Apology

Asebeia is the technical charge leveled at Socrates over his alleged impiety. Although “impiety” or “blasphemy” are roughly synonymous with asebeia, asebeia is more specific, referring to insufficient reverence toward state gods and parental figures alike. Thus, the charge of asebeia reflects both Socrates’s impiety and his corruption of youths, who after witnessing the philosopher expose the ignorance of prominent Athenians proceed to emulate Socrates by doing the same to their parents.

Socrates describes his daimonion—which translates to “a divine something”—as “a voice, and whenever it speaks it turns me away from something I am about to do” (35). It is like a transmission from the divine world to the mortal world that for Socrates manifests as a conscience. He points to this daimonion as evidence of his piety and thus his innocence of the charge of asebeia. Nevertheless, Socrates’s belief in this personalized divine entity is not supported by Athenian religious dogma and thus may serve as further evidence of his guilt.

In Apology Socrates famously likens himself to a gadfly, another word for a horsefly known to deliver painful bites to livestock. He says, “I was attached to this city by the god—though it seems a ridiculous thing to say—as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly” (35).