The Trial and Death of Socrates - Plato E-Book

Plato

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 371

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato  is a philosophical exploration of justice, morality, and the nature of wisdom. Comprising four dialogues—Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo—the work recounts the final days of Socrates, from his trial in Athens to his execution by drinking hemlock. Through Socrates' defense against accusations of impiety and corrupting the youth, Plato presents a profound meditation on ethical integrity, the pursuit of truth, and the role of philosophy in society. Since its recording, The Trial and Death of Socrates has been revered as one of the most significant works in Western philosophy. Socrates' unwavering commitment to his principles, even in the face of death, has made him a symbol of intellectual courage and moral resilience. The dialogues not only offer insight into Athenian law and political structures but also challenge readers to reflect on the meaning of justice, virtue, and the examined life. The work's enduring relevance lies in its exploration of fundamental philosophical questions and its portrayal of Socrates as an archetype of wisdom and integrity. The Trial and Death of Socrates remains a timeless testament to the power of reason, the consequences of challenging societal norms, and the philosophical pursuit of truth, inspiring generations of thinkers and readers.

Leseprobe

Plato

THE TRIAL AND DEATH OF SOCRATES

Contents

PRESENTATION

INTRODUCTION

THE TRIAL AND DEATH OF SOCRATES

EUTHYPHRON

THE APOLOGY

CRITO

PHAEDO

PRESENTATION

Plato

(c. 427-347 BCE)

Plato was a Greek philosopher and one of the most influential thinkers in Western philosophy. A student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle, he founded the Academy in Athens, one of the earliest institutions of higher learning. Plato’s works, written in the form of dialogues, explore subjects such as justice, ethics, politics, metaphysics, and epistemology. His ideas laid the foundation for much of Western philosophical thought and continue to be studied extensively today.

Early Life and Education

Plato was born into an aristocratic family in Athens. His early education exposed him to poetry, music, and philosophy, but his intellectual journey took a decisive turn when he became a student of Socrates. The execution of Socrates in 399 BCE deeply affected Plato, leading him to develop his philosophical system in response to the perceived failures of Athenian democracy. Seeking knowledge beyond Athens, he traveled to Egypt and Italy, where he studied mathematics, philosophy, and political systems, experiences that shaped his later writings.

Career and Contributions

Plato's philosophy is primarily conveyed through his dialogues, where Socrates often serves as the main character. His most famous works include The Republic, Phaedo, Symposium, and The Apology, each exploring fundamental philosophical questions. In The Republic, he introduces his theory of the ideal state, ruled by philosopher-kings, and his famous allegory of the cave, which illustrates the nature of knowledge and perception.

Another key aspect of Plato’s philosophy is his Theory of Forms, which posits that the material world is only a shadow of a higher, unchanging reality of perfect Forms or Ideas. This concept has influenced countless philosophical and religious traditions, shaping discussions on reality, knowledge, and existence for centuries.

Impact and Legacy

Plato’s establishment of the Academy marked the beginning of organized philosophical education, influencing intellectual thought for centuries. His ideas on politics, ethics, and epistemology laid the groundwork for later philosophical movements, including Neoplatonism and modern political theory. His student Aristotle would later challenge some of his concepts, yet both remain central figures in philosophical discourse.

Plato’s influence extends beyond philosophy, impacting literature, political science, and psychology. His dialogues are not only philosophical treatises but also masterpieces of literary form. His vision of an ideal society and the role of justice and governance continue to be subjects of debate in contemporary political thought.

Plato died around 347 BCE in Athens, leaving behind a body of work that continues to shape Western thought. His Academy survived for nearly a millennium, preserving and transmitting his teachings. Today, his works remain fundamental to philosophical inquiry, and his ideas continue to be explored in modern debates on politics, ethics, and the nature of reality.

Plato’s intellectual legacy is unparalleled; his influence can be seen in the writings of later philosophers, theologians, and political theorists. His vision of philosophy as a means to seek truth and wisdom endures, ensuring that his impact on human thought remains as significant today as it was in ancient Greece.

About the work

The Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato is a philosophical exploration of justice, morality, and the nature of wisdom. Comprising four dialogues—Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo—the work recounts the final days of Socrates, from his trial in Athens to his execution by drinking hemlock. Through Socrates’ defense against accusations of impiety and corrupting the youth, Plato presents a profound meditation on ethical integrity, the pursuit of truth, and the role of philosophy in society.

