PLATO’S B I OGRAP HY OF S OCRATE S

BY A E TAY OR . . L

FE LLOW OF THE ACADE MY

Read March 8 1 1 9 , 9 7

THE p ap er which I ha ve the honour of laying before my colleagues of to- of a of the Academy day is the n ture a simple experiment, an experiment which can make no claim to represent the results of

a or extr ordinary research profound speculation , but is, all the same, w o n . in my opinion well worth the making Its immediate interest is,

of no doubt , for the special student of the history philosophic thought, but it should also prove in som e degree attractive to every one who

in a has a genuine interest great literature, inasmuch as it ims at throwing some light on the literary methods of a great philosopher ’ who was at the same time one of the world s greatest literary and

of of dramatic artists . The question the relation the Socrates who ’ figures as the protagonist in all the most widely known of Plato s prose dramas to the Socrates who was a prominent figure in the

A of of B C of abso thens the last half the fifth century . . , is, course, lutely critical for the historian of Hellenic thought on the funda

of and of mental issues science, ethics, religion . It is also a question

‘ of interest to the student of the history literary forms . Even if we are indifferent to the whole history of the actual development of

as of scientific thought, we can hardly students literature be equally indifferent to the general problem suggested by' the sudden appear ance in the early years of the fourth century of a wholly ne w type of

wk a rtkb Aé o or prose composition, the E p s y g discourse of Socrates About the fact of the emergence of this type of composition just at can A this particular date there be no conceivable doubt . ristotle comments on the fact that the Socratic discourse is a distinct

Poetics 1 4447 2 w literary form , in the b , here he associates it with the versifi ed mimes of S0phron and Xenarchus and complains that the G m reek language possesses no generic na e for the type, inasmuch as ‘ ’ of a the word mime implies the use verse, and is thus only ppro

riate one of for as p to species a form which prose is, a matter of fact, as suitable a medium as verse . What Aristotle took to be the dis tinctive characteristics of this literary form is clear from the two remarks he makes about it . In the first place the recognition of the ’ community of form between the mime and the Socratic discourse ’ ’ implies that, in Aristotle s opinion, the Socratic discourse is dis ’ tin uished its g by realism . For, as we know from the ancient notices ‘ ’ ’ of the mimes and can see for oursel ves from Theocritus brilliant vm A

52 2$9 " PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

m of i n a r i itation a mime his fifteenth Idyll, and ag in f om the imita

of He rondas it was u a t tion , j st by their re lism tha they were dis

tin u ishe d of g from other and earlier kinds dramatic composition . It A is to the same purpose , as I take it, that ristotle observes in his Rhetoric 1 417 a 19 that mathematical discourses presumably he is

of " thinking such dialogues as that he quotes elsewhere, in which eno and Protagoras figu red as discussing the difficulties about the infi ni ’ tesimal— not 6 1 do exhibit 7, characters , because they reveal nothing

of w oa f ea t k c of the p p g, the wal and condu t the personages, whereas Socratic discourses do exhibit because it is about such matters that the personages speak What this means is made clear by a comparison with the passages of the Poetics in which Aristotle

1 00 explains rather more fully what he understands by 7 9 , character

ization to and why, important as it is the dramatist, it is less impor a of cc t nt than plot To the intending composer a su essful tragedy, or the plot story must be the first consideration , because the primary object of tragedy is to represent an action of a certain kind it only represents the p ersons who do the act or have it done to them because

it cannot represent the act in any other way , or, as he also puts it,

not of tragedy is the representation a man but of action and life,

1 450 1 6 if 1 450 1 iii . happiness and misery ( a ; b ) Or, as we should

perhaps prefer to phrase it, tragedy is concerned directly with the tragic situation with the personages who appear in that situation as

d to do m oing or suffering its concern is secondary . It has with the only in so far as their being the sort of persons they are is an indis pensable factor in bringing about the tragic situation or determining

a con its issue . Thus it shows us persons acting and by their ction

to of of tributing the kind situation we call tragic . What kind per sonalit do y they have should be shown only by what they . But a ’ 5 man s 15009 is not fully disclosed by the way in which he hears him in self some specially tragic situation . To understand it you require

7r oa f e o' t s' — of to know not only his acts but his p p , his settled habit

—in 6 0 will , a word, his personality, and this is why 6 g is only ‘ ’ exhibited by discourses in which it is made clear what some one ’ 1 Gor ias or Re u blic chooses or declines . Thus the g p , from this point

a i 91 of view, would be first and foremost portraiture of f 7. Socrates,

G Callicle s Th ras machus to P orgias, , y are not exhibited us by lato as

m a a contributors to so e high tr gic situ tion , but as engaged in quiet a nd of peaceful conversation , but from the course the conversation it is made clear what sort of things each of them would choose or

1 We might illustrate th e point by c onsidering how a modern novelist would be l el to e ct suc a c a a amlet ik y d pi h h r cter as H . PLATO’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES

how w decline, each might be expected to bear himself to ards the

us issues between which life forces all to choose . We do not see the ’ ‘ m k a of personages in act , but fro their tal we g ther what manner f man (floié g m g) each o them is . If we put the two observations of Aristotle together we may fairly gather that in his view the Eco/( p a

‘ — rucbs Aé yog and he seems always to mean by the words just those Specimens of the type which dwarfed all others by their superior

of P — merit, the dialogues lato is first and foremost a highly realistic o l representation of character r personality . It is just in the fu lness with which it reproduces or imitates a character that it differs from

far drama proper, in which characterization is only valuable so as it of is inseparable from the adequate presentation the tragic situation . n A d it is important to remember, what we sometimes forget, that the characters depicted in the Socratic discourse are almost with out exception notable personages of the actual history of the half 450 400 Ar im century from to , so that when istotle insists upon the ‘ portance of making a character 8p ow v or like he must be taken to mean in the case of a figure in a Socratic discourse not merely that

' be to human or itse a t sibi it shall true nature, consistent with lf ( constet ori inal as Horace says), but that it shall be like its g , faithful to the broad historical trut h about the named and known man after

who whom it is called, just as we should reasonably expect a novelist introduced Napoleon or Abraham Lincoln by name into one of his works to make the figure not merely possible and self-consistent but

f a true to actual fact, and regard it as a de ect in Thackeray th t the

f E smo d a a Ja o n . mes III , though natur l enough , is wholly f lse to history a P n We may reason bly infer, then, that Aristotle regarded the lato ic account of Socrates as in all essentials a true and trustworthy repre sentation of a great historical figure, just as we may infer from his exclusive use of Plato as a source of information about the teaching of Socrates that he looked on the dialogues as a faithful account of

of . d we the philosophical tenets Socrates In mo ern times, as all know, it has been the fashion to reject both these positions and to hold that Plato not only fathered on Socrates a set of doctrines of w hich he knew himself to be the author, but even provided him with a largely fictitious biography, and invented an unreal personality for s Pl him . According to ome theorists, things which ato relates of

on Socrates, such as e . g . the impression made him in early life by the

o f work of Anaxagoras, really belong to the life and character nobody but represent the typical development of the philosophical character ; according to others the central figure of the dialogues is a mere ‘ ’ n P a conve ient mask under which lato conce ls at pleasure himself, A 2 4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

A -i n ntisthenes, unnamed disciples or opponents, a word any and every ‘ ’ one but the a k the person whose name is on l bel attached to the mas . When we set ourselves to answer the question which party is right in A of or this dispute, ristotle and the mass ancient readers the moderns fi nd ff of the last century, we shall , as Socrates found about a di erent Re u blic question in the p , that a full and final decision requires us to take a long and circuitous path on which every one can hardly be

to or c to w expected have the leisure the special vo ation follo . But ’ to there is also a short cut which may lead a probable conclusion , to- and it is by this shorter road that I propose to proceed day . Without troubling oursel ves with wearisome researches into the f G history o reek philosophic ideas and terminology, we may put the

. P of e issue to ourselves briefly thus Does the latonic picture Socrat s, o of if we study it as a wh le, leave the impression being the delinea tion of a type or the result of superposing several portraits of ff men one or the a di erent upon another, has it char cter we should expect in the lifelike dramatic reproduction of a highly complex and Are l - individual personality we rea ly dealing with a genre study, in of M A t the style enander and the later comedy, or, as ristotle seems o for of indivi have taken granted, with a highly realistic portrait an dual " The attempt to piece together the biographical statements made in the different Platonic dialogues into a continuous narrative ought at least to leave us in a position to give a probable answer in

one or . to the sense the other Incidentally also, it may serve show how much of what is universally retained by the modem s as fact about Socrates has no contemporary authority for it but that of in of Plato, and ought therefore strictness to be rejected as doubtful authenticity if we are sincere with the belief that the so-called of not on Socrates history and the Platonic Socrates are two and e . Before I proceed to the detailed execution of the task I have set two r on before me, there are perhaps p eliminary points which a word

or two not un rofitabl . one may p y be said We may, for thing, ask what facts may fairly be taken as certainly known about Socrates on authority independent of the assertions of Plato or any other of the ‘ " of Socratic men nder this head we may reckon, course, any f in ormation derived from really ancient inscriptions , together with C all that is fairly inferable from the caricatures of the Old omedy, which go back to dates when those Socratic men whose writings have - been preserved to us were boys or infants . Well authenticated tradi of tions the late fourth century, derived from writers like Demetrius o f Phalerum and even Aristoxenus are similarly valuable when they v deal with matters not mentioned by the Socratic men , pro ided that PLATO’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES 5

c of we are careful to distinguish in the ase biased witnesses, like

Aristoxenus inter re , between the facts to which they testify and the p A of tations they put upon them . brief survey the information still derivable from these sources will show what our knowledge of to we Soc rates would amount , if set aside as possibly untrustworthy what we are told on the authority of the two Socratics whose writings of A have come down to us, or later writers like ristotle who appear A a merely to repeat the c demic traditions . one From inscriptional sources we learn j ust fact, which would in any case be certain on the testimony of so good a chronologist as

Phaleru m Ma rmor Parium of Demetrius of . The gives us the year ’ A Socrates death as a fixed date from which to reason . From risto Amei sias of phanes and his rival p , both whom produced comedies 423 in the year in which Socrates played the leading part, we gather of 47 or 48 was that at this date, when Socrates was a man about he a suffi ciently familiar figure to be made the object of burlesques on one intended to catch as topical pieces, and that notable feature about him was his poverty ; since this point was plainly very much

on as insisted by both poets, we may perhaps go as far to conjecture with Professor Burnet that the philosopher had recently incurred

. of A Clou ds some notorious losses From the play ristophanes, the , we gather further that he was interested in mathematical, cosmologi cal , and biological studies, and combined these interests with a kind of private religion which enjoined an ascetic rejection of the good things of this life and involved what were commonly regarded as fantastic notions about the soul and the unseen world . From a later

B ird 1 553 if of notice in the s ( . ) we may infer that these notions were such a kind that it was within the limits of legitimate parody to ’ represent Socrates as presiding over spiritualistic seances o f the familiar fraudulent kind at which his favourite follower Chaerephon of A acted the part the spirits evoked . ccording to the same play (1282) a taste for Socrates was like wearing long hair and carrying one of of - A a thick stick, the marks a pro Spartan at thens in the middle of the great war . One other vaguer reference we get in the Frog s (1 492) when the poet falls foul of young folk who neglect the ’ playwright s art to sit chattering over crazy hair-splitting problem s o — b m an of - with S crates y this ti e elderly man some sixty four or so . We m ay add to these notices one or two comic fragments of no — significance which accuse Euripides an older man by at least ten or — w of or m a t elve years being inspired by Socrates, and may y not be regarded as evidence in support of the later belief in the personal friendship of the two most remarkable in tellectuels of the time of the 6 PRO CEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

