## 1. Socrates's strangeness



Standards of beauty are different in different eras, and in
Socrates's time beauty could easily be measured by the standard
of the gods, stately, proportionate sculptures of whom had been
adorning the Athenian acropolis since about the time Socrates reached
the age of thirty. Good looks and proper bearing were important to a
man's political prospects, for beauty and goodness were linked
in the popular imagination. The extant sources agree that Socrates was
profoundly ugly, resembling a satyr more than a man--and
resembling not at all the statues that turned up later in ancient
times and now grace Internet sites and the covers of books. He had
wide-set, bulging eyes that darted sideways and enabled him, like a
crab, to see not only what was straight ahead, but what was beside him
as well; a flat, upturned nose with flaring nostrils; and large fleshy
lips like an ass. Socrates let his hair grow long, Spartan-style (even
while Athens and Sparta were at war), and went about barefoot and
unwashed, carrying a stick and looking arrogant. He didn't
change his clothes but efficiently wore in the daytime what he covered
himself with at night. Something was peculiar about his gait as well,
sometimes described as a swagger so intimidating that enemy soldiers
kept their distance. He was impervious to the effects of alcohol and
cold weather, but this made him an object of suspicion to his fellow
soldiers on campaign. We can safely assume an average height (since no
one mentions it at all), and a strong build, given the active life he
appears to have led. Against the iconic tradition of a pot-belly,
Socrates and his companions are described as going hungry
(Aristophanes, *Birds* 1280-83). On his appearance, see
Plato's *Theaetetus* 143e, and *Symposium*
215a-c, 216c-d, 221d-e; Xenophon's
*Symposium* 4.19, 5.5-7; and Aristophanes's
*Clouds* 362. Brancusi's oak sculpture, standing 51.25
inches including its base, captures Socrates's appearance and
strangeness in the sense that it looks different from every angle,
including a second "eye" that cannot be seen if the first
is in view. (See the Museum of Modern Art's
 page on Brancusi's *Socrates*
 which offers additional views.) Also true to Socrates's
reputation for ugliness, but less available, are the drawings of the
contemporary Swiss artist, Hans Erni.



In the late fifth century B.C.E., it was more or less taken for
granted that any self-respecting Athenian male would prefer fame,
wealth, honors, and political power to a life of labor. Although many
citizens lived by their labor in a wide variety of occupations, they
were expected to spend much of their leisure time, if they had any,
busying themselves with the affairs of the city. Men regularly
participated in the governing Assembly and in the city's many
courts; and those who could afford it prepared themselves for success
at public life by studying with rhetoricians and sophists from abroad
who could themselves become wealthy and famous by teaching the young
men of Athens to use words to their advantage. Other forms of higher
education were also known in Athens: mathematics, astronomy, geometry,
music, ancient history, and linguistics. One of the things that seemed
strange about Socrates is that he neither labored to earn a living,
nor participated voluntarily in affairs of state. Rather, he embraced
poverty and, although youths of the city kept company with him and
imitated him, Socrates adamantly insisted he was *not a
teacher* (Plato, *Apology* 33a-b) and refused all his
life to take money for what he did. The strangeness of this behavior
is mitigated by the image then current of teachers and students:
teachers were viewed as pitchers pouring their contents into the empty
cups that were the students. Because Socrates was no transmitter of
information that others were passively to receive, he resists the
comparison to teachers. Rather, he helped others recognize on their
own what is real, true, and good (Plato, *Meno*,
*Theaetetus*)--a new, and thus suspect, approach to
education. He was known for confusing, stinging, and stunning his
conversation partners into the unpleasant experience of realizing
their own ignorance, a state sometimes superseded by genuine
intellectual curiosity.



It did not help matters that Socrates seemed to have a higher opinion
of women than most of his companions had, speaking of "men and
women," "priests and priestesses," likening his work
to midwifery, and naming foreign women as his teachers: Socrates
claimed to have learned rhetoric from Aspasia of Miletus, the *de
facto* spouse of Pericles (Plato, *Menexenus*); and to have
learned erotics from the priestess Diotima of Mantinea (Plato,
*Symposium*). Socrates was unconventional in a related respect.
Athenian citizen males of the upper social classes did not marry until
they were at least thirty, and Athenian females were poorly educated
and kept sequestered until puberty, when they were given in marriage
by their fathers. Thus the socialization and education of males often
involved a relationship for which the English word
'pederasty' (though often used) is misleading, in which a
youth approaching manhood, fifteen to seventeen, became the beloved of
a male lover a few years older, under whose tutelage and through whose
influence and gifts, the younger man would be guided and improved. It
was assumed among Athenians that mature men would find youths sexually
attractive, and such relationships were conventionally viewed as
beneficial to both parties by family and friends alike. A degree of
hypocrisy (or denial), however, was implied by the arrangement:
"officially" it did not involve sexual relations between
the lovers and, if it did, then the beloved was not supposed to derive
pleasure from the act--but ancient evidence (comedies, vase
paintings, et al.) shows that both restrictions were often violated
(Dover 1989, 204). What was odd about Socrates is that, although he
was no exception to the rule of finding youths attractive (Plato,
*Charmides* 155d, *Protagoras* 309a-b; Xenophon,
*Symposium* 4.27-28), he refused the physical advances of
even his favorite, Alcibiades (Plato, *Symposium*
219b-d), and kept his eye on the improvement of their, and all
the Athenians', souls (Plato, *Apology* 30a-b), a
mission he said he had been assigned by the oracle of Apollo at
Delphi, if he was interpreting his friend Chaerephon's report
correctly (Plato, *Apology* 20e-23b), a preposterous
claim in the eyes of his fellow citizens. Socrates also acknowledged a
rather strange personal phenomenon, a *daimonion* or internal
voice that prohibited his doing certain things, some trivial and some
important, often unrelated to matters of right and wrong (thus not to
be confused with the popular notions of a superego or a conscience).
The implication that he was guided by something he regarded as divine
or semi-divine was all the more reason for other Athenians to be
suspicious of Socrates.



Socrates was usually to be found in the marketplace and other public
areas, conversing with a variety of different people--young and
old, male and female, slave and free, rich and poor, citizen and
visitor--that is, with virtually anyone he could persuade to join
with him in his question-and-answer mode of probing serious matters.
Socrates's lifework consisted in the examination of
people's lives, his own and others', because "the
unexamined life is not worth living for a human being," as he
says at his trial (Plato, *Apology* 38a). Socrates pursued this
task single-mindedly, questioning people about what matters most,
e.g., courage, love, reverence, moderation, and the state of their
souls generally. He did this regardless of whether his respondents
wanted to be questioned or resisted him. Athenian youths imitated
Socrates's questioning style, much to the annoyance of some of
their elders. He had a reputation for irony, though what that means
exactly is controversial; at a minimum, Socrates's irony
consisted in his saying that he knew nothing of importance and wanted
to listen to others, yet keeping the upper hand in every discussion.
One further aspect of Socrates's much-touted strangeness should
be mentioned: his dogged failure to align himself politically with
oligarchs or democrats; rather, he had friends and enemies among both,
and he supported and opposed actions of both (see SS3).


## 2. The Socratic problem: Who was Socrates really?



The Socratic problem is a rat's nest of complexities arising
from the fact that various people wrote *about* Socrates whose
accounts differ in crucial respects, leaving us to wonder which, if
any, are accurate representations of the historical Socrates.
"There is, and always will be, a 'Socratic problem'.
This is inevitable," said Guthrie (1969, 6), looking back on a
gnarled history between ancient and contemporary times that is
narrated in detail by Press (1996), but barely touched on below. The
difficulties are increased because all those who knew and wrote about
Socrates lived before any standardization of modern categories of, or
sensibilities about, what constitutes historical accuracy or poetic
license. All authors present their own interpretations of the
personalities and lives of their characters, whether they mean to or
not, whether they write fiction or biography or philosophy (if the
philosophy they write has characters), so other criteria must be
introduced for deciding among the contending views of who Socrates
really was. A look at the three primary ancient sources of information
about Socrates (SS2.1) will provide a foundation for appreciating
how contemporary interpretations differ (SS2.2) and why the
differences matter (SS2.3).



