In The Trial of Socrates by Plato, Socrates is on trial for his life because he was introducing strange gods and corrupting the youth of Athens. Socrates subsequently chose to take his own life by drinking hemlock, thereby fulfilling the sentence of execution passed on him. Why is The Trial of Socrates important in Philosophy?.
There are many ways the Socrates formed and influenced modern Philosophy. In Sorates" time there were people called Sophists these people received money to teach people how to argue. The sophists did exactly what Socrates was apposed to, they advertised that they had knowledge and claimed to be able to pass it on; Socrates seeks knowledge without possessing any himself. Sophists also only wanted to win arguments and not find the truth. Where Socrates wanted to find truth and to do that it did not necessarily mean the argument is won. For example, he says that to find truth you might find a presence of ignorance and it is necessary to find the presence of ignorance to find genuine knowledge of virtue.
Socrates" constant search for virtue is important in philosophy because it teaches to question what is "real". When I say what is "real" I mean what is truth and what is knowledge. If we do not question what is "real" then we cannot truly find the answers for which drives us. For example if we never questioned what is "real" then we would not have any philosophers past Socrates, we would not have the sciences that have evolved from metaphysics, and we would not have the virtue that has evolved from questioning.