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Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue Edited by Alessandro Stavru Christopher Moore leiden | boston Cover Illustration: socrates – Herm of Socrates, 470–399 b.c.e. National Museum of Archaeology, Naples, Italy. Album / Art Resource, ny. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2017040048 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. isbn 978-90-04-32191-5 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-34122-7 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Abbreviations ix Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue: An Overview from the First-Generation Socratics to Neoplatonism 1 Christopher Moore and Alessandro Stavru part 1 Around Socrates A Sage on the Stage: Socrates and Athenian Old Comedy 31 Jacques A. Bromberg Aristophanes’ Iconic Socrates 64 Andrea Capra Protagorean Socrates, Socratic Protagoras: A Narrative Strategy from Aristophanes to Plato 84 Michele Corradi Isocrates as a Reader of Socratic Dialogues 105 David J. Murphy The Origins of the Socratic Dialogue: Plato, Xenophon, and the Others 125 James M. Redfield part 2 The Immediate Socratic Circle On the Dialectical Character of Antisthenes’ Speeches Ajax and Odysseus 141 Vladislav Suvák Socratism and Eleaticism in Euclides of Megara 161 Aldo Brancacci vi contents Aristippus on Freedom, Autonomy, and the Pleasurable Life 179 Kristian Urstad Shock, Erotics, Plagiarism, and Fraud: Aspects of Aeschines of Sphettus’ Philosophy 202 Claudia Mársico Phaedo of Elis: The Biography, Zopyrus, and His Intellectual Profile 221 Danilo Di Lanzo part 3 Plato Plato and the Socratics 237 Luc Brisson Philosopher Socrates? Philosophy at the Time of Socrates and the Reformed Philosophia of Plato 268 Livio Rossetti A Literary Challenge: How to Represent Socrates’Daimonion 299 Stefano Jedrkiewicz The Logical Structure of Socrates’ Expert-Analogies 319 Petter Sandstad Crying for Help: Socrates as Silenus in the Euthydemus 336 Michael Erler Socrates and Natural Philosophy: The Testimony of Plato’s Phaedo 348 Jörn Müller Bios Praktikos and Bios Theôrêtikos in Plato’s Gorgias 369 Ivan Jordović The Socratic Dubia 386 Harold Tarrant Notes on Lovers 412 Sandra Peterson contents vii part 4 Xenophon How to Defend the Defense of Socrates? From the Apology to Memorabilia Book 1 435 Pierre Pontier Nature, Culture and the Rule of the Good in Xenophon’s Socratic Theory of Friendship: Memorabilia Book 2 459 Gabriel Danzig From Generals to Gluttony: Memorabilia Book 3 481 David Johnson Xenophon’s Socratic Education in Memorabilia Book 4 500 Christopher Moore Fundamental Parallels between Socrates’ and Ischomachus’ Positions in the Oeconomicus 521 Louis-André Dorion Aphroditê and Philophrosunê: Xenophon’s Symposium between Athenian and Spartan Paradigms 544 Maria Consiglia Alvino Xenophon’s Hiero: Hiding Socrates to Reform Tyranny 564 Federico Zuolo Xenophon’s Philosophical Approach to Writing: Socratic Elements in the Non-Socratic Works 577 Noreen Humble part 5 Later Reception Aristotle on Socrates 601 Nicholas Smith Aristoxenus on Socrates 623 Alessandro Stavru viii contents Socratic Protreptic and Epicurus: Healing through Philosophy 665 Jan Erik Heßler From Competitor to Hero: The Stoics on Socrates 682 Robert Bees Cicero and the Socratic Dialogue: Between Frankness and Friendship (Off. i, 132–137) 707 François Renaud Socrates and Alcibiades as “Satiric Heroes”: The Socrates of Persius 727 Diego De Brasi Plutarch’s Reception of Socrates 744 Geert Roskam “A Man of Outstanding Perfection”: Apuleius’ Admiration for Socrates 760 Friedemann Drews Socrates in Maximus of Tyre 772 Michael B. Trapp Socrates in the Ancient Biographical Tradition: From the Anonymous PHib. 182 to Diogenes Laertius 787 Tiziano Dorandi An Embodiment of Intellectual Freedom? Socrates in Libanius 799 Heinz-Günther Nesselrath Political Philosopher or Savior of Souls? Socrates in Themistius and Julian the Emperor 816 Maria Carmen De Vita Proclus on Socratic Ignorance, Knowledge, and Irony 836 Danielle A. Layne Index of Passages 855 Index of Ancient Names 912 Index of Modern Names 921 Abbreviations dk Diels, H. and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed., Berlin 1966. dl Dorandi, T., Diogenes Laertius: Lives of eminent philosophers, Cambridge 2013. lsj Liddell, H.G. and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., rev. H. Stuart Jones, 1925–1940. pcg Kassel, R. and C. Austin, Poetae comici graeci, i–viii, Berlin 1983–2001. ssr Giannantoni, G. Socratis et socraticorum reliquiae, i–iv, Napoli 1990. svf von Arnim, H., Stoicorum veterum Fragmenta, Leipzig, 1903–1905–1924. tgf Nauck, A. Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta, suppl. B. Snell, Hildesheim 1964. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004341227_002 Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue: An Overview from the First-Generation Socratics to Neoplatonism Christopher Moore Pennsylvania State University Alessandro Stavru Università Bocconi Milano 1 Scope and Organization of This Collection The last decade has featured a spawning of studies on Socrates and the Socratic literature that is unprecedented in both quantity and methodological variety. Nearly a dozen edited collections have appeared (among them three Compan- ions to Socrates),1 along with a great many editions, translations, monographs, and scholarly articles.2 Basic issues of Socratic scholarship that in the second half of the twentieth century had been bracketed or even rejected as unin- teresting or fruitless—such as those of the “historical Socrates,” the “Socratic question,” or the “Socratic schools”—have returned as urgent research direc- tions in this recent upsurge in Socratic studies. The hypotheses advanced to resolve these issues still need to be verified, and some of them remain highly problematic. It is difficult, in the first place, to establish the extent and the reliability of “Socratic literature” as such,3 and, consequently, to determine whether and to what degree such literature can yield a “Socratic personality” or a “Socratic philosophy.” One major feature of the “Socratic question” concerns the reliability of the extant sources’ apparent claims about the man named Socrates of Alopece. Granted, these are all and without question literary portraits of Socrates, that is, fictional representations of his personality and teaching. But it is also a fact 1 See Karasmanēs 2004; Ahbel-Rappe and Kamtekar 2006; Trapp 2007a and 2007b; Rossetti and Stavru 2008 and 2010; Morrison 2011a; de Luise and Stavru 2013; Bussanich and Smith 2013; Zilioli 2015; Danzig, Johnson, and Morrison (forthcoming). 2 For detailed surveys on the major trends of recent scholarship on Socrates and the Socratics see Stavru and Rossetti 2010; Stavru 2013; and Wolfsdorf (forthcoming). 3 Trapp 2007c; Dorion 2011; Wolfsdorf (forthcoming). 2 moore and stavru thattheserepresentations(i)containanumberof realistic—whileperhapsnot altogether historical—features that exceeds by far those we can find in other fictional genres of antiquity,4 and (ii) exerted, both through their fictional and their realistic features, a great influence on ancient philosophy and history.5 These considerations limit or even undermine whatever hopes one might have to make univocal claims about the “fictionality” or the “historical reliability” of Socratic literature. Many attempts have been made to solve the Socratic question by identi- fying and then studying those sources assumed to yield the “historical” or at least a “reliable” or a “realistic” Socrates. Scholars have often restricted their inquiry, accordingly, to specific texts, or to some range of texts, by a “quadriga” of authors,namelyAristophanes,Plato,Xenophon,andAristotle.6Suchaselec- tion led to important scholarly work, but it often failed to account for the lit- erary and philosophical complexity to which these texts refer, and upon which they largely depend. In fact most scholars opted for a focus on Plato alone.7 This yielded a wide range of studies that while meant to deal with “Socrates” actually investi- gated problems particular to the Platonic corpus.8 But a similar treatment was applied to the other major Socratic authors. Calls to re-examine their presen- tations of Socrates led mostly to studies restricted to the works or the portions 4 What we argue here is not that Socratic literature should be considered historical, but that its historical elements (references to events, persons, etc.) are a clear hint to the fact that this literature claims to be realistic. It is a matter of fact that Socratic literature was considered historical throughout antiquity. This makes Socratic literature radically different from other fictional literature of Antiquity such as poetry or myth, where the claim to realism is much weaker if not altogether absent. 5 See Morrison 2011b, xviii. 6 The “quadriga” approach is championed by Guthrie 1971, 7, but is still observable among present-day studies. A useful account of the major interpretations of Socrates relying on a selection between these four authors, or on combinations of them, is in Trapp 2007c, xix. 7 Mostly in the wake of Gregory Vlastos’ distinction between a “Socratic” SocratesE and a “Platonic” SocratesM. 