Socrates (5 page)

Chapter 3
Socratic Literature and the Socratic Problem

The account of Socrates’ life and death attempted in the previous chapter has already involved us in grappling with the so-called ‘Socratic problem’, that is, the question of what access our sources give us to the life and character of the historical Socrates. Every statement in that chapter has involved some assumptions, explicit or implicit, about the character and reliability of the source on which it relies. In particular, the account of Socrates’ trial emphasizes the different apologetic stances which shape the presentations of Socrates’ defence by Plato and Xenophon, concluding that, while we can identify with some plausibility the main lines of the attack on Socrates, our sources merely suggest to us the general tenor of his defence, while leaving us agnostic about the detail. It is the task of this chapter to put that result into context by giving a brief sketch of the extant ancient literature dealing with Socrates and of the genres to which it belongs.

Authors Other Than Plato

On the first kind of Socratic literature, the depiction of Socrates in fifth-century comedy, I have nothing to add to the previous chapter. It is the only Socratic literature known to have been written before Socrates’ death, and its depiction of Socrates cannot have been influenced by Plato. It gives us a contemporary caricature, which associates Socrates with some important aspects of contemporary intellectual life, and
which we have every reason to believe contributed substantially to the climate of suspicion and hostility which led eventually to his death.

In the opening chapter of his
Poetics
Aristotle refers to ‘Socratic conversations’ (
Sōkratikoi logoi
) as belonging to an as yet nameless genre of representation together with the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus, two fifth-century Sicilian writers (apparently father and son). The ‘mimes’ were dramatic representations of scenes from everyday life (we have a few titles such as
Mother-in-Law
and
The Tuna Fishers
), fictional and apparently comic, classified into those with male and those with female characters; there is no suggestion that the characters portrayed included actual historical individuals. Though Aristotle counts them as belonging to the same genre as Socratic conversations, and Plato was said to have introduced them to Athens and to have been influenced by them in his depictions of character, we should not exaggerate the degree of resemblance, which consists essentially in the fact that both are representations in prose of conversations from (roughly) contemporary life. In particular, we should not jump to the conclusion that because the mimes are wholly fictional, and because Socratic conversations belong to the same genre as the mimes, therefore Socratic conversations are wholly fictional. There is at least one respect in which they are not wholly fictional, in that their characters are mostly taken from real life. The extent to which the depiction of those characters is fictional is a further question.

Ancient sources credit different authors with the invention of the ‘Socratic conversation’, but there is no dispute that the composition of such conversations was widespread among Socrates’ associates, at least nine of whom, in addition to Plato and Xenophon, are mentioned by one source or another as having written them. There is no good evidence that any of this literature was written before Socrates’ death, and it is reasonable to assume that its authors shared the intention, explicit in Xenophon, to commemorate Socrates and to defend his memory both against the charges made at the trial and against hostile
accounts such as the
Accusation of Socrates
, a pamphlet (now lost) written by a rhetorician named Polycrates some time after 394
BC
. Some friends of Socrates are reported by Diogenes Laertius to have made notes of his conversations, and there is no reason to reject that evidence, but just as we must not assume that ‘Socratic conversations’ were wholly fictional, so we must avoid the opposite error of thinking of them as based on transcripts of actual conversations. The function of note-taking was not to provide a verbatim record for later publication, but to preserve authentically Socratic material for incorporation into broadly imaginative reconstructions.

