Athens tried its most famous philosopher for asking too many questions, and executed him
In 399 BC, roughly 500 Athenian jurors convicted Socrates of impiety and corrupting the youth, verdicts shaped by the city's recent trauma under the Thirty Tyrants. Offered a chance to propose exile instead, he refused, accepted a death sentence, and drank a cup of hemlock while calmly discussing the soul's immortality with his students. Plato's account of that final conversation, the Phaedo, became one of philosophy's founding texts.