At the end of the war, the Spartans established in Athens an oligarchial government, known as the Thirty Tyrants. Some of the Thirty, including Critias, their chief, had been pupils of Socrates. They were deservedly unpopular, and were overthrown within a year. With the compliance of Sparta, democracy was restored, but it was an embittered democracy, precluded by an amnesty from direct vengeance against its internal enemies, but glad of any pretext, not covered by the amnesty, for prosecuting them. It was in this atmosphere that the trial and death of Socrates took place (399 B.C.).
* Arithmetic and some geometry existed among the Egyptians and Babylonians, but mainly in the form of rules of thumb. Deductive reasoning from general premisses was a Greek innovation.
* Diana was the Latin equivalent of Artemis. It is Artemis who is mentioned in the Greek Testament where our translation speaks of Diana.
* She has a male twin or consort, the “Master of Animals,” but he is less prominent. It was at a later date that Artemis was identified with the Great Mother of Asia Minor.
* See The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion by Martin P. Nilsson, p. IIff.
* See P. N. Ure, The Origin of Tyranny.
* For instance, “Gimel,” the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet, means “camel,” and the sign for it is a conventionalized picture of a camel.
† Beloch, Griechísche Geschichte, Chap. XII.
‡ Rostovtseff, History of the Ancient World, Vol. I, p. 399.
* Five Stages of Greek Religion, p. 67.
* Primitive Culture in Greece, H. J. Rose, 1925, p. 193.
* Zoroaster’s date, however, is very conjectural. Some place it as early as 1000 B.C. See Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. IV, p. 207.
† As a result of the defeat of Athens by Sparta, the Persians regained the whole coast of Asia Minor, to which their right was acknowledged in the Peace of Antalcidas (387-86 B.C.). About fifty years later, they were incorporated in Alexander’s empire.
* Rose, Primitive Greece, p. 65 ff.
† J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena for the Study of Greek Religion, p. 651.
* I mean mental intoxication, not intoxication by alcohol.
* The verse translations in this chapter are by Professor Gilbert Murray.
* Mystically identified with Bacchus.
† One of the many names of Bacchus.
* Rostovtseff, History of the Ancient World, Vol. I, p. 204.
* Burnet (Early Greek Philosophy, p. 51) questions this last saying.
* The Greek cities of Sicily were in danger from the Carthaginians, but in Italy this danger was not felt to be imminent.
* Aristotle says of him that he “first worked at mathematics and arithmetic, and afterwards, at one time, condescended to the wonder-working practised by Pherecydes.”
† Clown: What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wildfowl?
Malvolio: That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
Clown: What thinkest thou of his opinion?
Malvolio : I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.
Clown: Fare thee well; remain thou still in darkness: thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits. (Twelfth Night)
* Quoted from Burner’s Early Greek Philosophy.
† Cornford, op. cit., p. 201.
* Early Greek Philosophy, p. 108.
* But not by Euclid. See Heath, Greek Mathematics. The above proof was probably known to Plato.
† was substituted by Franklin for Jefferson’s “sacred and undeniable.”
* Quoted from Edwyn Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, Oxford, 1913, p. 121.
* Cornford, op. cit. (p. 184), emphasises this, I think rightly. Heraclitus is often misunderstood through being assimilated to other Ionians.
* But cf. “We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are, and are not.”
* Burnet’s note: “The meaning, I think, is this…. There can be no thought corresponding to a name that is not the name of something real.”
* It does not appear who “they” are, but one may assume that they are those who have preserved purity.
* Cyril Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, estimates that he flourished about 430 B.C. or a little earlier.
* From Thaïes to Plato, p. 193.
† Greek Mathematics, Vol. I, p. 176.
‡ On Generation and Corruption, 326 a.
* This interpretation is adopted by Burnet, and also, at least as regards Leucippus, by Bailey (op. cit. p. 83).
† See Bailey, op. cit., p. 121, on the determinism of Democritus.
* On the logical and mathematical grounds for the theories of the atomists, see Gaston Milhaud, Les Philosophes Géomètres de la Grèce, Ch. IV.
* On Generation and Corruption, 325 a.
* Bailey (op. cit. p. 75) maintains, on the contrary, that Leucippus had an answer, which was “extremely subtle.” It consisted essentially in admitting the existence of something (the void) which was not corporeal. Similarly Burnet says: “It is a curious fact that the Atomists, who are commonly regarded as the great materialists of antiquity, were actually the first to say distinctly that a thing might be real without being a body.”
* On the way in which this was supposed to happen, see Bailey, op. cit., p. 138 ff.
* “Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to what is called prosperity under despots as freedom is to slavery,” he says.
* It ended in 404 B.C. with the complete overthrow of Athens.