Apart from the writings of Plato and Xenophon, very little of this literature has survived. For most authors all that we have are titles and occasional snippets. Some of the titles indicate thematic interconnections, including connections with Platonic dialogues. Thus, Crito is said to have written a
Protagoras
and a defence of Socrates; Aeschines, Antisthenes, Eucleides, and Phaedo all wrote an
Alcibiades
; Aeschines and Antisthenes each wrote an
Aspasia
(Aspasia was the celebrated mistress of the statesman Pericles and the inspiration of Plato’s
Menexenus
); and Antisthenes wrote a
Menexenus
. A particularly interesting survival is an anonymous papyrus fragment now in Cologne;
³
this contains part of a dialogue between Socrates and an unnamed person in Socrates’ cell after his sentence (recalling Plato’s
Crito
) in which Socrates is asked why he did not defend himself at the trial. In his answer Socrates is represented as maintaining, as in
Protagoras
, that pleasure is the supreme end of life, a position taken by the Cyrenaic school founded by Socrates’ associate Aristippus (also an author of dialogues). It has been plausibly suggested that the author may have belonged to that school. Another possible association with Plato’s
Protagoras is
provided by Aeschines’
Callias
(whose house is the setting for Plato’s dialogue, as well as for Xenophon’s
Symposium
). In addition to his
Alcibiades
, Eucleides of Megara wrote an
Aeschines
, a
Crito
, and an
Eroticus
(the last on a characteristically Socratic theme, as evidenced by Plato’s
Phaedrus
and
Symposium
and by Aeschines’
Alcibiades
). The prominence of the name of Alcibiades in this catalogue is not accidental. As we saw in the previous chapter, Socrates’ association with Alcibiades had certainly fuelled the accusation of corruption of the young and was probably still being used to blacken his reputation after his death; in Xenophon’s words (
Mem
. 1.2.12), ‘The accuser [perhaps Polycrates] said that Critias and Alcibiades, associates of Socrates, did the greatest harm to the city. For Critias was the most covetous and violent of all the oligarchs, and Alcibiades the most wanton and licentious of all the democrats.’ It then became a central theme of Socratic literature to show that, far from encouraging Alcibiades in his wantonness, Socrates had sought to restrain him, and that his crimes (which included sacrilege and treason) had issued from his neglecting Socrates’ advice and example, not from following them. Xenophon argues prosaically in
Mem
. 1.2 that (like Critias) he was well behaved as long as he kept company with Socrates and went to the bad only after he ceased to associate with him, and that in any case his motive for associating with Socrates had from the beginning been desire for political power rather than regard for Socrates. (A dangerous argument, for why should desire for power lead him to associate with Socrates, unless he believed that Socrates would help him to attain it?) Plato’s depiction in the
Symposium
of Alcibiades’ relations with Socrates, presented in the first person by the dramatic character of Alcibiades himself, is intended to make the same point. Socrates’ courage and self-control (which withstands the sexual blandishments of the otherwise irresistible Alcibiades) fill him with shame and the recognition that he should do as Socrates bids him, but when he is apart from him he falls under the influence of the flattery of the multitude, so that he would be glad to see Socrates dead (216b–c). The theme of the probably pseudo-Platonic
First Alcibiades
is similar. Alcibiades, convinced that his capacity is greater than that of any of the acknowledged political leaders, is proposing to go into politics, and Socrates’ task is to convince him that he is unqualified because he lacks the necessary knowledge, namely, knowledge of what is best. The dialogue ends with Alcibiades promising to be submissive to Socrates, to which Socrates replies, clearly with reference to their respective fates, that he is afraid that the city may prove too strong for them both.

7. A depiction of Alcibiades being reprimanded by Socrates (Italian school,
c
.1780).

Ambition, shame, and knowledge are similarly central themes in the
Alcibiades
of Aeschines of Sphettus, of which we possess some substantial fragments. Socrates narrates to an unnamed companion a conversation with Alcibiades, beginning by observing how Alcibiades’ political ambitions are prompted by emulation of Themistocles, the great statesman who had led Athens in the Persian war of 480. He then points out how Themistocles’ achievements were based on knowledge and intelligence, which were yet insufficient to save him from final disgrace and banishment. The point of this is to bring home to Alcibiades his intellectual inferiority to Themistocles and the consequent vanity of his pretensions to rival him, and the strategy is so successful that Alcibiades bursts into tears, lays his head on Socrates’ knees, and begs him to educate him. Socrates concludes by telling his companion that he was able to produce this effect not through any skill on his part but by a divine gift, which he identifies with his love for Alcibiades: ‘and so although I know no science or skill which I could teach anyone to benefit him, nevertheless I thought that by keeping company with Alcibiades I could make him better through the power of love.’ This excerpt combines two themes prominent in Plato’s depiction of Socrates: the denial of knowledge or the capacity to teach and the role of love in stimulating relationships whose goal is the education of the beloved (see esp.
Symposium
and
Phaedrus
).

