Socrates in Love

by Armand D'Angour

  Socrates’ physique and martial expertise were clearly exceptional. The rescue of Alcibiades on the field at Potidaea is described by Plato in the course of the final section of the Symposium, where Alcibiades recalls it as follows:

  If you want to know what Socrates was like in battle, let me praise him as he truly deserves.

  You know that I was decorated for bravery during that campaign. Well, during that battle Socrates rescued me single-handed, and without doubt his action saved my life. I was wounded, and Socrates not only refused to leave me behind, he retrieved my armour as well.

  At the time, Socrates, I said that it was you, not I, who should be decorated for valour. You will admit that I wasn’t wrong to do so then, and it’s not wrong for me to say it again now. Of course the generals were well aware of my social position, and decided that I should get the reward. To be fair, you were even keener than the commanders that I should be decorated rather than you.

  The ‘social position’ of which Alcibiades speaks was his relationship to Athens’ powerful general, Pericles, who had become his guardian after his father’s death. Socrates was no less cognisant than the generals that his close friend and personal tent-companion was the ward of Athens’ popular leader. Pericles must, in turn, have been aware that the two men were billeted together as tent-mates on Alcibiades’ first campaign. Athenian citizens were divided into ten ‘tribes’, and Socrates and Alcibiades belonged to different ones; since they might have been expected to share tents with soldiers from their own tribes, it is possible that Pericles had to give express approval to the arrangement. Yet Plato gives no elaboration of the association between Socrates and Pericles that the former’s relationship with Alcibiades from the latter’s early youth would seem to demand. It leaves a gap in our evidence that suggests the need, in due course, for a reassessment of the nature of Socrates’ early links to Athens’ foremost citizen.

  A determined warrior

  Socrates continued to participate in Athenian military activities until he was in his forties. In 424 BC, just a year before the performance of Clouds, he had fought in a particularly bloody battle at Delium in Boeotia. The region of Boeotia just north of Attica was dominated by the powerful city-state of Thebes. In the Battle of Delium, seven thousand Athenian hoplites, including Socrates and his friend Laches (whose presence alongside him at Potidaea in the opening narrative above is not historically attested, but based on the testimony of their fighting together at Delium) were faced by a similar number of Theban troops.

  For a while it looked as if the battle was evenly balanced, with each side winning on their stronger right wings. After the Athenians had broken through the Boeotians’ line on that side, the Theban commander ordered two cavalry units to the aid of his retreating columns. Mistakenly supposing that these reinforcements belonged to a large army that had been kept in reserve, the Athenians panicked and fled. In the ensuing retreat hundreds of Athenians were killed by the pursuing Boeotians.

  In this engagement Alcibiades was serving on horseback, along with a small contingent of Athenian cavalry. In the Symposium Plato has him recount what he saw in the following words:

  The army had already dispersed in all directions, and Socrates was retreating together with Laches. I happened to come across them, and as soon as I saw them I shouted encouragement, telling them that I would watch their backs.

  That day I was better placed to observe Socrates than at Potidaea, for being on horseback I was in less danger. It was clear that he was considerably calmer than Laches. In fact, seeing him striding along there just as he does here in town, I was reminded, Aristophanes, of your description of him advancing ‘with swaggering gait and roving eye’. He was calmly observing everything around him, scouting for friendly troops while keeping an eye on the enemy.

  Even from afar it was clear that this was a very tough man, who would put up a terrific fight if anyone approached him. That’s what saved them both. In battle you usually try to avoid such men, and instead go after those who run away in panic.

  This account recalls a passage of Plato’s dialogue Laches, in which the meaning of courage is the main topic of discussion. There the general Nicias is described advising that young men should practise fighting in full armour.14 That way, he says, they will be prepared ‘when the ranks are broken and you have to fight man to man, either pursuing someone who’s trying to fend off your attack, or retreating yourself and fending off an enemy’s attack’.

