chapter eight

XENOPHON ON SOCRATES’ TRIAL AND DEATH

Robin Water eld

Xenophon starts his Apology of Socrates as follows: Another aspect1 of Socrates that I think worth recording is what decisions he made with regard to his defence and his death after he had been summoned to court. Now, others have written accounts of the trial, and they have all managed to hit of his boastfulness (megal¯egoria),2 so there can be no doubt that this is how Socrates actually spoke. But what they didn’t make clear— and without it his boastfulness is bound to appear ill-considered—is this: he had already concluded that for him death was preferable to life. (Apology 1) A good start. He tempts anyone interested in Socrates’ trial and death with a vital piece of information—what Socrates had made up his mind to do—and gives an astonishing answer: Socrates had decided that for him death was preferable to life. Xenophon claims to be the only one to have revealed the truth on this matter (always a good way to start a pamphlet) and simultaneously solves what was taken to be one of the outstanding puzzles of Socrates’ famous trial, his boastful tone of voice, by asserting that Socrates had nothing to lose: he preferred to die. This is clearly Xenophon’s deduction; there is no other way, he claims, to explain Socrates’ behaviour. Of course, we immediately want to know why Socrates might have pre- ferred death, and Xenophon does not keep us waiting. He relates a conver- sation (2–9)3 between Socrates and Hermogenes Hipponikou.4 Hermogenes

1 Xenophon also uses de, followed by kai (‘also’), to link many of the Memorabilia. Though ‘published’ as a separate work, like Apology, Oeconomicus similarly starts as if it were directly linked to a previous work. It is not impossible that the  rst part of Oeconomicus (the  rst six or six and a half chapters, the conversation with Critobulus) was originally written as a chapter of Memorabilia. So too might Apology have been, but certainty is impossible, and in any case Apology reads as though it were unpolished. There is certainly no need to suggest that ‘The de must have been added by an editor or copyist who thought that the work belonged to Mem.’: Hackforth 1933: 173. Even poems could sometimes start with a connective: e.g. Solon F4 W. 2 The word has proved troublesome, but ‘boastfulness’ captures its core meaning in classical Greek. See e.g. Danzig 2010: 25, Dorion 2005: 132. 3 Echoing, or echoed by, Mem. 4.8.4–10. 4 On whom see Nails 2002: 162–164. He was undoubtedly Xenophon’s source for much of 270 robin waterfield wanted to know why Socrates appeared to be unconcerned about the im- pending trial; Socrates replied that his daimonion s¯emeion had prevented him considering his defence, and that he understood this to mean that ‘the god thinks it is better for him to die’ because his life so far has been enjoyable (secure in the knowledge of his pious and moral behaviour), but ‘if my years are prolonged, I shall doubtless have to pay the penalties of old age: impaired vision and hearing, increasing slowness at learning, and forgetfulness of what I have learned’—which would nullify the pleasantness of his life so far.5 Besides, he adds, hemlock poisoning is not a bad way to go.6 So it was not just Socrates who thought that he should die; the god thought so too. This is an important addition: if you are a religious person, it is not enough to choose to die just from your own calculations; you await divine blessing for the act. And this is, it must be said, a good reason for speaking boastfully (that is de antly, arrogantly, and without compromise): if you are going to die anyway, and you have the opportunity, why not go out with a forceful statement? What I should like to do in this paper is try to test the truth of this asser- tion of Xenophon’s, that Socrates sought death, or chose not to mount the kind of defence Athenian democratic dikasts would take seriously, because he preferred this form of assisted suicide. This innocuous-seeming quest has wide-ranging rami cations, and I apologize in advance for cutting some cor- ners in order to keep this paper within bounds, but this corner-cutting has, I am sure, never led to any signi cant distortion.

Plato versus Xenophon?

How would one go about testing the truth of Xenophon’s claim? It relates to little or nothing else that we know about Socrates; none of our other sources for his life and work ever has him explicitly or unambiguously claim that death is preferable to a miserable old age. Many scholars therefore simply dismiss it as one more case of Xenophon imposing his own concerns on his Socrates,7 but that seems too cavalier. In this section I shall explore the few relevant passages from Plato, in order to sharpen up both the similarities and the diferences between Plato’s and Xenophon’s versions of Socrates in this respect. the period when Xenophon himself was not in Athens, but serving in Asia. We are not told that Hermogenes was at the trial himself. 5 Xenophon himself agreed: Ap. 32. 6 Which we now know to be true: see Bloch 2002. 7 E.g. Brickhouse & Smith 1989a: 61–62, de Strycker & Slings 1994: 198–199.