SOURCE: "The Life and Death of Socrates," in The Cambridge Ancient History, edited by J. B. Bury, S. A. Cook, and F. E. Adcock, Cambridge University Press, 1935, pp. 386-97.

[Below, Bury briefly surveys the life of Socrates as presented in the dialogues and Apology of Plato, highlighting some of the philosopher's most significant philosophical views in the process.]

… The book of Xenophon on the life and teaching of Socrates, known as the Memorabilia, would, if it stood alone, give us little idea of what Socrates was like, and no idea of the secret of his greatness. Xenophon belonged (probably for a very short time) to the Socratic circle, but he had no notion of what philosophy really means and but a slight first-hand knowledge of the master. He produced a portrait such as a journalist with a commonplace mind might contribute to a gallery of 'good men,' and in his endeavour to show that Socrates was a good man he succeeds in concealing the fact that he was a great man. Most of the anecdotes he tells are uninstructive or insignificant, and some, as edifying stories are apt to be, simply tedious, like the remonstrances of Socrates with his son Lamprocles who could not put up with the rough side of his mother Xanthippe's tongue. Discerning as Xenophon was in many practical things he displays conspicuous want of discernment here: and for appreciating the personality of Socrates his book is almost negligible, while for most of the bare external incidents of his life that are interesting and which a biographer ought to supply, we go to him in vain¹. He was not present at the trial of Socrates.

It is in the Dialogues of his companion Plato that a figure probably resembling the real Socrates appears. There we find his animae figura, his mind and methods, and the features of his personality, and also many details of his life. At all events, it is very difficult to resist the impression that the Platonic Socrates is a genuine life-like portrait of the original man, however unsocratically Platonic may be the argument and ideas of which he is made the spokesman.

Socrates was born about 470 B.C., and since he served as a hoplite he must have inherited some property from his father, Sophroniscus. He is said to have possessed a house and a capital sum of 70 minae which was invested for him by his friend Crito, who belonged to the same deme (Alopece). He witnessed the development of the Athenian democracy under Pericles and lived through the Peloponnesian War, serving in some of the earlier campaigns. He was a man of strong physical constitution, and of eccentric appearance and habits. His features are well known from portrait busts which are probably faithful enough to reality. With his flat nose and prominent eyes he was compared by his contemporaries to a satyr. He was subject to trances of meditation; when rapt in thought he would stand for hours, unconscious of what was going on around him. He said that from his childhood he used to hear from time to time the monition of an inner voice; its monitions were always negative, never prompting him to an action, but always restraining him from doing things.

What we know of the external events of his life is not a great deal but it is interesting. In his youth he was a pupil of Archelaus, who was a disciple of Anaxagoras, and accompanied him to Samos in 440 B.C. when the Athenians were blockading it. In 437-6 B.C. he may have served as hoplite at Amphipolis,² and in 432 B.C. he served at Potidaea; again in 424 B.C. at Delium where he exhibited remarkable presence of mind in the retreat. On these military occasions he showed extraordinary powers of endurance in sustaining cold, hunger, and fatigue; barefooted in a severe frost he could outmarch the other soldiers who were shod.

Perhaps³ it was not till he was an elderly man that he was called upon to perform any public duty, beyond serving in the army. In 406 B.C. he was a member of the Council of Five Hundred, being one of the fifty representatives of his tribe (Antiochis). It was the year of Arginusae, and when the unhappy Generals were tried, Socrates was the only member who stood out in refusing to agree with the illegal resolution that all should be tried together. Under the Thirty he risked his life by refusing to carry out an order which was illegal. In all the public affairs in which he happened to be concerned he displayed moral and physical courage and respect for the laws of his city. Thus remarkable for courage and justice, Socrates was no less distinguished for his sobriety and temperance, but he was not an ascetic nor a spoilsport. He would take part in potations, but his head was strong, and he was never the worse for them.