Since its recording, The Trial and Death of Socrates has been revered as one of the most significant works in Western philosophy. Socrates' unwavering commitment to his principles, even in the face of death, has made him a symbol of intellectual courage and moral resilience. The dialogues not only offer insight into Athenian law and political structures but also challenge readers to reflect on the meaning of justice, virtue, and the examined life.

The work’s enduring relevance lies in its exploration of fundamental philosophical questions and its portrayal of Socrates as an archetype of wisdom and integrity. The Trial and Death of Socrates remains a timeless testament to the power of reason, the consequences of challenging societal norms, and the philosophical pursuit of truth, inspiring generations of thinkers and readers.

INTRODUCTION

These dialogues contain a unique picture of Socrates in the closing scenes of his life, his trial, his imprisonment, and his death. And they contain a description also of that unflagging search after truth, that persistent and merciless examination and sifting of men who were wise only in their own conceit, to which his latter years were devoted. Within these limits he is the most familiar figure of ancient Greek history. No one else stands out before us with so individual and distinct a personality of his own. Of the rest of Socrates’ life, however, we are almost completely ignorant. All that we know of it consists of a few scattered and isolated facts, most of which are referred to in these dialogues. A considerable number of stories are told about him by late writers : but to scarcely any of them can credit be given. Plato and Xenophon are almost the only trustworthy authorities about him who remain ; and they describe him almost altogether as an old man. The earlier part of his life is to us scarcely more than a blank.

Socrates was born very shortly before the year 469 B.C. His father, Sophroniscus, was a sculptor: his mother, Phaenarete, a midwife. Nothing definite is known of his moral and intellectual development. There is no specific record of him at all until he served at the siege of Potidaea (432 B.C.– 429 B.c.) when he was nearly forty years old. All that we can say is that his youth and manhood were passed in the most splendid period of Athenian or Greek history. It was the time of that wonderful outburst of genius in art, and literature, and thought, and statesmanship, which was so sudden and yet so unique. Athens was full of the keenest intellectual and political activity. Among her citizens between the years 460 B.c. and 420 B.C. were men who in poetry, in history', in sculpture, in architecture, are our masters still. AEschylus’ great Trilogy was brought out in the year 458 B.c., and the poet died two years later, when Socrates was about fifteen years old. Sophocles was born in 495 B.C., Euripides in 482 B.C. They both died about 406 B.C., some seven years before Socrates. Pheidias, the great sculptor, the artist of the Elgin marbles, which are now in the British Museum, died in 431 B.c. Pericles, the supreme statesman and orator, whose name marks an epoch in the history of civilization, died in 429 B.c. Thucydides, the historian, whose history is ‘ a possession for all ages/was born in 472 B.c., about the same time as Socrates, and died probably between 401 B.C. and 395 B.C. Ictinus, the architect, completed the Parthenon in 438 B.C. There have never been finer instruments of culture than the art and poetry and thought of such men as these. Socrates, who in 420 B.c. was about fifty years old, was contemporary with them all. He must have known and conversed with some of them : for Athens was not very large, and the Athenians spent almost the whole of their day in public. To live in such a city was in itself no mean training for a man, though he might not be conscious of it. The great object of Pericles’ policy had been to make Athens the acknowledged intellectual capital and centre of Greece, ‘the Prytaneum of all Greek wisdom.’ Socrates himself speaks with pride in the Apology of her renown for * wisdom and power of mind.’ And Athens gave her citizens another kind of training also, through her political institutions. From having been the head of the confederacy of Delos, she had grown to be an Imperial, or, as her enemies called her, a tyrant city. She was the mistress of a great empire, ruled and administered by law. The Sovereign Power in the State was the Assembly, of which every citizen, not under disability, was a member, and at which attendance was by law compulsory. There was no representative government, no intervening responsibility of ministers. The Sovereign people in their Assembly directly administered the Athenian empire. Each individual citizen was thus brought every day into immediate contact with matters of Imperial importance. His political powers and responsibilities were very great. He was accustomed to hear questions of domestic administration, of legislation, of peace and war, of alliances, of foreign and colonial policy, keenly and ably argued on either side. He was accustomed to hear arguments on one side of a question attacked and dissected and answered by opponents with the greatest acuteness and pertinacity. He himself had to examine, weigh, and decide between rival arguments. The Athenian judicial system gave the same kind of training in another direction by its juries, on which every citizen was liable to be selected by lot to serve. The result was to create at Athens an extremely high level of general intelligence, such as cannot be looked for in a modern state. And it may well be that in the debates of the Assembly and the discussions of the courts of law Socrates first became aware of the necessity of sifting and examining plausible arguments.