One thing is certain about the historical Socrates: even among those
who knew him in life, there was profound disagreement about what his
actual views and methods were. This is evident in the three
contemporaneous sources below; and it is hinted at in the few titles
and scraps by other authors of the time who are now lumped together as
'minor Socratics', not for the quality of their work but
because so little or none of it is extant. We shall probably never
know much about their views of Socrates (see Giannantoni
 1990).[2]
 After Socrates's death, the tradition became even more
disparate. As Nehamas (1999, 99) puts it, "with the exception of
the Epicureans, every philosophical school in antiquity, whatever its
orientation, saw in him either its actual founder or the type of
person to whom its adherents were to aspire."


### 2.1 Three primary sources: Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato


#### Aristophanes (+-450-+-386)



Our earliest extant source--and the only one who can claim to
have known Socrates in vigorous midlife--is the playwright
Aristophanes. His comedy, *Clouds*, was produced within a year
of the battle of Delium (423) at which Socrates fought as a hoplite,
and when both Xenophon and Plato were infants. In the play, the
character called Socrates heads a Think-o-Rama in which young men
study the natural world, from insects to stars, and study slick
argumentative techniques as well, lacking all respect for the Athenian
sense of propriety. The actor wearing the mask of Socrates makes fun
of the traditional gods of Athens (lines 247-48, 367,
423-24), mimicked later by the young protagonist, and gives
naturalistic explanations of phenomena Athenians viewed as divinely
directed (lines 227-33; cf. *Theaetetus* 152e,
153c-d, 173e-174a; *Phaedo* 96a-100a). Worst
of all, he teaches dishonest techniques for avoiding repayment of debt
(lines 1214-1302) and encourages young men to beat their parents
into submission (lines 1408-46).



Comedy by its very nature is a tricky source for information about
anyone. Yet, in favor of Aristophanes as a source for Socrates is that
Xenophon and Plato were some forty-five years younger than Socrates,
so their acquaintance could only have been during Socrates's
later years. Could Socrates really have changed so much? Can the
lampooning of the younger Socrates found in *Clouds* and other
comic poets be reconciled with Plato's characterization of a
philosopher in his fifties and sixties? Some have said yes, pointing
out that the years between *Clouds* and Socrates's trial
(399) were years of war and upheaval, changing everyone. The Athenian
intellectual freedom of which Pericles been so proud at the beginning
of the war (Thucydides 2.37-39) had been eroded completely by
the end (see SS3). Thus, what had seemed comical a quarter century
earlier, Socrates hanging in a basket on-stage, talking nonsense, was
ominous in memory by then. A good reason to believe that
Aristophanes's representation of Socrates is not merely a comic
exaggeration but systematically misleading in retrospect is Kenneth
Dover's view that *Clouds* amalgamates in one character,
Socrates, features now well known to be unique to specific other
fifth-century intellectuals (1968, xxxii-lvii). Perhaps Aristophanes
chose Socrates to represent garden-variety intellectuals because
Socrates's physiognomy was strange enough by itself to get a
laugh. Aristophanes sometimes speaks in his own voice in his plays,
giving us good reason to believe he genuinely objected to social
instability brought on by the freedom Athenian youths enjoyed to study
with professional rhetoricians, sophists (see SS1), and natural
philosophers, e.g., those who, like the presocratics, studied the
cosmos or nature. Such professions could be lucrative. That Socrates
eschewed any earning potential in philosophy does not seem to have
been significant to the great writer of comedies.



Aristophanes's depiction of Socrates is important because
Plato's Socrates says at his trial (*Apology*
18a-b, 19c) that most of his jurors have grown up believing the
falsehoods attributed to him in the play. Socrates calls Aristophanes
more dangerous than the three men who brought charges against him
because Aristophanes had poisoned the jurors' minds while they
were young. Aristophanes did not stop accusing Socrates in 423 when
*Clouds* placed third behind another play in which Socrates was
mentioned as barefoot; rather, he soon began writing a revision, which
he circulated but never produced. Complicating matters, the revision
is our only extant version of the play. Aristophanes appears to have
given up on reviving *Clouds* in about 416, but his comic
ridicule of Socrates continued. Again in 414 with *Birds*, and
in 405 with *Frogs*, Aristophanes complained of
Socrates's deleterious effect on the youths of the city,
including Socrates's neglect of the poets. Aristophanes even
coins a verb, *to socratize*, conveying a range of unsavory
 behaviors.[3]


#### Xenophon (+-425-+-386)



Another source for the historical Socrates is the soldier-historian,
Xenophon. Xenophon says explicitly of Socrates, "I was never
acquainted with anyone who took greater care to find out what each of
his companions knew" (*Memorabilia* 4.7.1); and Plato
corroborates Xenophon's statement by illustrating throughout his
dialogues Socrates's adjustment of the level and type of his
questions to the particular individuals with whom he talked. If it is
true that Socrates succeeded in pitching his conversation at the right
level for each of his companions, the striking differences between
Xenophon's Socrates and Plato's is largely explained by
the differences between their two personalities. Xenophon was a
practical man whose ability to recognize philosophical issues is
almost imperceptible, so it is plausible that his Socrates is a
practical and helpful advisor. That is the side of Socrates Xenophon
experienced. Xenophon's Socrates differs additionally from
Plato's in offering advice about subjects in which Xenophon was
himself experienced, but Socrates was not: moneymaking (Xenophon,
*Memorabilia* 2.7) and estate management (Xenophon,
*Oeconomicus*), suggesting that Xenophon may have entered into
the writing of Socratic discourses (as Aristotle labeled the genre,
*Poetics* 1447b11) making the character Socrates a mouthpiece
for his own views. His other works mentioning or featuring Socrates
are *Anabasis*, *Apology*, *Hellenica*, and
*Symposium*.



Something that has strengthened Xenophon's *prima facie*
claim as a source for Socrates's life is his work as a
historian; his *Hellenica* (*History of Greece*) is one
of the chief sources for the period 411-362, after
Thucydides's history abruptly ends in the midst of the
Peloponnesian wars. Although Xenophon tends to moralize and does not
follow the superior conventions introduced by Thucydides, still it is
sometimes argued that, having had no philosophical axes to grind,
Xenophon may have presented a more accurate portrait of Socrates than
Plato does. But two considerations have always weakened that claim:
(1) The Socrates of Xenophon's works is so pedestrian that it is
difficult to imagine his inspiring fifteen or more people to write
Socratic discourses in the period following his death. (2) Xenophon
could not have chalked up many hours with Socrates or with reliable
informants. He lived in Erchia, about 15 kilometers and across the
Hymettus mountains from Socrates's haunts in the urban area of
Athens, and his love of horses and horsemanship (on which he wrote a
still-valuable treatise) took up considerable time. He left Athens in
401 on an expedition to Persia and, for a variety of reasons
(mercenary service for Thracians and Spartans; exile), never resided
in Athens again. And now a third is in order. (3) It turns out to have
been ill-advised to assume that Xenophon would apply the same criteria
for accuracy to his Socratic discourses as to his
 histories.[4]
 The biographical and historical background Xenophon deploys in his
memoirs of Socrates fails to correspond to such additional sources as
we have from archaeology, history, the courts, and literature. The
widespread use of computers in classical studies, enabling the
comparison of ancient persons, and the compiling of information about
each of them from disparate sources, has made incontrovertible this
observation about Xenophon's Socratic works. Xenophon's
memoirs are pastiches, several of which simply could not have occurred
as presented.


#### Plato (424/3-347)



Philosophers have usually privileged the account of Socrates given by
their fellow philosopher, Plato. Plato was about twenty-five when
Socrates was tried and executed, and had probably known the old man
most of his life. It would have been hard for a boy of Plato's
social class, registered in the political district (deme) of Collytus
within the city walls, to avoid Socrates. The extant sources agree
that Socrates was often to be found where youths of the city spent
their time. Further, Plato's representation of individual
Athenians has proved over time to correspond remarkably well to both
archaeological and literary evidence: in his use of names and places,
familial relations and friendship bonds, and even in his rough dating
of events in almost all the authentic dialogues where Socrates is the
dominant figure. The dialogues have dramatic dates that fall into
place as one learns more about their characters and, despite
incidental anachronisms, it turns out that there is more realism in
the dialogues than most have
 suspected.[5]
 The *Ion*, *Lysis*, *Euthydemus*, *Meno*,
*Menexenus*, *Theaetetus*, *Euthyphro*,
*Cratylus*, the frame of *Symposium*, *Apology*,
*Crito*, *Phaedo* (although Plato says he was not
himself present at Socrates's execution), and the frame of
*Parmenides* are the dialogues in which Plato had greatest
access to Athenians he depicts.



