Was Socrates a Sophist?

what ideal was that?

Integrity.

Intellectual honesty.

>hates all the stupid fucks in the state
>pupils more than willing to let him escape
>kills self by order of those he hates

yeah totally integrity

>builds a career on saying that "intellect" isn't all that its cracked up to be

Socrates wasn't especially oligarchic, in a couple of ways, the most obvious being his disinterest in material wealth and his lack thereof, material wealth having by that poin come to strongly dominate what it meant to be a non-Spartan oligarch. Further, his sympathies to those cities that inspired oligarchic sentiment, Crete and Sparta, are very mixed. Both cities end up the butt of a longish joke in the Protagoras on the part of Socrates who makes the ironical claim that those cities are the true home of philosophy, the Cretans and Spartans having apparently concealed their deep wisdom by putting on a show of militant masculinity to fool all of their sympathizers and mimics elsewhere.

There *is* something to say in noting that he strongly appreciates Spartan moderation, but I'd think that a look at what Socrates does and at the strict homogeneity of Spartan character and the unquestionability of their civic customs would show very clearly that he'd have done especially badly there. Let's not forget that the regime that most resembles the Spartans in the Republic (the Timocracy) is still a *degeneration* of the Best City, and that the Timocracy contains the seeds of its degenerations into the Oligarchy and then Democracy.

You're right to point to the relationship with tyrants, however, and that probably gets at a strong element to the Athenian accusation against Socrates--his close relationship to the sometimes demagogue/sometimes oligarch Alcibiades, and his sort-of friendships with Critias (the leader of the Thirty that became the Thirty Tyrants) and Charmides (one of the members of the Ten in charge of dominating the Democracy-sympathizing Piraeus of Athens) certainly led democratically minded citizens of Athens to wonder if there wasn't a connection between this annoying man who kept asking questions like "what is a law?" and "what is piety?" to seem as if he was teaching these ambitious men to question the democracy, political life, and laws and customs of Athens in a way as to reject them and suggest a coup.

(Oddly, one of the three accusers, Anytus, was earlier involved in the Four Hundred, an oligarchic coup that lasted for a few months, initiated by Alcibiades; if I'm remembering correctly, I think he was exiled and then returned and joined the democrats.)