What Are the Old and the New Charges and What Is the Relation Between Them?

What are the old and the new charges and what is the relation between them?

It was the first time for Socrates to be brought to the court. Things began with a prophecy by the oracle at Delphi which claimed that he was the wisest of all men. Socrates then tried to figure out the meaning of this oracle as he thought that he cannot be wiser than all men. In order to prove that, he talked with some men that he thought that they are wiser. He then discovered that he is wiser than him by a small extent that he knew than he knows nothing. Socrates said that he considered that to be his duty, to ask people who are supposed to be wise in order to prove their ignorance and falsify his wisdom. That caused much hatred and unpopularity by people towards him and they thought that he had the kind of wisdom which he proved that his interlocutor did not have. The young always listened to his conversations and was trying to ask people and mimic socrates which caused more and more hatred from the people of Athens and that was the origin of his charges.

The first set of charges that remained in minds of people for a long time were that Socrates was a student of all things in the sky and below the earth, that he made the weaker argument stronger and that he teaches these things to the others. Socrates thought that these charges were the ones which arose the slander in which the jury and the people believed for a long time and affected Meletus when writing the new formal charges against him. He said that all these charges are lies and rumors and he was completly innocent from them. For the first charge he said that people have never seen him practicing such things or heard him discussing them with his interlocutors in his convesations. For the second and the third charges, Socrates said that he never tought people for money and he can not be a sophist like Gorgias, Hippias, and Evanus because he did not have this kind of wisdom or knowledge and that the sophists are highly paid but he lives in great poverty.

The second set of accusations which are the formal ones written by Meletus were that he corrupted the youth and that he did not believe in the Gods of the city. Socrates did not follow the same method of the first accusations in responding to these ones. But he kept questioning Meletus many times to show the jury his ignorance about the charges and that he contradicts himself during the questions. He also said that he was giving Athens a service by improving their beliefs of wisdom and human excellence, he discribed himself by a gadfly which annoys a nobel horse and arouse its feelings.

It was obvious from his defense especially for the formal accusations despite of its length that he did not want to acquit himself and clear away the slanders but to show the ignorance of Meletus, judges and all the Athenians about the charges and the slanders. He realized that he was taking doing the course of