In their book on Plato's Apology, Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith suggest that commentaries on this dialogue "are strikingly similar in their defense of the general thesis that Socrates' speech was not intended to be a serious response to his accusers. Instead, we are told, Socrates was primarily interested in proclaiming the paramount importance of the philosophical way of life and cared little or nothing about securing his own acquittal" (Brickhouse and Smith 37-38). The implication of this point of view would be that Socrates was not trying to defend himself but only to challenge some of the wrong assumptions of his accusers. It also would indicate that the trial was, from his point of view, a foregone conclusion so that he saw no need to raise a real defense because he knew he was a condemned man; as a result, he took the opportunity to speak in public and to disseminate his views to a wider audience at the last opportunity he would have. A related view is that Socrates made himself into a martyr by refusing to mount an effective defense. Brickhouse and Smith deny the validity of this interpretation and suggest instead that this point of view is actually a misinterpretation of the power and importance of Socratic irony.
Brickhouse and Smith cite several commentators who hold the view that Socrates was not mounting a real defense, and there are others as well who display this same attitude. George Grote analyzes the speech and says that it "foregoes the immediate purpose of a defense--persuasion of the judges" (Grote 157). John Burnet says that the apology "is not really a defense at all" (Burnet 146).
Harold Tarrant points out how early commentators saw the Apology in such a way that they did not see it as a true defense. He cites Maximus Tyrius form the second century, referring to the latter's treatise, "Did Socrates do the right thing in not responding to the charges?" Tarrant writes,
The title...