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

by Bettany Hughes

  11 Euripides, Orestes, 108.

  12 Frag. 205, Jensen.

  13 Lysias 3 [Simon].6. Trans W. R. M. Lamb (1930) [LCL].

  14 Cratinus, Cheirons, Frags 246 268 K-A.

  15 Eupolis, Demes (110 K-A) produced 411 BC. Interestingly in his play Philoi, produced in 424/3, Aspasia was described, in effect, as a ball-breaker, and in the Marikas, which beat Aristophanes’ Clouds in the drama competition of 423, she was mentioned as a ‘bastard’ child.

  16 Clearchus of Soli, Erotika, Frag. 26, Frag. 30.

  17 Madeleine Henry’s discussion of Aspasia’s reception in Prisoner of History (1995) is enormously helpful for anyone interested in Aspasia. Nb. Interesting that the male collective hetairoi refers to an aristocratic band of intimate comrades.

  18 See Plutarch, Pericles, 24 and 32.

  19 See Bicknell, (1982) 240–50, and the analysis of this gravestone (IG II 2, 7394).

  20 An interesting side-effect of this legislation was an increased focus on women in the body politic. Women both became more prominent on vase-paintings and painted frescoes and were mentioned more often in inscriptions. They were also subject to tighter legal controls.

  21 Close on Pericles’ death in 429 BC, the Assembly, with honorific motives, passed a decree that accepted Pericles Junior as an Athenian citizen.

  22 There are rare exceptions. The poet Sappho had a brother who (we are told) bought the freedom of a feisty-sounding girl called Rhodopis. Rhodopis ran businesses in Egypt, made a tidy profit – and dedicated one-tenth (in the form of iron spits, early money) of her fortune to Apollo at Delphi. An anachronistic but useful parallel is to look at the career of Theodora, Empress of Byzantium, who, via increasingly helpful liaisons with increasingly wealthy men, and eventually by marrying the Emperor Justinian, managed in the sixth century AD to access control of the most powerful civilisation in the eastern Mediterranean.

  23 Cratinus, Cheirons, Frag. 258 K-A and 259 K-A, in Henry (1995).

  24 See Plato, Menexenus; Symposium; Aristophanes, Archarnians; Xenophon, Memorabilia, Oeconomicus.

  25 Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1398b. Trans. H. C. Lawson-Tancred (1991).

  26 Aspasia suffered particularly at the hands of early Christian scholars and copyists: as a pagan philosopher who was not only female, but overtly sexual, she was prime material for censorship. This goes a long way to explain why we know so much and yet so little about her. Interesting that the Christian neo-Platonist Synesius of Cyrene, a pupil of the female philosopher Hypatia, tried to redeem her reputation a little.

  27 Theophrastus, Characters, 28.

  28 Plutarch, Pericles, 24.3; Plato, Menexenus, 235e–6b.

  29 Plato, Republic, 353b.

  30 Plato, Menexenus, 236d–49c.

  31 Xenophon, Memorabilia, II, 6.36.

  32 Something we accept now, that having power, changing things, gives a rush, a high.

  33 Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 3.15. Trans. E. C. Marchant (1992) [LCL].

  34 Plato, Menexenus, 235–6. Of course Socrates himself took a dim view of rhetoric.

  35 Interesting that both Cratinus and Eupolis apparently referred to Aspasia as a ‘Helen’: see Prospaltians, 267 K-A. Later in Socrates’ lifetime Euripides has Helen call herself a ‘bitch-whore’ – these were women whose political machinations tempted men to their beds and to untimely deaths.

  36 Plato, Menexenus, 235e. Trans. B. Jowett (1953).

  37 Plato, Menexenus, 236b.

  38 Josiah Ober, ref. from Gale (2000), 367.

  39 The Tektas shipwreck is now on display in the Bodrum Underwater Archaeology Museum, Bodrum.

  40 Thucydides, 1.115.2.

  41 Plutarch, Pericles, 24, and Duris, 28.2–3.

  42 Herodotus, 6, 19.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Samos

  1 The Spartan Military Spirit (Tyrtaios, Frag. 9D.21–30 [Bergk]. Trans. R. Lattimore (1955).

  2 The city walls are still visible. For most recent excavations see photothek@athen.dainst.org. Many thanks to Dr. Dimitris Grigoropoulos and the Institute at Samos, and Deutsches Archäologisches Institut for their help with this chapter.

  3 Thucydides, 1.115–18.

  4 Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 369–75. Trans. S. Berg and D. Clay (1978).

