From Cape Sounion, 28 January 2025

Pondering the association between Sounion and the death of Socrates.  He was granted a reprieve between his death sentence being announced the day after the crowning of the ship the Athenians sent annually to the island of Delos, associated with Apollo, in commemoration of Theseus’s saving of the seven boys and seven girls sent every nine years to be devoured by the Minotaur. Athenian law decreed that the city must be pure and no one could be executed until the ship had gone and come back. Consequently, it was only after the tribute ship was spotted rounding Cape Sounion that Socrates’ reprieve elapsed and he, as a law abiding Athenian citizen, carried out the sentence of death himself by drinking hemlock.