P out eloponnesian war . Beyond this, of all the anecdotes told of Socrates by later writers from Aristotle onwards there appears to be only one which comes with certainty from a source older than Plato or of C hi s Xenophon . Ion hios related in memoirs that Socrates had am A in his youth visited S os in company with rchelaus, the successor of A as of D Laertius naxagoras, who in the phr e iogenes translated ’ o physics from Ionia to Athens . As Ion also recorded anecdotes f his meeting with Sophocles when the poet was one of the generals

of 441—40 dispatched to put down the revolt the year , it is not u nlikely that his reference to Socrates means that Socrates and

A a w l rchel us were serving in this campaign . The event ou d then i or have occurred when Socrates was about th rty, thirteen fourteen

t P s years before the bir h of lato, and its remotenes will explain why it does not appear among the fe w necessary absences of Socrates from

P Ion a io D . . Athens recorded by lato ( p . g. Laert ii Thus the total information about the philosopher which can be regarded as coming certainly from sources earlier than the fourth century and independent of the group of much younger admirers whom he left behind him at his death is exceedingly scanty and affords no material f for a real biography or an account of the real nature of his in luence . had He had perhaps served in the campaign against Samos, been

of reduced to poverty by a time soon after the battle Delium , and apparently not earlier ; he had a curious stare and an odd way of rolling in his walk, was a great talker, and associated with persons ’ ’ odd who were supposed to hold spiritistic views, was the fashion - n ro 681 m of u with the you g p m at the time the Sicilian advent re, and

of was perhaps a friend Euripides . That is in sum and substance all we know independently of information supplied by men who were at least forty years his juniors, and as it will be seen , it does not

c For P a amount to mu h . the rest we have only the statements of l to and can Xenophon , together with any traditions which be traced ‘ ’ back to the Socratic men or to the Pythagoreans with whom

A ristoxenus - had associated, and in the case of the last named source of information we have constantly to face the problem of distinguish ing between the traditions themselves and the malevolent interpreta

' Aristoxenus our Gewahrsmann . tions put upon them by , There is indeed just one more statement which should perhaps A P be included in this summary . ccording to Isocrates, olycrates, ’ fe w a the sophist who published, a years after Socr tes death, the defamatory pamphlet which perhaps opened the series of writings ’ A about the philosopher s life and character, declared that lcibiades ‘ ’ of had been a disciple Socrates . Isocrates treats this as a gross PL ATO ’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES

P and palpable falsehood, thus, as rofessor Burnet reminds us, showing

a of P a himself quite in keeping with the represent tions l to , according to whom Socrates insisted that he had never followed the profession ’ e of a teacher, and cons quently had never had any disciples ‘ l or pupils at all . That A cibiades had been a young friend not of Socrates and influenced by him Isocrates does , of course, deny .

(Isocrates xi . I come now to consider my more immediate subject—the biography of Socrates as we could write it if we took Plato as our exclusive P of h source . roperly I mean , course, the biography w ich we could P collect from the latonic dialogues, but we must not omit from consideration the one work in which Plato speaks of Socrates in h ro ria ersona VIIt P . not p p p , the latonic Epistle I do propose here to make any formal defence of the genuineness of this important to of P document . It is enough say that the authenticity the latonic correspondence—which we must remember was known to Cicero and ’ included in the edition of Plato s works by Aristophanes of Byzantium — has bee n generally allowed by the be st critical and historical G G M students, Bentley, obet, rote, Eduard eyer, and only denied by

on . writers philosophy That is to say, for the letters we have the judgement of those who have no preconceived opinion of their own as to what the philosopher ought to say in his correspondence, against them the judgement of just the persons m ost likely to be

s of own bia ed, thinkers with pet theories their about what is or is ’ n ‘ And our ot Platonic in philosophy . for particular document we have also the verdict of the most important of those who have doubted or denied the authenticity of other items in the collection . Hence I propose to utilize it freely for my present purpose without 2 s u further di c ssion .

The letter, if such a name can be given to what is really a public or - was d semi public manifesto, ad ressed to the Sicilian partisans o f Dion after his assassination by Callippus and aim s at putting new heart into a party which had lost its leader by an exposition o f the fundamental principles for the sa ke of which Plato had

a . a and intervened in Sicili n politics Incident lly , to justify his cause

P a u o exhibit the consistency of his conduct, l to is led into an a t bio graphical retrospect of his earlier life and the way in which he had

e far ff t n b en forced, so as the public a airs of his own ci y were concer ed , 1 It is n oteworthy that Pl at o n ever call s him self a disciple In th e care ful accou nt of h is early years which h e se nt m u ch later to th e partisan s of Dion in Sicil h e calls Soc ate s sim l an elde rl frie d of h is own se e 8 y r p y y n ( pp . , 2 For fu t e disc ussio of E V II R . se e C . itte Ne a nt r h r n p r, e " ersu chu nge n tiber

Platon c . 7 Hac fort The Authorshi o the Platonic E istles . 84 ff , k h , p f p , pp . PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

to desist from direct political activity . The main purport of the narrative is that his original bent had been that of an active social reformer. Twice in life there had seemed to be an opening for such of a reformer at Athens, on the reconstitution the city with an oligarchical constitution after the final extinction of Periclean

a 404 of democratic Imperi lism in , and again at the restoration

a P the democracy by Thr sybulus and his friends . lato would have

c o- e a a been ready to op r te with either party in real social reform, but had discovered that each was bent on discreditable party ends . In both cases what finally disillusioned hi m was the unworthy treatment

u a — A meted o t to Socr tes the best and wisest of living thenians . Of the oligarchy of the thirty he says " There was a revolution in as ul on the existing constitution , which was denounced fa ty many

of was s l sides . The consequence this revolution the e tab ishment of of a s Now a body thirty irresponsible magistr te . some of these men

own s were my connections and relative , and actually invited me to take what might be considered my proper part in that administration . My feelings were such as might have been expected in so young

a ff a man . I supposed their m nagement of a airs would begin with a general reversion from an unprincipled to a righteous policy. C l e onsequently I observed very careful y how they would proc ed . But what did I find Before long they had made the old constitution e M of s em like a golden age . ore particularly there was the case

e of Socrat s, an elderly friend mine, whom I may fairly make bold to call the most upright man of the time . They despatched him and others to arrest a fell ow-citizen illegally and bring him to

to nolcn tem execution , hoping implicate him in their proceedings volen tem . S ocrates, however, disregarded the order and put his life in jeopardy rather than make himself an accomplice in such wicked

. of ness When I saw this and other grave indications the same kind, ’ I was disgusted and withdrew from the evil of the times . He then goes on to add that he would have been equally ready to serve the

of restored democracy, but for their equally reprehensible treatment a Socr tes . Not long after this the thirty and the whole system were m overthrown , and once more I was attracted, though ore slowly, of u m to a life p blic political action . The new ti e was, of course, one

and a s d of confusion much h ppened which cau ed natural isgust, and it is not surprising that in a revolution there should have been some

on a on cases of excessive revenges priv te enemies . Yet the whole the

B ut a a restored party showed notable forbearance . unh ppily cert in prominent and influential persons again interfered wi th my friend Socrates and brought him before the courts on a wicked charge of PLATO’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES 9

to a was conduct wholly foreign his char cter. He prosecuted con — de mne d and executed for impiety he who had refused to j oin in the old wicked proceedings in the case of one of their own exiled friends ’ 1 o wn at the time of their exile and ruin .

a are of The references throughout this p ssage , course , to the

n of L of a am a incide t of the illegal execution eon S l is, rel ted more

A olo ia and all fully in the p g , thus serve to establish beyond doubt

a o f as the historic l truth the story told there . well as incidentally to

m a m P m confir the statement th t Socrates, who lato is careful to ention

h e had simply as a friend for whom a profound admiration , had no ’ a m regul r disciples . That this should be the only re iniscence of ’ Socrates in a correspondence which belongs to Plato s old age is

own t ffa of L natural enough, since by his accoun the a ir eon was As an event which changed the whole current of his life . a young man he had aimed at the vocation of a practical statesman . He was at first willing to enter public life as a supporter of the government ‘ ’ of the Thirty until their attempt to make Socrates an accomplice in their breaches of the la w Opened his eyes to the real character of

a on to their administr tion later , he was anxious serve Athens under

re ime the revived democratic g , but was again disillusioned by the enmity of Anytu s and other persons of influence and position to — Socrates, the specially shocking thing about their conduct being, a to pparently, the ingratitude thus shown a man who had put his life in peril rather than comm it an illegality against one of the democratic partisans when it had been their tu rn to be under the ’ m a P a harrow . For it y be noted that l to s indignation does not lead him to deny that Socrates m ay ha ve done things which would ha ve brought him within the scope of the law against so ill -defi ned an ff i -6 ‘ ’ b o 6 m n . o ence as 5 , such as honouri g unrecognized divinities He

not a a an c a does , like Xenophon , m intain that Socr tes had, in y se,

old- i a been a model of fash oned Athenian piety . Wh t disgusts him is that such an accusation shou ld have been laid by the leaders of a party for whose friends Socrates had incurred the heaviest risks in

o wn of m V w their time isfortune . From the point of ie of the

as P a m Athenian law, l to of course knew, the oral virtue which Socrates had shown in the affair of Leon could be no defence to an ’ ‘ ’ cia e eza a m a accusation of fi . Th t real impiety is identical with or l ’ turpitude is a maxim not from Athenian law but from Plato s o wn

a a philosophy . To borrow an illustr tion from a l ter and very different

a G u a revolution , Socr tes might well have been a irondist but wo ld h ve ‘ ’ had a e no truck with the Mountain . We r now in a position to — Pla E VI I . 324 0 2 to 3 5 0. , p . A 3 10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

consider the actual statements about Socrates which occur in the

m ou a dialogues . In presenting the to y I sh ll do my best to make

a as far a a my narr tive full as possible, so as the f cts go, and sh ll also,

m a a a of course, confine myself to state ents of biogr phic l f ct, to the exclusion of expositions of philosophical convictions except where the m a o ission would make the biogr phy incomplete .

was So hroniscus Phaenarete Socrates, then , the son of p and his wife and belonged to the tribe An tiochis and the deme Alopecae (for

So hro iscu Laches 180- 1 for Phaenarete Theaet t n s . e us 1 4 p see e . g , , 9 a, f A m Gor ias 4 or olo ia 32 95 . the tribe, p g b, and for the de e g d) The

year of his birth is not specified , but it may be inferred from the fact that he is made on the first page of the Ap ology to sp eak of himself as more than seventy that we are to suppose him born not later than

4 0 or of 46 7 9 . the earlier months As to his social position , we learn M y , Theaetetus l assm to from the , the only p ace, except for a p g reference the Fi rst Alcibia des an , in which y Socratic man mentions his mother,

Phaenare w na of that te was a mid ife . Her me is suggestive good

am - f ily connexions, as we see from its appearance in the mock heroic ‘ ’ ’ genealogy of the imm ortal Amphith e u s of Aristophanes Acharnians

o hroniscu s m (l . Of S p we are told rather ore . His name occurs

a of more than once in the di logues, and from the Opening pages the Laches we learn that he was a family friend of his fellow demesman

L son o f Ariste ides to ysimachus, the the great and, according

of of Lysimachus, a man some consequence and high character . From the jest in E uthyp hro 1 1 c where Socrates speaks of his

a a a for a u ncestor D edalus, f mous in legend his skill in m king stat es

a So hroniscu s which could walk about , we see th t p must have been of " a member of an hereditary guild sculptors . nless we accept the

First Alcibiades P one as a genuine work of lato, this is his and only

of S o hroniscus n reference to the calling p , and u fortunately tells us even less about the circumstances of the family than we should learn about those of a modern eminent m an in his early years from the

a m was a M a st te ent that his father Free ason . The gener l impression , ’ w P on ho ever, which lato s account leaves us is quite inconsistent with ‘ the popular conception of Socrates as a genius who rose almost from ’ ‘ the gutter and untouched by the influences agitating the good ’ of m La ches society his age . The re arks of the imply at least that S oph roniscus was a man of weight and influence in the affairs of his

or a w a deme township, and there is nothing to be r out the vie th t because he belonged to a guild which regarded Daedalus as its ‘ ’ a ncestor , he must have been something very much like a working