  5 Plutarch, Pericles, 8.6. Trans. I. Scott-Kilvert (1960) [adapt.].

  6 It was also in the late 440s that Pericles’ favourite composer, Damon, was exiled from the city. A number of ostraka bearing his name have been excavated; it could be that he was ostracised for interfering with traditional Athenian music – for creating something that was just too, suspiciously, new.

  7 Diogenes Laertius, 2.23: ‘Ion of Chios relates that in his youth he visited Samos in the company of Archelaus; and Aristotle that he went to Delphi; he went also to the isthmus, according to Favorinus in the first book of his Memorabilia.’ Although our later, textual reference has Socrates in Samos as a philosopher, it is just as likely that he would have visited the place as a soldier. Trans. R. D. Hicks (1925).

  8 See, e.g., Stele 385, Piraeus Museum, memorialising Chairedemos and Lykeas.

  9 Estimate taken from p.22 of Waterfield (2009). The other figures he offers are: 1,200 rich enough to fund liturgies, 3,000 with large estates, a further 3,000 not quite as well off but liable for emergency taxation, 9,000 thetes.

  10 Mark Anderson in his interesting 2005 paper ‘Socrates as Hoplite’ points out the number of places where Socrates, quite possibly, could have fought. These include: Therme, Pydna, Beroea, Strepsa, Spartolus, Mende, Scione, Torone, Gale, Singus, Mecyera, Thyssus, Cleonae, Acanthos, Olophyxus, Stageira, Bormiscus, Galepsos and Trailus. See Anderson (2005), passim.

  11 See Graham (2008).

  12 Aristophanes, Clouds, 225; 227–34.

  13 Plato, Phaedo, 96a. Trans. H. Tredennick (1954).

  14 Aristotle, Politics, 7.1333b38–1334a2. Trans. T. A. Sinclair, rev. T. J. Saunders (1981) [adapt.].

  15 Trans. Brickhouse and Smith (2002)

  16 My thanks for help with this chapter and for access to the Isthmus site go to Prof. Elizabeth Gebhard and the team working on the University of Chicago excavations at the inspiring excavation of the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia. See http://humanities.uchicago.edu/isthmia and http://isthmia.ohio-state.edu

  17 Herodotus tells us that an official Athenian delegation sailed in a ‘special’ ship to the Isthmus. The fact that Plato omits this detail suggests that Socrates was not perhaps a part of this ‘official embassy’.

  18 The Isthmian Games are a useful reminder never to think of Socrates as a cartoon philosopher – a quiet white-beard. His purpose was all about understanding and participating in, the grimy, joyful-sorrowful business of being, of living, of sweating out our lifespan in the real world. They also remind us to head-shift; to see fifth-century Greece with fifth-century eyes. They remind us that Socrates had a youth, as well as a middle and old age. That he was not a remote aesthete, but a full-blooded fifth-century Greek.

  19 The basins to collect this water have been identified. The site is now open to the public and a visit is highly recommended.

  20 The heroic sponsor of the games would have chimed with Socrates’ own ambiguous attitude to dying and the afterlife. See Plato, Phaedo, passim.

  21 Sport, sustenance, politics, culture, competition, international relations – for the Ancient Greeks religion lay at the heart of everything.

  22 Plato, Republic, 379c. Trans. R. Waterfield (1993).

  23 Aristophanes, Acharnians, 524. Trans. M. M. Henry (1995).

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Flexing muscles

  1 Trans. R. Warner (1972).

  2 Thucydides, 1.33.

  3 The date of the Megarian decree is the subject of much debate; ‘around 432’ is as secure as possible. See, e.g., J. McDonald (1994), with extensive bibliography.

  4 Aristophanes, Acharnians, 528–9. Trans. M. M. Henry (1995).

  5 This was a turn in the popular tide that would eventually leave charm
ing, witty, sexy Aspasia stranded. The parallels with the story of Helen of Troy are numerous.

  6 Cf. Socrates’ fate, see Ch. 50 onwards

  7 Potidaea, 432–429 BC (Plato, Symposium, 219e–21a); Delium, 424 (Plato, Apology, 28e, Laches, 181a–b and Symposium, 221a–b); Amphipolis, 422 (Apology, 28e).

  8 The keenest moral template for Socrates’ society are Homer’s epics and the epics of other epic-cycle poets. The Iliad and the Odyssey speak of many things, but they recall a long, bloody, seemingly pointless conflict – the Trojan War. Warmongering in antiquity was pragmatic before it was ethical. The poor in the democratic body knew that conflict could be an income generator; a poor soldier could earn from war (booty and payment). Socrates himself, middle-aged, hard-up, might even have volunteered for service – a drachma a day, potentially what a soldier can earn, is not to be sniffed at. As stated before, following Anderson, Socrates almost certainly fought at Therme, Pydna, Beroea, Strepsa, Mende, Scione, Torone, Gale, Singus, Mecygerna, Thyssus, Cleonae, Acanthos, Olophyxus, Stageira, Bormiscus, Galepsos and Trailus.

