Martyr or Not?

Is Socrates a man who is willing to die for his personal and philosophical beliefs or is he "a person who displays or exaggerates their discomfort or distress in order to obtain sympathy or admiration."  Is he seeking to be a martyr-figure?  I don't think he is seeking to be a martyr, instead I believe that he is simply a man willing to die for what he believes in.  In the end he can be seen as a martyr as he does die rather than give up his beliefs, but I don't think that his goal was to be admired as a martyr, rather, he just would not compromise his beliefs and if that lead to his death, while so it goes.  While Socrates does gain sympathy and admiration, throughout the Apology and later in the Crito you can see that rather than focusing on or exaggerating his own distress or discomfort, Socrates focuses on doing what he believes to be the right thing. 

In the Apology, Socrates spends a lot of time discussing the validity of the charges of impiety and corruption of youth, that have been laid against him but he urges the jury to listen to him so that they can learn the truth, something he values greatly.  He doesn't display any distress during the trial and even states that "Perhaps Meletus and others think [that death, exile or a deprivation of civil rights are] great evils.  But I do not think so."[1] Instead of showing a fear of death, or making out his decision to die for his beliefs to be a great sacrifice he instead tells those that voted to have him acquitted that he believes that death is not a bad thing but instead highly likely to be something good.  If he has done anything, he has under exaggerated, rather than exaggerated, the severity and discomfort of death.  If he where trying to be a martyr he would not have downplayed death or made it seem like something not to fear.

Rather than displaying anxieties and distress, Socrates is calm and peacefully accepting of his death, as Crito, in Crito, marvels over while talking to Socrates in prison, "how easily and calmly you bear the calamity that has come to you."[2]  Rather it is Socrates's friends who feel distressed. 

For these reasons I feel that Socrates is not the martyr that the definition is given for in the question.  Instead he is just a man with strong convictions, who is unwilling to compromise on them and would rather die, especially since death is not something bad to him.  This personal conviction does earn him the admiration of his friends and others in the city of Athens however this is not the end he seeks, it is not his main goal.  Instead his main goal is to do right by his city, and to do right by the gods, seeking to be the best person he can be.

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[1] Plato, Euthyphro, Apology Crito, trans. F.J. Church (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1948), 37.

[2] Plato, 51.