- one or a . u stone mason brickl yer And, as we shall see, tho gh with PLATO’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES 11

notable exception the Platonic dialogues prefer to depict S ocrates

either in ripe manhood or advanced age , it is regularly assumed in é of them that he had the entr e to the best society all kinds, where

of he was admitted by the most eminent men the time as an equal , and that he encountered the most distinguished representatives of thought and letters from the non -Attic Hellenic world on terms

a a a of perfect equ lity . In particular it seems cle r th t we should be wrong if we read into Plato the m odern notion of Socrates as having

all u f . P been thro gh li e hampered by poverty . It is true that lato " of does depict him as exceedingly poor at the close his life . He makes him say in the Ap ology that the highest fine he could pay not m to a But would a ount more th n a mina . we must recollect that he also expressly ascribes this po verty to his lifelong devotion to a spiritual quest which left him no time to serve tables, and also that the close of the Peloponnesian War had been followed by a fi nan

cial collapse in which even the richest had suffered badly . To take

or m e of a only two three fa iliar instances, the famous w alth the f milies of G Aa xkbn' kovro of icias u allias the s, and N vanished in the conf sion 1 5 of the year of anarchy, and we find Lysias (xix . ) dwelling in the peculiar tone of pathos appropriate to the law-courts on the straits to r of M rrhinus we which Phaed us y had been reduced. It is true that ’ of a of Re u blic begin to hear Socr tes want means in the p , where the

S of Archidamian scene is laid omewhere in the early years the war, and that the fact of his poverty is treated as notorious by the comic 423 P s poets in the year . But, as rofessor Burnet remind us, Socrates was still servi ng as a hoplite the year before 423 at Delium and the year A after at mphipolis, and this means that until then at any rate he was

decidedly not in any dire p overty . In fact one may reasonably con j ecture that he must have suffered some rather sudden and consider able loss between the affair at Delium and the attack of the comic n poets o him in the following year . Indeed the iteration with which Aristophanes returns to this topic is rather difficult t o explain if the

of impoverishment Socrates was not a recent event . There is at any rate no reason to suppose that in his early life he was cut off from

of m or a a sources culture by want of eans the need to e rn his bre d .

one a P In fact , in the di logue in which lato professes to be dealing

Parmenides with the youth of Socrates, the , he represents him as having as a m atter of course free access to the society of one of the

m o f ff of P thodorus o f most pro inent men a airs the period, y son Isolochus , who figures m Thucydides a s being 111 his riper age a person

of fi rst all Archidamian rate importance through the war. Given an v u w t initial re erse after the battle of Deli m , when e take into accoun A 4 12 PROCEEDINGS O F THE B RITISH ACADEMY the growing financial pressure caused by the failu re of the great

- of Sicilian expedition, the land blockade Athens and the gradual

u - De cele an a destr ction of her sea power in the war, and the cr zy Ter rorism of the Thirty and remember that for many years at any rate before his death Socrates had wholly devoted himself to his spiritual vocation we can readily see that no inference can be drawn from his poverty in 399 to the wealth and social position of his parents or

own of to his financial position in the first forty years his career.

h ow The more reasonable question would be such a man , after such a career, could be so much as able to keep himself supplied with food and even in a position to pay a fine of as much as a mina without a n m And A olo ski g for ti e . it is clear that in the p gy Socrates means on to say that he could pay this much down the spot, since he does not u ff as ff s pplement the o er, was customary when an o ender could not m discharge the penalty im ediately, by the suggestion of imprison ment until the fine has been paid . P We may, I think, infer that the latonic notices are probably a sufficient basis for the statements about the family of Socrates which we find in the later writers appealed to by Diogenes Laertius ;

a to in particular, there ppears be no real evidence that Socrates him P ’ self had ever followed statuary or any other craft . lato s assertions about his youth and early manhood at least im ply that he had from ’ n to the first abu dant leisure satisfy his passion for science , and the late story of the figures of the Graces which were shown to visitors to Athens as the work of Socrates prove only that these figu res were 1 o shown in a much later time as such, but nothing m re . It is also

a worth while to note th t Xenophon, who is still regarded in what may be called official quarters as so trustworthy an authority on ’ to or the facts of Socrates life, never refers his parentage names either

So hroniscus or Phaenarete one p , except in the brief passage in

H ellen ica I of ffa , where he refers to the behaviour Socrates in the a ir of Ar inusae the trial of the generals who had commanded at g . There ' he speaks of the philosopher for once as Ewkpdm' s Ecoqfip omo kov

M i / one s e j i a las. In the other place outside his Socratic discour es

It t ue as P ofe so Ga e em m e t at Pausa as a ea to a e is r , r s r rdn r r inds , h ni pp rs h v e t e se statue us 8 5 B ut th e fo me as a all e Pa . . 22 . ix . 3 s e t at s n h s ( i , in r r p g h h e says is that the grou p was c urre ntly ascribe d to Socrates (Kai Xcip tr' a s‘ w pdm ‘ ’ wori o a t rc w2 w ovta xov Ae ovm so t at h e can a dl be e sum e to be ea j ¢p y ), h h r y pr d sp king w t ce rta t on th i fu ll cussio h F a e o t . S ee th e of t e o t in ze i h in y p n dis n p in r r, ’ — Pausanias s Descri tion o Greece vol . . 26 8 2 e e the aut o com es t o p f , ii , pp 7 , wh r h r ’ the co clus o t at Soc ates ce ta l did n ot e xe cute th e o al e l f n i n h r r in y rigin r ie , t ou he a m t th e ossi l t a h ma a m a e a c f it h gh d i s p bi i y th t e y h ve d opy o . PLATO ’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES 13

— Anabasis 1 where he refers to the philosopher the story in iii . of ’ Socrates disapproval of his connecting himself with the ad venture of C a prince yrus, he s ys only Socrates the Athenian evidently pre supposing that the person so described will be too well known to his

a readers to require any further specification . The e rliest allusion to t S o hroniscus P far a of the craf of p , outside lato, is, so as I know, th t

m of Phlius al a At flo oo a . L . Ti on , who c ls Socr tes a g s (Timon p D . k of a ii . At the ris deserting chronologic l order it may be well to deal at this point with the one other piece of inform ation ’ ff Plato gives us about Socrates family a airs . As we learn from the

Phaedo a of Socr tes was married to a lady of the name Xanthippe,

two of who survived him , and had by her three children , whom were

at and quite young the time of his death, the third no more than l 34 of a lad (Ap o ogy d) . The names the children are never men tioned P a for by l to , and here, once, we are indebted to Xenophon for a piece of real information . From him we learn that the name ‘ ’ of the son who was a lad at the time of his father s death was

Lam rocles n S o hron iscu s p . (The names of the two you ger, p and Me nexe nus may possibly have been mentioned in the dialogu e on

A of distinguished ancestry ascribed to ristotle, which I shall have to or Laertius speak in a moment, Diogenes may have got them from the third-century biographical writers to whom he also refers

of for his statements about the family Socrates . ) It has very properly been observed that both the name Xanthippe and the names Lamp rocle s and Me nexe nus have a highly aristocratic ’ m of A e Clouds sound . Fro the opening monologue ristophan s we gather that a name with ‘ hippos ’ in it was thought to stamp its ’ of V V m a e our bearer as the caste of ere de ere , and we y r mind selves that the masculine Xanthippus was a name in the famous

of Alcm ae onidae f o . house the , and was borne by the father Pericles When I come to say som ething about the Social connexions of ’ a a P Socrates, it will, I think, be m de cle r that lato s account pre supposes a close relation with the fa mily and immediate circle of P x m ericles himself, and this may ha e so ething to do with the name ’

. as P f u out of Socrates wife It is, ro essor B rnet has pointed , another

a of a a n ot indication of the soci l position X nthippe th t the second,

of a am of a the eldest, son the f mily bore the n e the p ternal grand

at . am Lam rocles u f her The n e p , which obvio sly belongs to the nom en c lature t m a u of high socie y, was presu bly bestowed in hono r of some

a a — a rel tive of X nthippe, possibly her f ther . Thus it seem s to be ‘ fa a a at u se a a m a a irly cle r th t Socr es, to the vulg r phr se, rried bove him I need hardly re m ind you that the stories of the shre wishness 14 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADE MY

m P a All of Xanthippe find no confir ation in l to . that he records of ’ of a her is her conduct on the day Socrates de th which, as he describes

a aff a a a it, is th t of an ectionate wom n of ordin ry intellectual cap city,

‘ who can only take in the on e thought that she will never see her

a husband again . Nor is there anything in the ccount to suggest that

Socrates was indifferent to his wife . Since Xanthippe is said to have ’ been discovered in company with Socrates when his friends were

on of a admitted early the morning his l st day, she had presumably

o spent the night before with him in the prison , and his famous instru tions for her removal appear to be dictated partly by the desire to save her from a complete breakdown , partly, as he himself remarks

on Phaedo 1 17 t later ( d), by the correc anticipation that in any case the actual scene at his death would be almost intolerably trying to one of a of the nerves of more than member the p rty . The presence i ul his wife and ch ld wo d no doubt have made it quite unbearable . It must be remembered that there is an interval in the Platonic narrative immediately before the execution scene in which Socrates n v w ul - has a last i ter ie with his family, so that the p pit rhetoric which ’ has been spent on making out a contrast between the hardness of

ff of O L Socrates and the a ectionateness ur ord, who provided for His

ff o mother in His last moments, is as false to fact as o ensive t

Christian feeling . Xenophon also says nothing to the discredit of

Xanthippe except that, like many devoted mothers, she had a ’ temperament which sometim es called for patience on the part of

of of her husband and her son . The source the popular conception Xanthippe seems to be the anecdotes of her high temper told by i sa As D ogenes who does not even y where he got them . he is known to have used the gossiping Alexandrian writers Satyrus and Hierony

R Aristoxenus mus of hodes, as well as the deliberate slanderer , they presumably have no better authority behind them . It may possibly be that the Phaedo throws some light on the quaintest of all the traditions of a later age abou t the family life of

Socrates . There was a story, which we meet both in Diogenes and P in lutarch , according to which Socrates had two wives, Xanthippe

M m a s and yrto, who is so etimes called a d ughter, sometime a grand

u of Arist ides da ghter e the Just . The gossips were undecided

t M a whe her yrto was the e rlier or the later wife, and some of them

a h a said that Socr tes lived with bot at once, lleging as an explanation a ridiculous story that the Athenians were so badly hit by the decrease in population in the later years of the Peloponnesian war

a a 1 s Aristoxenus th t they legalized big my . The story told by ,

Sat rus s one Hieronymus and y , and has u ually been dismissed as of PLATO ’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES 1 5

I hodomontades of fi rst- author B ut the characteristic r the named . it — also seems to have been related so far as the mere ascription of two — wives to the philosopher goes in the doubtfully authentic Aristo telian dialogue on Distinguished Ancestry and by Dem etri us O f

hal erum a of m t P . The uthority De e rius seems to me too great to

m O f a permit of the si ple rej ection the t le as a pure fiction . Hence it seem s to me not without so me significance that according to the

Ph do a . ae , Socrates at his de th left a baby in arms behind him For we are told that when the friends of Socrates arrived at the prison ' a they found Xanthippe with her fl a zdtou there . The only expl nation of the presence of the child that is at all natural is that it was a baby A olo too young to be left by itself. (According to the p gy Socrates ’ n a cdt a wh o left two sons who were then , but we hear only of one w actually spent the last night in the prison . ) This indicates t o of things, the remarkable physical vigour Socrates, who must have d begotten the chil when he was well on at least towards seventy, and of a the considerable disparity age between himself and X nthippe . If we bear in mind the age at which a woman of Southern Europe

-P m at ceases to bear children , lato fixes it, as you will re ember,

— we forty, may infer that Xanthippe must in all probability have

us Lam rocl been a good thirty years younger than her h band . As p e s is said in the Ap ology to have been 7787; p e rpdm ov at the time of his ’ u father s death, it is natural further to s ppose that his birth fell in ’ or the first year two of Socrates married life with Xanthippe . In

1 W e have the following versions of the story

. t a t a c ate w D L . 2 . t le t So a . 6 o m e t o e . B th e fi r t ii Aris s ys h r s rri d wiv s y s , Xa t e h e had Lam rocle s th e e co M to dau hter of Aristeide s the Just n hipp , p , s nd, yr , g , b e ma e t out a ow and h er h e h ad S o h roniscus and Me n x n rri d wi h d ry , by p e e us. C o olo as e ll as th e te tim o of Plato ows the false oo of t i ( hr n gy, w s ny , sh h d his vers on ’ of th e tale . Pos l D . L. h as uote istotle wro l lac Xa t e sib y q d Ar ng y, p ing n hipp fi t stea of e co B ut t at case th e to rs in d s nd . in h s ry be com e s inconsiste nt with th e accou nt of Xe noph on wh o re fe rs t o Xanthippe as notoriously hard to m anage in his S m osium and o ousl t e e fo e m ea s h e r and n y p , bvi y h r r n o othe r to be th e m othe r of ose i tem e Lam rocles c om lai s Memorabilia ii wh h gh p r p p n in .

