Why Socrates Died

by Robin Waterfield

  55 recognized signs: ps.-Aristotle, Physiognomics 808a.

  57 consistently portrayed: see Plato, Charmides 154b ff., Lysis 204b ff., Republic 403b, Symposium, Phaedrus; Xenophon, Symposium 4.26, 8.12, 8.32, Recollections of Socrates 1.2.29, 1.3.8–13; see also Plato, Laws 636a–c, 836c–841e, though these sentiments are not put into Socrates’ mouth.

  57 ‘Just then … I was in ecstasy!’: Plato, Charmides 155d.

  57 his name was especially linked: Plato, Symposium 222b.

  58 his father had become connected: Plato, Laches 180e.

  58 A later tradition: preserved in Plutarch, Life of Aristides 27, who refers to various unreliable authors, but also, hesitantly, to Aristotle; see also Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 2.26 and Athenaeus, The Learned Banquet 555d–556a.

  58 ‘one a stripling … the others still children’: Plato, Apology 34d.

  59 ‘because it is hard … with long hair’: Aristotle, Rhetoric 1367a.

  60 ‘Even a poor man … receives a eulogy’: Plato, Menexenus 234c.

  64 date from the fourth century: Demosthenes 54.16 ff. (Against Conon).

  64 ‘Charicles and Critias and their club’: Lysias 12.55 (Against Eratosthenes).

  65 two set-piece speeches: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.16–18, 6.89–92.

  66 certainly the leader of a club: Isocrates, 16.6 (On the Team of Horses).

  FIVE

  67 Some scholars have speculated: see Brunt, ‘Thucydides and Alcibiades’.

  67 ‘Alcibiades … downfall of the city’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.15.

  73 Thucydides dramatized: The Peloponnesian War 3.37–48.

  77 like Oscar Wilde: Wilde is reputed to have said to André Gide: ‘I have put my genius into my life, whereas all I have put into my work is my talent.’

  77 plenty of stories: see especially Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 2–9.

  77 a punch-up with a rival impresario: ps.-Andocides 4.20 (Against Alcibiades). The prestige attached to performing this liturgy made it a highly competitive and emotional occasion; at any rate, Demosthenes too had a fist-fight with a rival under similar circumstances: see his Speech 21, Against Meidias. See Peter Wilson, ‘Leading the Tragic Khoros: Prestige in the Democratic City’, in Christopher Pelling (ed.), Greek Tragedy and the Historian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 81–108.

  78 According to Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War 5.43–46.

  80 ‘It was a grandiose scheme …’: Gomme, Historical Commentary, 4.70.

  81 ‘That may be so …’: Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 15.3.

  83 Thucydides cast the negotiations: The Peloponnesian War 5.84–113.

  SIX

  85 ‘The 44 … account for 25 of them’: Davies, Wealth, 100–1. Ancient sources that pinpoint ownership of horses as a sign of great wealth include Aristotle, Politics 1289b; Lysias 24.10–12 (On the Refusal of a Pension to an Invalid); ps.-Demosthenes 42.24 (Against Phaenippus); Aristophanes, Clouds 14–16, 25–32.

  86 a later historian records: Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History 13.74.

  86 or possibly third: fourth, Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.16.2; third, Isocrates 16.34 (On the Team of Horses), and the Euripidean ode in Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 11.2. At Life of Demosthenes 1.1 Plutarch records a tradition that this surviving ode was not actually by Euripides.

  86 in a speech the following year: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.16.

  87 led others to claim: as ps.-Andocides did, 4.27 (Against Alcibiades). The dating of this speech is controversial: good starting points are the relevant articles by Prandi and Raubitschek in the bibliography.

  87 rumours of tyranny: reported already for the year 415 by Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.15.4, and ps.-Andocides 4.24, 27 (Against Alcibiades); see also Isocrates 16.38 (On the Team of Horses).

  88 kinky sex: Lysias, fr. 5 Thalheim.

  88 within a generation … rumours: Antisthenes, fr. 29 Caizzi.

  88 Aristophanes was mocking: Wasps 488–507 (produced in 422), Birds 1074–5 (produced in 414). For other contemporary passages where ‘tyrant’ is used as a more or less meaningless term of abuse, see Douglas MacDowell, Aristophanes: Wasps (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), n. to 345.

  89 According to Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War 6.15.2, 6.90.2; the ambition is attributed both times to Alcibiades.

