Purpose and context
Xenophon's Apology of Socrates is a short work explaining Socrates' conduct at his trial in 399 BCE and the spirit in which he met his condemnation and death. The platform reads it as written to answer a specific puzzle that troubled later admirers: why Socrates spoke at his trial with what looked like arrogance (megalēgoria, “big talk”), seeming almost to provoke the jury. Xenophon, who was not present and writes partly from the report of Hermogenes, sets out to defend the apparent arrogance as something better understood.
Argument and character
The platform reads the work's central argument as distinctive and revealing. Xenophon's Socrates spoke as he did, the Apology argues, because he had deliberately judged that death was preferable to living on into the infirmities of old age — and because his daimonion, his inner divine sign, confirmed the choice. His seeming defiance was therefore not pride but the serenity of a man who had reasoned his way to accepting, even welcoming, the verdict. The platform reads this as characteristic of Xenophon's practical, psychologically-minded portrait: where Plato's Apology gives a soaring defence of the philosophic life, Xenophon's explains a man's state of mind and the prudential reasoning behind his bearing.
Influence and reception
The platform reads the Apology as the more neglected of the two ancient defences, long overshadowed by Plato's masterpiece. Its reception has turned on the same question as the rest of the Xenophontic Socrates: whether its plainer, more practical portrait is a diminution of Socrates or a valuable corrective to Plato's idealisation. The platform takes the second view — the Apology preserves a tradition about Socrates' state of mind that Plato does not, and is evidence in its own right.
Modern significance
For the Xenophon cluster the Apology matters as a compact instance of the two-witnesses problem at the heart of Socratic studies, and as part of the platform's argument that Xenophon's Socrates deserves to be read in his own right. Its account of a man meeting death by reasoned choice connects to the platform's themes of self-control and discipline and character, and to the comparison Socrates in Plato vs Xenophon.