Socrates in Love

by Armand D'Angour

  Many Greeks, however, considered intellectual achievements even more important than athletic glory. They could repeat with approval the words of the sixth-century BC philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon, who expressed his trenchant views in poetic form:

  Our customs are absurd, it isn’t right

  to praise a strong man more than one who’s bright …

  A victory on the Olympic pitch

  is not a thing to make the city rich.17

  These verses would have been well known to Socrates, whose strong competitive streak in the intellectual arena is central to Plato’s and Xenophon’s portrayal of the older man. In his younger days, however, Socrates was also an accomplished dancer, wrestler, and fighter, who like the Homeric hero Achilles could turn to music to ‘soothe his spirit’ by singing and reciting the great song-poetry of previous centuries.18 As I suggested earlier, the verse of Homer that advises young men ‘always to excel and to surpass’ in pursuit of martial glory could easily have been the motto of the young Socrates no less than Alcibiades. But something changed in his early adulthood. By the time Socrates was known in person to his principal biographers, the trappings of glory, wealth, and status that he will once have sought out as a youth had long lost any allure for him.

  A matter of money

  From the time his biographers knew him, Socrates was notorious for going around barefoot, neglecting his appearance, and wearing ragged clothes. In Aristophanes’ Clouds of 423 BC he and his followers are burlesqued as being so poor that they need to swindle visitors to their Thinkery out of their cloaks and shoes. The sources provide no clarity about Socrates’ financial status, but the supposition that he came from humble origins stems partly from the image of Socrates as a middle-aged and older philosopher operating in circumstances of poverty and impecuniosity.

  As a hoplite, however, Socrates will have needed to acquire and maintain an expensive panoply – a helmet, spear, sword, and shield, as well as key items of body armour including shin-greaves and a breastplate. A conversation reported by Xenophon shows that Socrates had a soldier’s intimate experience of how a serviceable and well-fitting breastplate felt.19 Some have suggested that Socrates participated in frequent military service in order to benefit from the wages paid to soldiers on campaign, which amounted to a drachma a day. This cannot be how he acquired the panoply in the first place, especially if his earliest active service took place at Coronea, shortly after he became eligible to serve as a soldier. Furthermore, in order to fight at any stage of his life he would have been required to demonstrate that he had the necessary property qualification to be a hoplite.20

  It seems more likely that Socrates would have inherited money – and probably a panoply as well – from his father Sophroniscus. His inheritance would have permitted him as an adult to pursue a life of philosophical examination punctuated by service on the battlefield. Aristotle states that Socrates did not obtain a dowry when he married Myrto, daughter of Lysimachus. He may not have needed one, if his inheritance provided him, as some ancient sources state, with an income from rental of properties that he owned. Such sources may be telling the simple truth, but they tend to be construed as hostile because they detract from the idealised picture, bequeathed to us by Plato and Xenophon, of Socrates as a secular saint divorced from worldly concerns.21

  What cannot be doubted, however, is that Socrates’ lack of interest in material wealth, which is emphasised in all the biographical sources, was a choice rather than a necessity. One anecdote tells how he once gazed at all the products on sale in the Agora and declared: ‘Look at all these things that I don’t need.’ The fact that he attracted a keen following of rich Athenian men suggests that he might easily have managed to earn a living, had he wished to, by charging for his teaching, as other sophists did with marked success. It was, however, something that he refused to do on principle, as a statement Plato puts into his mouth in the Apology makes clear. There Socrates says that by doing service to the god Apollo, through whose oracle he was declared wiser than all other men, he has ‘no leisure to attend to any of the affairs of the state worth mentioning, or of my own, but I live in deep poverty’. Anaxagoras, the teacher of Socrates’ mentor Archelaus, had similarly shunned worldly wealth and success, despite his close association with Athens’ most powerful man.