Pluta c Aristeides 27. De m etriu s of Phale rum Hie o m u of R o e s r h , , r ny s h d ,

Aristox en us an d r stotle — the dialo ue n e i e b eveia — , A i if g p y s is genuine say that Soc ate s co a ite it M rto th e randdau hter of Ari i r h b d w h y g g ste de s. He h ad inde e d a ot e r f but too M r in additi as sh e was i e to o owe an d e at o e rt . n h wi , k y n w d d , in gr p v y

t e ae us x iii . 556 a . S ocrate s sai Callisth e n es Dem e t ius risto A h n is d by , r , A xe nus to a e h ad tw o e Xa t i e an d M to a re at- ra dau t f h v wiv s , n h pp yr g g nd gh er o

‘ Ariste ides r st otle n e i e b e veia s is th e c omm on sourc e for th e t A i p s ory . y l ‘ ’ D L . i i . 26 . M wa th . Som e sa t at rto s e fi st Wife ot e rs i c l udi y h y r , h , n ng Sat ru s and Hie ro m us t at h e was m a e d t o bot at o c r h y ny , h rri h n e . Fo t e

t e ia s a xious to m a e ood th e l osse s in th e m ale la a A h n n , n k g p opu tion , m de a se ism t at a man s oul be le all m a r e to one t e a oma but p ph h h d g y r i d A h ni n w n , e e t c l a al b g hi dre n by se cond so. BRITI H ACADE 16 PROCEEDINGS OF THE S , MY that case Socrates must have been about fifty at the least when he

Now married a wife of probably under twenty . in view of the regular practice in Greek com mun ities it is hard to believe that a man intending to marry at all would have waited until this age to t do it . Such conduc would be especially surprising in Socrates who had if anything a weakness for pluming himself on the fidelity with Nomos of which he conformed to the his city, and is not likely to have forgotten that begetting sons for the city was a universally recognized civic duty. (Even the tale which represents him as having two wives at once is careful to assert that he takes the second to com —i e ply with the imaginary special law enjoining bigamy . . as a duty m e imposed on him by the State . ) Hence it seems to not improbable

a A olo Phaedo that, as the d ta drawn from the p gy and suggest,

Socrates was a widower when he married Xanthippe . In that case, in view of the evidence of the Laches for the intimacy of Sophroniscus of Ariste ide s w with the fa mily , it ould not be at all surprising if one of he was married as a young man to its members, as Demetrius A f haleru m . o P , and j ust possibly ristotle, asserted The reason why we hear nothing of such a first wife in Plato or Xenophon would be simply that their knowledge of Socrates of course did not go As . not w back to his early manhood it is, we should kno from Plato whether Socrates had ever been married to Xanthippe if it had not been necessary to mention her for the purposes of the

a o Ap ology and Ph ed . m to To return fro this digression the main theme of my argument . Nothing is recorded by Plato of the early boyhood of Socrates beyond the one fact that the famous warning voice attended him even in "i n n a tdbs‘ d d evov A olo 31 childhood ( pg p , p gy d), a fact which has ’ an important bearing on Plato s ascription to him in later age of other ’ signs of the temperam ent ofa visionary and on Aristophanes burlesq ues f of him as an occultist . Beyond this we hear no more o him fro m Plato until he is already a man though a very young one when we get a glimpse of his special interests from the professedly auto biographical narrative of the Phaedo and agal n from the introductory

Parmenides a pages of the . Both sketches gree in representing him as at that time principally interested in the latest mathematical and physical theories of the early science which was just on the verge of

o a m eclipse by the new light f sophistic hum nis . According to the Phaedo he was acquainted with and originally an enthusiast about ’ ’ - a io ro ta n e i bzfo eco bu t what they c ll natural science ( p p g g), much perplexed by the hopeless incompatibility of the results to which ff w it had led in di erent hands . Thus he kne bo th the Ionian

1 8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

1 a of " M a a at pupil eno . ost of the di logues depict Socr tes a later but all a as period of life, they gree in representing him well known and highly thought of by the most distinguished society of the Laches Periclean democracy . Thus , in the , dated shortly after the

a of m of b ttle Delium , we find Socrates on ter s familiarity with both Nicias and Laches and highly thought of by both of them not only for his personal courage but for his thorough understanding of u to military professional matters . He is eq ally familiar, judge from

P rota oras of the g , with the brilliant wits who formed the entourage

Ga a Hi onicus of lli s son of pp , and grandson the famous millionaire of the time of the Persian wars ; the Timaeus represents him as 2 Critias consorting as an equal with the elder and the rising, though Herm ocrate s w not yet fully mature, Syracusan statesman as ell as n with Timaeus himself, who is described as bei g at the very top of the tree in astronomy and having in his past life filled the most ffi w important o ces in his native state, apparently before the overthro of the domination of the Pythagorean order in the cities of Magna 3 raecia l a G . It shou d be speci lly noted that he is represented as p ersona g rata in the houses of m en who are typically representative of re im e u of C the Periclean g , s ch as those ephalus, and the family to P which lato himself belonged . This would naturally mean that he ’ of P - P rilam es was welcome in the house lato s step father y p , whose close connexion with Pericles is proved by the malicious allusions of the comic poets who represented Pyrilampe s as keeping a p etite maison ’ for P t ericles and his misses . Thus, from Plato s represen ation, we should conclude that Socrates had been on friendly terms with many ’ of m P the most pro inent Whigs , as rofessor Burnet has called the party who , without ceasing to be loyal to the democracy, disapproved of the inferior men who guided its fortunes after the death of Pericles . Even the notorious friendship for Critias the oligarch probably comes

Critias under this head, as had always figured as a democrat until his moral character was ruined by his entrance into the coterie of the ’ Thirty The general effect of Plato s account on my own mind is the impression that he wishes us to think of Socrates as being from

of a the first a person a sound social standing, mingling on equ l terms with the best society of the Pericle an régime and devoted

1 Al ibiad I . 1 1 c es 9 a . 2 Th at Profe ssor B urnet is right in his ide ntifi cation of th e Critias of th e Tim aeus s oul eall e e d f h d r y n no proo . 3 Timaeus 20 a r l ad w t att t f w e e e e r w o d sh ou d be e e o . E e e , wh v y r r i h n i n v n i c ou ld ge t over th e palpable absurdity of supposing th at th e poem s of Solon we re th e

last o e lt at an t m e in th life f Critias 6 Tap T tdKo vr' a w at is sai e e n v y y i e o p , h d h r s ows t at th e Critias b i h h m e ant is an Old man with a great pu lic care er behind h m . PLATO’S BIOGRAPHY OF SO CRATES 1 9

a e th e s i of and a l from a very early g to pur u t science, cert in y not, m m w s as a and after the fashion of so e odern riter , a kind of plebei n

do s n a s n . illite rate but mysteriou ly i spired rti a Hence, though I not wish here to suggest an opinion eith er way on the genuineness o f

l lif enexenus n in that singu ar work the , I see nothi g out of keep g with ’ Plato s stan ding hypothesis about the mann er of life of Socrates in th e su g gestion m ade there of a personal intim acy with As pasia and n u P m an co seq ently with ericles . The point is not wholly uni port t in conn exion wi th the satire Of the Rep u blic and Gorg ias on the Im peri al democ racy (in th e Gorg ias it will be remembe red the person of

P s e c s of d s on ericle is not spar d), and the omment mo ern exp ositor

a the po litical a ttitude reveal ed by these pass ges . That this almost un qualified censure of Athenian democracy is m eant by Plato to be ta ken as re prese nting the attitude Of Socrates him self seems to me s i s s s quite certain . The pas ion wh ch breathe through the pa sage in n r P oliticu s Laws questio is wholly absent f om books like the and , where another than Socrates discusses the merits and faul ts of

a n a democracy . It is directed not gai st democr cy in general but

a P s a against the very speci l form of democracy which ericle had cre ted,

r w r l d on a ur a democ acy hich is prima i y commercialize , bent the c pt e ’ l of r o i m the world s t ade, and, sec ndar ly and by consequence, com itted to Of m e i x a and its e n s far too a policy I p rial stic e p nsion, bitt r e s is intense to represe nt the moral verdict of a thi nker looking back on

n s a of i s ram a va i hed st te th ng . It is d atically right only in the mouth of a disill usioned brave old m an who has li ved hims elf through the a e is n n has an d a its g he denou ci g, seen perh ps once believed in

is and iv t o n a u l prom e l ed witness its i evitable coll pse . It is eq a ly — clear that this vehem ent arraignment of th e Imperial democracy an d — indeed of Pericles himself as wantin g in respect of a so und moral ‘ ’ basis is not mea nt to be the judg ement of an outsider from the s lower order . It is intended as the final pronouncem ent of one who had known the lea ders of the movement and thorou ghly underst ood

r m all e their pu poses, and found the , on matur reflection , deficient in u ru a r— ui the one thing needf l in a t e le de gen ne sta tesmanship . What Plato tells us of the ea rly ma nhood an d prime of Socrates is c n a t s li a a on ected with two m in opic , his mi t ry exploits, and the f mo

t r of i a t a a hi n m d ut e ance the Delph c or cle which more h n nyt g else for e , as P ss has a urn - o hi s a rofe or Burnet s id, the t ing p int in c reer. The

ec m a be a s in a n s former subj t y de lt with fir t few brief sente ce .

at s all m m was on e m s in m Socr e , for his ysticis , not of the ystic who

1 ' Lik e th e Impe rialism (so-c all ed) of our ow n fi nan cie rs an d comm e rcial m o o olist s wit in an d wit out th e " it ed Ki n p , h h n ng dom . PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY transcendental emotion is most regularly aroused by loneliness and

h and t e a of . O f contempl tion nature He Wordsworth, in spite some

o m a f marked points f rese bl nce, are in this respect mystics o radically opposed schools, the urban and the rustic . It was not the sleep that is among the lonely hills ’ that induced in Socrates the mood Of

and interior stillness reflection of the soul back upon herself, but the

bu rn o f . busy noise and man Hence, except when on active service m - of he was the most ho e keeping townsmen , devoted to the crowded streets of Athens with even more than Johnson’s devotion to the streets f ‘ ’ o London . The trees of the country side in his own language ‘ ’ had nothing to say to him ; even a short excursion to the Isthmus G to see the ames was so contrary to his habits, that it is regarded as

t Crito 52 A a one wor h chronicling ( b) . p rt from this occasion , he was only absent from Athens when his duty as a citizen took him into the

of stricken field . This seems to me more like the peculiarity an actual man than the invention of a dram atic genius imagining

of a fictitious character. It may, course, be said that the whole modern romantic feeling for nature is a thing unknown to the Hellenic - ’ world, only we have the choruses of Euripides, Socrates elder con

a of temporary, to prove the opposite, and in p rticular the lyrics the

B acchae w h ow sho us potent in ancient times, as well as in our own , w was the association bet een lonely nature and the spirit of mysticism .

