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athenians voted. they voted as judges in the law courts, and at Dionysian festivals. They voted in their demes, and in the Assembly on the Pnyx. In a law court a jury voted to convict Socrates. This final chapter will return to episodes presented in earlier chapters to reflect one last time on the historical evidence, its cultural context, and most importantly its connection to the trial of Socrates. Four pivotal moments had repercussions that reached beyond the restoration of the democracy in 403: the events leading up to the trials of 415, the two coups of 411 and 404, and the trial of the generals after Arginusae in 406. Athenians’ interpretations of the role played by law and religious custom, nomoi, in each earlier instance helped the demos reach a critical decision concerning Socrates’ guilt in 399. Long traditions of free speech and artistic expression allowed Athenians to voice—and sometimes reject—new ideas. Just as ritual drama could contain contradictory truths that enabled Athenians to witness the harsh and mild side by side, so the public drama of political life following the fall of Athens presented the best and the worst that the city’s citizens had to offer. Dramatic poets brought their audiences a sharp awareness of the human compulsion to power, and the final restoration of democracy in 403 added another level of awareness for the demos. Collectively they survived the tyranny of the Thirty, and then turned to the past to try to un2 0 8 seven Socrates Impiety Trials in the Restored Democracy derstand how such a group of men could have come to power. For the next few years, themes that had been performed on the stage in ritualized drama were played out again in the shared life of the city. During this time Athenians could not stop returning in their public debates to the episodes of 415, 411, 406 and 404. They understood themselves and their recent past in a different light after they restored the democracy in 403 and put their ancestral laws back into place. This reinterpretation of traditional cultic nomoi itself provided another way for citizens to reflect on the past and debate what they wanted for the future of their polis. In the four years leading up to Socrates’ trial, Athenians were returning to the business of running the polis and worshipping the gods according to their ancestral customs. With the Thirty deposed and democracy restored, Athenians again debated what they called the patrios politeia, their ancestral constitution. Disagreements soon arose about the content of their actual laws and customs. Some nomoi had been abolished during the reign of the Thirty, and before that some had perhaps never been written down in full. In part, disagreements that arose reflected long-standing differences between average citizens and wealthy aristocrats, and in public debates each side called upon its memory of ta patria to support its own interests and point of view. In the absence of any universally held understanding of the past, it proved challenging to move forward. In the end Athenians settled on a new concept for nomos, one that placed the sovereignty of written law over the sometimes fractious outcomes that had been produced by popular votes in the assembly during the last decades of the war. It was the complex process of restoring the democracy after 403 and setting religious and civic customs back in place that brought Athenians to their new understanding of law and nomos. New practices confirming the sovereignty of law were implemented, and while this was happening three significant trials took place, each of which addressed asebeia and the place of public piety in Athenian communal life. These were the trials of Andocides, of Nicomachus, and, in 399, of Socrates. In times of social tension Athenians were inclined to respond to political crises by evoking ritual norms and cultic behaviors. In the affairs of the Herms and the Mysteries in 415, reports of secret impious acts had raised fears that aristocratic hetaireiai were fomenting an oligarchic revolution, and the trial and execution of the Arginusae generals in 406 reminded Athenians of the centrality of ancestors and funerals in the communal life of the polis. The trials of Andocides, Nicomachus, and Socrates suggest that after the restoration of the democracy Athenians i m p i e t y t r i a l s i n a r e s t o r e d d e m...

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