It does not follow, however, that Plato represented the views and
methods of Socrates (or anyone, for that matter) as he recalled them,
much less as they were originally uttered. There are a number of
cautions and caveats that should be in place from the start. (i) Plato
may have shaped the character Socrates (or other characters) to serve
his own purposes, whether philosophical or literary or both. (ii) The
dialogues representing Socrates as a youth and young man took place,
if they took place at all, before Plato was born and when he was a
small child. (iii) One should be cautious even about the dramatic
dates of Plato's dialogues because they are calculated with
reference to characters whom we know primarily, though not only, from
the dialogues. (iv) Exact dates should be treated with a measure of
skepticism for numerical precision can be misleading. Even when a
specific festival or other reference fixes the season or month of a
dialogue, or birth of a character, one should imagine a margin of
error. Although it becomes obnoxious to use *circa* or
plus-minus everywhere, the ancients did not require or desire
contemporary precision in these matters. All the children born during
a full year, for example, had the same nominal birthday, accounting
for the conversation at *Lysis* 207b, odd by contemporary
standards, in which two boys disagree about who is the elder.
Philosophers have often decided to bypass the historical problems
altogether and to assume for the sake of argument that Plato's
Socrates is *the* Socrates who is relevant to potential
progress in philosophy. That strategy, as we shall soon see, gives
rise to a new Socratic problem (SS2.2).



What, after all, is our motive for reading a dead philosopher's
words about another dead philosopher who never wrote anything himself?
This is a way of asking a popular question, Why do history of
philosophy? --which has no settled answer. One might reply that
our study of some of our philosophical predecessors is
*intrinsically valuable*, philosophically enlightening and
satisfying. When we contemplate the words of a dead philosopher, a
philosopher with whom we cannot engage directly--Plato's
words, say--we seek to understand not merely what he said and
assumed, but what his statements imply, and whether they are true.
Others' words can prompt the exploration of new and rich veins
of philosophy. Sometimes, making such judgments about the text
requires us to learn the language in which the philosopher wrote, more
about his predecessors' ideas and those of his contemporaries.
The truly great philosophers, and Plato was one of them, are still
capable of becoming our companions in philosophical conversation, our
dialectical partners. Because he addressed timeless, universal,
fundamental questions with insight and intelligence, our own
understanding of such questions is heightened whether we agree or
disagree. That explains Plato, one might say, but where is Socrates in
this picture? Is he interesting merely as a predecessor to Plato? Some
would say yes, but others would say it is not Plato's but
Socrates's ideas and methods that mark the real beginning of
philosophy in the West, that Socrates is the better dialectical guide,
and that what is Socratic in the dialogues should be distinguished
from what is Platonic (SS2.2). But how? That again is the
*Socratic problem*.


### 2.2 Contemporary interpretative strategies



If it were possible to confine oneself exclusively to Plato's
Socrates, *the Socratic problem* would nevertheless reappear
because one would soon discover Socrates himself defending one
position in one Platonic dialogue, its contrary in another, and using
different methods in different dialogues to boot. Inconsistencies
among the dialogues seem to demand explanation, though not all
philosophers have thought so (Shorey 1903). Most famously, the
*Parmenides* attacks various theories of forms that the
*Republic*, *Symposium*, and *Phaedo* develop and
defend. In some dialogues (e.g., *Laches*), Socrates only weeds
the garden of its inconsistencies and false beliefs, but in other
dialogues (e.g., *Phaedrus*), he is a planter as well,
advancing structured philosophical claims and suggesting new methods
for testing those claims. There are differences on smaller matters as
well. For example, Socrates in the *Gorgias* opposes, while in
the *Protagoras* he supports, hedonism; the details of the
relation between erotic love and the good life differ from
*Phaedrus* to *Symposium*; the account of the relation
between knowledge and the objects of knowledge in *Republic*
differs from the *Meno* account; despite Socrates's
commitment to Athenian law, expressed in the *Crito*, he vows
in the *Apology* that he will disobey the lawful jury if it
orders him to stop philosophizing. A related problem is that some of
the dialogues appear to develop positions familiar from other
philosophical traditions (e.g., that of Heraclitus in
*Theaetetus* and Pythagoreanism in *Phaedo*). Three
centuries of efforts to solve versions of the Socratic problem are
summarized in the following supplementary document:



> 
> Early Attempts to Solve the Socratic Problem
> 



Contemporary efforts recycle bits and pieces--including the
failures--of these older attempts.


#### The Twentieth Century



Until relatively recently in modern times, it was hoped that confident
elimination of what could be ascribed purely to Socrates would leave
standing a coherent set of doctrines attributable to Plato (who
appears nowhere in the dialogues as a speaker). Many philosophers,
inspired by the nineteenth century scholar Eduard Zeller, expect the
greatest philosophers to promote grand, impenetrable schemes. Nothing
of the sort was possible for Socrates, so it remained for
*Plato* to be assigned all the positive doctrines that could be
extracted from the dialogues. In the latter half of the twentieth
century, however, there was a resurgence of interest in who
*Socrates* was and what his own views and methods were. The
result is a narrower, but no less contentious, Socratic problem. Two
strands of interpretation dominated views of Socrates in the twentieth
century (Griswold 2001; Klagge and Smith 1992). Although there has
been some healthy cross-pollination and growth since the mid 1990s,
the two were so hostile to one another for so long that the bulk of
the secondary literature on Socrates, including translations peculiar
to each, still divides into two camps, hardly reading one another:
literary contextualists and analysts. The literary-contextual study of
Socrates, like hermeneutics more generally, uses the tools of literary
criticism--typically interpreting one complete dialogue at a
time; its European origins are traced to Heidegger and earlier to
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The analytic study of Socrates, like
analytic philosophy more generally, is fueled by the arguments in the
texts--typically addressing a single argument or set of
arguments, whether in a single text or across texts; its origins are
in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. Hans-Georg Gadamer
(1900-2002) was the doyen of the hermeneutic strand, and Gregory
Vlastos (1907-1991) of the analytic.


#### Literary contextualism



Faced with inconsistencies in Socrates's views and methods from
one dialogue to another, the literary contextualist has no Socratic
problem because Plato is seen as an artist of surpassing literary
skill, the ambiguities in whose dialogues are intentional
representations of actual ambiguities in the subjects philosophy
investigates. Thus terms, arguments, characters, and in fact all
elements in the dialogues should be addressed in their literary
context. Bringing the tools of literary criticism to the study of the
dialogues, and sanctioned in that practice by Plato's own use of
literary devices and practice of textual critique (*Protagoras*
339a-347a, *Republic* 2.376c-3.412b, *Ion*,
and *Phaedrus* 262c-264e), most contextualists ask of
*each* dialogue what its aesthetic unity implies, pointing out
that the dialogues themselves are autonomous, containing almost no
cross-references. Contextualists who attend to what they see as the
aesthetic unity of the whole Platonic corpus, and therefore seek a
consistent picture of Socrates, advise close readings of the dialogues
and appeal to a number of literary conventions and devices said to
reveal Socrates's actual personality. For both varieties of
contextualism, the Platonic dialogues are like a brilliant
constellation whose separate stars naturally require separate
focus.



Marking the maturity of the literary contextualist tradition in the
early twenty-first century is a greater diversity of approaches and an
attempt to be more internally critical (see Hyland 2004).