Yet of m a and there is a type mind, less co mon th n the other perhaps not likely to be imagined by one who has had no actual contact with

ffi scufflin n it, in which the roar of tra c, the restless g of the huma ’ ant-heap and the wilderness of bricks and m ortar are still more potent than the silences of nature to make the soul realize her own essential solitude and render her apt for the communication of the beatifi c v T ision . Francis hompson with his vision of the shining ’ traffic of Jacob s ladder pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross

am a is an ex ple, and Socrates would seem to have been such nother .

S m osium In the y p , when the vision suddenly overmasters him, he is in the act of making his way along the streets to a dinner-party of the

a . u our g yest It is another touch, tr e enough to , nature, that the

isionar -in - y quality goes in him hand hand with the soldierly, as it has done with men like Gordon and others . It is from no idle fancy that ‘ ’ Plato represents the most famous of these rapts as taking him when

was a m a he serving in the trenches before Potid ea . We are e nt to feel

a in a a in a of th t the serene cour ge of Socr tes the f ce the foe, of which Alcibi ades is m ade to say that it far surpassed that of Laches 011 the

a . dis strous day of Delium , there is just a touch of the unearthly Socrates is strong and daring and above everything else serene in the PLATO ' S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES 21

‘ n an G a hour of da ger, ideal warrior just because, like al had, he is at

a m an - t - P a of heart even more saint th n a arms . l to names three these

am a a P a a 431 a u and c p igns, th t of otid e ( th t of Deli m that of Amphipolis and presumably these were the only three

A lo 28 u ( p o gy e) of any note, tho gh it is curious that we hear nothing a f 422 of any milit ry service o Socrates after . As he would not be ’ ffi e a w m m 41 1 O cially a y p exe pt fro further service until , the explana tion m ay be that during the ten years in question there was no land fighting serious enough to demand the calling up of men of advanced Archidamian middle age. Why nothing is said of service in the war

431 424 422 . P itself except in , , and is a further question ossibly Socrates may ha ve taken his part in the other years in the defence of

Attica against the regular annual invasion of the Peloponnesian forces . Hence Plato would have no occasion to mention the fact in recording

s on the occa ions which his hero left Athenian territory . It is hardly m e credible to that the philosopher, who was in the very prime of

al a physic strength when the war beg n , should have been called on for P no military service except in the years specified by lato . n As for the details supplied about two of these campaigns, we k ow ’ from the Symp osium that what seems to have been Socrates principal ‘ ’ experience of the illuminative way came to him in the camp before

P a one otidae , on the occasion when he stood in a rapt rooted to spot,

u and P thro gh the whole of a summer day night . lato , who puts the

a of A a n rrative in the mouth lcibiades, further records th t Socrates showed the highest valour in actual fighting and saved the life of

a Alcibiades, who had been wounded in the eng gement . The prize for w on valour was besto ed on Alcibiades, though he himself urged the

a of a gener ls the claims Socr tes, and ascribes their selection of himself ' a — his d tco ra . . to a r ther unworthy reason regard for f / , i e the weight which his name carried with the partly no doubt on account of

l ou t his il ustrious birth, and partly because he seemed to be marked

P a as successor to ericles in the c pacity of uncrowned despot of Athens . Thus Plato at least wishes us to believe that Socrates was more than

a a mere aver ge good soldier, he was a man who merited what corre s onded ou C and act r V . p to . only failed to get the distinction by an

a m on u of f vouritis the part of the a thorities . (For all this see S m ‘ ’ . 220 m g p c and e . ) In connexion with the fa ous rapt it is

as a at P a a worth noting, I h ve said elsewhere, th , unless l to is f lling ’ i nto a sm all anachronism the story implies that the nicknam e 0 (pp m/ 7 1 0 7 1 9 t a m a Clou ds was 5 , wi h which Aristoph nes kes such play in the , a a m a a as 430 t e u lre dy com only given to Socr tes as e rly , for her wo ld ’ be no point otherwise in Alcibiades s tatement that the word went PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

’ round that Ewkpdms gbp ourffa w TL éo mke We might fairly infer from this that Socrates was already known as the head of a school — for the gbpourw rfis implies the gbp ow w rfip t ou at the beginning of the

Archidamian War , and the evidence of Aristophanes points in the same direction as he introduces the gbp ourt o r fip tou as if it was already a well known and familiar institution, not something invented by himself and requiring an explanation . But the consideration of this point is

r m . better defer ed for a mo ent It is also an excellent touch, which many modern editors have done their ignorant best to remove from w ’ the text, that the persons who sho ed the chief curiosity about Socrates singular behaviour were Ionians -men from the home of purely O secular science where trances and ecstasies were unfamiliar. f all the mistaken emendations of the passage the worst is that German one a P a a which turns the Ioni ns into aeoni ns, inhabitants of region where possession must have been too fa miliar a thing for the rapt m Of Socrates to cause any special re ark . The conduct of Socrates in the panicky retreat of the Athenian

for of P forces from Delium is described us in two passages lato . In — the Symp osium the imaginary date of which dialogue is some eight

— of a years after the event, Alcibiades, speaking the m tter as an - t on eye wi ness, says that as he retired himself horseback he fell in of with Laches and Socrates who were, course, serving as hoplites, ’ that Socrates showed himself much the more self-possessed (isp gbpcov) of n A the pair, beari g himself exactly as ristophanes had represented A it him as doing in the streets of thens, and that was due to his

L off u coolness that aches himself, as well as Socrates, came unh rt m 221 m (Sy p . b) . A similar account is given by Laches hi self in the L dialogue named after him . Indeed aches goes further in his com ‘ mendation m for he says, He accompanied me in the flight from Deliu ,

one our and I may tell you that if every had done his duty as he did, ’ on Laches 1 81 city would never have fallen that calamity ( b) . h It is notable that, for whatever reason, Xenophon tells us not ing whatever about any of these military exploits " for all we learn from S c h of him ocrates might never have ome wit in sight a stricken field, ’ though one would think a brief reference to the philosopher s deeds as a brave and loyal soldier would have been much more valuable in a professed ap olog ia for his life than many chapters of the moralizing s P mall talk with which Xenophon abounds . Thus lato is really our only authority for the campaigns of Socrates (the one later story of about them, that he saved the life Xenophon at Delium is plainly only a confused doublette of what the Sy mp osium says about his rescu e of Al P t a f e cibiades before o idae , and is shown to be alse by the simpl PLATO’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES 23 consideration that if Xenophon w as old enough to fight at Delium he must have been between forty and fifty when he j oined the enterprise — ’ b e dran ov m a . a of Cyru s rr p , as the mathe atici ns say) The only re lly consistent position for those who believe Plato to have freely invented biographical incidents for the hero of his prose dramas is that of the extremely vigorous and rigorous Germ an critic who has had the courage to declare that this m ilitary record is from beginning to end — pure fiction though what the object of the fiction could be it is not

s ea y to say . ’ of P I turn now to the other chief point interest, lato s account of ‘ Of the philosophic mission Socrates . It is plain that according to ’ Plato the turning-point in Socrates inner life was the deliverance of the famous oracle which assured Chaerephon that Socrates was the ’ greatest of all the wits of the age (for that is what o ogbcbra r os of P As means in the language the ericlean age) . we have seen, Plato’s account represents Socrates as being in his early manhood an enthusiastic student of science and the author of a philosophical hypothesis by the help of which both the puzzles raised by the doctrine of Anaxagoras and the perplexing mathematical question s

first brought into clear light by "eno might be successfully met . He is careful to let us kno w that the greatest men of an earlier ’ generation had formed the highest expectations of Socrates future eminence as a philosopher . Such expectations are put into the ’ mouth of Parmenides with reference to the promise of Socrates early Parm 1 30 135 of P youth ( . e, d) and again into that rotagoras Prota 361 the ( g . e), the context in latter passage showing quite

a P a clearly th t rot goras had formed his opinion, which he had m ’ f already expressed to any persons , not rom the conversation A on reported in the dialogue, but during that first visit to thens of which he had made the acquaintance Socrates, who figures in the di As P alogue as already quite well known to him . rofessor Burnet n observes, this visit must have been earlier than the fou dation of Th ii 444 B P ur c . in . , or rotagoras would hardly have been chosen by Pericles to assist in drawing up the constitution of so important

a a colony . So that we are taken back ag in to the early manhood of m Timaeus Socrates . And although the i aginary date of the is shown by the allusions of the Rep u blic to the youth of Polemarchus , — ’ - and Lysias they are both called vea vta K ot according to the best — text in Rep u blic 328 d and by the presence of Cephalus in that — dialogue to fall somewhere in the earlier years of the Peloponnesi an

a m an a — wa war, when Socrates would be of r ther over forty the y P a in which he is accepted as an equal by Timaeus, a ythagore n of 24 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

Tim 20 the highest distinction both in science and in politics ( . a)

u a points in the sa m e direction . The s ggestion is th t Socrates would a s he grew to manhood becom e disti nguished as the central and dominating figure in a regular school or band of associates devoted

u n a to the prosec tion of scie ce and the higher knowledge in gener l .

a u w a was 423 According to Aristoph nes this is j st h t he in the year , w of ith Chaereph on as o ne the most devoted members of the coterie . of of a — Xenophon also knew the existence this org nization, which according to Aristophanes had not only common scientific pursuits

m a — but a co mon t ble, for it is clearly they, and not the rich and leisured young men who collected about Socrates in later life from

of m a of pure enjoyment his talk, whom he eans when he spe ks the sophist Antiphon as wishing to rob Socrates of his associates

(o vvovo t a o rds). That the association is that of the central person ality o f the school with less advanced students is distinctly implied in the comment which Antiphon makes on the unwisdom Of not ’ m o vuovo ca Me . . 6 charging a fee for the ( i . and more than merely implied when Socrates in his reply describes him self and his friends as in the habit of unrolling together the stores of the old wits ’ i which they have left us in the books they have written ( b.

