“Unmodern Observations”

Abstract

It is worth remembering that the Athens that created Socrates also destroyed him. In the same vein, the first trial by a citizen jury, symbolic in Aeschylus’ Oresteia of the birth of democracy itself, ends in a tie. Greece is full of these lessons of tough love and would have it no other way. Do such tales embody tragic pessimism only? On the contrary, Aeschylus is trying to show that democracy is something that can never been taken for granted, never be assumed to work because of the pedigree of its name. History has proven this many times. After all, Adolf Hitler was democratically elected. Democracy is something that must be continuously reevaluated to be certain its ideals are embodied in its practice. Putting his own ideals to the test, Socrates chose to die rather than escape. That the city misapplied the laws in no way nullified the principle of the law itself. Laws represented ideals, lodestars, by which life and moral judgment should be guided. To break the law and run away would have made him no better than his accusers. For the Greeks, ideals are on no account invalidated by being virtual rather than actual.