  89 dreams of western conquest lingered: e.g. references to Sicilian wealth in Euripides’ Cyclops (423 bce) and Aristophanes, Peace 93–4 (421 bce).

  89 ‘to help the Segestans … further Athenian interests’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.8.2.

  91 Thucydides says: The Peloponnesian War 6.27.1.

  91 ‘in case a herm-basher catches sight of you’: Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1093–4.

  92 a very striking … vase: Musée cantonal d’archéologie et d’histoire, Lausanne, Inv. no. 3250 (Beazley Archive no. 352524). It is the cover image for Furley’s Andokides and the Herms.

  92 Another vase: Louvre, Paris, Inv. no. 1947 (Beazley Archive no. 202393).

  93 One of the informants … one of the defendants: Andocides 1.37, 52 (On the Mysteries).

  93 ‘part of a conspiracy … subvert the democracy’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.27.3.

  93 ‘They did not assess … on the evidence of bad men’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.53.2.

  94 he asked his dikasts: Andocides 1.36 (On the Mysteries).

  94 One of those accused later claimed: Andocides 1.67 (On the Mysteries).

  95 linked in a single sentence: Isocrates 16.6 (On the Team of Horses).

  95 five or six occasions: at the house of Poulytion (Andocides 1.11–13; Andromachus’s deposition), at the house of a certain Charmides (1.16; Agariste’s deposition), at the house of Pherecles (1.17–18; Lydus’s deposition), at the house of Alcibiades (Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 22.3), at the house of ‘a metic’ (Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History 13.2.4, unless this just refers to Poulytion), and at an unnamed location (Andocides 1.15; Teucrus’s deposition).

  95 ‘one of the most sensational events in an uncommonly sensational year’: Wallace, ‘Charmides, Agariste and Damon’, 333.

  97 feature in a number of literary works: see Nails, People of Plato, 242.

  98 ‘supposedly loyal democrats at the time’: Andocides 1.36 (On the Mysteries).

  98 in a speech to the Spartans: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.89.6.

  98 ‘that what had happened … the investigation should continue’: Andocides 1.36 (On the Mysteries).

  99 Alcibiades of Phegous: Andocides 1.65 (On the Mysteries).

  100 Demosthenes mistakenly said: 21.147 (Against Meidias).

  100 ‘an oligarchic and tyrannical conspiracy’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.60.1.

  100 ‘I’ll show them I’m alive’: Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 22.2.

  100 ‘stood facing west …’: ps.-Lysias 6.51 (Against Andocides). The nice story (Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 22.4) that one priestess refused to take part, on the grounds that she was ‘a priestess for prayers, not for curses’, is probably fictional, because a priestess was a state official: the Athenian people ordered priests and priestesses to do any cursing that was required in a political situation such as this, and there was little room for dissent.

  101 the speech in which he persuaded: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.89–92.

  101 evidence … not of an especially convincing kind: from the biographer Satyrus, of the third century bce, quoted by Athenaeus, The Learned Banquet 534b. The hint is speculatively developed by Westlake, ‘Alcibiades, Agis, and Spartan Policy’.

  102 ‘While King Agis … rule over the Spartans’: Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 23.7.

  102 ‘the … surprising availability … extra-marital sex’: Paul Cartledge, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta (London: Duckworth, 1987), 113.

  SEVEN

  105 which found its way into Thucydides’ narrative: The Peloponnesian W
ar 8s.50–1. The whole story is unbelievable: Phrynichus wrote to Astyochus, accusing Alcibiades of not acting in Sparta’s best interests, but Astyochus told the Athenian leaders on Samos about the letter. Phrynichus wrote to Astyochus again, offering to betray the Athenian cause. But, first, Alcibiades was already under sentence of death from the Spartans, so the news that he was not acting for Sparta was irrelevant; and, second, why would Phrynichus, an intelligent man, write a second time to Astyochus after the Spartan had already betrayed him? And if Phrynichus had been in treacherous contact with the Spartans, Peisander would not have resorted to the lesser charge of letting down the rebel Persian satrap Amorges, in order to get rid of Phrynichus (8.54.3).

  106 ‘a different form of democracy’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 8.53.1; see also 8.53.3 on a ‘more moderate’ form of government.

  109 ‘downright democracy’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 8.92.11.

  110 Thucydides calls Alcibiades’ restraining …: The Peloponnesian War 8.86.4–5.

  111 the most helpful enemies: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 8.96.5.