‘ A life of P Pa this kind is, in fact, just what lato makes rmenides or P all rotagoras prophesy for Socrates, and it is implied by the rules of artistic composition that the prophecy had its fulfilment . Thus I t hink it plain that Plato wishes us to think of Socrates as

a having been the regular head of an org nized school . The natural

P a thing, to quote rofessor Burnet again, would be th t he should succeed his o wn teacher Archelaus as the head of the school founded by A f . not o naxagoras But it is plain, merely from the character the P special doctrines ascribed to Socrates by lato, but from the promi nence of P C Simmias Phaedondas n ythagoreans like ebes, , and amo g the associates who were still connected with Socrates at the time of P his death , from his friendship with ythagoreans such as Timaeus , P E checrate s n hilolaus, Theodorus, and , and from the hesitatio ascribed to him in the Phaedo between the Ionian type of cosmology taught by Anaxagoras and the Italian views of which Philolaus ’ a c would probably be the source, th t the school under So rates must

m a P tha oreanized have beco e more than h lf y g , not to mention that Cloud of the burlesque in the s seems to mean that many its members, P ‘ including Socrates, practised the ascetic ythagorean rule of life

P t m an In lato, whose dialogues mostly deal wi h Socrates as a either

in the early forties or in advanced life , we naturally do not hear

much of this side of his activity, and are clearly meant to think of

26 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY o f the Platonic Ap ology with the Charmides and the Clouds of A A olo a ristophanes . The p gy tells us that the widespre d influence of a one of Socrates on the rich and leisured l ds, which was the excuses

out - m for his prosecution, arose accidentally of his self i posed mission ’ of detecting the vain pretences of the diflerent professors of special

knowledge and that it was the oracle which set him upon this task . P A olo Of course, as rofessor Burnet says, in the p gy Socrates treats of the business the oracle with scarcely veiled humour, but even the humorous version which he is made to give of its influence on his career would be the silliest of j ests if the chronological facts abou t

of a his biography did not admit such a construction . It follows th t

a a w P a the or cle must have been given, ccording to the vie which l to

as wishes us to accept , before Socrates had attained his vogue

f ow Charmid a Mentor o youth . N the es assumes that he was already ’ 430 B c known in this capacity as early as . . , for it opens with Socrates o wn a P a statement th t as soon as he returned from his service at otid ea, — — he at once made for his accustomed haunts the palaestrae and ‘ made inq uiries about the condition of philosophy and the young r men du ing his absence . (Incidentally also , this gives us a date about which Plato is not likely to have been mistaken for the begin ’ ning of Socrates closer acquaintance with Charmides and thus cor re cts a t P the absurd st tement of later wri ers that lato, the near

of Charmide s relative , was twenty years old before he came into contact with an eminent man who had been the friend of his uncles own and cousins before his birth . ) The response of the oracle was

f war i . e o P . therefore given before the beginning the eloponnesian ,

a at when Socrates was under forty, and the fact th t there were that date persons who thought it worth while to ask Apollo whether ’ he was not the very forem ost of the wits c an hardly mean less than that he then held a perfectly definite position as the leader of P a group of largely ythagorean adherents . We need not, of

A olo a a course, suppose that the story of the p gy means th t Socr tes never had any personal influence over any single youth Of promise of Al S m osium before this date . The famous tale cibiades in the y p expressly lays stress on the point that the admiration of Alcibiades m for Socrates began when the for er was a mere child . This, in

a a fact, is the re l excuse for the extraordinary methods Alcibi des ’ professes to have attempted in his anxiety to gain Socrates full con

fi dence and aff u a ection . That even a dr nken Alcibiades should rel te what he does of himself is incredible unless we bear in mind that ‘ the man can afford to smile at the extravagance of the m ere boy This particular connexion must thus be much earlier than the relation PLATO’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES 27

’ a an a m M a of Socrates to the ue or in gener l as d ired entor, as is actu lly ’ a a presupposed by Plato s story . For relation which beg n in the m ere boyhood of Alcibiades m ust go back to a tim e well before the battle at Potidaea in which Alcibiades was serving in the Athenian

a Charmide s had cav lry . But if even not attracted any special notice from Socrates until 430 we m ay be sure that at that time the circle o f young men and lads who admired him cannot have been a very 53 a Charm. 1 extensive one, though we see from the dialogue ( d) th t

ri ias it already included C t . Of course it must have required some time for Socrates to extend his personal influence outside the group of lads with whom the friend of Alcibiades would naturally be — ’ i a P P rila m e s. fam li r, such as the connexions of ericles intimate y p In fact in the Laches it is distinctly implied that the p u blic fame ’ of Socrates as a person widely admired among the ueot does not go

a a back beyond the years just after the b ttle at Delium . That b ttle is the latest event alluded to in the dialogue and it is natural to ’ suppose from the strength of the impression that Socrates conduct L to in the retreat has made upon aches, that we are assume the a t he of a f cts to be quite recent . Yet Lysimachus, son the gre t ’ Aristeid s l a Lach 1 80 e o d r of . , an f iend Socr tes family, observes ( e) ‘ that though he had heard a good deal of talk from the lads about c a not a ert in Socrates as a wonderful being, it had yet occurred to him that the Socrates of their admiration was the son of his old

So hroniscus to friend p . We are thus plainly suppose that the influence of Socrates on the young men of rich and leisured families began with a connexion with Alcibiades which must go back to some 440 B C t time not much later than . . (This point is fur her implied in

Prota oras the introductory narrative of the g , where Socrates and Alcibiades are already fast friends at a time when Al cibiades is only

to of Prot 30 beginning show the signs puberty ( . 9 b), and also by the tacit assumption in the Symp osium narrative that Socrates was at the beginning of this friendship still young enough for the roman

ff A not tic o ers of lcibiades to be a patent absurdity . The whole

l - i of story is, in fact, thorough y ill conceived unless we th nk Alci biades as as little more than a romantic child just Old enough, he

a out s ys himself, to be allowed to go alone, and Socrates as still quite

m an m u P r ta oras a young , at the outside not ch over thirty . In the o g w itself, the date of hich must be supposed to be at any rate some

war years before the great , we find Socrates standing in a rather 430 similar relation to his young friend Hippocrates, and before , he

on m Critias 430 m a is already close ter s of intimacy with . In he kes

Charmide s h rm 1 54 the closer acquaintance of , who is then (C a . b) PROC I G THE R ACA M EED N S OF . B ITISH DE Y a et d ov — a p p m . Early in the war though the year c nnot be fi xe d we a of — find, as is only natur l, that he is a close friend the step sons of P rilam e s Ade im antus G au y p , and l con , and friendly with two ‘ ’ Pole m archu s L i C u lads and ys as, sons of ephalus, whom he wo ld

a m m e m natur lly know, if I am right in the assu ption that he was a

of P a Ce a was m ber the ericlean circle, from the f ct that ph lus an i por ’ é t 424 tant proteg of Pericles . But it is not until af er that we hear of that extensive influence upon which the charge of corrupting the m youths was ul timately founded . That the very year after Deliu s ul u m on ho d have seen the earliest burlesq es of the co ic poets him , and that Aristophanes should have m ade him double the character ‘ o f a scientific saint of the Pythagorean type with that of a teacher of — a the youths (there is, in f ct, only a forced connexion between his performances as a geometer and hierophant of strange gods and his — miseducation Of Pheidippides) seem s equally to show that his p op u larity with the véot had j ust been greatly augmented and was a

a l ud novelty to the average Athenian in the ye r of the C o s. The topical caricaturist does not select for his subject facts which have a one lready been familiar for years, and if the comedians with accord fell on Socrates just at a particular time, he must in some way have done or suffered something very recently to recomm end himself to P their notice . Hence I think we may infer that lato means us to Clouds suppose that at least two of the things made prominent in the , ’ a ul m en Socr tes poverty and his pop arity with young at large, were 42 u new things in 3 . (The same remark wo ld not apply equally to the

to affa activities of the qbp ovrw rfip v. They were a more private ir, of

s a a less intere t to the mass of spectators in the the tre, and would h rdly have served of themselves for the material of a successful comedy . )

It of of P a should, course, be noted that the construction the l tonic dialogues as a whole conform s to this conception of the life of Socrates as a one a m exhibiting three successive st ges, in which he appe rs ainly

u t a a as a st den , a second in which his gre t interest is to bring to n ught the pretended wisdom of the wits and a third in which he is m ainly

u m e n P armenides and re mini the co nsellor of younger . Thus the the sce nces p ut into his mouth in the Phaedo belong to the opening of the

a Timaeus Re ublic e rliest period, the and the central books of the p

u s a u o f am m show Socr tes at a f rther level the s e develop ent, whereas th e P rota oras Gor ias k Re u blic are g , the g , and the first boo of the p drama tic exhibitions of his power as a critic of those who pass for ’ Cha rmides Laches E u th demus Meno and wits ; in the , , y , , elsewhere he is chiefly the wise and affectionate older adviser of young men of

B ut Plato lainl m ean u s n promise . . p y s to u derstand that the interests ’ GR P OF CR 2 PLATO S BIO A HY ~ SO ATES 9

’ ‘ a of one of these periods could be continued into nother . Thus in the Tima eu s Socrates listens with absorption to just such specul ations

Ph h ad a aedo . as those which, according to the , ch rmed his youth But that di alogu e is represented as being held only two days after

a Re ublic a a un the convers tions in the p , where Socr tes is p rtly the m Thras m achus a asker of the pretender y , p rtly the guide, philosopher and r G Ade im antu s f iend of laucon , , and the other young folk among

m ti ersona e S a dra a s p . Similarly the ecstatic peculiarities of ocr tes are a A olo a a s id by the p gy to go right b ck to his e rliest youth, but

a a on the S m osiu m we find an intention l stress l id them in y p , the

s m of 416 P haedrus a su ed date which is , and the , a conversation

a 41 6 which must be t ken to be held after , as it not only criticizes the

Ab at L a Thurii A y of ysi s , thus implying his return from to thens, but dwells on the rising fame of Isocrates as a writer of A6y or which dis a i J one a u pl y a real capacity for ph losophy. ust as in the di log e

Socrates , in advanced middle age , can recapture all the ardour of his first youthful enthusiasm when he speaks to a fit audience about the ‘ ’ a m n and a f ir a o g ten thousand ltogether lovely , so in the other, ‘ ’ the same topic rouses him into a state of inspired madness at ’ a date when he must be thought of as already an official y epa w;

m an though he died a of seventy, we are to suppose, he was none ‘ the less one of the lad s who never grow old He does not usually e a P sp k, when lato brings him into company with the wise of this

of of ft world or the eager youth the last quarter the fi h century, of - a or but his lover like devotion to Be uty of the Forms, the reason is that his audience would not understand, not that he has forgotten the

S m osiu m and Phaedrus outbursts of the y p , like the briefer passionate utterance of the Rep u blic about the Form of Good which is our spiri

a sun m m Phaedo tu l , are re inders which har onize with the story of the ’ a at a th t in prison, with his public life a close, the old m n s thoughts went wholly back to the theory he h ad devised for himself in the early days

A at " when he haunted the school of rchelaus and sat the feet of eno . Of the outward facts of Socrates’ life after the campaign of Am phi polis down to the year of Arginu sae Plato cannot be said to tell us

t . P l was t any hing robab y there not much to tell . A man over fif y was not likely to be called up for what campaigning there was in t e a s of P h se years , and , ccording to the repeated a sertions lato, ’ ‘ ’ a a m Socr tes sign held him b ck fro active politics . We may sup pose that as the ai ms of the Athenian democracy were more and more

a as a an d a r reve led irr tional unscrupulous exp nsion, empi e over every

1 ’ Socrates too mi t a e sai wit t at ot e imm rtal t ful e a w , , gh h v d h h h r o you h y p , ’ Sir Jo You t at are old co si e r not th ca hn , h n d e pacitie s of us that are young . PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

’ one an a u m P and at y price, Socr tes j dge ent of the ericlean system , hard as it had long been (to judge from the language Plato thinks a a Re u blic a Re . u bl ppropri te to him in the p ), bec me harder In the p ic

a u a w Imperi listic democracy, tho gh decl red the orst system of govern

a a a a ment short of sheer person l tyr nny, is in det il tre ted in the main

a with a det ched humour ; Socrates smiles at its licence and jobbery .

