The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life

by Bettany Hughes

  4 Writers are often tempted to understand Socrates’ trial and death in hard political terms. It is indeed exciting to try to unpick our extant textual sources and work out who was in whose faction, what political undercurrents were in play. I have tried to take Socrates’ story one stage further back. Political squabbles are emotional – and the one thing that Plato is certainly trying to do is to convey the emotional complexity of how a city such as Athens dealt with a man like Socrates.

  5 But throughout this book where a particular line of Plato is ambiguous, tricky or contested, or where later interpolation is an issue, I have either omitted it or flagged up the difficulty in hand. Where ideas are clearly Plato’s and not Socrates’ own, I have made note – but I have not censored. Following scholarly convention, the Socrates in this book is the character depicted in Plato’s ‘early’ or ‘sceptical’ dialogues (Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthydemus, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Menexenus, Meno, Protagoras and Republic 1, with the exception of Theaetetus).

  6 Many thanks to Professor Patrick Haggard, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, for his confirmation of my initial enquiry and for his help with these points.

  7 For an overview, see the websites of the Greek Archaeological Service. Specific sites dealing with places and events relevant to Socrates’ life are marked in the map section of this book.

  8 And similar details crop up in the texts antipathetic to Socrates.

  9 The Socrates I have chosen to guide us around the fifth century BC is, in the main, the dramatic/historic character offered to us by contemporary eye-witnesses. I am using this ‘phantom-Socrates’, this ‘Socrates-sized shape’, to transport us through the city of Athens.

  10 Socrates is a man of Athens. But his own travels through the eastern Mediterranean, and key events that impacted directly on his life, are located in a geographical area that encompasses perfectly all the hot and the high spots of the fifth century BC. Using history and archaeology in the field, I have attempted to visit every site connected to Socrates’ life and to pin down what it is that gives cause to his ideas, and what throws them into context. This book follows the coordinates that Socrates himself would have used.

  11 And I believe we have to listen to Socrates now. Socrates lived in a brutal world – but he saw its potential. As is ours, his was a time of change. Just as the warrior ethos, the ‘might is right’, the ‘harm enemies, help friends’ modus operandi of prehistoric and archaic Greece was being replaced by something more consensual, more discursive, more intelligent, so now – when we are sliding back in to a new age of warring – we need to remind ourselves why Socrates’ analysis of life matters. Socrates offered a roadmap for humanity that was coming out of the Greek ‘Dark Ages’: we should follow his path as we approach a future that again looks stormy.

  DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

  1 E.g., Plato, Apology, 18b–c, 19d; Dover (1996), 164.

  2 Dover (1996), 164.

  3 For discussion of dates see Meineck (1998), p.xvi, fn. 16: ‘An inscription (IG 112 2318.196) gives Araros a Dionysia victory in 387; if the hypothesis to Plutus is correct that after 388 Aristophanes produced Cocalus and Aiolosikon through Araros, we can assign victory with Cocalus to Aristophanes in 387.’ The hypothesis referred to is Hyp. 4 Arist. Wealth, Hyp. 3 in the recent OCT. P. Meineck, Aristophanes I: Clouds, Wasps, Birds, (Hackett 1998).

  4 It has been suggested that Erchia was near the modern Spata, about 10 miles outside Athens, in the Mesogeia (Macleod [2008], 7; Pomeroy [1994], 1 with bibl.). Nb Deme affiliation was hereditary, he may not have lived here.

  5 Nails (2005), §2.1 s.v. ‘Xenophon’ suggests that Xenophon could not have known Socrates well, because Xenophon lived in Erchia, which was not a simple journey to Athens; Macleod (2008), 7–8, argues that Xenophon’s family would have spent a lot of their time within the city walls, to avoid the constant raiding by the Spartan forces based at nearby Decelea.

  6 Following Macleod (2008), 13–16 at 6.

  7 428/427 are the dates usually suggested for Plato’s birth (see, e.g., Szlezák in the New Pauly), but D. Nails considers it more likely that Plato was born in 424/423 (see Nails, The People of Plato, [2002], 245–6).

  8 Press (2007), 15: ‘Plato’s connection with Socrates was not more than eight years.’ A similar length of acquaintanceship is implied by Szlezák (2000), IX, s.v. ‘Platon (1)’, col. 1095: ‘Erst mit 20 J. schloß er sich mit Sokrates an.’ [Plato did not associate with Socrates until he was 20.] Nails (2005), s.v. ‘Socrates’, §2.1 s.v. ‘Plato’: ‘Plato … had probably known the old man most of his life.’