The only other Socratic dialogue of which any substantial excerpts survive (apart from the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon) is Aeschines’
Aspasia
. This also connects with themes in other Socratic writings. It is a dialogue between Socrates and Callias, whose opening recalls Plato’s
Apology
20a–c, but in reverse, since there Socrates reports a conversation in which Callias recommends the sophist Euenus of Paros
as a tutor for his sons, whereas in Aeschines’ dialogue Callias asks Socrates whom he would recommend as a tutor, and is astonished when Socrates suggests the notorious courtesan Aspasia. Socrates supports his recommendation by instancing two areas in which Aspasia has special expertise: rhetoric, in which she instructed not only the famous Pericles but also Lysicles, another prominent politician; and marriage guidance. The former topic is common to this dialogue and Plato’s
Menexenus
, in which Socrates delivers a funeral oration which he says was written by Aspasia who, he adds, had taught rhetoric to many, including Pericles, and had written the famous funeral speech reported by Thucydides in book 2 of his history. The topic of marriage guidance provides an interesting link with Xenophon, for the recipients of Aspasia’s wise advice described by Socrates are none other than Xenophon and his wife. (The style of the advice is characteristically Socratic, since Aspasia proceeds by a series of instances in which both husband and wife want to have the best of any kind of thing, dress, horse, etc., to the conclusion that they both want the best spouse, from which she infers that each of them has to make their partnership perfect.) It can hardly be coincidence that Xenophon twice refers to Aspasia’s expertise in matchmaking and the training of wives (
Mem
. 2.6.36,
Oec
. 3.14). We should not, of course, suppose that Xenophon had actually benefited personally from Aspasia’s expertise, as Aeschines depicts; the point is that this was a common theme in the Socratic literary circle, and that whoever treated it later (a question which the evidence seems to leave open) probably did so with the earlier treatment in mind. We must remain equally agnostic about the relative priority of Plato’s
Menexenus
and the
Aspasias
of Aeschines and Antisthenes, and of that of the various
Alcibiadeses
. In general, there seems little if any ground for the attempt to assign relative priority among Socratic works, with the exception of a few cases where Xenophon seems fairly clearly to refer to works of Plato.

The Socratic writings of Xenophon and Plato’s Socratic dialogues are the only bodies of Socratic literature to have survived complete. In
addition to Xenophon’s version of Socrates’ defence, we have his
Memorabilia
, four books of reports, mostly in direct speech, of Socrates’ conversations;
Symposium
, a lively account of a dinner-party at which Socrates is a guest, similar to and certainly containing references to Plato’s
Symposium
; and
Oeconomicus
, a moralizing treatise on estate-management in the form of a Socratic dialogue. The opening of the
Memorabilia
makes it clear that its purpose is primarily apologetic. Xenophon begins by citing the accusation against Socrates and introduces the conversations by elaborating in the first two chapters the themes of his
Apology
, that Socrates was exceptionally pious, of exemplary virtue, and a good influence on his younger associates, some of whom, unfortunately, went to the bad through neglecting his advice. In the rest of the book these themes are developed in a series of conversations, normally between Socrates and one other person, though sometimes it is said that others were present; the interlocutors are mostly familiar figures from the Socratic circle, such as Aristippus, Crito and his son Critobulus, and Xenophon himself, but also including others, such as one of the sons of Pericles, the sophists Antiphon and Hippias, and a high-class prostitute named Theodote. The final chapter returns to the theme which opens the
Apology
, that Socrates did not prepare a defence because his divine sign had indicated to him that it was better for him to die then than to decline into senility, concluding with a eulogy of Socrates as the best and happiest of men, who not only excelled in all the virtues but also promoted them in others.