Euthyphro

The King’s Porch was a court of law located in the Agora (commercial and assembly place) in Athens. It was the judicial seat of the King Archon, a magistrate in charge of overseeing religious law. The King’s Porch is the place where both Euthyphro and Socrates are to carry out their suits and where they meet at the beginning of the dialogue. The setting symbolizes the weight of religious law that affects both men. Euthyphro is prosecuting someone (his father) for violating ethical norms, and Socrates hopes to defend himself from the charge of impiety toward the city’s gods. The setting is particularly ominous in hindsight, as we know that Socrates will eventually be convicted in the court and forced to commit suicide. 

Zeus, the king of the gods in the Greek religion, is cited several times in the dialogue. First, Euthyphro uses the example of Zeus to justify his own actions in prosecuting his father. Zeus imprisoned his father, Kronos the Titan, for unjustly swallowing his other children, yet Zeus is revered as the “best and most just of the gods” (14). Later, Socrates cites Zeus and several other gods in light of their disagreement about questions of right and wrong, wondering whether Euthyphro’s action might be approved by Zeus and disapproved by Uranus, for example.