#### Analytic developmentalism



Beginning in the 1950s, Vlastos (1991, 45-80) recommended a set
of mutually supportive premises that together provide a plausible
framework in the analytic tradition for Socratic philosophy as a
pursuit distinct from Platonic 
 philosophy.[6]
 Although the premises have
deep roots in early attempts to solve the Socratic problem (see the
supplementary document linked above), the beauty of Vlastos's
particular configuration is its fecundity. The first premise marks a
break with a tradition of regarding Plato as a dialectician who held
his assumptions tentatively and revised them constantly; rather,


1. Plato held philosophical *doctrines*, and
2. Plato's doctrines *developed* over the period in
which he wrote,



accounting for many of the inconsistencies and contradictions among
the dialogues (persistent inconsistencies are addressed with a complex
notion of Socratic irony.) In particular, Vlastos tells a story
"as hypothesis, not dogma or reported fact" describing the
young Plato in vivid terms, writing his early dialogues while
convinced of "the substantial truth of Socrates's teaching
and the soundness of its method." Later, Plato develops into a
constructive philosopher in his own right but feels no need to break
the bond with his Socrates, his "father image." (The
remainder of Plato's story is not relevant to Socrates.) Vlastos
labels a small group of dialogues 'transitional' to mark
the period when Plato was beginning to be dissatisfied with
Socrates's views. Vlastos's third premise is


3. It is possible to determine reliably the chronological order in
which the dialogues were written and to map them to the development of
Plato's views.



The evidence Vlastos uses varies for this claim, but is of several
types: stylometric data, internal cross references, external events
mentioned, differences in doctrines and methods featured, and other
ancient testimony (particularly that of Aristotle). The dialogues of
Plato's Socratic period, called "elenctic dialogues"
for Socrates's preferred method of questioning, are *Apology,
Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches,
Protagoras,* and book 1 of the *Republic.* The
developmentalists' Platonic dialogues are potentially a discrete
sequence, the order of which enables the analyst to separate Socrates
from Plato on the basis of different periods in Plato's
intellectual evolution. Finally,


4. Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates only what Plato himself
believes at the time he writes each dialogue.



"As Plato changes, the philosophical persona of his Socrates is
made to change" (Vlastos 1991, 53)--a view sometimes
referred to as the "mouthpiece theory." Because the
analyst is interested in positions or doctrines (particularly as
conclusions from, or tested by, arguments), the focus of analysis is
usually on a particular philosophical view in or across dialogues,
with no special attention given to context or to dialogues considered
as wholes; and evidence from dialogues in close chronological
proximity is likely to be considered more strongly confirming than
that from dialogues of other developmental periods. The result of
applying the premises is a firm list (contested, of course, by others)
of ten theses held by Socrates, all of which are incompatible with the
corresponding ten theses held by Plato (1991, 47-49).



Many analytic ancient philosophers in the late twentieth century mined
the gold Vlastos had uncovered, and many of those who were productive
in the developmentalist vein in the early days went on to constructive
work of their own (see Bibliography).


### 2.3 Implications for the philosophy of Socrates



It is a risky business to say where ancient philosophy is now, but an
advantage of an entry in a dynamic reference work is that authors are
allowed, nay, *encouraged* to update their entries to reflect
recent scholarship and sea changes in their topics. For many analytic
philosophers, John Cooper (1997, xiv) sounded the end of the
developmentalist era when he described the early- and middle-period
dialogue distinctions as "an unsuitable basis for bringing
anyone to the reading of these works. To use them in that way is to
announce in advance the results of a certain interpretation of the
dialogues and to canonize that interpretation under the guise of a
presumably objective order of composition--when in fact no such
order *is* objectively known. And it thereby risks prejudicing
an unwary reader against the fresh, individual reading that these
works demand." When he added, "it is better to relegate
thoughts about chronology to the secondary position they deserve and
to concentrate on the literary and philosophical content of the works,
taken on their own and in relation to the others," he proposed
peace between the literary contextualist and analytic developmentalist
camps. As in any peace agreement, it takes some time for all the
combatants to accept that the conflict has ended--but that is
where we are.



In short, one is now more free to answer, Who was Socrates really? in
the variety of ways that it has been answered in the past, in
one's own well-reasoned way, or to sidestep the question,
philosophizing about the issues in Plato's dialogues without
worrying too much about the long toes of any particular interpretive
tradition. Those seeking the views and methods of Plato's
Socrates from the perspective of what one is likely to see attributed
to him in the secondary literature (SS2.2) will find it useful to
consult the related entry on
 Plato's shorter ethical works.


## 3. A Chronology of the historical Socrates in the context of Athenian history and the dramatic dates of Plato's dialogues



The larger column on the left below provides some of the biographical
information from ancient sources with the dramatic dates of
Plato's dialogues interspersed **[in boldface]**
throughout. In the smaller column on the right are dates of major
events and persons familiar from fifth century Athenian history.
Although the dates are as precise as allowed by the facts, some are
estimated and controversial (Nails 2002).




|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| When Socrates was born in 469, a Persian invasion
had been decisively repulsed at Plataea, and the Delian League that
would grow into the Athenian empire had already been formed. Attica
comprised 139 political districts (demes), assigned variously to
Athens's ten tribes; regardless of how far from the walled urban
center a deme might be, its registered members were Athenian.


Socrates's tribe was Antiochis, and his deme was Alopece
(south-southeast of the city wall). Assuming that his stoneworker
father, Sophroniscus, kept to the conventions, he carried the infant
around the hearth, thereby formally admitting him into the family,
five days after he was born, named him on the tenth day, presented him
to his *phratry* (a regional hereditary association) and took
responsibility for socializing him into the various institutions
proper to an Athenian male. Literacy had become widespread among males
since about 520, and there were a number of elementary schools
teaching boys to read and write, along with the traditional gymnastics
and music, by the 480s (Harris 1989, 55), so we can be confident that
Socrates received a formal education and that Plato was not
exaggerating when he described the young Socrates as eagerly acquiring
the philosopher Anaxagoras's books (scrolls, to be more precise,
*Phaedo* 98b). |  | **469** tragedies of Aeschylus, poetry
of Pindar prominent

**462** democratic judicial reform of the Areopagus

**459** Athens's long walls to the Piraeus port
begun

**450s** Athens extends empire, introduces democratic
reforms (archonship opened to third citizen class, pay for jurors
instituted, citizenship restricted) |
| In Socrates's eighteenth year, Sophroniscus presented him
to the deme in a ceremony called *dokimasia*. He was there
examined and entered onto the citizens' roll, making him
eligible--subject to age or class restrictions--for the many
tasks of government determined by lot or required of all citizens,
beginning with two years of compulsory training in the Athenian
militia. In an important sense, the *dokimasia* marked a young
man's allegiance to the laws of Athens. Sophroniscus died soon
after Socrates came of age, making him his mother's legal
guardian. Socrates's mother, Phaenarete, later remarried and had
a second son, Patrocles (Plato, *Euthydemus* 297e); she became
a midwife sometime thereafter (Plato, *Theaetetus*149a).


Athens was a city of numerous festivals, competitions, and
celebrations, including the Panathenaea that attracted visitors to the
city from throughout the Mediterranean. Like the Olympics, the
Panathenaea was celebrated with special splendor at four-year
intervals. **[450 *Parmenides*]** Plato depicts
the nineteen-year-old Socrates in conversation with the great visiting
philosophers from Elea, Parmenides and Zeno, at one of the Greater
Panathenaea festivals, in late July or early August of 450. |  | **450-430** "Golden Age of
Pericles": construction on the Athenian acropolis, led by
Phidias, Polyclitus; tragedy dominated by Sophocles and Euripides;
natural philosophy, rhetoric, and sophistry thrive in atmosphere of
relative affluence and freedom |
| After completing his two years of military training, Socrates
was subject to being sent beyond the borders of Attica with the army,
but these were years of relative peace, so he is likely to have
practiced a trade, at least until he gave his mother in marriage to
Chaeredemus. Only at the age of thirty was eligibility reached for
such responsibilities and offices as jury service, generalship, and
Council (executive body for the sovereign Assembly), so Athenian men
lived at home with their parents during those ten years,
and--depending on their class in Athens's rigid four-class
system, based on wealth and birth--they spent that period
learning a trade or acquiring the skills in public speaking and
persuasion that would serve them well in Athens's citizen
Assembly and courts. **[433/2 *Protagoras*]** When
Plato next writes of Socrates, he is attending Callias's
"open house" where famous educators of the day
(Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias) are vying for the lucrative
opportunity to teach the wealthiest and most prominent young men of
the city. |  | **448** Spartan invasion