Athenians had taken no part in the scientific speculations which had been so vigorously pursued by men of Ionia and in far western Greece. Archelaus, the instructor of Socrates, was the earliest, and not a very eminent exception. The sharp intellectual curiosity of Socrates was accompanied by a sane spirit of scepticism which was confirmed by the influence of Zeno. He cannot have been much over twenty when he came under that influence which was powerful in determining the direction of his thought. Parmenides, with his young friend Zeno, may have visited Athens not long after 450 B.C. and, if so, every Athenian of inquiring mind was interested in their visit. In any case, Zeno seems to have resided at Athens for several years; he was the inventor of dialectic and Socrates learned his method.

In the course of time a small circle of friends gathered around Socrates, drawn to him by the stimulus of his conversation. Knowledge he consistently professed himself unable to impart, and these friends were associated with him not as disciples but as fellow-inquirers. Their inquiries appear to have been chiefly concerned with mathematical and physical questions, the doctrines of Anaxagoras and Archelaus and Diogenes of Apollonia and of Pythagoras. In fact during the first half of his life the studies of Socrates were devoted chiefly to physical science; it was in his later years that he turned to the logical and ethical problems with which we chiefly associate his name.

Socrates and his circle became notorious in Athens as the Thinkers …, and comic poets seized on them as an obvious and legitimate subject for ridicule. In 423 B.C. Ameipsias produced his Connus, in which the chorus consisted of Thinkers and Socrates was derided, and in the same year was acted the Clouds of Aristophanes in which the scene was laid in the Thinking-shop … of Socrates and his fellow-workers.

The most devoted in this group of students was a certain Chaerephon who adored Socrates so sincerely that he went to Delphi and put to the oracle the amazing question 'Is any man wiser than Socrates?' More amazing still was the categorical answer of the oracle, without any reservations, 'No one is wiser.' Socrates said that he was greatly puzzled by this reply, being acutely conscious how little he knew. If the oracle were true, it must mean that others were not so wise as they seemed, or imagined themselves to be; and in order to test its truth, he states that he went about questioning and cross-examining persons who were eminent as proficients in their special subjects—politicians, poets, handicraftsmen. None of them stood the test; they were all convinced that they were wise, but none possessed more wisdom than Socrates himself, but he was superior in that he was fully aware of his own ignorance. In this way the oracle was justified. We do not know at what time it was given, but in the later portion of his life Socrates seems to have spent much of his time, not only in his accustomed haunts, the gymnasia of the Academy and the Lyceum, but also in the market-place and the workshops of artisans, cross-examining people and exposing their erroneous convictions that they were wise, thus fulfilling, as he put it, a duty imposed upon him by the god. Defending himself at his trial he said 'People suppose that I am wise myself in those things in which I convict another of ignorance. They are mistaken. The god alone is wise, and his oracle declares that human wisdom is worth little or nothing, using the name of Socrates as an example. That man is wisest who like Socrates knows that he is worthless so far as wisdom is concerned. The disgraceful ignorance is to think you know that you do not know.' Sceptical as Socrates was and always careful to appeal to reason, we cannot fail to see, in some parts of his defence, that there was a side of his nature which was moved by reasons that reason does not know.

In all ages of active progress, the warfare between the ideas and fashions of a young critical generation, and the old strongly entrenched opinions and customs which the innovators mock and assail, always presents amusing and humorous pictures which can furnish material for comedy. Comic poets can laugh impartially at the extravagances and the prejudices of both the combatants. If Aristophanes held up to ridicule the scientific Thinkers and the modern critics of society, he did not spare the praisers of the past, the old fogies whose ideas are out of date … who bore you with faded memories of the veterans of Marathon, and descant on bygone virtues and modern degeneracy.

We are told nothing of personal relations between Socrates and Pericles, but it is difficult to think that they were not acquainted. Socrates, though he belonged to a different class of society, had such a high repute as a thinker and talker that he could hardly have failed to arouse the curiosity and interest of Pericles, and they had many common friends. On the other hand, we hear of an intimacy between Socrates and Aspasia,⁴ who, it was even supposed, gave him instruction in the art of rhetoric.

