This, it seems, indicates a certain reverence for what Athenian democracy could be, though it’s obvious Socrates doesn’t think his contemporaries are properly enforcing or living up to this standard. On the other hand, his assertion that people who manipulate the jury “bring shame upon the city” suggests that he believes acting this way disrespects the values for which Athens stands. On the one hand, this refusal indicates that he thinks democracy is a system that is subject to emotional manipulation and, as such, is inherently flawed. However, it’s worth considering this moment, in which Socrates refuses to manipulate the jury by crying and pleading for their forgiveness. Many scholars and readers of Plato believe Socrates disapproved of democracy (this is largely based on the opinions he expresses in Plato’s The Republic). In turn, he again presents himself as someone who speaks and acts straightforwardly and without rhetorical embroidery. Nonetheless, it’s important to understand that Socrates wants to separate himself from the Sophists in the minds of the jurors, as he insists not only that he doesn’t accept money for his teachings, but also that he isn’t clever enough to make a living in this manner.
This, at least, is the unfavorable opinion held by Plato, though historians and scholars remain uncertain about whether or not all Athenians were this critical of the Sophists.
It is important for Socrates to establish the fact that he does not engage in this kind of activity, since many Athenians associate him with the Sophists-teachers of philosophy and rhetoric who charge exorbitant sums, take advantage of rich families, and turn their pupils into wordsmiths void of any true sense of morality. Socrates goes out of his way to differentiate himself from Aristophanes’s representation of him in a play entitled The Clouds, in which Socrates appears as an intellectual trickster who teaches young men how to argue convincingly against others even when their positions are weak and unsound.
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