Such, shortly, were the influences under which Socrates passed the first fifty years of his life. It is evident that they were most powerful and efficient as instruments of education, in the wider sense of that word. Very little evidence remains of the formal training which he received, or of the nature and extent of his positive knowledge : and the history of his intellectual development is practically a matter of pure conjecture. As a boy he received the usual Athenian liberal education in music and gymnastic, an education, that is to say, mental and physical. He was fond of quoting from the existing Greek literature, and he seems to have been familiar with it, especially with Homer. He is represented by Xenophon as repeating Prodicus’ fable of the choice of Heracles at length. He says that he was in the habit of studying with his friends ‘ the treasures which the wise men of old have left us in their books collections, that is, of the short and pithy sayings of the seven sages, such as ‘know thyself’; a saying, it maybe noticed, which lay at the root of his whole teaching. And • he had some knowledge of mathematics, and of science, as it existed in those days. He understood something of astronomy and of advanced geometry:’ and he was acquainted with certain, at any rate, of the theories of his predecessors in philosophy, the Physical or Cosmical philosophers, such as Heraclitus and Parmenides, and, especially, with those of Anaxagoras. But there is no trustworthy evidence which enables us to go beyond the bare fact that he had such knowledge. We cannot tell whether he ever studied Physical Philosophy seriously, or from whom, or how, or even, certainly, when, he learnt what he knew about it. It is perhaps most likely that his mathematical and scientific studies are to be assigned to the earlier period of his life. There is a passage in the Phaedo in which he says (or rather is made to say) that in his youth he had a passion for the study of Nature. The .historical value of this passage, however, which occurs in the philosophical or Platonic part of the dialogue, is very doubtful. Socrates is "represented as passing on from the study of Nature to the doctrine of Ideas, a doctrine which was put forward for the first time by Plato after his death, and which he never heard of. The statement must be taken for what it is worth. The fact that Aristophanes in the Clouds (424B.c.) represents Socrates as a natural philosopher, who teaches his pupils, among other things, astronomy and geometry, proves nothing. Aristophanes’ misrepresentations about Socrates are so gross that his unsupported testimony deserves no credit: and there is absolutely no evidence to confirm the statement that Socrates ever taught Natural Science. It is quite certain that latterly he refused to have anything to do with such speculations. He admitted Natural Science only in so far as it is practically useful, in the way in which astronomy is useful to a sailor, or geometry to a land-surveyor Natural philosophers, he says, are like madmen: their conclusions are hopelessly contradictory, and their science unproductive, impossible, and impious; for the gods are not pleased with those who seek to discover what they do not wish to reveal. The time which is wasted on such subjects might be much more profitably employed in the pursuit of useful knowledge.

All then that we can say of the first forty years of Socrates’ life, consists of general statements like these. During these years there is no specific record of him. Between 432 B.c. and 429 B.c. he served as a common soldier at the siege of Potidaea, an Athenian dependency which had revolted, and surpassed every one in his powers of enduring hunger, thirst, and cold, and all the hardships of a severe Thracian winter. At this siege we hear of him for the first time in connection with Alcibiades, whose life he saved in a skirmish, and to whom he eagerly relinquished the prize of valor. In 431B.C. the Peloponnesian War broke out, and in 424 B.c. the Athenians were disastrously defeated and routed by the Thebans at the battle of Delium. Socrates and Laches were among the few who did not yield to panic. They retreated together steadily, and the resolute bearing of Socrates was conspicuous to friend and foe alike. Had all the Athenians behaved as he did, says Laches, in the dialogue of that name, the defeat would have been a victory, Socrates fought bravely a third time at the battle of Amphipolis [423B.c.] against the Peloponnesian forces, in which the commanders on both sides, Cleon and Brasidas, were killed: but there is no record of his specific services on that occasion.