Though Socrates consistently disclaimed the possession of knowledge and therefore of the power of imparting it, he was a master of dialectic, for which he had a natural gift, and he was really teaching all the time, disguising the instruction and the ideas which he communicated under the form of question and answer. Many young men attached themselves to him and were his constant companions, and among them were the men, both Athenians and foreigners, who in the next generation were to be the great thinkers of Greece, the founders of philosophical schools, each emphasizing according to his own temperament a different side of the master's teaching. Plato, son of Ariston, the greatest of them all; Antisthenes, a poor man, who founded the school of the Cynics, which was the parent of Stoicism; Aristippus of Cyrene, whose Cyrenaic school was to be the parent of Epicureanism; Eucleides of Megara; Phaedo of Eretria; Aeschines, generally called 'the Socratic,' to distinguish him from Aeschines the orator. Thus Socrates was in some sense the ancestor of all the later philosophies of Greece. Outside this circle of companions, who were virtually disciples, his society was sought by men who were not interested much in philosophical questions but who were interested in listening to him cross-examining people and perhaps hoped to learn the secret of his skill. Two of the most distinguished were the versatile man of letters, Critias, and Alcibiades, of whom the second was an ardent admirer and an intimate friend of the philosopher. It was natural that Socrates should, in the popular mind, have to bear some ill fame for associating with these enemies of the democracy and be held responsible for their mischievous conduct. Although he was always loyal to existing authorities he never concealed his unfavourable opinion of democracy, which must have seemed to him an irrational form of government; Alcibiades called it bluntly 'acknowledged folly⁵.'

Throughout the Peloponnesian War Socrates had with perfect impunity pursued his unpopular mission. But under the restored democracy it seemed to some of the democratic leaders that he was a dangerous and insidious anti-democratic influence and that it was desirable to silence him. The fact that he had remained at Athens unharmed during the government of the Thirty could not be made a charge against him on account of the amnesty. As a matter of fact he had barely escaped with his life from the despotism of the Thirty. Two of these oligarchs had been his friends, Critias the leader, and Charmides the uncle of Plato, and knowing that he was no admirer of the democracy they thought they were sure of his adhesion. They did not realize the unshakable strength of his respect for law and his love of justice. But they would not tolerate free speech and Critias thought it well to warn the philosopher that his discussions with the young men who sought his society must cease, and the government then made an effort to associate him with their unjust and tyrannous acts. The tyrants ordered him and four others to go to Salamis and arrest there a certain Leon whom they had resolved to put to death. Socrates said nothing and simply went home. He would have been executed for his disobedience to the government, if it had not fallen. This notorious incident however did not convince the people in power that Socrates stood quite outside party sympathies, and cared only for justice and right. They considered him disloyal to democracy, and that his criticisms were more to be feared than the plots of an oligarchical conspirator. It was therefore deemed highly desirable to rid Athens of a citizen whose influence and fearless tongue were felt to be a danger, though he took no part in politics and was the least likely of men to do anything contrary to the law. Anytus, an honest and moderate democrat and at this moment perhaps the most important Athenian statesman next to Thrasybulus, was the prime mover in preparing a prosecution intended to silence the embarrassing philosopher. No one was more determined than Anytus to observe honestly and to interpret strictly the terms of the amnesty; so that he was concerned carefully to keep out of sight the political motive for the action. He decided that the best ground of attacking Socrates successfully would be irreligion; it was common knowledge that the philosopher was far from orthodox. Accordingly an arrangement was made with a minor poet named Meletus, who was a fanatical champion of religion,⁶ that he should bring against Socrates a public suit for irreligion … and that Anytus should support it by acting as an advocate for the prosecution.… Anytus associated with himself a second advocate, a rhetorician named Lycon of whom otherwise we know nothing.

Legal actions having to do with religion came into the court of the King archon. The charge which Meletus lodged against Socrates was formulated thus: 'Socrates is guilty of not worshipping the gods whom the city worships, and of introducing religious novelties. He is guilty also of corrupting the young men.' This accusation seems to prove that neglect of the worship of the gods was an indictable offence under the laws of Solon; for no one could now be indicted under the decree of Diopeithes which had been passed to meet the case of Anaxagoras, inasmuch as the effect of the settlement of 403 B.C. was that no prosecution could be based solely on one decree passed before that date.…

