Euthyphro unfolds shortly before the trial of Socrates, in 399 BC. The setting of the dialogue is simple: Socrates happens to meet, outside the office of the Athenian magistrate (the king archon’s stoa), who was responsible for matters of public worship and the observance of religious laws, a younger fellow citizen.

His name was Euthyphro and he had come to accuse his father before the king archon for an incident that had occurred three years earlier on their family estate in Naxos, which resulted in the death of one of their workers due to, as Euthyphro believed, the negligence of his father.

According to Attic law, the official responsible for receiving such an accusation was indeed the king archon, since the case concerned homicide and, according to archaic belief, blood guilt constituted a pollution for the city and had to be purified.

[...] (From the introduction of the edition)