  Mastering such manoeuvres in full armour, Nicias claims, will ensure that a fighter can survive unscathed, even if he is facing several enemies at once. Socrates was, it seems, well practised in this kind of manoeuvre. His expertise may have been helped by his practice of the pyrrhichē, a war-dance performed fully armed that involved ducking, thrusting, and feinting, as well as from his experiences of live action on the battlefield.15 The image of Socrates as a trained, determined, and capable Athenian hoplite fighter is inescapable.

  An old soldier

  The fact that Socrates saw active service in numerous battles, at Potidaea, Delium, and elsewhere, is a notable and often under-recognised aspect of his life.16 He was a committed fighter at least until the summer of 422 BC when, having recently turned forty-seven – not a young age for field combat in full armour – he headed north again on a campaign to Chalcidice and Thrace, as part of the expedition against Amphipolis led by the populist Athenian politician and general Cleon to restore Athens’ imperial possessions in the region. There he may have participated in over a dozen separate engagements which are recorded as having taken place during the campaign.

  Only a year before the Amphipolis campaign, and the year after he fought at Delium, Socrates was portrayed in Aristophanes’ Clouds of 423 BC as a thin, long-haired scientific boffin and quibbling pedant. His participation in those actions and others, however, proves that he was no pacifist or conscientious objector, as some modern observers might romantically wish to consider him. He was for much of his life a demonstrably effective and patriotic Athenian soldier. And as all the evidence for his personality shows that he was not the kind of person to bow to convention without thinking, the conclusion must be that he made an express choice to participate, time and again, in military service on behalf of his city. He did so, in other words, not despite his insistence on subjecting to unflinching examination what it might mean to live a good life, but because of it.

  We are not explicitly told of military actions in which Socrates took part prior to the Potidaea campaign of 432–430 BC. As we have seen, during that campaign alone he may have seen action at least four times – in battles and sieges waged around Pydna, Beroea, Strepsa, and Spartolus. He was already in his late thirties, however, when he fought at Potidaea; and while this is the first campaign in which we are given details of his courage and military prowess, it will not have been his first experience of the battlefield.

  Alcibiades’ description in the Symposium demonstrates that Socrates had mastered the technique, recommended by Nicias in the dialogue Laches, of beating a retreat without succumbing to panic. One way he could have practised such a skill is if, as seems likely, he had participated in earlier campaigns in the service of Athens, including in battles in which an orderly withdrawal had been necessitated by the circumstances. What we are told of Socrates’ experience of war suggests that he fought in many Athenian campaigns, most of which were not conspicuously successful; but whether the battles in which he fought were won or lost, he always managed to survive to fight another day. Where and when might he have gained the vital experience he needed to do so?

  Learning to retreat

  Apart from the Samian war of 440–439 BC, little is known about military actions in which the Athenians engaged between 446 and 433 BC. The obvious candidate, however, for an engagement in which Socrates might first have practised the technique of controlled retreat for which he was to become known is the Battle of Coronea in the autumn of 447 BC, a couple of years after he had turned twenty and had b
ecome eligible for active service.17 One thousand Athenian hoplites were sent to fight at Coronea, and in view of Socrates’ battleworthy age at the time he would have been a likely candidate to be called up. Recreating the circumstances of that battle helps us understand the kind of initiation into fighting and retreat that Socrates might have received in his early twenties.

  For the Athenians involved, Coronea was a calamitous engagement that will have left many battle-scarred by defeat and the death of comrades. If it was Socrates’ first experience of the battlefield, it would also have had a personal consequence for him that was to play a crucial part in his life and eventual death: it was to create the conditions that led to his close association with Alcibiades.

  Coronea was a small town in central Boeotia, the region flanked by mountains north of the Gulf of Corinth and centred on the city of Thebes. In 447 BC a thousand Athenian hoplites under the overall command of Pericles’ comrade, Tolmides son of Tolmaeus, had been sent to the area to deal with an incipient rebellion involving a number of local towns. With the Athenians was also an impulsive young commander, Pericles’ close friend and relative by marriage, Cleinias son of Alcibiades (the Elder) of the deme Scambonidae. The force was small for the purpose, and the Thebans and their allies fielded a considerably larger number of troops. Back in Athens, Pericles was scrambling to raise reinforcements to send to the region; but before the additional troops could arrive, the advance force encountered the enemy army on a broad avenue leading towards Coronea. It was called the Goddess’s Road.