**446** defeat at Coronea, loss of Boeotia, Spartan
invasion

**446/5** Thirty Years' Peace signed with Sparta

**442** comedy added to the Lenaean festival

**433** Protagoras in Athens |
| Athens was even then, however, sliding toward war with Sparta on
a scale that would involve all of Greece over the next three decades.
Two of Plato's longer dialogues are set loosely throughout the
war. **[431-404 *Republic, Gorgias*]** Both
Socrates and Alcibiades were posted that summer, 432, to Potidaea to
put down a revolt, Socrates as a footsoldier (*hoplite*). After
an initial battle, a long siege reduced the population to cannibalism
before it surrendered (Thucydides 2.70.1). As the army made its way
home, it engaged in battle near Spartolus and suffered heavy losses
(Thucydides 2.79.1-7). Socrates distinguished himself there by
saving the life and armor of the wounded Alcibiades (Plato,
*Symposium* 220d-e). When the army finally returned to
Athens in May of 429, nearly three years had elapsed since its
deployment. Soon after his return, Socrates was accused by a comic
playwright of helping Euripides to write his tragedies, a claim that
was to be repeated at least twice more, by other comedy writers, on
the Athenian stage. Plato illustrates Socrates's arrival and
return to conversation in the *Charmides* **[429**
***Charmides*****]**, where
participants (including Plato's relatives Critias and Charmides)
discuss moderation. |  | **432** revolt at Potidaea

**431** Peloponnesian War begins

**430** outbreak of plague

**429** death of Pericles

**427** Gorgias in Athens

**425** Spartan peace offer refused |
| Socrates's active duty continued at the battle of Delium
in 424, under the command of Laches. This was another defeat for the
Athenian army which, while already under attack from Boeotian
footsoldiers, was surprised by a troop of cavalry. Socrates's
heroic behavior in the retreat is praised by Laches (*Laches*
181b) the following winter, and later by Alcibiades (Plato,
*Symposium* 221a). **[424 *Laches*]** The
*Laches*, on the nature of courage, shows Socrates as a friend
of the famous Athenian general Nicias and makes a point of
Socrates's being a favorite of the city's youths while
remaining unknown to most of his fellow citizens. Any anonymity
Socrates may have enjoyed came to an abrupt end at the annual
Dionysian festival in the spring of 423. In the comedy category, at
least two of the plays involved Socrates: one had the title of
Socrates's music teacher, Connus; the other was
Aristophanes's *Clouds* (SS2.1). |  | **424** battle of Delium

**424/3** birth of Plato

**423** one-year truce with Sparta; Aristophanes,
*Clouds* |
| A year later, Socrates fought at Amphipolis, another Athenian
disaster following another surprise attack. Socrates, so far as we
know, did not return to war again. Athens and Sparta entered into a
treaty named for Nicias that--while never completely
effective--allowed Attica to remain free of Spartan invasion and
crop-burnings for several years. During the peace, Socrates is
represented as carrying on with his dialectical conversations with
Athenians, concentrating on the nature of erotic love
**[418-416 *Phaedrus*]**, especially in
relation to the education in rhetoric that had been especially popular
in Athens since Gorgias's visit in 427. Plato's
*Symposium* also focuses on erotic love, bringing together in
February of 416 renowned Athenians--Socrates, the tragedian
Agathon, the comedian Aristophanes, the general Alcibiades, a doctor,
an orator, an unknown follower of Socrates, and Agathon's older
lover--who give speeches in praise of love **[416
*Symposium*]**. Again education is a central theme, but
so are the democracy and Eleusinian Mystery religion. In fact, at
least half the persons who celebrated Agathon's victory in the
tragedy competition were implicated in acts of
sacrilege--profanations of the Eleusinian
Mysteries--presaged in the dialogue, that were said to have taken
place in the months following the symposium but that had not been
reported to the authorities until much later. |  | **422** battle of Amphipolis

**421** "Peace of Nicias" declared

**416** subjugation of Melos |
| It was at about this time that Socrates married Xanthippe. From
the fact that they named their first son Lamprocles, it has been
assumed both that her father was named Lamprocles and that her dowry
was enough to provide for her needs. Their second son would be named
Sophroniscus for Socrates's father. |  |  |
| Meanwhile, Alcibiades persuaded the Assembly, over prescient
objections from Nicias (Thucydides 6.9-14), that Athens should
invade Sicily. Both Nicias and Alcibiades, along with Lamachus, were
elected to command. When the ships had been supplied and were on the
verge of sailing, almost all the city's boundary markers, called
*herms*, statues of the face and phallus of the god Hermes,
were mutilated in a single night. Since Hermes was the god of travel,
the city feared a conspiracy against the democracy. A commission was
formed to investigate not only the herm-smashing, but all crimes of
irreverence (*asebeia*) that could be discovered, offering
rewards for information. In a climate of near-hysteria over three
months, accusations led to executions (including summary executions),
exile, torture, and imprisonment affecting hundreds of people, some of
whom were close to Socrates (Alcibiades, Charmides, Critias,
Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and others). The actual herm-mutilators turned
out to be a young men's drinking club, and some of the accusers
ultimately admitted to lying; although death penalties that has been
imposed *in absentia* were rescinded, nothing could bring back
the innocent dead. |  | **415** preparations to invade Sicily;
herm mutilations; fleet embarks; commission receives evidence

**414** Alcibiades recalled for trial, defects to Sparta;
siege of Syracuse; death of Lamachus

**414 (winter)** Sparta reenters the war, following
Alcibiades's advice, takes and fortifies the deme of Decelea,
encouraging Athenian slaves to escape |
| As the Sicilian invasion foundered, Nicias, in sole command
while gravely ill with kidney disease, sent a letter to the Athenians
saying the army was under siege and should be called back or
reinforced; he asked to be relieved of his command (Thucydides
7.11-15). He was not relieved, but reinforcements were
sent--too few, too late. The war in Sicily ended in complete and
humiliating defeat. Spring brought a new attack on Socrates by
Aristophanes (*Birds*, lines 1280-3, 1553-5). Plato
sets a dialogue between Socrates and a rhapsode before the news of the
defeat reached Athens **[413 *Ion*]**, while the
city--short of military leaders--was trying to attract
foreign generals to help with the war. |  | **413** reinforcements arrive in
Sicily; army annihilated, some enslaved; execution of Nicias |
| The next few years were chaotic in Athens as the empire shrank
from revolts, and former allies refused to pay extortion/tribute any
longer. The treasury was spent, and the citizenry demoralized. The
democracy was overthrown in a revolution of "the Four
Hundred" followed by a government of "the Five
Thousand." What was left of the army, however, was loyal to the
democracy and persuaded Alcibiades to return to his former command.
Under his leadership, Athens began scoring victories, and morale
improved. Democracy was restored, peace offers from Sparta were again
rebuffed, and Athens established a commission to rewrite all the
existing laws. |  | **412** subject-allies revolt against
Athens