About the same time that Socrates was displaying conspicuous courage in the cause of Athens at Delium and Amphipolis, Aristophanes was holding him up to hatred, contempt, and ridicule in the comedy of the Clouds. The Clouds was first acted in 423 B.c., the year between the battles of Delium and Amphipolis, and was afterwards recast in the form in which we have it. It was a fierce and bitter attack on what Aristophanes, a staunch “ laudator temporis acti se puero,” considered the corruption and degeneracy of the age. Since the middle of the Fifth Century B.C. a new intellectual movement, in which the Sophists were the most prominent figures, had set in. Men had begun to examine and to call in question the old-fashioned commonplaces of morality and religion. Independent thought and individual judgment were coming to be substituted for immemorial tradition and authority. Aristophanes hated the spirit of the age with his whole soul. It appeared to him to be impious and immoral. He looked back with unmixed regret to the simplicity of ancient manners, to the glories of Athens in the Persian wars, to the men of Marathon who obeyed orders without discussing them, and ‘ only knew how to call for their barley-cake, and sing yo-ho ! ’ The Clouds is his protest against the immorality of free thought and the Sophists. He chose Socrates for his central figure, chiefly, no doubt on account of Socrates’ well-known and strange personal appearance. The grotesque ugliness, and flat nose, and prominent eyes, and Silenus-like face, and shabby dress, might be seen every day in the streets, and were familiar to every Athenian. Aristophanes cared little  —  probably he did not take the trouble to find out —  that Socrates’ whole life was spent in fighting against the Sophists. It was enough for him that Socrates did not accept the traditional beliefs,and was a good centre-piece for a comedy. The account of the Clouds given in the Apology is substantially correct. There, is a caricature of a natural philosopher, and then a caricature of a Sophist. Roll the two together, and we have Aristophanes’ picture of Socrates. Socrates is described as a miserable recluse, and is made to talk a great deal of very absurd and very amusing nonsense about ‘ Physics.’ He announces that Zeus has been dethroned, and that Rotation reigns in his stead.

The new divinities are Air, which holds the earth suspended, and Ether, and the Clouds, and the Tongue — people always think ‘that natural philosophers do not believe in the gods. ’He professes to have Belial’s power to ‘make the worse Appear the better reason;’and with it he helps a debtor to swindle his creditors by means of the most paltry quibbles. Under his tuition the son learns to beat his father, and threatens to beat his mother; and justifies himself on the ground that it is merely a matter of convention that the father has the right of beating his son. In the concluding lines of the play the chorus say that Socrates’ chief crime is that he has sinned against the gods with his eyes open. The Natural Philosopher was unpopular at Athens on religious grounds: he was associated with atheism. The Sophist was unpopular on moral grounds : he was supposed to corrupt young men, to make falsehood plausible, to be ‘ a clever fellow who could make other people clever too. ’The natural philosopher was not a Sophist, and the Sophist was not a natural philosopher. Aristophanes mixes them up together, and ascribes the sins of both of them to Socrates. The Clouds, it is needless to say, is a gross and absurd libel from beginning to end I but Aristophanes hit the popular conception. The charges which he made in 423 B.c. stuck to Socrates to the end of his life. They are exactly the charges made by popular prejudice, against which Socrates defends himself in the first ten chapters of the Apology, and which he says have been so long ‘ in the air.’ He formulates them as follows : “ Socrates is an evil-doer who busies himself with investigating things beneath the earth and in the sky, and who makes the worse appear the better reason, and who teaches others these same things. ”If we allow for the exaggerations of a burlesque, the Clouds is not a bad commentary on the beginning of the Apology. And it establishes a definite and important ’historical fact — namely, that as early as 423 B.c. Socrates’ system of cross-examination had made him a marked man.

For sixteen years after the battle of Amphipolis we hear nothing of Socrates. The next events in his life, of which there is a specific record, are those narrated by himself in the twentieth chapter of the Apology. They illustrate, as he meant them to illustrate, his invincible moral courage. They show, as he intended that they should, that there was no power on earth, whether it were an angry popular assembly, or a murdering oligarchy, which could force him to do wrong. In 406 B.c. the Athenian fleet defeated the Lacedaemonians at the battle of Arginusae, so called from some small islands off the south-east point of Lesbos. After the battle the Athenian commanders omitted to recover the bodies of their dead, and to save the living from off their disabled triremes. The Athenians at home, on hearing of this, were furious. The due performance of funeral rites was a very sacred duty with the Greeks; and many citizens mourned for friends and relatives who had been left to drown. The commanders were immediately recalled, and an assembly was held in which they were accused of neglect of duty. They defended themselves by saying that they had ordered certain inferior officers (amongst others, their accuser Theramenes) to perform the duty, but that a storm had come on which had rendered the performance impossible. The debate was adjourned, and it was resolved that the Senate should decide in what way the commanders should be tried. The Senate resolved that the Athenian people, having heard the accusation and the defense, should proceed to vote forthwith for the acquittal or condemnation of the eight commanders collectively. The resolution was grossly unjust, and it was illegal. It substituted a popular vote for a fair and formal trial. And it contravened one of the laws of Athens, which provided that at every trial a separate verdict should be found in the case of each person accused.