Meletus, in the writ of indictment, named death as the penalty which he demanded, for irreligion was one of the offences for which there was no punishment fixed by the code; the court itself determined the penalty on each occasion. But the court was limited to a choice between two penalties, that which was demanded by the prosecutor and one which it was the right of the prisoner himself to propose in case he were found guilty. It was the prisoner's interest to name a substantial penalty milder than that named in the indictment, yet not so light that it could not be entertained by the jury. A result of this curious judicial method was that the prosecutor generally assessed a penalty greater than he expected or wished to inflict. This is emphatically a case in point. There is no reason to suppose that Anytus wished Socrates to be put to death. It was doubtless expected that if he were convicted he would, as he had a right to do, propose exile as an alternative penalty and the court would assuredly be satisfied with that. To have him out of Athens was the object.

Our knowledge of this famous trial is derived from one of the most memorable and impressive books in the literature of the world, Plato's Apology of Socrates. The view that it was Plato's own composition used generally to be held although it was never doubted that it was based on the facts of the trial, but some critics now believe that it is the actual speech of Socrates, edited by Plato for publication, and as near to what was said as, say, a speech of Demosthenes or Cicero in its published form to the speech the orator actually delivered. The truth probably lies between these two views. We cannot suppose that the prisoner was allowed to make an address to the court after the sentence was passed. The epilogue is an addition imagined by Plato, an artistic and moving conclusion. If this is admitted, it must also be allowed that Plato may have taken other liberties with the Defence; he may have left out parts of it and considerably expanded other parts. The most grave and perilous of the charges brought against Socrates was that of being a corrupter of youth. That would count for much with the judges because they knew that leading politicians who were enemies of the democracy had cultivated his society—Critias, Alcibiades, Charmides. But this was just the proof of the accusation which Meletus and his two advocates were prohibited from touching on. The amnesty forbade them to pronounce these names. They must however have made an attempt to show in what ways the conversation of Socrates misled and injured the young men. Of this there are no indications in the Defence according to Plato, nor can we discover from that defence how Meletus explained what were the strange religious practices which he alleged that Socrates introduced, as he assuredly must have done, producing some proof of his statements. It seems to follow that the Apology does not supply a full account of the trial.⁷

Socrates was found guilty by a majority of 60 votes, for he mentions in his Defence that he would have been acquitted if 30 of the votes recorded against him had been for acquittal. It is probable, though not certain, that the number of Athenians in the jury appointed by the king to try the case was 501. If that was so, 225 must have voted in his favour, and it is quite likely that he would have been acquitted if he had assumed a different attitude and had really been concerned to secure a verdict of 'not guilty.' But he adopted throughout a very high tone, which was far from calculated to conciliate the court though he expressed himself with his usual urbanity and politeness. He had not condescended to make the conventional appeal to pity by bringing into court his wife and children to excite the compassion of the judges by family tears, as was almost invariably done by prisoners tried on a grave issue, and the omission of which many of the judges might consider an affront to themselves.

When the verdict of his guilt was pronounced, it was for Socrates to submit a punishment less drastic than death, and there can be no question that he could have saved his life if he had proposed banishment. But Socrates was not as other men. His tone now became higher than ever and to the ears of his judges more offensive. 'Meletus,' he said, 'assesses the penalty at death. What fair counter-assessment then shall I make, Athenians? What do I deserve to suffer, or what fine to pay, because during my life I would not keep quiet, but neglecting the things that most people care for—making money, managing their property, public offices and political clubs—I considered myself really too good for such things, and instead of entering upon these ways of life in which I should have been no good either to you or to myself I set myself on the way of benefaction, to confer the greatest of all benefactions as I assert, by attempting to persuade each of you individually not to care for any of his own belongings before he cares for himself—for his being as good and as wise as possible, nor for any of the city's belongings before he cares for the city, and on the same principle in all other matters. What then do I deserve for this? Something good surely, Athenians, and a good that would be suitable to me personally, suitable to a poor man who is a benefactor and requires leisure. There is nothing so suitable than that such a man should have free commons in the Prytaneum, far more than for one of you who has won a victory at Olympia in a horse-race or a chariot-race; because while he makes you appear happy, I make you be happy, and he does not need public support while I do. Accordingly, if I am to propose what I deserve, I propose that my sentence be free board in the Prytaneum.' This was not calculated to conciliate the judges; it was an undisguised 'contempt of court' and was quite unnecessary; it seemed as if the prisoner was determined to make it certain that he should be condemned to death. Having by this digression done what he could to dispose the judges against him he returned to business and considered possible penalties which the court might accept. He knew quite well that banishment would probably be considered adequate. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'banishment is what you think I deserve. Yet I should be fond indeed of life, Athenians, if I were so poor a reckoner as to calculate that if you who are my fellow citizens could not put up with my lectures and discourses, and if they have become so onerous and offensive, that you are now wishing to rid yourselves of them, other people will readily tolerate them. Nay, a fine life I should have, leaving my own city at my age and moving from one city to another and continually being driven out. I know that wheresoever I came the young men would listen to my talk as they do here. If I repulse them they will persuade the older men to expel me, and if I do not, their fathers and relatives will do so for their sakes.