**411** oligarchic revolution; Alcibiades returns to
command

**410** restoration of democracy; peace with Sparta
refused; legal reforms begun |
| A wrestling school, newly erected, is the setting for Socrates
to examine the nature of friendship with a group of adolescents
**[409 *Lysis*]** who were agemates of Plato and
his older brothers. One of the *Lysis* characters, Ctesippus,
was present again two years later for a display by two sophists
(former generals) **[407 *Euthydemus*]**. |  | **407** Alcibiades in Athens; battle
of Notium lost, Alcibiades dismissed |
| Athens was meanwhile pursuing the war with Sparta by sea. Athens
won the sea battle of Arginusae, but at such cost that the city never
recovered: in barest outline, what happened was this. Two of
Athens's board of ten generals were under siege at Mytilene, so
the other eight commanded the battle. With thousands dead, and damage
to the fleet, two captains were sent to collect the casualties; a
storm prevented their doing so, while the generals hastened to give
relief at Mytilene. When news of the battle hit Athens, there was
outrage at the failure to save the wounded and collect the corpses for
burial. The board of ten generals was charged, but two fled (and two
were still in Mytilene), so six returned to Athens for trial in
October of 406 (Lang 1990). By luck of the lottery, Socrates was
serving on the Prytanes, the presiding committee of Council (Plato,
*Apology* 32b; Xenophon, *Hellenica* 1.7.15) when the
trial took place, not in a court before a jury but before the whole
Assembly. |  | **406** battle of Arginusae; trial and
execution of the generals; deaths of Euripides and Sophocles |
| The generals were being tried for a capital crime in one
day--a flaw in the Athenian legal code that Socrates would later
criticize (Plato, *Apology* 37a-b)--but, even worse,
they were being tried as a group, in direct violation of the Athenian
law of Cannonus requiring each defendant in a capital crime to receive
a separate trial. Some in the Assembly opposed the illegality, but the
opposition so incensed the majority that it overwhelmingly approved a
motion to subject the opposition to the same vote as would decide the
fate of the generals. At that point, several of the fifty members of
the Prytanes refused to put the question, so the generals'
accusers roused the crowd to greater anger. Socrates alone among the
Prytanes was left standing for the law and the generals; his refusal
to allow the vote had the effect of allowing one last, eloquent speech
from the floor that proposed a preliminary vote to decide between
sentencing the group and permitting separate trials (Xenophon,
*Hellenica* 1.7.16-33). The Assembly approved separate
trials, but a parliamentary maneuver invalidated the vote. When the
Assembly voted again, it was to decide the lives of the generals up or
down. All were condemned. The Athenians were soon to regret having
executed their remaining military leaders. |  |  |
| The following spring, Aristophanes again attacked Socrates, this
time declaring that it was no longer fashionable to associate with
Socrates who, with his "hairsplitting twaddle," ignored
the craft of the tragedians (*Frogs*, lines
1491-99). |  | **405** battle of Aegospotami; siege
of Athens |
| The next naval battle, Aegospotami, was cataclysmic and was
followed by the Spartan siege of Athens. The Athenians, recalling
their own treatment of the Melians, expected to be slaughtered when
the siege inevitably ended, but nothing of the sort occurred. When the
Spartans entered Athens, they required that the defensive long walls
be demolished, and they directed that the Athenians elect a government
that would reinstitute the city's ancestral constitution to
prevent the excesses of the democratic Assembly. The
*authority* of the government that was subsequently elected,
perhaps three per tribe--"the Thirty"--lies at
the root of any discussion of whether Socrates committed what would
now be called civil disobedience when he disobeyed their order (Plato,
*Apology* 32c-e). None of the contemporaneous sources, no
matter how hostile to the rule of the Thirty--Isocrates, Lysias,
Plato, and Xenophon--denies the legitimacy of their election.
That they formed a government that abused and exceeded its authority
no one could reasonably deny, but it is against just such governments
that acts of civil disobedience must sometimes be directed.
Undermining a corrupt government by refusing to harm a good man might
be unlawful, but not unjust. |  | **404** legal reforms begun in 410
completed; board appointed to add new laws, assisted by Council; death
of Alcibiades; Spartans enter the city under Lysander; long walls
demolished; "the Thirty" elected; seizures and executions;
roll of "the Three Thousand"; death of Theramenes;
democratic exodus to Phyle |
| The Thirty moved quickly after the election to consolidate power
by calling for Spartan aid, seizing the property of wealthy Athenians
and foreign residents, many of whom they executed (including
Lysias's brother, Polemarchus; and Nicias's son,
Niceratus--associates of Socrates). Critias and Charicles, two
leaders of the Thirty, sought to intimidate Socrates by forbidding
him, unsuccessfully, to speak to men under thirty (Xenophon,
*Memorabilia* 1.2.35). As the scope of the government's
executions widened to include detractors, and a select citizen roll of
3,000 was named, and all others disarmed, a moderate member of the
Thirty, Theramenes, objected to the wanton killings and found himself
taken captive at Critias's instigation. Socrates, and two young
men with him, were said to have attempted to intervene unarmed against
the Scythian guards, stopped only when Theramenes himself implored
them to desist (Diodorus Siculus 14.5.1-3, likely apocryphal).
After Theramenes's execution, many citizens left the walled
city: some regrouped in the distant and mountainous deme of Phyle,
planning to topple the Thirty (among them was Socrates's
childhood friend, Chaerephon); others went only as far as the Piraeus
where "the Ten" (including Charmides) chosen by the Thirty
were less effective at suppression than the Thirty themselves. |  |  |
| The Thirty, now increasingly viewed as tyrannical, were also
making contingency plans: they sent forces to secure the deme of
Eleusis for themselves by putting to death the population on charges
of supporting democracy (Xenophon, *Hellenica* 2.4.8-10;
Diodorus Siculus 14.32.5). Socrates remained in the city. The Thirty
attempted to implicate him in their executions by ordering him to join
others in going to Salamis to fetch the former democratic general,
Leon. It was Socrates's refusal to obey this order that has
controversially been called an act of civil disobedience. Luckily for
Socrates, before the Thirty could exact revenge, the democrats from
Phyle entered the city through the Piraeus and met the forces of the
Thirty in a battle where both Critias and Charmides were killed.
Remnants of the Thirty returned to the city to consider their options.
The Three Thousand, increasingly suspicious of one another, deposed
the Thirty and replaced them with a Board of Ten that was elected one
per tribe (Xenophon, *Hellenica* 2.4.23). The Thirty began
abandoning the city for Eleusis as the board called for Spartan help.
The Spartans arrived, led by Lysander and by one of their two kings,
Pausanias. Pausanias especially attempted to effect reconciliation
among all the Athenian factions, allowing the exiles to return and the
oligarchs to rule themselves in Eleusis. One such exile was Anytus, a
man hostile to Socrates and who would later support charges of
irreverence against him. **[402 *Meno*]**. As soon
as the Spartans' backs were turned, the restored democrats
raided Eleusis and killed the remaining oligarchic supporters,
suspecting them of hiring mercenaries. **[winter 401/0
*Menexenus*]** |  | **403** battle of Munychia; Board of
Ten takes charge, calls for Spartan aid; Spartans arrive;
reconciliation talks begin; exiles return

**403/2** new legal era proclaimed; new religious
calendar adopted; Sparta encourages reconciliation among Athenian
factions

**402-400** Spartan war with Elis

**401** remaining oligarchs killed; Xenophon leaves
Athens

**400** conflict shifts to the courts |



This brings us to the spring and summer of 399, to Socrates's
trial and execution. Twice in Plato's dialogues
(*Symposium* 173b, *Theaetetus* 142c-143a),
fact-checking with Socrates took place as his friends sought to commit
his conversations to writing before he was executed. **[spring
399 *Theaetetus*]** Prior to the action in the
*Theaetetus*, a young poet named Meletus had composed a
document charging Socrates with the capital crime of irreverence
(*asebeia*): failure to show due piety toward the gods of
Athens. This he delivered to Socrates in the presence of witnesses,
instructing Socrates to present himself before the king archon within
four days for a preliminary hearing (the same magistrate would later
preside at the pre-trial examination and the trial). At the end of the
*Theaetetus*, Socrates was on his way to that preliminary
hearing. As a citizen, he had the right to countersue, the right to
forgo the hearing, allowing the suit to proceed uncontested, and the
right to exile himself voluntarily, as the personified laws later
remind him (*Crito* 52c). Socrates availed himself of none of
these rights of citizenship. Rather, he set out to enter a plea and
stopped at a gymnasium to talk to some youngsters about mathematics
and knowledge.



When he arrived at the king archon's stoa, Socrates fell into a
conversation about reverence with a diviner he knew, Euthyphro
**[399 *Euthyphro*]**, and afterwards answered
Meletus's charge. This preliminary hearing designated the
official receipt of the case and was intended to lead to greater
precision in the formulation of the charge. In Athens, religion was a
matter of public participation under law, regulated by a calendar of
religious festivals; and the city used revenues to maintain temples
and shrines. Socrates's irreverence, Meletus claimed, had
resulted in the corruption of the city's young men
(*Euthyphro* 3c-d). Evidence for irreverence was of two
types: Socrates did not believe in the gods of the Athenians (indeed,
he had said on many occasions that the gods do not lie or do other
wicked things, whereas the Olympian gods of the poets and the city
were quarrelsome and vindictive); Socrates introduced new divinities
(indeed, he insisted that his *daimonion* had spoken to him
since childhood). Meletus handed over his complaint, and Socrates
entered his plea. The king-archon could refuse Meletus's case on
procedural grounds, redirect the complaint to an arbitrator, or accept
it; he accepted it. Socrates had the right to challenge the
admissibility of the accusation in relation to existing law, but he
did not, so the charge was published on whitened tablets in the agora
and a date was set for the pre-trial examination--but not before
Socrates fell into another conversation, this one on the origins of
words (Smith 2022). **[399 *Cratylus*]** From this
point, word spread rapidly, probably accounting for the spike of
interest in Socratic conversations recorded in *Theaetetus* and
*Symposium*. **[399 *Symposium* frame]**
But Socrates nevertheless is shown by Plato spending the next day in
two very long conversations promised in *Theaetetus* (210d).
**[399 *Sophist*, *Statesman*]**



At the pre-trial examination, Meletus paid no court fees because it
was considered a public duty to prosecute irreverence. To discourage
frivolous suits, however, Athenian law imposed a heavy fine on
plaintiffs who failed to obtain at least one fifth of the jury's
votes, as Socrates later points out (*Apology* 36a-b).
Unlike closely timed jury trials, pre-trial examinations encouraged
questions to and by the litigants, to make the legal issues more
precise. This procedure had become essential because of the
susceptibility of juries to bribery and misrepresentation. Originally
intended to be a microcosm of the citizen body, juries by
Socrates's time were manned by elderly, disabled, and
impoverished volunteers who needed the meager three-obol pay.



