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The pattern of ideas in Euth. emerges under the conditions of the situation of Socrates encountering the attitude and intentions of Euthyphro. Euthyphro intends to prosecute his father because his father caused the death of a slave who while drunk had killed a household servant. Euthyphro is determined to prosecute, even though the common feeling is that the drunken slave was a murderer who deserved no more than death and that "it is impious for a son to prosecute his father for murder. But their idea of the divine attitude to piety and impiety are wrong, Socrates" (93e).
Euthyphro begins the dialogue quite certain of his own understanding of the difference between piety and the impious, as well as of the gods and of the proper relationship of human behavior to divine preference. His father acted unjustly, says Euthyphro, and so according to divine law, which Euthyphro knows very well indeed, his father should be prosecuted, as a matter of piety, even if the one to whom the injustice was done was himself unjust. Socrates queries Euthyphro on his certainty of what is pious, asking for the nature or "form itself that makes all pious actions pious" (95e). Euthyphro gives three different answers in turn.
First Euthyphro says that what is pious is what is dear to the gods (95). But Socrates points out that the gods disagree about what is dear to them. Next Euthyphro says, all the gods would agree that unjust killing should be punished. Socrates replies that even so, where to assign the injustice would still be a matter of disagreement, which means that what is pious to one would be impious to another (98d). Thus the nature or ideal form of piety is still elusive.
Now Euthyphro declares that what the gods do agree to love is pious. But agreement by itself does not prove piety. For the fact that something is beloved by the gods does not prove that it is pious but only that it is loved, even if what is pious is beloved because it ...