  Unlike Socrates himself, Socrates’ younger half-brother Patrocles, a name which means ‘of famous father’, may have had political ambitions; he is named as holding an official position in the Athenian treasury in the late fifth century. We cannot doubt that Socrates’ birth and background, no less than his brother’s, would have afforded him the wherewithal to attain a civic post of high standing should he have so wished. There are, in short, enough indications of status in what we know of Socrates’ family background and personal qualities to support the conclusion that his embrace of an austere and non-material lifestyle was never anything but a matter of personal choice. He was not the first thinker to adopt such a course, nor would he be the last.22

  A question of appearance

  The saying ‘the child is father of the man’ suggests that the way people present themselves in later life reflects how they were in their youth. The familiar image of an ugly, intellectually precocious older Socrates has meant to many readers that before that there must have been an equally unprepossessing and clever younger Socrates. In Gore Vidal’s historical novel Creation, for instance, Socrates the young stonemason is described as ‘uncommonly ugly and uncommonly intelligent’. And as we saw, Nietzsche fastidiously concluded, solely on the basis of Socrates’ looks as he envisaged them, that the philosopher bore every sign of coming from the ‘lowest origins’. But was the young Socrates thought to be ugly?

  Xenophon’s Symposium is set in 422 BC, a date when Socrates would have been nearly fifty. There Socrates is depicted at a party in the house of Callias son of Hipponicus in the company of Critobulus, a beautiful young man from Socrates’ deme Alopeke. Critobulus has been sent to Socrates by his father Crito to protect him from the passion of an older man – perhaps an echo of how Socrates was once thought to guard his protégé Alcibiades. Socrates says that he will prove that he is more beautiful than Critobulus. He first gets the young man to admit that beauty is to be found not only in people and animals but in objects such as shields, swords, and spears: their beauty resides in the fact that they are well made for the functions for which they are needed. On this basis, Socrates goes on to score a series of points against Critobulus, playing on the way the Greek word kalos means both ‘beautiful’ and ‘good for the purpose’, an ambiguity which one may capture by using the adjective ‘fine’.

  My eyes, Socrates tells him, are finer than yours, because the way they bulge means they can see to either side as well as straight ahead. My nose is finer, because the way it’s flared means it’s better at catching scents, while its snub shape means it does not obstruct the view when the eyes are angled. Critobulus concedes, on these lines, that Socrates’ mouth is finer because its larger size means it can receive more food, and his lips are finer because thick lips are better for kissing. Socrates’ final point to prove his superior beauty is that the Sileni, satyr-like creatures depicted in Greek art with animal features similar to his, are the offspring of divine river nymphs.23

  The discussion is humorous, but it makes the point that what counts as ‘good looks’ depends on subjective premises. A young man of short stature with wide-set eyes, a broad nose and large lips need not be thought an ugly man (such a description might suit a modern Hollywood star widely considered to be ‘fit’). Moreover, good looks are not solely the preserve of high-born individuals, while the looks of people of all classes and backgrounds can change as they grow to adulthood just as the development of their personalities can seem to turn them into different people. A striking example from antiquity of a change of personality in later life is that of the philosopher and theologian Augustine of Hippo (ad 354–430), later known as St Augustine. His Confessions tell of
a career of lustful and immoral behaviour in his youth before he converted to a life of dedicated Christian service and intense intellectual activity as a celibate priest. Those who knew St Augustine as a dignified bishop in his later years would have found it hard to imagine the extreme nature of his youthful misbehaviour. Later readers would not have guessed it either, had he not left an intimate written record.24

  Socrates left no such record, but the way he behaved and appeared as a young man may have presented no less a contrast to how he came to be viewed and to conduct himself in his later years. Had he been an ugly, satyr-like figure in his mid-thirties, it seems incredible that these features would not have been more central to his portrayal, negative and mocking as it already is, in Aristophanes’ Clouds of 423 BC. Yet the principal mention of Socrates’ physical attributes in that comedy, spoken by the chorus who represent Cloud-goddesses, gives a different picture: ‘You stalk through the streets, flicking your eyes from side to side, enduring the discomfort of going barefoot, with a solemn expression on your face …’ The description is reminiscent of a positive aspect of Socrates’ reputation, his fearsome ability on the battlefield. The description is quoted by Alcibiades in his account in Plato’s Symposium of Socrates marching barefoot through ice, where we learn that Socrates’ fellow-soldiers resented him for showing them up with his unflagging physical fortitude.