In the month of Thargelion **[May-June 399
*Apology*]** a month or two after Meletus's
initial summons, Socrates's trial occurred. On the day before,
the Athenians had launched a ship to Delos, dedicated to Apollo and
commemorating Theseus's legendary victory over the Minotaur
(*Phaedo* 58a-b). Spectators gathered along with the jury
(*Apology* 25a) for a trial that probably lasted most of the
day, each side timed by the water clock. Plato does not provide
Meletus's prosecutorial speech or those of Anytus and Lycon, who
had joined in the suit; or the names of witnesses, if any
(*Apology* 34a implies Meletus called none).
*Apology*--the Greek '*apologia*' means
'defense'--is not edited as are the court speeches of
orators. For example, there are no indications in the Greek text (at
35d and 38b) that the two votes were taken; and there are no breaks
(at 21a or 34b) for witnesses who may have been called. Also missing
are speeches by Socrates's supporters; it is improbable that he
had none, even though Plato does not name them.



Socrates, in his defense, mentioned the harm done to him by
Aristophanes's *Clouds* (SS2.1). Though Socrates
denied outright that he studied the heavens and what is below the
earth, his familiarity with the investigations of natural philosophers
and his own naturalistic explanations of such phenomena as earthquakes
and eclipses make it no surprise that the jury remained unpersuaded.
And, seeing Socrates out-argue Meletus, the jury probably did not make
fine distinctions between philosophy and sophistry. Socrates three
times took up the charge that he corrupted the young, insisting that,
if he corrupted them, he did so unwillingly; but if unwillingly, he
should be instructed, not prosecuted (*Apology* 25e-26a).
The jury found him guilty. By his own argument, however, Socrates
could not blame the jury, for it was mistaken about what was truly in
the interest of the city (cf. *Theaetetus* 177d-e) and
thus required instruction.



In the penalty phase of the trial, Socrates said, "If it were
the law with us, as it is elsewhere, that a trial for life should not
last one but many days, you would be convinced, but now it is not easy
to dispel great slanders in a short time" (*Apology*
37a-b). This isolated complaint stands opposed to the remark of
the personified laws that Socrates was "wronged not by us, the
laws, but by men" (*Crito* 54c). It had been a crime
since 403/2 for anyone even to propose a law or decree in conflict
with the newly inscribed laws, so it was ironic for the laws to tell
Socrates to persuade or obey them (*Crito* 51b-c). In a
last-minute capitulation to his friends, he offered to allow them to
pay a fine of six times his net worth (Xenophon *Oeconomicus*
2.3.4-5), thirty *minae*. The jury rejected the proposal.
Perhaps the jury was too incensed by Socrates's words to vote
for the lesser penalty; after all, he needed to tell them more than
once to stop interrupting him. It is more likely, however, that
superstitious jurors were afraid that the gods would be angry if they
failed to execute a man already found guilty of irreverence. Sentenced
to death, Socrates reflected that it might be a blessing: either a
dreamless sleep, or an opportunity to converse in the underworld.



While the sacred ship was on its journey to Delos, no executions were
allowed in the city. Although the duration of the annual voyage varied
with conditions, Xenophon says it took thirty-one days in 399
(*Memorabilia* 4.8.2); if so, Socrates lived thirty days beyond
his trial, into the month of Skirophorion. A day or two before the
end, Socrates's childhood friend Crito tried to persuade
Socrates to escape. **[June-July 399
*Crito*]** Socrates replied that he "listens to
nothing ... but the argument that on reflection seems best"
and that "neither to do wrong or to return a wrong is ever
right, not even to injure in return for an injury received"
(*Crito* 46b, 49d), not even under threat of death (cf.
*Apology* 32a), not even for one's family (*Crito*
54b). Socrates could not point to a harm that would outweigh the harm
he would be inflicting on the city if he now exiled himself unlawfully
when he could earlier have done so lawfully (*Crito* 52c); such
lawbreaking would have confirmed the jury's judgment that he was
a corrupter of the young (*Crito* 53b-c) and brought
shame on his family and friends.



The events of Socrates's last day, when he "appeared happy
both in manner and words as he died nobly and without fear"
(*Phaedo* 58e) were related by Phaedo to the Pythagorean
community at Phlius some weeks or months after the execution.
**[June-July 399 *Phaedo*]** The Eleven,
prison officials chosen by lot, met with Socrates at dawn to tell him
what to expect (*Phaedo* 59e-60b). When Socrates's
friends arrived, Xanthippe and their youngest child, Menexenus, were
still with him. Xanthippe commiserated with Socrates that he was about
to enjoy his last conversation with his companions; then, performing
the ritual lamentation expected of women, was led home. Socrates spent
the day in philosophical conversation, defending the soul's
immortality and warning his companions not to restrain themselves in
argument, "If you take my advice, you will give but little
thought to Socrates but much more to the truth. If you think that what
I say is true, agree with me; if not, oppose it with every
argument" (*Phaedo* 91b-c). On the other hand, he
warned them sternly to restrain their emotions, "keep quiet and
control yourselves" (*Phaedo* 117e).



Socrates had no interest in whether his corpse was burned or buried,
but he bathed at the prison's cistern so the women of his
household would be spared from having to wash his corpse. After
meeting with his family again in the late afternoon, he rejoined his
companions. The servant of the Eleven, a public slave, bade Socrates
farewell by calling him "the noblest, the gentlest, and the
best" of men (*Phaedo* 116c). The poisoner described the
physical effects of the *Conium maculatum* variety of hemlock
used for citizen executions (Bloch 2001), then Socrates cheerfully
took the cup and drank. Phaedo, a former slave echoing the slave of
the Eleven, called Socrates, "the best, ... the wisest and
the most upright" (*Phaedo* 118a).


## 4. Socrates outside philosophy



Socrates is an inescapable figure in intellectual history worldwide.
Readers interested in tracking this might start with Trapp's two
volumes (2007). Strikingly, Socrates is invoked also in nonacademic
contexts consistently over centuries, across geographical and
linguistic boundaries globally, and throughout a wide range of media
and forms of cultural production.



Though not commonplace today, Socrates was once routinely cited
alongside Jesus. Consider Benjamin Franklin's pithy maxim in his
*Autobiography,* "Humility: Imitate Jesus and
Socrates," and the way the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.,
defends civil disobedience in *Letter from Birmingham Jail* by
arguing that those who blame him for bringing imprisonment on himself
are like those who would condemn Socrates for provoking the Athenians
to execute him or condemn Jesus for having triggered his crucifixion.
In the visual arts, artist Bror Hjorth celebrates Walt Whitman by
giving him Jesus and Socrates as companions. This wood relief,
*Love, Peace and Work,* was commissioned in the early 1960s by
the Swedish Workers' Educational Association for installation in
its new building in Stockholm and was selected to appear on a 1995
postage stamp. A more light-hearted linking is Greece's entry
into the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest, Elpida's *Socrates
Supersta*r, the lyrics of which mention that Socrates was earlier
than Jesus.



At times, commending Socrates asserted the distinctiveness of Western
Civilization. For example, an illustrated essay on Socrates
inaugurates a 1963 feature called "They Made Our World" in
*LOOK*, a popular U.S. magazine. Today Socrates remains an icon
of the Western ideal of an intellectual and is sometimes invoked as
representative of the ideal of a learned person more universally.
Whether he is being poked fun at, extolled, pilloried, or just
acknowledged, Socrates features in a wide range of projects intended
for broad audiences as a symbol of the very idea of the life of the
mind, which, necessarily from a Socratic viewpoint, is also a moral
life (but not necessarily a conventionally successful life). 



