 This brings us to the spring and summer of 399, to Socrates’s trial and execution. Twice in Plato’s dialogues (Symposium 173b, Theaetetus 142c–143a), fact-checking with Socrates took place as his friends sought to commit his conversations to writing before he was executed. [spring 399 Theaetetus] Prior to the action in the Theaetetus, a young poet named Meletus had composed a document charging Socrates with the capital crime of irreverence (asebeia): failure to show due piety toward the gods of Athens. This he delivered to Socrates in the presence of witnesses, instructing Socrates to present himself before the king archon within four days for a preliminary hearing (the same magistrate would later preside at the pre-trial examination and the trial). At the end of the Theaetetus, Socrates was on his way to that preliminary hearing. As a citizen, he had the right to countersue, the right to forgo the hearing, allowing the suit to proceed uncontested, and the right to exile himself voluntarily, as the personified laws later remind him (Crito 52c). Socrates availed himself of none of these rights of citizenship. Rather, he set out to enter a plea and stopped at a gymnasium to talk to some youngsters about mathematics and knowledge.