Socrates was at that time a member of the Senate, the only office that he ever filled. The Senate was composed of five hundred citizens, elected by lot, fifty from each of the ten tribes, and holding office for one year. The members of each tribe held the Prytany, that is, were responsible for the conduct of business, for thirty-five days at a time, and ten out of the fifty were proedri or presidents every seven days in succession. Every bill or motion was examined by the proedri before it was submitted to the Assembly, to see if it were in accordance with law: if it was not, it was quashed: one of the proedri presided over the Senate and the Assembly each day, and for one day only : he was called the Epistates it was his duty to put the question to the vote. In short, he was the Speaker.

These details are necessary for the understanding of the passage in the Apology. On the day on which it was proposed to take a collective vote on the acquittal or condemnation of the eight commanders, Socrates was Epistates. The proposal was, as we have seen, illegal: but the people were furious against the accused, and it was a very popular one. Some of the proedri opposed it before it was submitted to the Assembly, on the ground of its illegality; but they were silenced by threats and subsided. Socrates alone refused to give way. He would not put a question, which he knew to be illegal, to the vote. Threats of suspension and arrest, the clamor of an angry people, the fear of imprisonment or death, could not move him. ‘ I thought it my duty to face the danger out in the cause of law and justice, and not to be an accomplice in your unjust proposal. ’But his authority lasted only for a day; the proceedings were adjourned, a more pliant Epistates succeeded him, and the generals were condemned and executed.

Two years later Socrates again showed by his conduct that he would endure anything rather than do wrong. In 404 B.C. Athens was captured by the Lacedaemonian forces, and the long walls were thrown down. The great Athenian democracy was destroyed, and an oligarchy of thirty set up in its place by Critias (who in former days had been much in Socrates’ company) with the help of the Spartan general Lysander. The rule of the Thirty lasted for rather less than a year: in the spring of 405 B.C. the democracy was restored. The reign of Critias and his friends was a Reign of Terror. Political opponents and private enemies were murdered as a matter of course. So were respectable citizens, and wealthy citizens for the sake of their wealth. All kinds of men were used as assassins, for the oligarchs wished to implicate as many as possible in their crimes. With this object they sent for Socrates and four others to the Council Chamber, a building where formerly the Prytanies, and now they themselves, took their meals and sacrificed, and ordered them to bring one Leon over from Salamis to Athens, to be murdered. The other four feared to disobey an order, disobedience to which probably meant death. They went over to Salamis, and brought Leon back with them. Socrates disregarded the order and the danger, and went home. ‘ I showed,’ he says, ‘ not by mere words, but by my actions, that I did not care a straw for death : but that I did care very much indeed about doing wrong. ’He had previously incurred the anger of Critias and the other oligarchs by publicly condemning their political murders in language which caused them to send for him, and forbid him to converse with young men as he was accustomed to do, and to threaten him with death.

There are two events in the life of Socrates to which no date can be assigned. The first of them is his marriage with Xanthippe. By her he had three sons, Lamprocles, Sophroniscus, and Menexenus. The two latter are called ‘ children ’ in the Apology, which was delivered in 399 B.C., and the former pet-pa,Kiov ; a phrase which implies that he was some fifteen years old. The name Xanthippe has come to mean a shrew. Her son Lamprocles found her bitter tongue and her violent temper intolerable, and his father told him that she meant all her harshness for his good, and read him a lecture on filial duty. The parting between Socrates and Xanthippe, as described in the Phaedo, is not marked by any great tenderness. His last day was spent, not with his wife, but with his friends, and she was not present at his death. No trustworthy details of his married life have been preserved ; but there is a consensus of testimony by late authors that it was not happy. Indeed the strong probability is that he had no home life at all.