  9 See Morrison (1987) and (1988) and Coates, Platis and Shaw (1990).

  10 Plato, Crito, 49b: Trans. Brickhouse and Smith (2002).

  11 Thucydides, 1.23.6. Trans. R. Warner (1972).

  12 Plato, Apology, 28d–29b. Trans. H. N. Fowler (1914) [LCL] and Brickhouse and Smith (2002) [adapt.].

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Socrates the soldier

  1 Trans. W. R. M. Lamb (1925) [LCL].

  2 Herodotus, 8.129, mentions a Greek temple to Poseidon in front of the city.

  3 One of the scant remains from the site is a spearhead from the Geometric Period, now held by the British Museum. See Forsdyke in the British Museum Quarterly, VI (1932), 82f., and viii (1934), 108.

  4 IG I3 279 (cf. Thucydides, 2.70).

  5 Diogenes Laertius, 2.23: ‘Again he served at Potidaea, whither he had gone by sea, as land communications were interrupted by the war’ Trans. R. D. Hicks (1925) [LCL].

  6 Van Wees (2004) has a vivid description of the conditions of the campaign in this period.

  7 Plutarch, Alcibiades, 7.2–3.

  8 Plato, Protagoras, 309a.

  9 Plato, Symposium, 219d.

  10 Plato, Phaedrus, 229a.

  11 Plutarch, Alcibiades, 1.3. Trans. I. Scott-Kilvert (1960). Nb Some sources say Alcibiades was only nineteen, but he would not have been allowed to fight beyond Attica until he was twenty.

  12 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.2.24. Trans. E. C. Marchant (1992) [adapt.] [LCL].

  13 Polyaenus, Strategemata, 1.40; cited by Kagan (1991), 196; citing Hatzfeld, Alcibiades, 164.

  14 Plato, Alcibiades, I, 105a–c. (Nb Plato’s authorship of Alcibiades is much disputed.)

  15 Pindar, Nemean Odes, 3.40. Trans. R. Lattimore (1959).

  16 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.3.13. Trans. H. Tredennick and R. Waterfield (1990) [adapt.].

  17 Plato, Symposium, 220e.

  18 Subconsciously we imagine this apparent humility as the selfless act of an immaterial man – maybe Socrates was riled by the blatant inequality. Perhaps this choice to honour not the virtuous but the great sparked his promotional campaign – you only live a good life if you are good on the inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Demons and virtues

  1 Trans. W. R. M. Lamb [LCL].

  2 Plato, Symposium, 219e–20d.

  3 Plato, Symposium, 219e–20e. The man from Alopeke’s much-discussed daimonion is perplexing. Is it perhaps the development of a personal conscience? Does religion, for Socrates, represent a route through to individual morality, rather than morality itself? Is there a more pedestrian argument? It could be that Socrates’ catalepsy (protruding eyes are a textbook sign of the condition) generated in him this otherworldly eccentricity. Whatever the cause, his odd behaviour was registered.

  4 Plato, Crito, 54d. Trans. H. N. Fowler (1914) [LCL].

  5 Thucydides, 2.70.1.

  6 Xenophon certainly played around with these ideas, see, e.g., Memorabilia, 1.

  7 See Ch. 13, for discussions of Socrates’ keen interest in the Spartan way of life.

  8 The Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, 8.2.

  9 Plato, Protagoras, 360e and following.

  10 Plato, Protagoras, 353a and following.

  11 Plato, Apology, 21e.

  12 Plato, Apology, 30a–b. Trans. H. N. Fowler (1914) [LCL].

  13 Euripides, Phoenician Women, 240–55. Trans. A. Wilson.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The plague

  1 I am still struck by how, even at the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the smaller Greek villages it is men who go to buy food, not women.

  2 The teeth of three corpses from the mass grave (discovered during excavations in 1994 for the extension of the metro) were analysed by the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology, Medical School of Athens University and the Laboratory of Micro-chemistry, Institute of Technology-Research of Crete in 2005. The bacterium discovered to be present in all samples was Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi. Symptoms of infection include: headache, high fever, anorexia, intestinal bleeding, intestinal perforation, septicaemia, meningitis, osteomyelitis, hepatomegaly and splenomegaly.

