Why Socrates died : dispelling the myths

250 Pages·2009·1.4 MB·English

by  Waterfield

WHY SOCRATES DIED
by the same author
XENOPHON’S RETREAT: Greece, Persia and the End of the Golden Age
WHY SOCRATES DIED
Dispelling the Myths
ROBIN WATERFIELD
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
New York • London
Copyright © 2009 by Robin Waterfield
Maps copyright © 2009 by András Bereznay All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Waterfield, Robin, 1952–
Why Socrates died: dispelling the myths / Robin Waterfield.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-0-39307290-7
1. Socrates—Trials, litigation, etc. 2. Socrates—Death and burial.
I. Title.
B316.W38 2009
183'.2—dc22
[B]
2009004317
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
For Kathryn
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Key Dates
Maps
THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES
1 Socrates in Court
2 How the System Worked
3 The Charge of Impiety
THE WAR YEARS
4 Alcibiades, Socrates and the Aristocratic Milieu
5 Pestilence and War
6 The Rise and Fall of Alcibiades
7 The End of the War
8 Critias and Civil War
CRISIS AND CONFLICT
9 Symptoms of Change
10 Reactions to Intellectuals
THE CONDEMNATION OF SOCRATES
11 Socratic Politics
12 A Cock for Asclepius
Glossary
References
Bibliography
Preface
Everyone has heard of Socrates, and even if they know little or nothing else
about the man, they usually know that he was put to death by his fellow
Athenians in 399 BCE. The events surrounding Socrates’ death have become
iconic–more discussed, portrayed or merely mentioned–than any except those
surrounding the death, some four hundred years later, of a Jewish prophet called
Yehoshua. In fact, the two trials and executions often seem to meld in people’s
minds, so that Socrates too becomes a kind of martyr–a good man unjustly killed
for his views, or for being an outstanding individual in a collectivist society, or
something like that. Do a web search for ‘Socrates and Jesus’ and you will see
what I mean. But Socrates would have been the last to want to leave a cultural
icon unexamined, and that is what I do in this book: examine all the evidence in
order to reach a fuller understanding of Socrates’ trial and execution than has
been achieved before.
Socrates’ trial was a critical moment in ancient Athenian history, and so
provides a very good lens through which to study a complex and perennially
fascinating, somewhat alien society. That is my second intention: to provide a
readable account of as much Athenian history as is necessary to fill in the
background of the trial. For we will, of course, never understand the trial without
being able to enter, as fully as possible, into the mindset of the Athenians who
condemned him to death. This is a book about classical Athenian society as
much as it is about Socrates, and especially about the social crisis that Athens
endured in the decades immediately preceding Socrates’ trial.
Socrates was famous: we have more evidence about him, and about
Alcibiades, his beloved (who also features prominently in this book), than any
other two figures from classical Athens. But even this good fortune may be two-
edged. Socrates himself wrote nothing, and almost all the evidence about him
comes from two of his followers, Plato and Xenophon, both of whom had their
own agendas and reasons for writing. Among these reasons was a desire to
exculpate their mentor–to make their fellow Athenians wonder why they ever
condemned him to death (in this respect, at least, he truly resembles Jesus). So
we may have a greater number of words about Socrates than about any
comparable ancient Athenian, but every single word needs to be weighed and
treated with caution. And the same goes for Alcibiades, a flamboyant, larger-
than-life character whose image became exaggerated over the years, until he
became an archetypal dandy, profligate and sexual omnivore, whose tyrannical
political intentions could be read off from his private life. As if the dubious
source material did not make the work difficult enough, at the heart of this book
is a trial. The nature of Athenian society, and of the legal system in particular,
means that very few trials–and none of those on social charges such as those of
which Socrates was accused–were concerned only with the explicit charges. So
all the evidence needs a judicious approach.
Socrates himself wrote nothing, as I have said, and there is a temptation to
understand this as an eloquent way of asserting his mistrust of the written word.
It is true that he preferred the flexibility of living conversation and the spark of
pre-verbal knowledge that can occasionally be transmitted in such
circumstances, but it is more to the point to remember that disseminating one’s
ideas by means of the written word was still very rare in his day. But he did have
views and opinions, and we need to unearth them from the pages of those who
wrote about him, while recognizing that it will never finally be possible to
disentangle Socrates’ own views from those of his followers.
I have long believed that the historical Socrates is pretty irrecoverable, but
also that it would be sheer stupidity to deny that he cast a shadow over the works
of Xenophon and Plato. Scholars often cling hopefully or desperately to a
distinction between the ‘historical’ Socrates of Plato’s earlier dialogues, and the
character ‘Socrates’ who seems to speak for Plato’s own ideas in later dialogues.
I no longer believe in this distinction, except that in the light of Plato’s genius
the shadow of the historical Socrates becomes harder to discern; but in order not
to beg the question, I have avoided using Plato’s later dialogues for anything
except corroborative evidence. I make far more use of Xenophon’s testimony
than has been normal in the scholarly study of Socrates for the past hundred or
so years–but I have already groused enough in print about the neglect of
Xenophon, so I will say now only that without his help we are never going to
gain a rounded picture of Socrates, or even of just his trial.
Socrates was a philosopher, one of the most influential the world has ever
seen. Naturally, then, in this book I make quite a bit of use of philosophical texts.
But I do not want to alarm any reader who associates ‘philosophy’ with ‘density
and complexity’, or even with ‘futility’. Neither of these is a fair reaction to the
majority of the ancient philosophers, for whom philosophy was, above all, a
practical exercise in self-improvement. These early philosophers were dealing
with real issues, problems arising from real life, so their work was not futile;