Gor ias a a a of of In the g his l ngu ge is th t invective, and the name Pericles appears on the list o f those false statesmen who had taught

t but ll and a d s A . n o thens no hing fo y wickedness Yet it is curious ,

S m osium A curious that one feels it must be true, that in the y p lcibiades, the very incarnation of the reckless and haughty spirit of the demo

on of a a cracy, the very eve the f t l and final enterprise in which the ’ fi t of Bp g the tyrant city undid itself, is still the loved personal

of and friend the philosopher, speaks of the influence Socrates can t u still exercise over his bet er nat re in the strongest terms . It is even m ore singular that in the dialogue which passes the heaviest on all Gor ias censure the democratic ideals and their creators, the g , Socrates definitely declares that whereas the love of Callicle s is given ’ to the Demos of Athens and the De mos of Pyrilamp es (Plato s own - ‘ A ’ handsome half brother), his is reserved for philosophy and lcibiades . This isall the more significant that the imaginary date of the con

to Ar inusae versation seems be the year after g , as there is an allusion to a recent occasion on which Socrates had made himself ridiculous by not knowing how to put a matter to the vote in the assembly as

A olo it was his business to do , being one of the prytanes . (As the p gy makes it a capital point that Socrates had never held any office except tha t he was a member of the Bovkfi at the time of the trials of Ar inusae a m n the g gener ls, this ust be the occasio to which the i m Gorg as refers . ) The senti ent about Alcibiades u ttered at such

m a a time cannot well ean less than th t Socrates, like Aristophanes, who produced the Frog s in the very year when Socrates was a

ovkevrr a A e m — fi j s, was prep red to recall lcibiades on his own t r s which is as much as to say that he was ready to see him the real monarch of A one of n w thens as the hope salvatio for the city, a vie so distasteful to the mass of the dfiuos that though the Frog s is a A cle rly written principally to urge it, ristophanes has to pretend that his object in the play is to damage the literary reputation of

a Euripides, and to m ke his real point only at the very end and, as it

a a were, by ccident . (At least this is how I should explain the singul r ’ a a all has fact th t fter that been said against Euripides frail heroines,

and a u his monodies metric l licences, Euripides and Aeschyl s come ou t so evenly balanced on their p oetical merits that the decision PLATO ’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES 31

m a u m which of the is to be sent b ck to the pper world is ade, as if

m of P by a whi luto, to depend on the sudden and unexpected question a u a what they think of Alcibi des . Aeschyl s is really triumph nt, not — a s a better poet it would be rash to be too sure that even Aristophanes — himself really thought him so but becau se he advises com pliance with the moods of the lion’s From the time of the battle of Arginusae on to the weeks which ‘ ’ a a Pa of P saw the ctu l ssion Socrates, lato tells us nothing of his doings apart from the two s tories of the Ap ology about the affairs of the trial of the generals and of the arbitrary execution of Leon of

a t wo S lamis, and these stories are only told for the special purpose of showing that the philosopher was equally ready to risk his life in

a ul or the cause of righteousness , whether ag inst an angry pop ace

a a gainst a little ring of olig rchs . There is no Platonic dialogue which seems to assume as its imaginary date any year in this unhappy of Men o 71 interval , with the probable exception the , which refers ( c)

m a and G as As to a previous eeting between Socr tes orgi . the opening lines of the Gorg ias (447 a) seem to imply that Socrates is supposed in that dialogue to be meeting the famou s rhetorician for the first M time. this may be taken as indicating that the conversation with eno

to Gor i as is thought of as subsequent the interview described in the g , how u but there is nothing to show m ch later it is supposed to be . It cannot be after the departure of Meno from Greece to join the a of C w M A i . No nabas s camp ign yrus eno, as we learn from the ,

a c C C of 401 u re hed yrus at olossae in the spring , and we m st pre sum ably allow some time for the collection of the motley band of

a t Highl nders whom he brough with him . Hence we cannot suppose the im aginary date of his conversation with Socrates at Athens to be

m 402 m a later than so e time in , and it y be earlier. The other point

be An tus a As to considered is that y is present t the meeting . Socrates did not retire from Athens with the democrats who withdrew P a A to the eir eus and other quarters , but remained in thens through out a An tus a ul the an rchy, whereas y went into exile with Thr syb us, we must date the dialogue either before the end of 404 or after the a a us mnesty of the following ye r. Since the violent outbursts of Anyt and his solemn warning to Socrates of the danger into which his free criticism of democracy and its leaders is likely to bring him are clearly meant to be indications of the feeling which led to the philo ’ - sopher s prosecution , and since this danger was likely to be a very m uch greater one after the reign of terror and the short civil than before the oligarchy had shown the lengths to which it was o prepared to g , the latest imaginary date assignable to the dialogue PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

u m a m e . t s seems to the most nat ral Hence, apar fro the di logue which connect them selves with the actual trial and death of Socrates

A olo Orito E u th hro Phaedo Theaetetus S o histes Politicus ( p gy , , yp , , , p , ), ‘ ’ the Meno seem s to be meant as the latest imaginary conversation

m P a of Socrates a ong the l tonic dialogues . So far is it from being, as

Gom e rz a d o of p f ncied, an apology to the fip g for the free handling Gor ias democratic statesmen in the g , that part of its purpose seems to be to show that the leaders of the restored democracy were even

a h e more intolerant th n t oligarchs where philosophy was concerned . The oligarchs had attempted to shelter themselves by entrappi ng the iusti simus u nus s of the age into complicity, the restored democrats were ready to take his life because he criticized their idols . Of the events connected with the actual prosecution and death o f P Socrates, lato has much to tell us which is too well known for P repetition here . Only it should be noted that lato is really the sole

of contemporary who has anything importance to tell us . From ’ M morabili a e a . 4 8 Xenophon s (iv ; iv . ) we learn th t the actual

r m Meletus p osecutor was na ed , that Socrates made no previous w f o n de . 1 preparations for his speech in his ence, and (i ) that the formal accusation was one of religious offences and corrupting the

of youth . We are also told in Bk . i certain charges of a general ‘ a to kind, such as te ching his associates contemn the existing laws

of ff and usages by ridiculing the use the lot in appointments to O ice,

of a a weakening the influence p rents over their children , and s ying that n o of and of kind occupation is discreditable , the more specific and rational accusation of being responsible for the offences of Alcibiades and Critias ; but these accusations are ascribed so loosely to an unnamed accuser that it is not even clear whether Xenophon means they were actually urged by the prosecutors or only figured in the pamphlet-war a of was ft bout the character Socrates which started a er his death . For the rest the Memora bilia throws no light whatever on either the

of or a of prosecution Socrates his death . Even the f mous incident ’ the attempted rescue from prison and Socrates refusal to avail himself ’ of it, much though it would have been to the writer s apologetic A olo ia purpose, is not even mentioned . The brief Xenophontic p g , u it is true, mentions this, but in so obscure and h rried a way that we should not know with any certainty what is meant by the ‘ ’ ’ four words when his friends had a mind to steal him away (ré w ’ ’ ’ ’ - er a t cov e KKAéxra t ovh o e vmv a dvbu Crito of P p l B p ), but for the lato, a which is m nifestly the source of the allusion . For the rest the

n A olo contents ofthe tract are mainly palpable borrowi gs from the p gy ,

Crito Phaedo P e two a , and of lato, xcept for not very h ppy additions

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

t l of our m It will be seen , I think , tha the resu t exa ination is that ’ S as P ocrates, he appears in lato s dialogues, comes before us as a person with a pretty full biography and a career in which we can quite readily d ff m iscern the di erent stages, and a very definite and strongly arked

a individuality . There are at least five str ins combined in his complex personality " (1) from his earliest manhood he has been a votary of s of of the of P cience and a haunter the circle wits the ericlean age , and it is just his prominence in this character which, by prompting

of Chaere hon to A led the question p pollo, has to his assuming the part, of i s so familiar to us, of apostle the doctrine that virtue knowledge of the good and that this knowledge is the one thing needful ; (2) he

of u of is a man immense physical vigour, f ll life even at the age of of threescore years and ten, and has behind him a record military service and shrewdness of judgement in military affairs which is of the most distinguished kind and caused his opinion to be valued by the military experts of his day ; (3) he is a distinct opponent of ‘ ’ P c r ericlean imperial democra y, whose opposition ha dens into bitter k ness and something li e unfairness as he grows older, and the upshot of a commercialistic imperialism is more visibly manifest in fact ; ‘ ’ 4 of O illuminé of ( ) he is a saint the rphic type, and an , a seer ’ v ‘ 5 of isions and subject to rapts ; ( ) and yet, unlike the mystics all be hr but the first order, is kept sane t oughout by that sense of humour and the due proportion of things which his enem ies mistake for a mere ’ ‘ n sly pretence, and call his irony . It is this, before anythi g else, which makes him a sweeter and saner Hellenic prototype of our own

C C of arlyle . arlyle, in fact, is in many respects a kind Socrates e man u of q , driven by failure to exercise the gift seeing things in their ‘ ’ right proportion , and above all by failure to exercise irony upon

of -flown himself, into alternations high raptures about the eternities and imm ensities with moods of that unqualified pessimism which the ’ Phaedo s call misology . A good deal more might be inferred if it of P were part my purpose, as it is not, to take into account what lato tells us about the doctrines of the man and the known philosophical leanings of the group whom both Plato and Xenophon name for us as ‘ ’ ’ - a P a his life long comrades . But, as I have alre dy said, it is l to s

of account of the life and personality his hero, not his statements

on about his views science and philosophy, which is my topic this

. u afternoon The question at issue is j st this, whether such a character and such a biography impress us as a vivid and dramatically tru e

a n a as of a reproduction of livi g origin l, or the free invention an rtist J a a w an m M own nxious to dr i aginary pictu re of an ideal sage . y thesis is that on the second supposition it is unintelligible why Plato i should have imagined such a host of small biographical details and PLATO’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES 35

succeeded in imagining them so well that, though they are scattered

of of no one through a long series works the composition which, as of denies, must have ranged over the best part half a century, there

a a are no discrepancies to be detected, and ag in that the peculi r combination of marked personal characteristics is most unlikely to have been thought by Plato or any one else necessary to the character o and m an f a typical ideal wise , and is therefore only explicable on the supposition that what Plato has given us is a brilliant reproduction ‘ ’ who a of an actual original was an original in the colloqui l , as well

of d as in other senses, that word . You may test the soun ness of this w how P conclusion , if you wish, very simply . If we want to kno lato, ‘ ’ of m in the full maturity his powers, i agined the philosophic type,

as he h given us the Opportunity to do so . The Eleatic stranger of the S op histes and Politicas is actually introduced to us in the opening

of of sentences the former dialogue as an excellent sample the type, u P and, as he is anonymo s, lato is not compelled to adjust the por traiture to the known biography or personal peculiarities of any one . ’ ’ This personage is far from being like Berkeley s Hylas or Hume s C fi ure - u leanthes a mere g head, a mouthpiece for a theory propo nded n As for discussion , and nothi g more . any attentive reader will per — c e ive he has a real individual manner of his own but it is hard to imagine any figure less like the Socrates whom we find sibi constans from his youth as described in the Phaedo and Parmenides to his Re u blic a e the S m osium d prime in the p , his middle g in y p and his eath Phaedo in the . To me the theory that we are dealing in these dialogues with a type or an im aginary figure sounds ' as wild and ’ a unn tural as it would be to maintain e . g . that Whistler s portrait f ’ o Carlyle was meant to represent the painter s notion of a typical m an of or P a letters, that ope had no actual contempor ry before his mind when he sketched the character of Atticus As a brief pendant to what has gone before, and by way of comment on o wn the dogma which still persists in our country, that it is from

Xenophon we must collect the facts about Socrates , I may subjoin a brief statemen t of the strictly biographical facts or unfacts recorded m by Xenophon . None of the , it will be observed, definitely include anything in the way of biography belonging to the earlier period of ’ a f Socr tes li e which might not have been directly copied from the Platonic dialogues which were indubitably used for Xenophon’s A olo ia ll p g , as Xenophon himself a but tells us in the opening sentences of the work . Socrates was the son of Sophronisc us Hellenica ( . 7 . Lam rocle s i he had a son who was called p , and

, h her own a wife wit a temper of , whose name, Xanthippe, is once S m osium occasionally given in the Xenophontic y p (ii . 36 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADE MY

‘ A list of his associates is given which seems to be taken direct Phaedo Chaere hon from the , only that p , who died before the trial o f o P S crates, as we learn from lato, is added . Further, he was a

of G Hi onicus of friend allias, son of pp (mentioned as the host P Prota oras of G P Charmides rotagoras in the dialogue g ), laucon , lato, , m and, though Xenophon wishes us to think this connexion te porary, of Critias f Alcibiades and , whom he sought in vain to correct o their f ul f - of was a ts o self will and hatred discipline . He well versed in the

of Mem 3 higher mathematics and astronomy his time ( . iv . 7. and though he did not think such knowledge of practical service for most

was m men . He exceptionally punctilious in perfor ing the ceremonies ’ of ta required by the religion the s te, and practised more than m ankind in general in the way of offering prayer and sacrifice on own his account . He believed in oracles and prognostications in

ul of dreams, and regarded his own pec iar sign as a kind oracle private to himself. But when we ask for something more definite al of the Memorabilia than these gener ities in the way biography, u Mem as f rnish us with remarkably little . We learn ( . i . we are