  9 Press (2007), 15; Szlezák, ibid., col. 1095.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The water-clock: time to be judged

  1 Trans. D. Allen (1996).

  2 It has been suggested that the introduction of 501 jurors occurred a few years later in the fourth century BC. See Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith (eds.) (2002) The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources and Controversies (Oxford: OUP).

  3 Herodotus, 1.155, 156; 3.25, 29, 59; 4.203, 204; 6.9, 17, 94; 8.126; and Aristotle, Politics, 1.4 1253b23. Cf. Hunt (2002), 42 n.13.

  4 The appearance of slaves in this period is subject to debate. Pseudo-Xenophon, Constitution of the Athenians, 1.10, describes them as indistinguishable from regular citizens. Some slaves would undoubtedly have been well dressed, but the majority must have been easy to mark out, not least because most were of non-Greek origin and the female slaves may well have had cropped hair. Cf. Deighton (1995), 56; Osborne (2004), 18; Gray (2007), 192; Patterson (2007), 156.

  5 Aristophanes, Ecclesiazousae, 652; Menander, Frag. 364 K.

  6 Water-clocks were installed elsewhere in external locations, but significantly, the first large stone klepsydra was situated on the outside wall of the north-west face of the Heliaia (a court of judgement in the centre of the Agora).

  7 Recent analysis suggests this is possibly where Socrates was tried. Alternatively his courtroom could have been in the open air at the Areopagus (unlikely given the kind of scene-setting presented to us by Plato), which had originally been established to deal with issues that ‘polluted’ the city; or in the Heliaia, ‘Sun-Court’ or ‘Sun-Area’ – yet to be excavated, but possibly in the south-west end of the Agora. (The Heliaia was in the form of a rectangular peribolos, with four walls open to the sky.) Law-courts dating from the late fifth century BC have almost certainly been identified in the north-east corner of the Agora under the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos. See, e.g., R. Townsend, Athenian Agora XXVII. The East Side of the Agora: The Remains beneath the Stoa of Attalos (1995).

  8 Plato, Apology, 18b; 19b. Trans. Brickhouse and Smith (2002).

  9 Plato, Apology, 26b. Trans. Brickhouse and Smith (2002).

  10 Athenian housing was notoriously small and cramped, even for wealthy citizens. Most would be flat-roofed (some two-storey) with a wooden framework, mud-brick walls and earth floors; the larger would probably have had a small courtyard. Aristophanes (Wasps, 125–32) describes the old man Philokleon trying to escape from one such house, desperate to make his trip to the law-courts whilst his slaves tried to keep him indoors. Cf. Tucker (1907), 29; Jones, Sackett and Graham (1973), 75–114; Deighton (1995), 15, 18; and MacDowell (1971), 148 on Aristophanes.

  11 Plato, Protagoras esp. 322–4. Interesting that this Protagoras is a non-Athenian.

  12 Athena in Aeschylus, Eumenides, 487–9.

  13 Athena in Aeschylus, Eumenides, 690–5.

  14 Plato, Meno, 80a.

  15 Possessing ‘the beauty of Helen’ and ‘the soul of Socrates’ was a flattering epithet on a woman’s tombstone of the fourth century BC.

  16 Plato, Symposium, 215d–e. Trans. W. R. M. Lamb (1925) [LCL].

  17 Plato, Symposium, 174a.

  18 Pericles’ Funeral Speech, Thucydides, 2.64.

  19 Plato, Meno, 80a–b. Trans. W. K. C. Guthrie (1956).

  CHAPTER TWO

&n
bsp; Athena’s city

  1 Trans. E. D. A. Morshead.

  2 ‘Age of Heroes’ is loosely 1500–1100 BC.

  3 During the eighth century BC warfare in Greece changed. Rows of soldiers, all armed in a similar way, replaced individual warrior fighters. Usually standing eight deep in a phalanx, these men were named for the armour and equipment which they carried – the hopla: a metal breastplate, metal greaves for the legs, a long spear, a large round shield. These men also stood tall thanks to their crested helmets.

  4 (Kolakes) flatterers, (parasitoi) parasites. This belief in self-reliance may even have fostered an entrenched slave system – very difficult for a ‘free’ Greek to enter the ‘free labour’ market.

  5 Hesiod, Works and Days, 2.349–350. Trans. H. G. Evelyn-White (1914) [LCL].

  6 ‘Balkan’ means ‘a chain of wooded mountains’ in Ottoman Turkish.