  3 Thucydides, 2.51.4–5. Trans. R. Warner (1972).

  4 Thucydides, 2.50.1. Trans. R. Warner.

  5 Thucydides, 2.52.2–3. Trans. R. Warner [adapt.].

  6 Thucydides, 2.53.1–2.

  7 Socrates operated in a landscape that was distinctly heroic. The words of Homer were at every street corner, images of tales of Troy and of Odysseus’ travels were inescapable: on vases, in stone, on colonnades and temples.

  8 ‘Myrtis’’ skull was presented at the 71st International Thessaloniki Fair in 2006.

  9 See www.archaeology.org/online/features/athens/1.html.

  10 Hanson (1998), 9–13.

  11 Aristophanes, Acharnians, 498–512.

  12 See Pollard, (1977).

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Silver Owls and a wise owl

  1 Trans. B. B. Rogers (1930) [adapt.] [LCL].

  2 A very useful reference book for this kind of social detail is Camp (1986).

  3 Prehistory seeped from the earth and sang in the air of classical Athens. It is still there in concrete terms: in the Aladdin’s Cave storeroom of the Agora Museum where a Late Bronze Age skull peeps from a wooden drawer; newly discovered ritual objects, the latest a female deity relaxing in a striped, curved throne, are carefully wrapped in tissue paper; in the Acropolis’ still-standing blocks of defensive cyclopean walls; in words such as ‘pharmakon’, first scratched on to Greek Linear B tablets 3,500 years ago as PA-MA-KO and now animated neon-green on pharmacy signs throughout the modern city. Athenian priests and priestesses active during Socrates’ lifespan mimicked in their dress gods, goddesses, demigods, nymphs and epic rulers from the ‘Age of Heroes’. Choruses of maidens sang praises to the deities of old, from a time before time. Bards – professional and amateur – rhapsodised the words of Homer in open spaces across the city; tales from a thousand years ago that felt as though they happened yesterday.

  4 The Temple is still a raised landmark in the Agora, although now mainly used for high-society weddings and state occasions.

  5 Plato, Apology, 26d–e.

  6 Site visit to Agora excavations’ research laboratory, 2007.

  7 Thanks to Dr Morcom. Currently on display in the Agora can be seen, e.g., gold Daric from Persia, electrum stater discs from Kyzikos, silver staters from Aigina, gold staters from Macedonia.

  8 Eupolis, Frag. 352E.

  9 Thucydides, 2.13.

  10 Fragment of lost fifth-century BC comedy. See also Xenophon’s story of Socrates’ encounter with Antiphon the Sophist. And see Olsen (2007), pp.445–6.

  11 Similar to the banco, the first banks set up in Renaissance Florence on the Via Rosso. The modern Greek for ‘bank’ is still trapeza, ‘table’.

  12 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers,
2.25. Trans. R. D. Hicks (1925) [adapt.].

  13 Whether or not the story told about Socrates’ exasperated father praying to Zeus Agoraios (Zeus of the Marketplace) was contemporary, or invented with hindsight, either way it shows that the Agora, its chat, its debates, its fervid humanness, was considered a vital part of Socrates’ DNA; and when Socrates spoke at his trial, the language of his defence was woven from the very fabric of these conversations at the money-tables (Plato, Apology, 17c).

  14 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.2.60. Trans. J. Fogel (2002).

  15 Plato, Charmides, 167a. Trans. B. Jowett (1953).

  16 Cicero, Academica, 1.15.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Hot air in the Agora

  1 See also trans. McLeish (1979): ‘Stop wriggling. if you come to a dead end,/Turn your analysis round, and take it back / To the nearest crossroads of thought. Look round,/Get the new direction right, and start again.’

  2 Demosthenes, 19.184.

  3 When you travel round Greece today words are earthquake-cracked at Delphi, in Segesta, reused as a doorstep, in the Acropolis Museum, scratched into the scoop of a Corinthian column. And in the National Epigraphical Museum in Athens – a lithrary rather than a library – they line the walls and litter the floors. More than 7,000 other inscribed fragments are waiting here to be deciphered.

  4 Cat. EM 6798. The inscription relates to Salamis.

  5 See, e.g., EM 6765, 440/39 BC, account of the supervisors for construction of the statue of Athena Parthenos by Pheidias; also EM 6769, 438 BC, EM 5223 + 5378β + 6710α 447/6–433/2 BC, account of the supervisors for the construction of the Parthenon; and EM 7862 401/400 BC – 399 18 BC, accounts of the treasures of the goddess Athena and the other gods.

  6 Piraeus Museum, 4628; see also 5352, standard measurements.

  7 Over a 2,500-year period it appears that Athenians have not lost their taste for using outsize red letters to register public protest. At the time of writing, students are rioting and covering Athens’ Parliament building and National Library (protected by statues of Socrates and Plato) with red graffiti: ‘Pigs, Police, Murderers’.