Little Hawk, Socrates was not "made to drink hemlock to satisfy the conventional morons of his day."

Athens was a democracy. Socrates, along with Plato (who followed him around and wrote down everything he said), was opposed to democracy, maintaining that ordinary citizens were not intelligent enough to govern themselves. He advocated an authoritarian government by "philosopher kings" (read Plato's Republic).

The charge against Socrates was, among other things, "corrupting the youth of Athens," along with other charges, because he was, essentially, preaching treason and advocating the overthrow of a functioning democratic government.

There are those who might take a different view of it today, but the maintenance of a viable and properly functioning democracy was deemed pretty important back then.

There were things wrong with Athenian democracy, such as allowing voting by men only, which, even at the time, many said was a mistake, because by not including women in their deliberations and decisions, they were wasting half of the intellectual power of Athens. But there were many things right with it, that we could profit from by adopting today. Such as choosing our representatives by lottery from the general citizenship, and making deliberating bodies much too large for anyone to bribe.

Socrates wanted to trade democracy for an all-powerful oligarchy of "philosopher kings," he being one of them.

Athenian democracy functioned well for over 300 years, and didn't come to an end until Athens was invaded from the north by Philip of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, who went on to conquer and subjugate the known world.

Athenians valued democracy even more than we do today, apparently, and Socrates was preaching sedition.

Don Firth