Hellenica ém o rd ‘ or also told in the , that Socrates was ms, chairman for the sitting of the assembly in which the proposal to deal with the Ar inusae en bloc ad g generals was m e, and that he refused to put the

r proposal to the vote . (This is related without the fu ther details given

Critias by Plato in the Ap ology . ) That in the oligarchic reign of terror Charicle s of and , fearing his censures their proceedings, forbade him

of to converse with the young, and that Socrates, under a show defer ff ’ ence to their authority, cha ed them about the absurdity of such a vague prohibition, but was dismissed with a threat . Whether he A obeyed the order we are not told . That ntiphon the sophist, at dr some unspecified time, tried to aw away the companions with whom Socrates was accustomed to study the writings of the wits of old ’ e of That Socrates admir d the apologue the choice of Heracles ,

- a a Prodicus which had been worked up into a show decl m tion by . That he once tried hard to make up a quarrel between Chaerephon

nd Chae re crates a his brother . That he advised a friend who had lost his means of support in the year of anarchy to set his women -folk at G remunerative work . That he found for the wealthy rito a useful factotum to protect him from blackmailers . That he prevented Plato’s brother Glaucon from making himself ridiculous by trying to ’ -' A o a . cut a figure before the eK K n t while he was still in his teens This, s m Charm ide s P ays Xenophon , he did fro friendship to and lato,

m of P a where the ention l to must be an inadvertence, since the Glaucon of the Rep u blic is already a young m an who has distinguished

s a a P him elf in battle, and f st friend of Socrates at a date when lato PLATO ’S BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES 37

Charmides d must have been a baby, though the statement about woul ’ fit in well with Plato s account that Socrates was at tracted to him as 0 one a early as 43 , if it were not for allusion which seems to show th t Xenophon is thinking of the incident as happening during the

Mem 6 . Decelean war ( . iii . This is quite incompatible with the assumptions of the Repu blic in which Glaucon is said to have dis M tinguished himself in a battle at egara fought at a date when of L Cephalus the father Lysias was still alive, and ysias himself a mere vea l/ fa m e. one It is a more interesting point, and which might help to explain some things in Socrates’ later life that Xenophon says it was

arm ides Mem 7 he who first persuaded Ch to enter politics ( . iii . . but when we find that the arguments of Socrates are made to turn mainly on the value of self-knowledge as a preparation for public life we are forcibly reminded of the discussion of self-know ’ i Charmides ledge n Plato s , and we have also to ask ourselves at what date the advice can have been given . It is definitely stated that

harmides who old to et cim ou C , was only just enough be called p p

430 h rm 1 54 cit/ i ) ai bko o C a . s in ( b), was an " fi y when Socrates urged off him to shake his shyness, and that Socrates had been struck by the sound advice he had been known to give in private to those who ’ ff M m e . 7. C are employed in the state s a airs ( iii . learly, then , we are to think of him as at any rate a man of some thirty years or so c more . This brings us down to late a date that it is in redible that the facts should not have been remembered by the democrats who prosecuted Socrates and have been a much more plausible charge against him than most of the matters which seem to have been Charmides of brought up at his trial , since was at the head the c C 404 P oligarchi al ommittee set up in to administer the eiraeus, and Critias of - with fell in battle against the majority his fellow citizens . ’ Yet from Xenophon s own silence it appears that no one had made it a grievance against Socrates that he had actually persuaded the man to take up public life " Hence I fear the incident is probably nothing more than a pleasing story founded on the charming Platonic ’ of harmide s description Socrates interest in C as a youth . Thus the Memora bilia are wholly silent about most of the characteristic facts of of P a of the life Socrates, as related by l to, before the year Ar in usae of g , and add nothing fresh a biographical kind except the story that Critias and Charicles tried to restrain his sarcastic com

1 G au m l co co la s a i le . e Charm id s a n p in th t h s unc (i . e ) c nnot be persuaded to e trust the m a a h i Ch r i n n gem ent of his affairs to m . a m de s is thus thought of as a full-grown man of position at th e time whe n S ocrate s fi rst cam e into contact wit Glauco h n . 38 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

ments on their administration , (the much more important incident of

a the arrest of Leon is not mentioned), and the rep resent tion of his wife, who is not named, as a woman with a temperament . S m osiu m From the y p , which purports to be an account of a gathering

4292 on in the year , we might gather that Socrates was friendly terms G w P ’ with the millionaire allias (as we kno from lato), that his wife s name was Xanthippe, that he used to dance, as Hobbes used to sing, v to in strict pri acy for bodily exercise, that he j estingly professed be ‘ proud of his skill as a pimp and go-between between wits and the pupils by whom they made a living (an idea which seems to be taken ’ a t tus a directly from Plato s The e e ) and of his personal attr ctions . (Here again we seem to have a clumsy development of a theme from the speech S m osium of P of Alcibiades in the y p lato, a work to which Xenophon

own makes constant and undisguised allusions throughout his piece . ) of Clou ds Further that, just after the production the , be it remem

e ourw r b red, there was a popular j est that he was a ¢p fis, who t ’ studied the things alof , and a j oke of some kind about his studying c on a geometri al problems turning some point about a flea, and th t he spoke eloquently about the difference between the heavenly and the earthly Aphrodite (again a palpable remi ni scence of the speech ’ of P S m osium not Pausanias in lato s y p ). I have taken into account the ’ rival possibility that it is Plato s dialogue which borrows touches from of t wo Xenophon, partly because I do not think any reader the works, unaware that such a theory has been mooted, could possibly on doubt which side the indebtedness lies, but partly because I hold that the question can be settled if necessary by a single case in which ’ ’ Xenophon s language is unintelligible except as an allusion to Plato s 11 26 to work . In Xenophon . Socrates is made apologize for a vivid ’ ’ ’ - ’ ‘ 7c K a i s ch e u f o t eco i a a w e irrco too metaphor by saying, y py w f fip , if I ’ -flown of G 0 one m ay use the high language orgias . N in the preceding ' - part of the work has used any Tom/ {eta p fip a ra at all ; everything has ‘ ’ been said in the simplest language of every day . The I too must therefore allude to something in a composition against which Xenophon own — is pitting his . He means though the statement is quaintly — no c untrue that he, less than some other, can make his chara ters the G talk dithyrambic language of orgias when he sees fit . If he

men of c c usually makes them speak like this world, it is from hoi e, A W k not of necessity . gainst hom the attac is directed is seen at once ’ c P S m osium 1 8 from a omparison with lato s y p 9 b, where Socrates says -flown of that the high speech Agathon , to which he had just listened, of G reminds him orgias, and pretends to be unable to keep the oratory, now that it has come to his turn to make his panegyric of Eros, at this magnificent level . PLATO ’S BIO GRAPHY OF SOCRATES 39

’ Xenophon s Symp osiu m thus contributes no single fact to the

a it as a u biography of Socr tes, though is interesting giving pict re

a far of his outward appe rance and his social manner which, so as

u u of a and w it goes, justifies the b rlesq e Aristoph nes sho s that the ’ writer cannot have thought the brilliant portrait of Plato s Sy mp a of A olo ia sium a pure invention the imagination . The p g , apart from

fam the points for which it has been cited already, mentions the ous response of the Delphic oracle 1 44) as a matter which Socrates had

spoken of in his defence before the dicasts, but makes him treat it

qui te out of character. He boasts and brags in a fashion which woul d have been certain to secure his condemnatio n and is quite out ’ of keeping with the modesty he elsewhere observes in Xenophon s writings no less than with the keen sense of humour ascribed to him 20 by Plato . He is also made ) to profess, contrary to the tenor ’ of 7 06 7 0 a ia a o' w his whole life, to be a specialist in education ( y p ’ i e ek b P ep o p p nx g), much in the fashion in which rotagoras makes the P P same claim in lato . resumably Xenophon thought this kind of ’ ‘ ’ n e a o ta thi g in keeping with the p y q p , the lofty tone which he professes to have found in all previous narratives ’ of the trial and — of to out death Socrates, that is to say, if he had chosen be more — i haed in A olo Cr to P o. spoken , the p gy , , and Of genuinely bio

graphical information the little tract is wholly empty .

of c Ana basis one l e Finally, we have, ourse, in the the really va uabl 1 addition to the information supplied by Plato, that Socrates (iii . . — ’ 5 7) doubted the wisdom of Xenophon s volunteering for the expedi f C l tion o yrus and sent him to Delphi to consult the orac e, obviously in the hope that he might change his mind .

If we omit the merely anecdotal from this recital, we are left with

S o hroniscus the following statements Socrates, son of p , had a wife called Xanthippe and a son Lamprocles he exercised a good deal of influence over Charmide s and some temporary influence on Alcibiades

ias At ha and Crit . some unknown date the Delphic oracle told C ere of v phon that he was a model all the irtues . He had some advanced knowledge of science and also claimed to have a peculiar private

to he oracle . He belonged a circle which studied the writings of t ‘ ’ 422 e n older wits . In it was a popular j st that he had propou ded m f a geometrical problem so ehow connected with fleas . In the year o Arginusae he presided over the assembly in which it was proposed to try all the generals together and refused to put this proposition to of 404 the vote . In the oligarchic anarchy he remained in the city but was reprimanded by Critias and Charicles for the imprudence of

a a m a a 402 or his s rc s s about their dministr tive methods . In very ’ 401 of A early in he disapproved Xenophon s siatic adventure . He 40 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY was put to death after a long life on the charges of religious offences

a m en all and of having bad influence upon younger . In this only the

of Lam rocle s a u name p , the reference to the joke bo t the flea, the story of the reprimand by the Thirty and the personal anecdote

' about his advice to Xenophon himself add anything to the statements of P v us lato , It is ob ious that Xenophon has really furnished with ’ of l ' no materials from which to make a story his hero s life . The on y

of of datable biographical events any importance , beyond the mention ’ or two of a name , belong to the last six or seven years Socrates career.

to of c (The reference the response the ora le is undated, and it is not from Xenopho n that we obtain the materials for fixing its approxi to " mate date . ) There is nothing whatever show us under what e of influences Socrates had grown up , exc pt a list his friends from — which again not by any help afforded by Xenophon but by com — parison with Plato we can infer that some of the most intimate of m P m l the were ythagoreans . If we compare these eagre resu ts with

of a his the pretty full and careful account Socr tes, his family, and al P history ready deduced from the dialogues of lato, we are driven to the conclusion that if Plato’s narrative is dismissed as imaginative

not of of fiction , only the doctrines Socrates but the events his life, for one or two 65 except which occurred after he was , are shrouded —to in impenetrable mystery . Socrates the man speak after the — fashion of the modern writer of personal paragraphs is as much an unknown X to us as the Socratic philosophy On the other ’ P not side, if we may trust lato s accounts we have, I maintain, only, as P f ex osi ro essor Burnet, myself, and others have contended, a coherent p

of of tion a philosophical theory high originality, obviously intended to meet j ust the problems which were perplexing Athenian minds in ’ of of d the middle the fifth century, the time Socrates early manhoo , but also a rather full and particular narrative of the life and personal traits of the man who devised this philosophy " the account is con tained in a whole series of works written at intervals during a period of to be probably at least forty y ears, yet no serious discrepancies are a found in it, even when we try it by the severe stand rd of demand for truth not only in casual statements on points of fact but in the w of a inferences hich result from combination such c sual statements . Is it necessary to put into words the only conclusion to which all the " facts point The historical Socrates as he has been called, must

l r a be found in the fu l and faithful portrait, d awn with c reful atten tion to fact, of a great thinker by another great thinker who, by ’ G of od s grace , was also a master dramatic portraiture . The portrait ’ is that of the actual son of Sophroniscus ; nearly every historical P touch in it is known to us ultimately only on the faith of lato .