Euthyphro

“He claims I’m a manufacturer of gods, and he says this is why he’s prosecuted me, that I create new gods and don’t recognize the old ones.” 

This is the substance of the charge brought by Meletus against Socrates, a charge that will lead to his trial and forced suicide. Socrates’s charge relates directly to the book’s main theme of impiety. 

“I see, Socrates; it’s because you claim that the divine sign keeps visiting you.” 

According to Harold Tarrant, Socrates received messages from a kind of inner voice—a daimonion or “divine thing”—that told him what course of action to take. In fact, Socrates’s charge included the idea that he was introducing “new divinities” like his inner voice in place of the established gods. 

“They ridicule me too, whenever I say something in the Assembly about matters divine and predict the future for them, saying that I’m crazy! Yet in all my predictions I’ve spoken the truth; they just have a grudge against all of us who are inclined that way. One should not be bothered about them—just meet them head on.” 

Euthyphro sympathizes with Socrates’s experience of being persecuted for his beliefs. Both Socrates and Euthyphro see the Athenian leaders as dishonest and not interested in seeking the truth for its own sake.