  7 Still, it is inaccurate to label this period the Greek ‘Dark Ages’. The latest excavations (summer 2008) at Lefkandi on the Greek island of Euboea show that culture within the city-states could be vibrant, sophisticated. Here women are buried with fabulous necklaces, their breasts shielded with solid gold breast cups, in communal graves; the eye sockets of their men stare, blind, at heavily decorated pots. But there is still not the gauze-fine craftsmanship, the exquisite palatial culture that fluoresced between 1600 and 1200 BC – the civilisation of the Greek Late Bronze Age. Cf. Irene Lemnos’ excellent excavations; work on Lefkandi resumed in 2003. www.lefkandi.classics.ox.ac.uk/ Nb. Through this period Cyprus keeps a syllabic writing system.

  8 Operated by a German gunner.

  9 Date c.510 BC. Akkadian was a common written language of this period, Elamite a spoken lingua franca.

  10 Herodotus, 8.100.

  11 Socrates served here one year and was elected leader of the council for one day. Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.1.18.

  12 The earliest surviving recorded example of the demos as a political unit has, just very recently, been made whole. It is carved on a block of stone, the letters each about an inch high. For decades one half of the name languished in the storerooms of the National Epigraphical Museum in Athens – there are so many fragments here and simply not enough scholars to publish them. If you hold up the loose half – not for too long, this is heavy marble and arms will ache after a while – ‘mos’ has been reunited with ‘de’. Fragments currently being re-catalogued.

  13 Origin of this phrase disputed, but the most likely relation does now seem to be with a Chinese proverb that originates around the fifth century BC.

  14 In Homer’s magnificent poetry (and in the absence in 1000–700 BC of a renaissance, a new ‘Golden Age’, a brilliance visible in the archaeological record), there is in the Hellenic diaspora a keen nostalgia, a sense of underlying disappointment.

  15 Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, 5.3. Trans. P. J. Rhodes (1984).

  16 Solon Frag. 6W = Aristotle, Ath. Pol., 12.2. Trans. P. J. Rhodes (2002) [adapt.].

  17 Cat. ref. 3477.

  18 The Spartans did not like change. Throughout the sixth century, when a city-state was controlled by a tyrant, rather than the traditional dynasties of aristocratic families, the Spartans would intervene. Tyrannos (the word originated in Lydia) at this time did not have the monstrous connotations we tar it with today. Tyrants were frequently supporters of the people. In 510 BC the Delphic Oracle had been bribed to persuade Sparta to intervene in Athenian aristocratic affairs. Isagoras’ use of Spartan muscle did not necessarily mean he was a confirmed supporter of the Spartans, but that he was simply forming pragmatic alliances to further his own causes during the stasis of the age.

  19 Herodotus, 5.66.

  20 Quotation taken from Ober, Raaflaub, and Wallace (co-authors) (2007), 54. For an up-to-date overview of the origins of Athenian democracy this volume is hard to beat.

  21 See Hanson (1986); (1991), 69–71.

  22 Aeschylus, Suppliants, or Suppliant Women, 604; 699.

  23 An inscription records offerings made to Demokratia, Tyche and Eirene in 331–330 BC (IG II 2, 1496. 131, 140–1). Cf. Smith (2003), 7.

  24 One hundred years after Solon’s reforms those old families with old, entrenched interests, who had climbed to the stony heights of the Areopagus (the hill is a baby brother to the brooding Acropolis, where schoolkids scramble and slip now), who had been invited in as protectors of the people, appeared self-serving; many were banished, ostracised; the council purged. A neo-conservative counter-revolution seemed certain, a true, full-blown, direct democracy too enormous, too scary an idea to take on. These were uncertain times.

  25 Because the Spartans did not write about themselves, we rely almost exclusively on perceptions of their society from outsiders. Paul Cartledge deals with the difficulties of this ‘Spartan mirage’ for the historian in his masterful Spartan Reflections (2001).

  26 Thucydides, 2.39. Trans. C. F. Smith (1919).

  27 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 18, originally from Homer, Iliad, 6.492.

  28 Sophocles, Women of Trachis, 281–3. Trans. R. C. Jebb (1892).

  29 Euripides, Hecuba, 639–56. Trans. E. P. Coleridge (1938).

  CHAPTER THREE

  Socrates in the Agora

  1 Trans. J. Fogel (2002).

  2 See Theophrastus (372–287 BC), Enquiry into Plants.

  3 Excavations ongoing. See American School at Athens website www.asca.edu.gr. Well dated to c.395–375 BC.

  4 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 4.2.1.