Again, no date can be assigned to the answer of the Delphic oracle, spoken of in the fifth chapter of the Apology. There it is said that Chaerephon went to Delphi and asked if there was any man who was wiser than Socrates, and the priestess answered that there was no man. Socrates offers to prove the truth of his statement by the evidence of Chaerephon’s brother, Chserephon himself being dead. In the next chapter he represents the duty of testing the oracle as the motive of that unceasing examination of men which is described in the Apology, and which gained him so much hatred. He says that he thought himself bound to sift every one whom he met, in order that the truth of the oracle might be thoroughly tested and proved. There is no reason to doubt that the answer of the oracle was actually given; but, as Zeller observes, Socrates must have been a well-known and marked man before Chaerephon could have asked his question, or the oracle have given such an answer. ‘ It may have done a similar service to Socrates as (sic) his doctor’s degree did to Luther, assuring him of his inward call; but it had just as little to do with making him a philosophical reformer as the doctor’s degree had with making Luther a religious reformer.’ The use which he makes of the oracle, therefore, must be regarded as ‘ a device of a semi-rhetorical character under cover of which he was enabled to avoid an avowal of the real purpose which had animated him in his tour of examination. ’His real purpose was not to test the truth of the Delphic oracle. It was to expose the hollowness of what passed for knowledge, and to substitute, or rather, to lay the foundations of true and scientific knowledge. Such an explanation of his mission would scarcely have been understood, and it would certainly have offended the judges deeply. But he never hesitates or scruples to avow the original cause of his examination of men. He regarded it as a duty undertaken in obedience to the command of God. ‘ God has commanded me to examine men,’ he says, * in oracles, and in dreams, and in every way in which His will was ever declared to man.’‘ I cannot hold my peace, for that would be to disobey God.’ The Apology is full of such passages. With this belief he did not shrink from the unpopularity and hatred which a man, who exposes the ignorance of persons who imagine themselves to be wise, when they are not wise, is sure to incur. At what time he became convinced of the hollowness of what then commonly passed for knowledge, and began to examine men, and to make them give an account of their words, cannot be exactly determined, any more than the date of the oracle. We cannot tell to how many years of his life the account of it given in the Apology applies. All that is certain is that, as early as 421 B.C., twenty-four years before his death, he was a sufficiently conspicuous man for Aristophanes to select him as the type and representative of the new school, and to parody his famous Elenchos. There is, therefore, no reason to doubt that he must have begun to cross-examine men before 421 B.c. He had begun to examine himself as early as the siege of Potidaea (430 B.C.-429 B.C.) But when he once set about this work he devoted himself to it entirely. He was a strange contrast to professional teachers like the Sophists. He took no pay: he had no classes : he taught no positive knowledge. But his whole life was spent in examining himself and others. He was ‘ the great crossexaminer.’ He was ready to question and talk to any one who would listen. His life and conversation were absolutely public. He conversed now with men like Alcibiades, or Gorgias, or Protagoras, and then with a common mechanic. In the morning he was to be seen in the promenades and the gymnasia: when the Agora was filling, he was there : he was to be found wherever he thought that he should meet most people. He scarcely ever went away from the city.‘ I am a lover of knowledge,’ he says in the Phaedrus ‘and in the city I can learn from men, but the fields and the trees can teach me nothing.’ He gave his life wholly and entirely to the service of God, neglecting his private affairs, until he came to be in very great poverty. A mina of silver is all that he can offer for his life at the trial. He formed no school, but there grew up round him a circle of admiring friends, united, not by any community of doctrines, but by love for their great master, with whom he seems not unfrequently to have had common meals.

Plato has left a most striking description of Socrates in the Symposium put into the mouth of Alcibiades. I quote it almost at length from Shelley’s translation, which, though not always correct, is graceful : — ‘ I will begin the praise of Socrates by comparing him to a certain statue. Perhaps he will think that this statue is introduced for the sake of ridicule, but I assure you it is necessary for the illustration of truth. I assert, then, that Socrates is exactly like those Silenuses that sit in the sculptor’s shops, and which are holding carved flutes or pipes, but which when divided in two are found to contain the images of the gods. I assert that Socrates is like the satyr Marsyas. That your form and appearance are like these satyrs, I think that even you will not venture to deny; and how like you are to them in all other things, now hear. Are you not scornful and petulant ? If you deny this, I will bring witnesses. Are you not a piper, and far more wonderful a one than he? For Marsyas, and whoever now pipes the music that he taught, (for it was Marsyas who taught Olympus his music), enchants men through the power of the mouth. For if any musician, be he skillful or not, awakens this music, it alone enables him to retain the minds of men, and from the divinity of its nature makes evident those who are in want of the gods and initiation : you differ only from Marsyas in this circumstance, that you effect without instruments, by mere words, all that he can do. For when we hear Pericles or any other accomplished orator, deliver a discourse, no one, as it were, cares anything about it. But when any one hears you, or even your words related by another, though ever so rude and unskillful a speaker, be that person a woman, man, or child, we are struck and retained, as it were, by the discourse clinging to our mind.