  Apart from this description, Socrates in the Clouds shares the attributes of Chaerephon and the pupils in the Thinkery: pale, long-haired, and scrawny to the point of emaciation – hardly the pot-bellied clown familiar from later portraits. A similar picture is given in Aristophanes’ later comedy Birds of 414 BC, where the notion of ‘doing a Socrates’ is connected to having long hair, fasting, going unwashed, and wielding staves, all features attributed to the warlike Spartans. Art historian Paul Zanker has traced the way images of Socrates and similar intellectual types vary in vase paintings and in sculptures. In the case of Socrates, the notion of the outwardly ugly man hiding an inner beauty may have influenced some artists to exaggerate his features as an older ‘Silenus’-type figure with bulging eyes, thick lips, and unkempt hair. Zanker points out that such a portrayal of Socrates also has positive implications, because ‘the old Silenus, unlike the rest of his breed, was considered the repository of ancient wisdom and goodness and for this reason appears in mythology as the teacher of divine and heroic children … The connotation as the wise teacher was thus an obvious one for the portrait of Socrates-as-Silenus.’

  Another depiction, however, known from a small-scale Roman copy of a fourth-century BC statue, is far more sober and dignified. In line with a more respectful understanding of Socrates as having been an innocent and upright Athenian intellectual unjustly condemned to death, it shows a man who has relatively unexceptional features – curly-haired, dome-headed, and robust to be sure, but not unduly fat nor with bulging satyr-like eyes. ‘Socrates is now depicted no longer as the outsider,’ writes Zanker, ‘but rather once again as the model citizen … The body is devoid of any trace of the famed ugliness that his friends occasionally evoked, the fat paunch, the short legs, or the waddling gait.’25

  Two contrasting portrait-busts of Socrates: on the left the middle-aged ‘distinguished thinker’, on the right the older ‘ugly satyr’.

  The fact that Socrates’ eyes are a focus of his appearance as early as the mention of his ‘flicking his eyes from side to side’ in Aristophanes’ Clouds draws attention to a possible condition that may have affected Socrates in middle age and later, that of hyperthyroidism. A case has been made that Socrates suffered from this medical condition: an overactive thyroid is associated with an irritable personality, a high sex drive, and a tendency to protruding eyes.26 As hyperthyroidism tends to emerge when its sufferer is older, we might suppose that if this was what made Socrates’ eyes appear to bulge in his forties and fifties, it need not have been an observable feature of his looks in his youth and early manhood. A picture of young Socrates as significantly different from that of the older man may thus be allowed to emerge. While Socrates will never have enjoyed the good looks of Critobulus or Alcibiades, the striking unattractiveness attributed to him as an older man need not be a prominent aspect of how he looked or was viewed as a youth.

  Hearing voices

  What might have curtailed Socrates’ ambitions and ultimately diverted his direction in life away from public and martial glory? If he was not discouraged, as I have argued, from such pursuits by his family background or expectations, nor did he lack the skills, intelligence, or energy to succeed in these traditional arenas. What made him change course at some stage in his twenties is likely to have been something more personal and compelling.

  One of the components of his decision to become a philosopher rather than concentrate on fighting or politics was his sense that he was the beneficiary of a ‘divine sign’. In the trial speech recorded in Plato’s Apology, Socrates explains that one of his accusers, Meletus, had sought to make light of this unusual and forceful element of his personal experience. From childhood, he says, he felt he had been guided by an inner voice, which he called his daimonion, or ‘divine thing’:

  You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divine thing which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign I have had ever since I was a child.

  The sign is a voice which comes to me and always prevents me from doing something I’m about to do. It never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician. And rightly, as I think. For I am certain, gentlemen, that if I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago and done no good either to you or to myself.

