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Euthyphro's father seized the labourer, bound him, threw him into a ditch, 'and then sent to Athens to ask a diviner what should be done with him. Before the answer of the diviner arrived, the labourer literally 'died in a ditch' of hunger and cold. For this offence, Euthyphro was prosecuting his own father.
After wishing Socrates success in his coming trial, Euthyphro informs him that he is going to prosecute his father for manslaughter, assuring him that it would be piety to do so. Socrates asks for a definition of piety.
Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, They this thing, and I that; whom shall my soul believe? In one of his very earliest dialogues, the 'Euthyphro', Plato puts the question almost in so many words. Is it not over the great questions of justice and injustice, of beauty, goodness, and the like?
Not only were such tales hateful to him, but they were of positively evil example to people like Euthyphro. The problem remained, how did the fathers of the Athenians ever come to tell such myths? Let us now examine the myth of Cronus, and the explanations which have been given by scholars. Later, Heaven, Uranus, became the husband of Gaea, Earth.
The doctrine of disobedience is everywhere preached in a democracy; violation of contracts is a normal practice and law-breakers have been known to be publicly feasted by the very members of our legislative body. A different lesson is found in the Euthyphro.
What is he accused of? 'Murder, Socrates. Then Euthyphro explains the case, which quaintly illustrates Greek civilisation. Euthyphro's father had an agricultural labourer at Naxos. One day this man, in a drunken passion, killed a slave.
Socrates shows that he disapproves, and Euthyphro thus defends the piety of his own conduct: 'The impious, whoever he may be, ought not to go unpunished. For do not men regard Zeus as the best and most righteous of gods?
Their union was prejudicial to their children, and so the children violently separated the parents. This conduct is regarded as impious, and as an awful example to be avoided, in Maori pahs. In Naxos, on the other hand, Euthyphro deemed that the conduct of Cronus deserved imitation.
He 'cannot away with these stories about the gods, and so he has just been accused of impiety, the charge for which he died. Socrates cannot believe that a god, Cronus, mutilated his father Uranus, but Euthyphro believes the whole affair: 'I can tell you many other things about the gods which would quite amaze you.
Euthyphro attempts five "to act as Zeus did to his father"; "what the gods love"; "what all the gods love"; "a part of righteousness, relating to the care of the gods"; "the saying and doing of what the gods approve in prayer and sacrifice". Each of these proves inadequate; Euthyphro complains of the disconcerting Socratic method as follows: "Well, I do not know how to express my thoughts.