If I was not afraid that I am a great deal too drunk, I would confirm to you by an oath the strange effects which I assure you I have suffered from his words, and suffer still; for when I hear him speak my heart leaps up far more than the hearts of those who celebrate the Corybantic mysteries ; my tears are poured out as he talks, a thing I have often seen happen to many others besides myself. I have heard Pericles and other excellent orators, and have been pleased with their discourses, but I suffered nothing of this kind; nor was my soul ever on those occasions disturbed and filled with self-reproach, as if it were slavishly laid prostrate. But this Marsyas here has often affected me in the way I describe, until the life which I lived seemed hardly worth living. Do not deny it, Socrates; for I know well that if even now I chose to listen to you, I could not resist, but should again suffer the same effects. For, my friends, he forces me to confess that while I myself am still in need of many things, I neglect my own necessities and attend to those of the Athenians. I stop my ears, therefore, as from the Syrens, and flee away as fast as possible, that I may not sit down beside him, and grow old in listening to his talk. For this man has reduced me to feel the sentiment of shame, which I imagine no one would readily believe was in me. For I feel in his presence my incapacity of refuting what he says or of refusing to do that which he directs : but when I depart from him the glory which the multitude confers overwhelms me. I escape therefore and hide myself from him, and when I see him I am overwhelmed with humiliation, because I have neglected to do what I have confessed to him ought to be done : and often and often have I wished that he were no longer to be seen among men. But if that were to happen I well know that I should suffer far greater pain ; so that where I can turn, or what I can do with this man I know not. All this have I and many others suffered from the pipings of this satyr.

‘ And observe how like he is to what I said, and what a wonderful power he possesses. Know that there is not one of you who is aware of the real nature of Socrates ; but since I have begun, I will make him plain to you. You observe how passionately Socrates affects the intimacy of those who are beautiful, and how ignorant he professes himself to be; appearances in themselves excessively Silenic. This, my friends, is the external form with which, like one of the sculptured Sileni, he has clothed himself; for if you open him you will find within admirable temperance and wisdom. For he cares not for mere beauty, but despises more than any one can imagine all external possessions, whether it be beauty, or wealth, or glory, or any other thing for which the multitude felicitates the possessor. He esteems these things, and us who honor them, as nothing, and lives among men, making all the objects of their admiration the playthings of his irony. But I know not if any one of you have ever seen the divine images which are within, when he has been opened, and is serious. I have seen them, and they are so supremely beautiful, so golden, so divine, and wonderful, that everything that Socrates commands surely ought to be obeyed, even like the voice of a god.

‘At one time we were fellow-soldiers, and had our mess together in the camp before Potidaea. Socrates there overcame not only me, but every one beside, in endurance of evils : when, as often happens in a campaign, we were reduced to few provisions, there were none who could sustain hunger like Socrates ; and when we had plenty, he alone seemed to enjoy our military fare. He never drank much willingly, but when he was compelled, he conquered all even in that to which he was least accustomed : and, what is most astonishing, no person ever saw Socrates drunk either then or at any other time. In the depth of winter (and the winters there are excessively rigid) he sustained calmly incredible hardships: and amongst other things, whist the frost was intolerably severe, and no one went out of their tents, or if they went out, wrapped themselves up carefully, and put fleeces under their feet, and bound their legs with hairy skins, Socrates went out only with the same cloak on that he usually wore, and walked barefoot upon the ice : more easily, indeed, than those who had sandaled themselves so delicately: so that the soldiers thought that he did it to mock their want of fortitude. It would indeed be worth while to commemorate all that this brave man did and endured in that expedition. In one instance he was seen early in the morning, standing in one place, wrapt in meditation; and as he seemed unable to unravel the subject of his thoughts, he still continued to stand as inquiring and discussing within himself, and when noon came, the soldiers observed him, and said to one another  — “ Socrates has been standing there thinking, ever since the morning.” At last some lonians came to the spot, and having supped, as it was summer, they lay down to sleep in the cool: they observed that Socrates continued to stand there the whole night until morning, and that, when the sun rose, he saluted it with a prayer and departed.