8 This way of dealing with Plato’s Socrates can be observed in many of the essays contained in the three recent Companions to Socrates (Ahbel-Rappe and Kamtekar 2006; Morrison 2011a; Bussanich and Smith 2013). Here, the common practice of labeling as “Socratic” what is actually “Platonic” often goes hand in hand with the claim that the historical Socrates is to be found in the Platonic dialogues and not in Socratic literature—i.e., within the broader context in which Plato’s dialogues were written and to which they constantly refer. socrates and the socratic dialogue 3 of texts these authors explicitly devoted to Socrates—and only in rare cases to explorations of their literary and authorial context. For example, Socratic scholars dealing with Aristophanes mostly limited their study to the Clouds and some passages of Frogs and Birds; or those dealing with Xenophon to his Socraticworks;orthoseworkingonAristotletothepassagesinwhichthename “Socrates” occurs.9 Little attention has been paid to the presence of Socratic themes in other works or passages of these authors, or to the conceptual and intertextual links between the Socratic passages of these authors and other testimonies of the Socratic literature. This collection aims to set out on a new path. It presents a comprehensive picture of Socrates and the Socratic dialogue in ancient Greek and Roman literature, from the comedies of Eupolis and Aristophanes, written during Socrates’ middle age, to the treatises of Proclus, more than eight hundred years later. Each chapter addresses an author or group of authors whose work reveals something significant either about the thinking associated with Socrates and his nearest associates, especially the authors of “Socratic dialogues,” or the power and texture of the Socratic icon as formed in these dialogues and passed down, reinterpreted, and redeployed in the thought, biography, oratory, and literature of the ensuing generations. Special attention is paid to the Socratic literature of the first generation. Almost two thirds of the contributions directly explore texts written by authors who either knew Socrates directly (from the Comics to Xenophon) or may have relied on oral reports about him (Aristotle and Aristoxenus). Even the last third of contributions (from Epicurus to Proclus) contributes to reconstructing and understanding the dialogues of the first-generation Socratics, as it deals with the reception and interpretation both of well-known and of fragmentary Socratic literature. That Socrates has left neither writings10 nor formal institutions comparable to the schools founded after his death (the Clouds’ “Thinkery” notwithstand- 9 For detailed surveys of these scholarly approaches see the literature cited in n. 2 above. 10 The issue of Socrates’ agraphia is far from clear. In Plato, Socrates disavows writing (Phdr. 274b–275c), but composes a hymn to Apollo and verse retellings of Aesop’s fables shortly before dying (Phd. 60d–61b). The Hellenistic scholar Dionysodorus denies that he did (dl 2.42), but Diogenes Laertius himself, Ath. 14.628f, and Them. Or. 2.27b–c seem to confirm it. According to a tradition going back to the second-generation Socratic Menedemusof Eretria(c.345–260bce),Socrateswrotedialoguesthatafterhisdeathwere passed on to Aeschines from Xanthippe (dl. 2.60, also noted by Ath. 13.611d–e, who draws on the Epicurean philosopher Idomeneus of Lampsacus [c. 325–270 bce]). 4 moore and stavru ing) shows the necessity of studying his thought through this second-hand, interlocutionary,reflectiveSocratism.Inotherwords,thewaySocrateslivedhis life—in public, in constant conversation, in pursuit of the promising youth of his city, in a shared philosophy of mutual examination—means that to study Socrates requires studying his effect and influence on those around him and those, in turn, around them. We may note a basic dichotomy among the first-generation literature on Socrates. On the one hand we have the logoi Sôkratikoi, written by companions and pupils of Socrates; on the other, works by Comics or Sophists, whose main feature is their polemic against both Socrates and his circle. This collection includes both. The extant and fragmentary texts by Socrates’ associates consti- tute its main focus, as we will see, but not its only focus. Nor could it be, as the ComicsandtheSophistsprovideanindispensablebackgroundforunderstand- ing how Socrates and