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50 free Socrates trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Socrates wrote nothing, and yet everyone knows how he died. This quiz covers the man behind the hemlock: his stoneworker father and midwife mother, the deme of Alopece, his war service, his famous ugliness and bare feet, Xanthippe and the water jug, the oracle at Delphi, the gadfly, the daimonion, the elenchus and the midwifery of ideas. It then follows the trial of 399 BC in detail: the charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, Meletus and his fellow accusers, the 30 votes that would have acquitted him, the offer of free meals as a 'penalty', Crito's escape plan and the Laws of Athens, the Phaedo deathbed and the rooster owed to Asclepius. It finishes with the sources and the afterlife: Aristophanes's Clouds, Plato and Xenophon, Aristotle's coinage, Antisthenes and Aristippus, David's painting and Schleiermacher's attack. Easy questions suit any philosophy student; the expert tier asks for jury numbers and Greek terms. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Socrates, his trial and the Platonic dialogues, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on Plato and on Greek philosophy.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Socrates lived in which ancient Greek city?
Athens
He was born in 470 or 469 BC to relatively affluent citizens.
Q 02How many written works did Socrates himself leave behind?
None
Everything known about him comes from others, chiefly his students Plato and Xenophon and the playwright Aristophanes.
Q 03What was the trade of Socrates's father Sophroniscus?
Stoneworker
His mother's profession, he later joked, was the model for his own way of drawing ideas out of people.
Q 04In which Athenian deme was Socrates born?
Alopece
Being born there to citizen parents made him an Athenian citizen himself.
Q 05Xenophon was elected a leader of which retreating Greek mercenary army at age 30?
The Ten Thousand
They had marched with Cyrus the Younger in his failed bid for the Persian throne; the story fills his Anabasis.
Q 06What is the scholarly difficulty of reconstructing the real Socrates from contradictory sources called?
The Socratic problem
Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes all give different pictures.
Q 07Which Aristophanes comedy features a caricature of Socrates as an absurd atheist?
The Clouds
Plato's Apology cites the play as one reason for the prejudice that led to the trial.
Q 08In Aristophanes's play, what is the name of the school Socrates runs?
The Thinkery
Strepsiades enrols to learn how to argue his way out of his debts.
Q 09How did Aristophanes's play about Socrates fare when first produced at the City Dionysia in 423 BC?
It came last of the three competing plays
The playwright had hoped for much better.
Q 10In what year was Socrates tried and executed?
399 BC
The trial lasted a single day.
Q 11Alongside corrupting the youth, what was the other charge against Socrates?
Impiety
The Greek term for it was asebeia.
Q 12How long did the trial of Socrates last?
A day
He then refused offers from friends to help him escape.
Q 13What poison did Socrates drink to carry out his sentence?
Hemlock
He died the next morning, surrounded by friends.
Q 14Per Plato, Socrates's last words said the group owed what to the god Asclepius?
Q 21In the Theaetetus, Socrates compares his method to which profession?
Midwifery
The Greek maieutikós gives English the adjective 'maieutic'.
Q 22What did Socrates call the inner voice that his accusers said had a divine origin?
Daimonion
It warned him against actions rather than telling him what to do.
Q 23What was the name of Socrates's wife, mother of his son Lamprocles?
Xanthippe
He married her in his fifties; she was probably about 30 years younger.
Q 24How many sons did Socrates have with his wife?
A rooster
Asclepius was the god of healing, so the offering has been read as thanks for a cure, perhaps from life itself.
Q 15Which Plato dialogue shows Socrates discussing the immortality of the soul in the hours before his death?
Phaedo
It is narrated by Phaedo of Elis, who was present at the deathbed.
Q 16In the dialogue Crito, what does Socrates personify to argue he must not flee prison?
The Laws of Athens
He holds that injustice may never be answered with injustice and turns down Crito's offer to fund an escape.
Q 17Socrates's friend Chaerephon asked which oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates?
Delphi
The Pythia's reply set Socrates off questioning everyone in the city to test it.
Q 18How did the oracle reply to the question about Socrates?
No man was wiser
Socrates concluded he was wiser only in recognising his own ignorance.
Q 19Socrates said his questioning earned him a reputation as what kind of creature, pestering the city?
A gadfly
He acquired a bad reputation among the city's politically powerful as a result.
Q 20What is the Greek term for the Socratic method of question-and-answer refutation?
Elenchus
The conversations usually end at an impasse, with nobody able to define the virtue under discussion.
Three
He was also married, at some point, to the daughter of a prominent statesman.
Q 25In a famous anecdote, what did Socrates's wife pour over his head?
A jug of water
He reportedly quipped that after her thunder came rain; Chaucer's Wife of Bath makes it a jug of urine.
Q 26Which of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims retells the story of Socrates being doused by his spouse?
The Wife of Bath
Medieval writers largely repeated the ancient picture of her as a difficult wife.
Q 27Which poet initiated the accusations against Socrates and demanded the death penalty?
Meletus
Anytus and Lycon were the other accusers.
Q 28According to Plato, how many votes would have had to change for Socrates to be acquitted?
30
On a jury of 501 that implies a conviction by about 280 to 221.
Q 29According to Diogenes Laërtius, how many jurors voted for the death penalty?
280
That left 220 for a lesser punishment; Plato gives no numbers for that second vote.
Q 30What did Socrates, per Plato, cheekily suggest as his 'punishment' after conviction?
Free daily meals in recognition of his worth
More seriously he proposed a fine, and his friends offered 3,000 drachmae; the jury chose death.