'But it will be said: But, Socrates, when you leave Athens, why not keep quiet and hold your tongue? This is just what is so difficult to make you understand. To do that would be to disobey the god, and therefore it is impossible to keep quiet. When I say this, you will not believe me, you will take it as irony. And again if I say that a man's greatest good is to debate every day concerning virtue and the other things you hear me discussing and cross-examining myself and others about, and that the life which is not tested and proved by such examination is not worth living—when I say this, still less do you believe me to be in earnest. If I had money I should be ready to offer all I have as a fine; paying it would do me no harm. I could pay a mina. Plato, however, and Crito and two other friends bid me name 30 minae and will stand as sureties for the payment. They are solvent. So I propose this fine.'

The majority voted for death and this majority was greater than the previous one. We can understand that the tone which Socrates had adopted caused resentment among some of those who had originally voted for acquittal. One knows the type of persons who would be reasonable and fair enough to see that the accuser had failed to prove his case and would vote accordingly, yet would feel it an outrage that any prisoner should value his life so little as to neglect all the customary and obvious methods of trying to save it and take no trouble to conciliate the judges. Such an attitude was indecent and dangerous. If prisoners were not afraid of death, what could any one do? Socrates, it almost seemed, was so impertinent as to reverse the rôles of judge and accused; he had treated them as if it was they who were on trial, and had gone too far in his insolent assumption that he was a great and good man.

A month intervened between the sentence and the execution, because it happened to be the feast of the Delian Apollo when every year Athens sent a ship to Delos, and the law was that from the time the ship set sail till it returned to the Piraeus the city should not be polluted by any death inflicted by the authority of the State. The ship had been adorned with the official garlands on the day before the trial of Socrates, and, as it turned out, a month elapsed before it returned, a month which he had to spend in the public prison in chains. He seems to have been treated there with much consideration; the overseer of the prison was a humane man and did what he could to make the confinement as little irksome as possible. His friends came daily to visit him and his last days were passed in philosophical discussion. Some of his companions, particularly Crito, urged him to escape; a plan was prepared, and there is little doubt that it could easily have been managed; even the authorities might not have been very unwilling to connive; but Socrates refused to consent. It had always been his principle to obey the laws and had he not been legally condemned? And to flee from prison and death would have been glaringly inconsistent with his own attitude at the trial and rendered it obviously absurd. If to live was such an important consideration as to prompt escape, which meant abiding in exile, he ought clearly to have proposed exile as the alternative penalty.

The last hours and death of Socrates have been described by Plato in his Phaedo. His friends were with him to the end, and he was killed by the painless method of a draught of hemlock poison which produced a gradual paralysis. It is the one famous execution, recorded in history, of which the circumstances are quite ideal; the end of Socrates is marred, for our memory, by no violence or shedding of blood; and modern critics have often praised the Athenians for their humane methods of punishment. But it would be an error to suppose that the ways of brutal evil-doers at Athens were made so easy for them, or that robbers and assassins were treated like Socrates. It is not long ago since excavations near Phalerum revealed⁸ evidence that the Athenians used to inflict punishments which in agony rivalled crucifixion and hardly fell short of Assyrian atrocity. We do not know on what principle or in what cases execution by hemlock was adopted.