Part II. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
CHAPTER XI
Socrates
SOCRATES is a very difficult subject for the historian. There are many men concerning whom it is certain that very little is known, and other men concerning whom it is certain that a great deal is known; but in the case of Socrates the uncertainty is as to whether we know very little or a great deal. He was undoubtedly an Athenian citizen of moderate means, who spent his time in disputation, and taught philosophy to the young, but not for money, like the Sophists. He was certainly tried, condemned to death, and executed in 399 B.C., at about the age of seventy. He was unquestionably a well-known figure in Athens, since Aristophanes caricatured him in The Clouds. But beyond this point we become involved in controversy. Two of his pupils, Xenophon and Plato, wrote voluminously about him, but they said very different things. Even when they agree, it has been suggested by Burnet that Xenophon is copying Plato. Where they disagree, some believe the one, some the other, some neither. In such a dangerous dispute, I shall not venture to take sides, but I will set out briefly the various points of view.
Let us begin with Xenophon, a military man, not very liberally endowed with brains, and on the whole conventional in his outlook. Xenophon is pained that Socrates should have been accused of impiety and of corrupting the youth; he contends that, on the contrary, Socrates was eminently pious and had a thoroughly wholesome effect upon those who came under his influence. His ideas, it appears, so far from being subversive, were rather dull and commonplace. This defence goes too far, since it leaves the hostility to Socrates unexplained. As Burnet says (Thales to Plato, p. 149): “Xenophon’s defence of Socrates is too successful. He would never have been put to death if he had been like that.”
There has been a tendency to think that everything Xenophon says must be true, because he had not the wits to think of anything untrue. This is a very invalid line of argument. A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand. I would rather be reported by my bitterest enemy among philosophers than by a friend innocent of philosophy. We cannot therefore accept what Xenophon says if it either involves any difficult point in philosophy or is part of an argument to prove that Socrates was unjustly condemned.
Nevertheless, some of Xenophon’s reminiscences are very convincing. He tells (as Plato also does) how Socrates was continually occupied with the pr
oblem of getting competent men into positions of power. He would ask such questions as: “If I wanted a shoe mended, whom should I employ?” To which some ingenuous youth would answer: “A shoemaker, O Socrates.” He would go on to carpenters, coppersmiths, etc., and finally ask some such question as “who should mend the Ship of State?” When he fell into conflict with the Thirty Tyrants, Critias, their chief, who knew his ways from having studied under him, forbade him to continue teaching the young, and added: “You had better be done with your shoemakers, carpenters, and coppersmiths. These must be pretty well trodden out at heel by this time, considering the circulation you have given them” (Xenophon, Memorabilia, Bk. I, Chap. II). This happened during the brief oligarchic government established by the Spartans at the end of the Peloponnesian War. But at most times Athens was democratic, so much so that even generals were elected or chosen by lot. Socrates came across a young man who wished to become a general, and persuaded him that it would be well to know something of the art of war. The young man accordingly went away and took a brief course in tactics. When he returned, Socrates, after some satirical praise, sent him back for further instruction (ib. Bk. III, Chap I). Another young man he set to learning the principles of finance. He tried the same sort of plan on many people, including the war minister; but it was decided that it was easier to silence him by means of the hemlock than to cure the evils of which he complained.
With Plato’s account of Socrates, the difficulty is quite a different one from what it is in the case of Xenophon, namely, that it is very hard to judge how far Plato means to portray the historical Socrates, and how far he intends the person called “Socrates” in his dialogues to be merely the mouthpiece of his own opinions. Plato, in addition to being a philosopher, is an imaginative writer of great genius and charm. No one supposes, and he himself does not seriously pretend, that the conversations in his dialogues took place just as he records them. Nevertheless, at any rate in the earlier dialogues, the conversation is completely natural and the characters quite convincing. It is the excellence of Plato as a writer of fiction that throws doubt on him as a historian. His Socrates is a consistent and extraordinarily interesting character, far beyond the power of most men to invent; but I think Plato could have invented him. Whether he did so is of course another question.
The dialogue which is most generally regarded as historical is the Apology. This professes to be the speech that Socrates made in his own defence at his trial—not, of course, a stenographic report, but what remained in Plato’s memory some years after the event, put together and elaborated with literary art. Plato was present at the trial, and it certainly seems fairly clear that what is set down is the sort of thing that Plato remembered Socrates as saying, and that the intention is, broadly speaking, historical. This, with all its limitations, is enough to give a fairly definite picture of the character of Socrates.
