Socrates is a founding figure in the history of Western philosophy, revered for his single-minded dedication to truth and virtue, for his great argumentative skill, and for his death, which came to be viewed as martyrdom. As a result of his public philosophizing in Athens, he was sentenced to death by the city’s democratic government for “impiety” and “corrupting the youth.” Beyond his reputation as a philosophical hero, Socrates is important for reorienting Greek philosophy toward ethical concerns and indeed for insisting that the cultivation of virtue, the “care of the soul."

Source: Britannica