source: Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, T. 63, No. 3 (2001), pp. 457-475 Published by: Librairie Droz Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20680331 Accessed: 22-09-2016 10:08 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Librairie Droz is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance This content downloaded from 212.189.224.203 on Thu, 22 Sep 2016 10:08:27 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Biblioth?que d'Humanisme et Renaissance - Tome LXIII - 2001 - n? 3, pp. 457-475 MONTAIGNE AND THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES In 399 BC Socrates was tried and condemned to death by an Athenian jury on charges of impiety and corruption of youth in a case that continues to reverberate in our own time. Due to the hagiographie efforts of Plato and Xenephon, Socrates has assumed the role of an exemplar of virtue and a martyr of free thought. One submerged feature of this portrait drawn by his disciples is Socrates' status as a victim of democracy, whose unjust fate vin dicates his own antagonism to popular government.