There may be no more succinct expression of this standing than James
Madison's comments on the tyrannical impulses of crowds in
*Federalist* 55: "Had every Athenian citizen been a
Socrates; every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob."
The persistence of this position in the cultural imagination is clear
in his many appearances as a sober knower (e.g., Roberto
Rossellini's 1971 film) and a giant among giants, as in, for
example, his imagined speech, penned by Gilbert Murray, where he is
placed first among the "immortals" featured in the 1953
recording, *This I Believe*,compiled by journalist Edward R.
Murrow and linked to his wildly successful radio broadcast of the same
name. But Socrates also persistently appears in funny settings. For
example, an artist makes the literally brainless, good-natured
scarecrow featured in the 1961 animation, *Tales from the Wizard of
Oz*, answer to the name 'Socrates'; and the Beatles
make Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D., their sweet fictional character in
the 1968 film *Yellow Submarine*, respond to a question with
the quip, "A true Socratic query, that!" A more robust
recent example that mobilizes the longevity of Socrates'
association with reflection and ethical behavior is Walter
Mosley's crime fiction featuring Socrates Fortlow. His three
books follow a Black ex-con in Los Angeles with a violent past and a
fierce determination to live life as a thinking person and to do good;
the character says his mother named him 'Socrates' because
she wanted him to grow up smart, a reference to a naming custom
practiced by former slaves. The association of Socrates with great
intellect and moral rectitude is still kicking, as a quick glance at
the collection of Socrates-themed merchandise available from a wide
array of vendors will attest. Further, in the mode of "the
exception proves the rule," observe that in DC Comics, Mr.
Socrates is a criminal genius able to control Superman by subduing him
with a device that disables him mentally. 



In antiquity, Socrates did not act as a professional teacher of
doctrines; he did, however, self-identify as a knowledge-seeker for
the sake of himself and the benefit of those with whom he engaged,
young or not. So firmly entrenched internationally in today's
vernacular is his association with education that his name is used to
brand professional enterprises as varied as curricula designed for
elementary school, college, law school, institutional initiatives that
serve multiple disciplines, think tank retreats, cafe
gatherings, electronic distance learning platforms, training programs
for financial and marketing consultants, some parts of cognitive
behavioral therapy, and easy-to-use online legal services. We find a
less commercial example in *Long Walk to Freedom* (1994)
in which the great South African statesman Nelson Mandela reports
that, during his incarceration for anti-apartheid activism, his fellow
prisoners educated themselves while laboring in rock quarries and that
"the style of teaching was Socratic in nature;" a leader
would pose a question for them to discuss in study sessions. Another
example is Elliniko Theatro's S*ocrates Now,* a solo
performance based on Plato's *Apology* that integrates
audience discussion.



In U.S. education at all levels these days, Socratic questioning
implies no effort on the part of a leading figure to elicit from
the participants any severe discomfort with current opinions
(that is, to sting like a gadfly or to expose a disquieting truth),
but instead uses the name 'Socrates' to invest with
gravitas collaborative learning that addresses moral questions and
relies on interactive techniques. The unsettling and dangerous aspects
of Socratic practice turn up in politicized contexts where a
distinction between dissent and disloyalty is at issue. Appeals to
Socrates in these settings most often highlight the personal risks run
by an intellectually exemplary critic of the unjust acts of an
established authority. This is a recurring theme in politically minded
allusions to Socrates globally. A wave of such work took hold in the
U.S., Britain and Canada around WWII, the McCarthy Era, and Cold War.
Creative artists in literature, radio, theater, and television
summoned Socrates to probe what it means to be an unyielding advocate
of free speech and free inquiry--even a martyr to belief in the
necessity of these freedoms to meaningful and virtuous human life. In
these sources, his strange appearance, behavior, and views, especially
his relentlessly critical, even irritating, truth-seeking, and
anti-ideological posture are presented as testing Athenian
democracy's capacity to abide by these ideals. They suggest that
the indictment, trial, and execution are stains on Athenian democracy
and that a worrisome historical parallel is unfolding. These
full-blown interpretations of the life of Socrates require wrestling
with the whole issue of the historical Socrates; a claim to historical
accuracy was a crucial part of any case for his story's being
credible as a warning. 



Visually, we find monuments and other sculptural tributes to a less
overtly political Socrates in cities and small towns across the globe
in public spaces devoted to learning and contemplation. A stand-out
for its unusual focus is Antonio Canova's 1797 bas-relief,
"Socrates rescues Alcibiades in the battle of Potidaea,"
in which Socrates strikes a powerful pose as a hoplite. An 1875 piece
by Russian imperial sculptor Mark Antokolski foregrounds the personal
cost of Socrates's commitment to philosophy, portraying him
alone, a drained cup of hemlock at his side, slumped over dead.
Reproductions of, and drawings based on, ancient copies of what are
thought to be a fourth-century B.C.E. statue of Socrates by the
Athenian Lysippus (e.g., the British Museum's Statuette of
Socrates) are also in wide circulation. A particularly interesting one
can be found in graphic artist Ralph Steadman's
*Paranoids*, a 1986 book of Polaroid caricatures of famous
people. But the most influential image of the philosopher today is the
riveting, widely reproduced, 1787 painting, "The Death of
Socrates," by Jacques Louis David, now in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It captures the
philosopher's own claim to be reverent, his courageous decision
to take the cup of hemlock in his own hand, and the grief his unjust
fate stirred in others. 



David's neo-classical history-painting has come to be a defining
image of Socrates. This is curious because, while the design of the
painting abounds with careful references to the primary sources, it
ignores those sources' description of Socrates himself --
the ones cited in section 1 on Socrates's strangeness --
rendering the old philosopher classically handsome instead. Attending
to the primary sources has led some readers to wonder whether Socrates
might have had an African heritage. For example, in the 1921
"The Foolish and the Wise: Sallie Runner is Introduced to
Socrates," a short story in the NAACP journal edited by W. E. B.
Du Bois, author Leila Amos Pendleton tackles the issue. Her character,
a bright girl employed as a maid, responds to her employer's
account of the physical appearance of the great man born before Jesus
that Miss Audrey intends to tell Sallie all about: "He was a
cullod gentmun, warn't he?" This prompts the following
exchange: "Oh no, Sallie, he wasn't colored."
"Wal, ef he been daid all dat long time, Miss Oddry, how kin
yo' tell his color?" "Why he was an Athenian,
Sallie. He lived in Greece." Nails (1989) depicted Socrates as
an African village elder in a recreation of *Republic* 1. In
the visual arts, drawings and watercolors by the Swiss artist Hans
Erni resolutely portray Socrates as ugly as the sources describe him.
Socrates also sometimes resonates as Black (or queer, or touched),
independent of any discussion of physical attributes; this follows
from his renown for refusing to be defined by the stultifying norms of
his day. 



In Plato's *Phaedo*, Socrates says a recurring dream
instructs him to "compose music and work at it" and that
he had always interpreted it to mean something like keep doing
philosophy because "philosophy was the greatest kind of music
and that's what I was working at" (60e-61a). In
prison awaiting execution, he says he experimented with new ways of
doing philosophy; he tried turning some of Aesop's fables into
verse. We might view some of the deeply thoughtful, even loving,
engagements with Socrates in music and dance in light of this passage.
"Socrates" is the fifth movement of Leonard
Bernstein's Serenade after Plato's *Symposium*
(1954). He is the explicit inspiration for two works of choreography
by Mark Morris, *Death of Socrates* in 1983, and
*Socrates* in 2010, both of which work with 1919 compositions
by Erik Satie that directly reference Socrates. And we have a work
produced in 2022 at HERE in New York, *The Hang,* the stunning
product of a collaboration by playwright Taylor Mac and composer Matt
Ray.



Conjurings of Socrates appear outside philosophy as both brief but
dense references to discrete features of this puzzling figure, and
sustained portraits that wrestle with his enigmatic character. Details
of the sources mentioned above, and other sources that may be useful,
are included in the following supplementary document.



> 
> Resources for Teaching
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