  For the religiously-minded Greeks, the standard course of action before battle was to pray and make sacrifices to local deities to try to ensure success. Conscious of being heavily outnumbered, the Athenian commander Tolmides made sacrifices to the local divinity, a legendary warrior who had become the object of a local hero-cult, and who provided oracular guidance to inquirers.

  The Athenian priest attached to the army relayed the Hero’s oracular words. ‘The army,’ he declared, ‘will prove a hard prey for hunting.’ The priest interpreted this obscure comment in positive terms: he said it was meant to reassure the Athenians that it would be hard for the Boeotians, superior as they were in number, to put their enemies to flight. Tolmides also took comfort in the notion that his Athenian forces would prove a ‘hard prey’ – a tough adversary – for the more numerous Boeotian forces, so that should the Athenians be forced to retreat, they would at least be able to avert disaster.

  Buoyed up with false hope, Tolmides ordered his soldiers to attack; but although they fought valiantly, they were soon forced to fall back in the face of greater strength. Gradually the retreat turned into a rout. Pursued by the Boeotians, hundreds of Athenians were cut down and killed, including the general Cleinias at the age of just thirty-four. In the event, the oracle’s statement turned out to presage a far worse outcome than the one Tolmides had hoped for. The Athenians may have proved a ‘hard prey’ for the Boeotian troops, but they were ‘prey’ nonetheless.

  An epigram inscribed on a marble slab set up at the time in Athens preserves a lament for the fallen from which this narrative of the battle is reconstructed. It lays the cause of defeat on the disfavour of the oracular Hero, in whose ambiguous oracle Tolmides had placed undue confidence:18

  Steadfast men, to the end you endured in a hopeless contest:

  for you lost your lives through divine intervention.

  It was not men’s strength that you faced: you were hard pressed

  on the Goddess’s Road by a god’s ill intention.

  He sealed your fate with the oracle welcomed by you –

  ‘A hard prey for hunting’: but that saying obscure

  meant ruin for you who were hunted. So in future time too

  men will reckon his oracle truthful and sure.

  If Coronea was indeed Socrates’ first experience of battle, he will have been one of the few hundred ‘steadfast men’ who endured and survived the disastrous retreat. This will have been the earliest occasion of his testing the technique advised by Nicias and described by Alcibiades: when fleeing in battle, the right method is to walk with purpose, rather than to run in panic.

  Cleinias’s death on the field of Coronea had an incalculable consequence for Socrates’ life. The general left his widow Deinomache, the former divorced wife of Pericles (as well as his first cousin – the marriage may have been arranged for dynastic reasons). Their two young sons would need a male guardian, and Cleinias’s will specified that in the event of his death they should pass into the guardianship of Pericles. One of those sons, aged just four, was Alcibiades.

  Fifteen years later Alcibiades was to be Socrates’ companion and messmate at Potidaea.19 The loss of his father may have been a decisive moment for his becoming an intimate friend of Socrates in peace and war as his pupil, wrestling-partner, and devoted companion – a relationship that could not have been fostered without the knowledge and agreement of his guardian Pericles. The implications of that closeness for Socrates’ class and status have been accorded remarkably scant attention. Yet it was the long and intimate association, boy and man, of Alcibiades with Socrates that was in the end to be instrumental in the perception that the philosopher had ‘corrupted the youth’ – the charge for which, along with ‘introducing new kinds of gods’, Socrates was many years later in 399 BC to be indicted, tried, and condemned to death.

  3

  Enter Alcibiades

  The last act of the symposium

  When Socrates finished his speech the assembled company clapped enthusiastically. Aristophanes was about to say something in response to an allusion Socrates had made to his own speech, when suddenly there was a loud banging on the door, and a group of revellers could be heard outside, and the voice of a piper-girl. Agathon told his servants to go and investigate: ‘If they’re friends invite them in. If not, say that the drinking’s over.’

