I was on the fence about Socrates until I read Popper’s “The Open Society…”. The book is split into three parts where he analyzes Plato, Hegel, and Marx, deeming their philosophies as pro-authoritarian. In the first part on Plato, he traces that tradition back through Socrates to Heraclitus. At the same time he describes the various struggles between the democratic and anti-democratic factions in Greece at the time, which you mentioned.

Totally worth the read! And yeah, Socrates is totally guilty!