  It was important for Socrates to rebut the formal charge, as this statement aims to do, that he was ‘introducing new gods’ into Athens; and in addition to refute any suggestion that he ever sought to play an influential part in the vexed arena of Athenian politics. The claim that he benefited from communication with a personal ‘divine thing’ may not have swayed a jury already suspicious of or ill-disposed towards Socrates owing to his confident self-regard and his reputation for atheism. It would, however, have provided an explanation for Plato’s readers about why the Athenians were misguided in condemning his teacher on the stated charge.

  Until fairly recently, historians have been largely content to mention Socrates’ divine sign simply as a curious phenomenon rather than as a psychological symptom. Psychologists, however, are inclined to relate it to a condition that may be more common than is often realised, that of hearing voices. Psychological experts have estimated that as many as one in five people in the general population will have auditory hallucinations in the course of their lifetime. In most cases the condition will be limited and transient, but in some cases it is recognised as a form of psychosis which can vary from mild to severe. It may occur over the course of a few months or many years; for some who experience it, the hearing of voices can persist throughout their lives. Such people may feel the need to take steps, medical or psychological, to lessen the perceived negative effects of the condition. Others learn to appropriate it for their own advantage.27

  Hearing voices can often be related to an early childhood experience, usually of a traumatic nature. There’s a candidate for such an experience in Socrates’ early life. Socrates’ remarks in Plato’s dialogue Crito on the way truant boys are beaten by their fathers lead one to suppose that his father Sophroniscus had done so in his case. Socrates was said to have disobeyed his father and shown a disinclination to pursue the craft of stoneworking, so we might imagine that Sophroniscus caught Socrates playing truant, on more than one occasion, from his duties as a stonemason or sculptor in training, and subjected him to physical punishment. The psychological impact on an intellectually precocious and emotionally aware youngster may have been severe. In addition to his natural concern for his own comfort and physical wellbeing, Socrates would have been afflicted by a sense of shame for defying his father’s wishes. Such
an experience may have contributed to Socrates’ inner voice, which, as he claimed, he heard as preventing him from undertaking a wrong action rather than initiating a preferred course of action. But Socrates managed to turn the condition to something that he could reasonably claim, within the context of the religious belief of his place and time, gave him a special advantage.

  While the management of heard voices is found in modern accounts of people with similar conditions, in Socrates’ case there was an additional symptom that seems likely to be connected: his tendency to stand still in a trance for extended periods. Diagnoses such as ‘cataleptic seizure’ would make of this a pathological disposition, though one might add that Socrates will have had his early regime of dance and athletic training to thank for the simple ability to withstand the physical strain of such lengthy bouts of standing still. However we choose to psychologise the ‘inner voice’ – in Freudian psychology it might be related to the commands of a harsh ‘superego’ or conscience – it is likely to have been something that aroused concern and consternation both in those close to Socrates and in the boy himself. It will have made him conscious of being different from his fellow-pupils, and evidently of being out of place among them.28 It is also likely to have given him greater diffidence in making friends, both with other boys and perhaps in due course with the girls his family might have sought to introduce to him for the purpose of marriage. In a number of passages in Plato’s dialogues, Socrates explicitly points out that his daimonion prevented him from forming friendships, particularly with young men of strong political ambition who pursue wealth and glory rather than self-control and truth.29

  Psychological illness might also have carried a stigma for sufferers, albeit one that was related to divine intention rather than organic causes. Greek medical thought was developing in new directions at this period; a medical treatise from roughly the time of Socrates’ death details the symptoms of epilepsy, which the author euphemistically calls ‘the sacred disease’. Similarly Plato describes Socrates discussing the notion of mania (madness) in his dialogue Phaedrus, arguing that many forms of it – including love and the pursuit of wisdom itself – are god-given, creative and positive conditions rather than negative ones. In laying out the argument, Plato may well have had in the back of his mind some of the more unfavourable and unforgiving views of mental illness that would have been directed at his revered teacher for exhibiting symptoms of an unusual and alarming condition.