The main facts of the trial of Socrates are not open to doubt. The prosecution was based upon the charge that “Socrates is an evil-doer and a curious person, searching into things under the earth and above the heaven; and making the worse appear the better cause, and teaching all this to others.” The real ground of hostility to him was, almost certainly, that he was supposed to be connected with the aristocratic party; most of his pupils belonged to this faction, and some, in positions of power, had proved themselves very pernicious. But this ground could not be made evident, on account of the amnesty. He was found guilty by a majority, and it was then open to him, by Athenian law, to propose some lesser penalty than death. The judges had to choose, if they had found the accused guilty, between the penalty demanded by the prosecution and that suggested by the defence. It was therefore to the interest of Socrates to suggest a substantial penalty, which the court might have accepted as adequate. He, however, proposed a fine of thirty minae, for which some of his friends (including Plato) were willing to go surety. This was so small a punishment that the court was annoyed, and condemned him to death by a larger majority than that which had found him guilty. Undoubtedly he foresaw this result. It is clear that he had no wish to avoid the death penalty by concessions which might seem to acknowledge his guilt.
The prosecutors were Anytus, a democratic politician; Meletus, a tragic poet, “youthful and unknown, with lanky hair, and scanty beard, and a hooked nose”; and Lykon, an obscure rhetorician, (See Burnet, Thales to Plato, p. 180.) They maintained that Socrates was guilty of not worshipping the gods the State worshipped but introducing other new divinities, and further that he was guilty of corrupting the young by teaching them accordingly.
Without further troubling ourselves with the insoluble question of the relation of the Platonic Socrates to the real man, let us see what Plato makes him say in answer to this charge.
Socrates begins by accusing his prosecutors of eloquence, and rebutting the charge of eloquence as applied to himself. The only eloquence of which he is capable, he says, is that of truth. And they must not be angry with him if he speaks in his accustomed manner, not in “a set oration, duly ornamented with words and phrases.” * He is over seventy, and has never appeared in a court of law until now; they must therefore pardon his un-forensic way of speaking.
He goes on to say that, in addition to his formal accusers, he has a large body of informal accusers, who, ever since the judges were children, have gone about “telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heavens above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause.” Such men, he says, are supposed not to believe in the existence of the gods. This old accusation by public opinion is more dangerous than the formal indictment, the more so as he does not know who are the men from whom it comes, except in the case of Aristophanes.* He points out, in reply to these older grounds of hostility, that he is not a man of science—“I have nothing to do with physical speculations”—that he is not a teacher, and does not take money for teaching. He goes on to make fun of the Sophists, and to disclaim the knowledge that they profess to have. What, then, is “the reason why I am called wise and have such an evil fame?”
The oracle of Delphi, it appears, was once asked if there were any man wiser than Socrates, and replied that there was not. Socrates professes to have been completely puzzled, since he knew nothing, and yet a god cannot lie. He therefore went about among men reputed wise, to see whether he could convict the god of error. First he went to a politician, who “was thought wise by many, and still wiser by himself.” He soon found that the man was not wise, and explained this to him, kindly but firmly, “and the consequence was that he hated me.” He then went to the poets, and asked them to explain passages in their writings, but they were unable to do so. “Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration.” Then he went to the artisans, but found them equally disappointing. In the process, he says, he made many dangerous enemies. Finally he concluded that “God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name by way of illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.” This business of showing up pretenders to wisdom takes up all his time, and has left him in utter poverty, but he feels it a duty to vindicate the oracle.
Young men of the richer classes, he says, having not much to do, enjoy listening to him exposing people, and proceed to do likewise, thus increasing the number of his enemies. “For they do not like to confess that their pretence of knowledge has been detected.”
So much for the first class of accusers.
Socrates now proceeds to examine his prosecutor Meletus, “that good man and true lover of his country, as he calls himself.” He asks who are the people who improve the young. Meletus first mentions the judges; then, under pressure, is driven, step by step, to say that every Athenian except Socrates improves the young; whereupon Socrates congratulates the city on its good fortune. Next, he points
out that good men are better to live among than bad men, and therefore he cannot be so foolish as to corrupt his fellow-citizens intentionally; but if unintentionally, then Meletus should instruct him, not prosecute him.
The indictment had said that Socrates not only denied the gods of the State, but introduced other gods of his own; Meletus, however, says that Socrates is a complete atheist, and adds: “He says that the sun is stone and the moon earth.” Socrates replies that Meletus seems to think he is prosecuting Anaxagoras, whose views may be heard in the theatre for one drachma (presumably in the plays of Euripides). Socrates of course points out that this new accusation of complete atheism contradicts the indictment, and then passes on to more general considerations.
The rest of the Apology is essentially religious in tone. He has been a soldier, and has remained at his post, as he was ordered to do. Now “God orders me to fulfil the philosopher’s mission of searching into myself and other men,” and it would be as shameful to desert his post now as in time of battle. Fear of death is not wisdom, since no one knows whether death may not be the greater good. If he were offered his life on condition of ceasing to speculate as he has done hitherto, he would reply: “Men of Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you,* and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet…. For know that this is the command of God; and I believe that no greater good has ever happened in the State than my service to the God.” He goes on:
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