History on Trial

摘要

'The one duty we owe to history is to re-write it', contends a character in an Oscar Wilde dialogue. One way in which such an exercise can be performed in an imaginative, instructive and non-fraudulent fashion was demonstrated by a recent trial in which Socrates was acquitted at the UK Supreme Court in a dramatic reversal of his 2,400 year-old conviction. ' Je suis Socrates' was the resonating final remark from Sally Howes QC in defence of Socrates at a mock trial held in support of the charity Classics for All. Lord Toulson, Justice of the Supreme Court, presided at the hearing where counsel for Socrates argued that the Greek philosopher-a political dissident in his day-should not have been found guilty of 'not believing in the gods of the state' and corrupting the minds of young Athenians.