Socrates (film)
His enemies, led by a young man named Meletus, accuse him in court, arguing that the philosopher preaches crazy doctrines to the youth, and does not believe in the gods, but demons. Socrates makes his "apology" (i.e., legal defense), but the citizens are against him; so Socrates is sentenced to death, and held in prison, awaiting execution. His disciples are desperate, and one of them, Crito, tries to help him by encouraging him to flee. Socrates rejects this idea, saying he must obey the rulers of the city. Socrates then resolves to die, and dies as soon as he is forced to drink hemlock.
Socrates
The sources are thought to have in part or wholly made use of the factual information of the life of Socrates available to each of them, to give their own interpretation of the nature of his teaching, giving rise to differing versions in each case. For example, in Aristophanes's play "The Clouds", Socrates is made into a clown of sorts, particularly inclined toward "sophistry", who teaches his students how to bamboozle their way out of debt. However, since most of Aristophanes's works function as parodies, it is presumed that his characterization in this play was also not literal. In "Phaedo", which is the only attested source describing the death of Socrates, Plato is thought to have selected and omitted details to provide material for his argument for the existence of the liberation of the soul from the body, an argument he possessed from learning of the ideas of Pythagoras (born sometime after 606 and died sometime after 510 BC).