  Shortly afterwards they heard the voice of Alcibiades echoing in the courtyard. He was thoroughly drunk, and kept booming ‘Where’s Agathon? Take me to Agathon.’ Eventually he appeared in the doorway, supported by a piper-girl and some servants. He was crowned by a massive garland of ivy and violets, and his head was flowing with ribbons.

  ‘Greetings, friends,’ he said, ‘will you allow a very drunken man to join your party? Or shall I just crown Agathon and go away? That’s what I’m here for. I couldn’t come yesterday, so I’ve come with these tassels, so that I can take them off my head and garland this man, clever and handsome as he is, if I may say so. Are you laughing at me for being drunk? Laugh away, I know what I’m saying. So tell me, if I come in will you drink with me or not?’

  The company clamoured for him to join them, and Agathon in particular. Alcibiades was brought in and, because he was intent on crowning Agathon, he took the ribbons from his head and held them in front of him. This prevented him from seeing Socrates, who made way for him on the couch. Alcibiades took the vacant seat, hugged and kissed Agathon, then crowned him with ribbons.

  ‘Take off your sandals,’ said Agathon, ‘and be the third person on our couch.’

  ‘I will,’ said Alcibiades. ‘So, who’s the other person here?’

  He turned, and when he saw Socrates he gave a start.

  ‘What?’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s Socrates, sneaking up on me as usual. He’s there when you least expect it! What do you have to say for yourself, Socrates? I see you’ve even managed to find the perfect place. You didn’t sit next to some old comedian like Aristophanes, but next to the best-looking man in the room.’

  Socrates turned to Agathon and said:

  ‘Please protect me, Agathon. This man’s become a real problem for me. Ever since I became his admirer I’m not allowed to speak to or even look at any one else. If I do, he goes wild with envy and jealousy, and not only shouts at me but can barely keep himself from hitting me, as he might do right now. Please make peace between us, or protect me in case he tries to hit me. I’m genuinely scared of his maniacal anger.’
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br />   ‘There’ll never be peace between us,’ said Alcibiades. ‘But I’ll defer reprisals for now. Agathon, please give me back some of those ribbons so that I can crown the wondrous head of this despot supreme, the champion debater of all time. I can’t have him arguing that I crowned you and not him.’

  Alcibiades took some of the ribbons and crowned Socrates with them, then settled back on the couch.1

  The young lion

  Alcibiades always liked to make an entrance. Here he does so in Agathon’s symposium of 416 BC, as recounted in Plato’s dialogue of that name. Born in 451 BC, Alcibiades would on the occasion portrayed have been in his mid-thirties, roughly the age at which his dashing father Cleinias had fought and died at Coronea.2 Socrates at that date would have been fifty-three, no longer the active warrior of his youth and middle age that Alcibiades goes on to describe.

  Remarkably, Plato makes Alcibiades divert the audience’s attention from his own person to make Socrates and his characteristics the centre of attention at the symposium. The dramatic date of the dialogue, 416 BC, falls just after the midpoint of the long Peloponnesian War, during a relative lull before the Sicilian campaign of 415–413 BC renewed large-scale campaigning; and the son of Cleinias was the most colourful and flamboyant personality of the era.

  Aristocratic, stunningly handsome, and even more dashing than his father, Alcibiades was also intensely competitive and ambitious. Such qualities evoked approval and admiration within the milieu of upper-class ancient Athenian society, even as they aroused concern among his tutors, admirers, and protectors. Alcibiades boasted descent from two of Athens’ most elevated and prestigious families. On his father’s side he belonged to a well-born (‘Eupatrid’) family which traced its ancestry back to the hero Ajax of Salamis.3 His mother Deinomache, a cousin of Pericles (and his former wife), came from the aristocratic dynasty of Alcmaeonids, who had provided leaders of Athens from time immemorial and who traced their ancestry to the Homeric king Nestor.4