then Socrates would have been acquitted (36a), and that (perhaps) less than three-fifths of the jury voted against him (36b). Assuming a jury of 501, this would imply that he was convicted by a majority of 280 against 221. Having been found guilty of corruption and impiety, Socrates and the prosecutor suggested sentences for the punishment of his crimes against the city-state of Athens. Expressing surprise at the few votes required for an acquittal, Socrates joked that he be punished with free meals at the Prytaneum (the city's sacred hearth), an honour usually held for a benefactor of Athens, and the victorious athletes of an Olympiad. After that failed suggestion, Socrates then offered to pay a fine of 100 drachmaeone-fifth of his propertywhich largesse testified to his integrity and poverty as a philosopher. Finally, a fine of 3,000 drachmae was agreed, proposed by Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, who guaranteed paymentnonetheless, the prosecutor of the trial of Socrates proposed the death penalty for the impious philosopher. (Diogenes Laërtius, 2.42). In the end, the sentence of death was passed by a greater majority of the jury than that by which he had been convicted. In the event, friends, followers, and students encouraged Socrates to flee Athens, an action which the citizens expected; yet, on principle, Socrates refused to flout the law and escape his legal responsibility to Athens (see: Crito). Therefore, faithful to his teaching of civic obedience to the law, the 70-year-old Socrates executed his death sentence and drank the hemlock, as condemned at trial. (See: Phaedo) Death The death of Socrates is presented in the Platonic diaologue the Phaedo, in which Socrates and his friends discuss the immortality of the soul before Socrates drinks the hemlock poison given to him for his execution. Interpretations of the trial of Socrates Ancient In the time of the trial of Socrates, the year 399 BC, the city-state of Athens recently had endured the trials and tribulations of Spartan hegemony and the thirteen-month régime of the Thirty Tyrants, which had been imposed consequently to the Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). At the request of Lysander, a Spartan admiral, the Thirty men, led by Critias and Theramenes, were to administer Athens and revise the city's democratic laws, which were inscribed on a wall of the Stoa Basileios. Their actions were to facilitate the transition of the Athenian government from a democracy