'I ought not to omit what Socrates is in battle. For in that battle after which the generals decreed to me the prize of courage, Socrates alone of all men was the savior of my life, standing by me when I had fallen and was wounded, and preserving both myself and my arms from the hands of the enemy. On that occasion I entreated the generals to decree the prize, as it was most due, to him. And this, O Socrates, you cannot deny, that when the generals, wishing to conciliate a person of my rank, desired to give me the prize, you were far more earnestly desirous than the generals that this glory should be attributed not to yourself, but me.

' But to see Socrates when our army was defeated and scattered in flight at Delium was a spectacle worthy to behold. On that occasion I was among the cavalry, and he on foot, heavily armed. After the total rout of our troops, he and Laches retreated together; I came up by chance, and seeing them, bade them be of good cheer, for that I would not leave them. As I was on horseback, and therefore less occupied by a regard of my own situation, I could better observe than at Potidaea the beautiful spectacle exhibited by Socrates on this emergency. How superior was he to

Laches in presence of mind and courage ! Your representation of him on the stage, O Aristophanes, was not wholly unlike his real self on this occasion, for he walked and darted his regards around with a majestic composure, looking tranquilly both on his friends and enemies: so that it was evident to every one, even from afar, that whoever should venture to attack him would encounter a desperate resistance. He and his companions thus departed in safety: for those who are scattered in flight are pursued and killed, whist men hesitate to touch those who exhibit such a countenance as that of Socrates even in defeat.

Many other and most wonderful qualities might well be praised in Socrates, but such as these might singly be attributed to others. But that which is unparalleled in Socrates is that he is unlike and above comparison with all other men, whether those who have lived in ancient times, or those who exist now. For it may be conjectured that Brasidas and many others are such as was Achilles. Pericles deserves comparison with Nestor and Antenor; and other excellent persons of various times may, with probability, be drawn into comparison with each other. But to such a singular man as this, both himself and his discourses are so uncommon, no one, should he seek, would find a parallel among the present or past generations of mankind; unless they should say that he resembled those with whom I lately compared him, for assuredly he and his discourses are like nothing but the Sileni and the Satyrs. At first I forgot to make you observe how like his discourses are to those Satyrs when they are opened, for if any one will listen to the talk of Socrates, it will appear to him at first extremely ridiculous: the phrases and expressions which he employs, fold round his exterior the skin, as it were, of a rude and wanton Satyr. He is always talking about great market-asses, and brass-founders, and leather-cutters, and skindressers ; and this is his perpetual custom, so that any dull and unobservant person might easily laugh at his discourse. But if any one should see it opened, as it were, and get within the sense of his words, he would then find that they alone of all that enters into the mind of men to utter, had a profound and persuasive meaning, and that they were most divine ; and that they presented to the mind innumerable images of every excellence, and that they tended towards objects of the highest moment, or rather towards all that he, who seeks the possession of what is supremely excellent and good, need regard as essential to the accomplishment of his ambition.

‘These are the things, my friends, for which I praise Socrates.’

After that, Socrates, Aristophanes and Agathon sat the night out in conversation, till Socrates made the other two, who were very tired and sleepy, admit that a man who could write tragedy could write comedy, and that the foundations of the tragic and comic arts were the same. Then Aristophanes and Agathon fell asleep in the early morning, and Socrates went away and washed himself at the Lyceum, and having spent the day there in his accustomed manner, went home in the evening.’

We have now reached the events recorded in our dialogues. In 399 B.c. Socrates was put on his trial for corrupting young men and for not believing in the gods of Athens; and on these charges he was found guilty and condemned to death. His death was delayed by a State religious ceremonial, and he lay in prison for thirty days. His friends implored him to escape, which he might easily have done, but he refused to listen to them ; and when the time came he cheerfully drank the poison and died. It is convenient to pause here for a little, before we go on to speak of these events in detail, in order to get some idea of Socrates as a thinker. With a very large number of questions concerning his philosophy we have nothing to do. But it is essential, if we are to understand these dialogues at all, that we should know something about certain points of it.