  111 ‘The elite … had proven unable … Athenian political society’: Ober, Mass and Elite, 94.

  112 ‘And suppose … their past errors’: Aristophanes, Frogs 689–91.

  116 in his play Baptae … Eupolis: frr. 76–98 Kassel/Austin; see Ian Storey, Eupolis: Poet of Old Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 94–111.

  116 ‘… having his way with my sea’: Xenophon, Hellenica 1.6.15.

  116 ‘greatest sea battle ever fought by Greeks against Greeks’: Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History 13.98.5.

  117 ‘it was intolerable not to let the people do what they wish’: Xenophon, Hellenica 1.7.12.

  118 ‘We are in command now, not you’: Xenophon, Hellenica 2.1.26; Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 37.1.

  119 ‘People thought … freedom for Greece’: Xenophon, Hellenica 2.2.23.

  119 made famous by Xenophon: in his Anabasis. See Xenophon: The Expedition of Cyrus, translated by Robin Waterfield, with introduction and notes by Tim Rood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), and Robin Waterfield, Xenophon’s Retreat: Greece, Persia and the End of the Golden Age (London: Faber and Faber, 2006).

  120 a sordid tale of adultery: see Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 39.5.

  120 Thucydides distributed blame: see pp. 67–8.

  120 ‘that he alone was responsible … be initiated by him alone’: Xenophon, Hellenica 1.4.17.

  120 as it has been called: by Strauss and Ober, in their Anatomy of Error.

  121 ‘They miss him … pander to his moods’: Aristophanes, Frogs 1425, 1431–2.

  EIGHT

  124 ‘art of words’: Xenophon, Recollections of Socrates 1.2.31.

  126 We hear that in all fifteen hundred people were illegally killed: ps.-Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 35.4, with other references in Rhodes’s note on this passage.

  126 hostile sources: e.g. Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3; since Xenophon himself had, as one of the knights, probably helped the Thirty police the city, he was trying to distance himself from the atrocities.

  127 ‘an amateur among philosophers, and a philosopher among amateurs’: Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, on 20a.

  127 named after his grandfather: Critias appears in anodyne roles in Plato’s Charmides (where, however, he is shown to be confused about the virtue of self-control) and Protagoras. Though the unfinished dialogue Critias is named after our Critias’s grandfather, I suspect that Plato teases us to a certain extent, since grandfather Critias in certain respects resembles what we know of his grandson: he is learned in the same way, and promotes an idealized society.

  127 Xenophon’s efforts: Recollections of Socrates 1.2.12–38.

  127 ‘to purge the city … to goodness and justice’: Lysias 12.5 (Against Eratosthenes).

  127 whoever wrote the seventh Platonic Epistle … says: at 324c–d.

  128 ‘the best possible state’: Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.34. On Athenian admirers of Sparta in general, see Cartledge, ‘The Socratics’ Sparta’.

  128 ‘The Fatherland … time for scruples’: quoted in Cees Nooteboom, Roads to Santiago, trans. Ina Rilke (New York: Harcourt, 1997), 108.

  129 thought … to be a trimmer: Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.31 and 33.

  129 ‘as though this number … all the good people’: Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.19.

  129 Diodorus of Sicily’s account: Library of History 14.5.1–3.

  130 ‘This is a memorial … the accursed Athenian populace’: Scholiast on Aeschines 1.39.

  132 Thrasybulus was remembered: Pausanias, Guide to Greece 1.29.3.

  132 ‘democracy would only benefit … died there’: Xenophon, Hellenica 3.1.4.

  133 Other trials too almost explicitly offered: e.g. Lysias 13.80–1 (Against Agoratus). Other speeches that refer copiously, but not exclusively, to crimes or alleged crimes committed by the Thirty or during their regime include Isocrates 20 (Against Lochites) and Lysias 26 (On the Scrutiny of Evandros) and 31 (Against Philon).

  133 ‘Peace was never final … period of unrest’: Wolpert, Remembering Defeat, 138.

  135 ‘It was deliberately made difficult … men of thirty and over)’: Rhodes, ‘Athenian Democracy after 403 BC’, 306.

  135 Concord … was the new watchword: see e.g. Andocides 2.1; Demosthenes 19.298; Dinarchus 1.99; Lysias 2.13, 17.24; Aeschines 3.208.