the dialogues reporting about him were perceived “from outside.” Comic literature of the fifth century gives important information for reconstructing the origins of the Socratic dialogue, especially the political and philosophical motivations prompting the Socratics to represent their master through a new literary form (chapters 1–3). Sophistic literature of the fifth and fourth century provides a lively insight into the way Socrates’ teaching was per- ceived before and after his death, as well as into the polemics between the Socratics and attentive readers of the logoi Sôkratikoi, such as Polycrates and Isocrates (chapters 3–4). Most of the chapters (5–40), while “monographic” and concentrating on a single author or corpus of texts, deal with a wide range of extant and fragmen- tary Socratic dialogues. This applies to the section on the major companions of Socrates (Antisthenes, Euclides, Aristippus, Aeschines, and Phaedo) as well as to those on Plato, Xenophon, and later reception.Throughout these sections we get a vivid picture not only of Socrates and his teaching but also of the intra- Socratic polemics that characterize each of these authors’ work. We can summarize and say that this collection tackles Socrates as he has been depicted in the logoi Sôkratikoi; in the literature that deals polemically with Socrates and these dialogues; and in the later reception that relies in turn on these dialogues and polemics. But these swathes of literature could prove too capacious taken without some principle of further selection. Our main criterion of choice was that of intertextuality: we decided to include only contributions about authors and texts that refer directly, and not merely hypothetically, to topics treated in the Socratic dialogues, or, from the other direction, about authors and texts to which the Socratic dialogues explicitly refer. This meant excluding from the collection figures who may have in fact played a pivotal role for Socrates’ education and teaching, such as Archelaus, socrates and the socratic dialogue 5 Anaxagoras, or Euripides (cf. dl 2.18–19). Their importance for the Socratic dialogue can be only indirectly inferred, textual evidence for their influence on Socrates’ thought being very poor.11 2 The Chapters of This Collection Across forty chapters, the collection brings into one place, for the first time, and by an international range of scholars, the remarkable sweep of sources, perspectives, and arguments worth considering by the present-day student of Socrates and the dialogues that rose around him, and of their philosophical legacy. We hold that understanding Socrates means, in an essential and pro- nounced way, understanding his significance to those who watched and talked to him, heard about him, and learned from him through the written testimony of the Socratic dialogues. The collection focuses therefore on the Socratic dia- logues, their context, and their reception in later centuries. We have arranged the collection into two halves: the period and authors around Socrates, and later reception. In the first half, we address Athenian comedy, members and competitors of the Socratic circle, Plato, and Xenophon. In the second half, chapters tackle the Peripatetics, Hellenistic schools, Roman Imperial writers, Middle Platonists, Neoplatonists, and other authors important for understand- ing the reception of Socratic dialogues. a Around Socrates The collection begins with a section on texts dealing with the literary and rhetorical context of Socrates’ lifetime.Three chaptersare devotedto Old Com- edy and the peculiarly intense and ramifying force that Aristophanes—our earliest comprehensive witness to Socrates—had in influencing what every- onesincePlatohasthoughtaboutSocrates.EveryoneremembersthatinPlato’s Apology (19c), Socrates blames Aristophanes, especially his Clouds, for foment- ing prejudice and hatred against himself. But as Jacques Bromberg (“A Sage on Stage: Socrates and Athenian Old Comedy”) reminds us, an entire sub-genre of comic drama arose in the 430s–420s, lampooning Socrates and parodying intellectuals of every variety. This broader vantage allows us to reassess Aristo- phanes’ motivations in depicting Socrates as he did. On this reassessment, the 11 Difficulties in determining the extent of the influence of single Presocratics on Socrates surface in the recent collection by Laks and Saetta-Cottone 2013, which features contribu- tions on Xenophanes, Parmenides, Empedocles, Archelaus, and Diogenes of Apollonia.
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