  5 Diogenes Laertius, 2.122.

  6 Although the historical existence of Simon is debated, recent work does tend towards his identification as a real man. A useful investigation of the problem and of the influence of the ‘Simon’ tradition is presented by Sellars (2003).

  7 Luis E. Navia concludes his scholarly work, Antisthenes of Athens; Setting the World Aright (2001), with a pseudo-Dialogue of Simon.

  8 Recent scholarship puts his dates at 450–410 BC. See Sellars, n.6, above.

  9 Socrates’ divine voice is held responsible for this prescient change of tack. The hand of God is questionable; but the local colour is spot-on.

  10 In the fifth century BC, chance meetings with friends or strangers were also thought to augur the future. This was a view to which Socrates subscribed – although adding his own idiosyncratic interpretation. ‘However, while some name what forewarns them “birds”, “voices”, “omens” or “prophets”, I call this a “divinity” [daimonion], and I think by naming it thus, I speak more truthfully and more piously than those who attribute the power of gods to the birds. Indeed, I have the following proof that I do not speak falsely concerning the god; for, though I told the advice of the god to many friends, never once was I shown to have spoken falsely.’ Xenophon, Apology, 13. Trans. J. A. Martinez (2002). ‘And yet most people say that they are “warned away” or “encouraged” by the birds and the chance meetings; and Socrates expressed it in the way he knew: he said that “the divinity signalled”.’ Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.1.4. Trans. J. Fogel (2002).

  11 Cf. Zaidman, Pantel and Cartledge (1991), 55.

  12 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Democritus, 9.44–5.

  13 Plato’s aim here was to ‘prove’, in hindsight, that Socrates was not a sophist.

  14 Plato, Euthyphro, 3d. Trans. H. N. Fowler (1914) [adapt.] [LCL].

  15 Frag. 12 Kock (Giannantoni I A2).

  16 The precise location of the prison is still disputed. The marble-chippings on the floor of the ‘prison-house’ could either be the result of artisans dispatching the culture of Athens or rough flooring for its troublemakers.

  17 Plato, Crito, 52b.

  18 Sophocles died a few months after Euripides in 406 BC (cf. Aristophanes, Frogs, 82). In his last competition at the Dionysia he dressed his chorus and actors in mourning for the death of his fellow playwright. Cf. OCD (3rd edn.), 1422–3.

  19 Only Plato remained, a self-proclaimed member of Socrates’ circle (Apology, 34a) and listed with Crito, Critob
ulus and Apollodorus as offering to pay the fine of thirty minas proposed by Socrates in lieu of the death penalty (Apology, 38b). Plato himself would be (briefly) sold into slavery, and Aristotle (originally from Stageira) would be driven from Athens to die in exile.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Stoa of the King

  1 Plato, Euthyphro, 1b–c.

  2 This explains why – thanks to translation issues – in some medieval Arabic texts it was asserted that Socrates was killed by a king. The King Archon’s role was to hear indictments and set in motion the business of justice.

  3 Isocrates, Address to the Areopagus, 30.

  4 Demosthenes, First Philippic, 35.

  5 Here too were said to be the pronouncements of the law-giver Draco – the Athenian whom we still commemorate with our word ‘draconian’.

  6 Again, see the American School at Athens’ excellent publications and website on the excavations of the Agora.

  7 Plato, Euthyphro, 1c.

  8 Although Anytus was a relatively well-to-do merchant and does play a minor part in the political history of the period.

  9 Zeus replies to Hermes, Plato, Protagoras, 322d.

  10 Plato, Euthyphro, 2d–3a. Trans. Brickhouse and Smith (2002).

  11 Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, 2.21. Trans. C. D. Yonge (1853).

  12 Plato, Apology, 29d–30a. Trans. B. Jowett (1953).

  13 Plato, Crito, 52c.

  14 Socrates did not ‘plead guilty’, but he accepted that within the legal framework of Athens his charges could be brought before a court.

  15 Plato, Theaetetus, 210d; see also Plato, Statesman, which ends with a discussion of courage.

  16 See Stroud (1998).

  17 See also Aristophanes, Clouds, 770; Wasps, 349; Isocrates, 15.237; Demosthenes, Against Midias, 103. Also Stroud (1998), Sickinger (2004).