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  139 some historians of classical Athens: see e.g. Paul Cartledge, ‘The Effects of the Peloponnesian (Athenian) War on Athenian and Spartan Societies’, in David McCann and Barry Strauss (eds), War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War (New York: Armonk, 2001), 104–23; and John Davies, ‘The Fourth-century Crisis: What Crisis?’, in Walter Eder (ed.), Die athenische Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995), 29–36.

  140 ‘It was as if … to conquer Sicily’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 8.1.1.

  141 ‘People had fewer inhibitions … punished for his crimes’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 2.53.

  142 ‘In times of peace … sniffing out intrigues’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 3.82.2–8.

  143 Alcibiades too was prepared to redefine terms: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.92.2–4.

  143 Euripides showed … double standards: see my paper ‘Double Standards in Euripides’ Troades’, Maia 34 (1982), pp. 139–42.

  143 on the latest estimate: Moreno, Feeding the Democracy, 31.

  144 ‘You were led astray … treatment of them’: Euripides, Suppliant Women 232–7, echoed by Nicias in Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.12.2–13.1. See Strauss, Fathers and Sons, 141–2, for the echoes, and Dover, Greek Popular Morality, 105, for further passages linking youth with warmongering.

  144 ‘Basically … against Alcibiades’: Plutarch, Life of Nicias 11.3.

  145 it was thought: e.g. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.38.5; Eupolis frr. 100, 121 Kassel/Austin; Cratinus fr. 283 Kassel/Austin.

  145 Aristophanes … in Clouds: 889–1114.

  145 ‘sexual licence, barbarian emotionality, and vulgar excess’: D’Angour, ‘New Music’, 273.

  146 ‘disdaining equality with the common people’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.38.5.

  146 it was apparently still plausible: see Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.28.1.

  147 Callicles … and Alcibiades: Plato, Gorgias 483b–484a; Xenophon, Recollections of Socrates 1.2.45.

  148 ‘There is no one … god among men’: Plato, Republic 360b–c.

  150 His image of himself as a horsefly: Plato, Apology 30e–31a. Plato must also have been thinking of the disturbing effects on the inherited conglomerate of Socratic questioning when he wrote Republic 538c–539a.

  151 we know little about them: Plutarch, Life of Aristeides 13.1, on an attempted coup in 479 bce, and Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 1.107.4–6, on oligarchic intrigue in 457.

  152 ‘p
roportionate equality’: the phrase ‘proportionate’ or ‘geometrical equality’ may have been an oligarchic slogan, borrowed perhaps from the elitist Pythagoreans. See Dodds’s note on Plato, Gorgias 508a (where the phrase first occurs): Eric Dodds, Plato, Gorgias (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 339–40.

  152 ‘unequivocal folly’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.89.6.

  152 a recent book: David Estlund, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

  154 the occasional hint: e.g. ps.-Xenophon (the ‘Old Oligarch’), The Constitution of the Athenians 2.20. This is the foundational text for oligarchic criticism of democracy, most likely written some time between 424 and 414. See especially Osborne’s edition of the pamphlet, and Ober, Political Dissent, 14–26.

  154 Pericles’ famous Funeral Speech: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 2.35–46.

  TEN

  155 Pericles’ boast: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 2.37.

  156 made no claim to absolute accuracy: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 1.22.

  156 ‘Suppose … our unmarried daughters’: Xenophon, Recollections of Socrates 1.5.2.

  157 Demosthenes taunted …: 19.249 (On the Embassy).

  157 ‘any decent Athenian gentleman’: Plato, Meno 92e.

  158 ‘A foreigner … hostility and intrigue’: Plato, Protagoras 316c–d.

  159 ‘A man who has a policy … who has none in mind’: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 2.60.6.

  159 ‘Persuasion was built … hung in the balance’: Yunis, ‘Constraints of Democracy’, 230.

  161 ‘the proper management … man of action’: Plato, Protagoras 318e–319a.

  161 ‘to make the morally weaker argument defeat the stronger’: this is the formulation of Plato, Apology 18b–c, following the lead of Aristophanes, Clouds 112–15.

  161 Gorgias … did nothing to alleviate such concerns: In Praise of Helen 8–14.

  161 ‘nonsense and quackery’: Isocrates 15.197 (On the Exchange), defending himself against the kind of charges brought by Xenophon in the final chapter of On Hunting 13.1–5. See also Isocrates’ defence in his Against the Sophists.