Among the companions of Socrates his memory was piously cherished, while they were stirred by a deep resentment against the democracy of Athens for the crime of his death. Seen through their eyes, the trial of Socrates by a jury of average practical citizens at the prosecution of an honest politician seems as absurd an event as, to use Plato's comparison, the trial of a physician in a court of little boys at the instance of a confectioner. The great memorial of Socrates is the body of Plato's works; no other man has had a more wonderful monument. Having described the last moments of his master, Plato wrote, 'Such was the end of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, the justest and the best of all the men I have ever known.' In the study of his imagination the revered master grew into the ideal figure of a perfect philosopher and as such has passed into history. The tragedy changed the course of Plato's own life. He had always meant to enter political life. The behaviour of the oligarchs during their short tenure of power, in which his relatives Critias and Charmides had been conspicuous, disgusted him so deeply that he was probably inclined to support the democracy, but the crowning injustice of the condemnation of Socrates decided him to abandon the idea of a political career. More than forty years later, in a letter addressed to 'the friends and associates' of Dion of Syracuse, he recalled his experience at this time, and his decision to embrace a life of philosophy. This is what he says⁹: 'Socrates an elderly friend of mine who, I should not be ashamed to say, was the justest man among the men of the time, was sent with others by the Thirty to arrest one of the citizens, to be executed, in order that he (Socrates) might himself share in their actions whether he wished it or not; he refused and ran the extreme risk, rather than become a participant in their wicked deeds. Seeing all these things, and other similar things which were not trifling, I was disgusted and withdrew and stood aloof from the crimes of that Government. Not long afterwards the Thirty fell and the existing constitution was changed. I felt myself again drawn though slowly towards public life. The new Government had merits, though it had also defects, but it so happened that this companion of ours, Socrates, was brought into court by certain men who were in power. They preferred against him a most wicked charge and one which was least applicable to Socrates of all men in the world. They accused him of impiety, and he was condemned and put to death, the man who had refused to take part in the wicked arrest of one of their friends who was trying to flee at the time when they were themselves unfortunate.'

He goes on to explain how this experience of the new democracy finally decided him to give up the idea of a political career.

How great Socrates was as an original thinker, whether he can be set beside Pythagoras, for instance, is a question that is open to dispute, and depends much on the view that is taken of the Platonic Dialogues.… But there can be only one opinion as to the greatness and the unique quality of his personality, and his unrivalled power as a stimulator of thought. The Athenians, with the exception of his personal friends, were quite unconscious of his greatness. Posterity looks back at him as the most remarkable figure of the Illumination; the contemporary man in the market-place of Athens probably remembered him merely as an eccentric Sophist. One can imagine what he would have said: 'Socrates—yes, an incessant talker, who fancied himself as a good-mixer. He was really an expert bore preaching for ever about virtue and other wearisome things. He got at last what he probably had richly deserved.'

Notes

¹ This has been shown by A. E. Taylor, Plato's Biography of Socrates, pp. 35 sqq.

² See Burnet's note on Plato's Apology, 28 E, p. 120.

³ Perhaps; for it is possible that he served on the Council before 406, at some unknown date; see Burnet in his edition of Plato's Apology, p. 133.

⁴ Aeschines wrote a Socratic dialogue Aspasia. See also the Menexenus which U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff has ingeniously defended as Platonic (Platon, 11, pp. 126 sqq.).

⁵ Thucydides VI, 89, in the speech at Sparta, probably a genuine phrase of Alcibiades.

⁶ There is a difference of opinion on the identity of this Meletus with the man who later in the same year, 399 B.C., prosecuted Andocides for impiety and part of whose speech is preserved among the works of Lysias (Or. VI). That two men of this name should have brought actions for impiety—such actions were not very frequent nor was the name very common—in the same year seems unlikely. It is interesting to observe that in this trial also Anytus was concerned, not however on the side of Meletus, but as a witness for Andocides, and his evidence seems to have secured an acquittal.

⁷ Cp. Bury, Trial of Socrates, in Rationalist Press Annual, 1925, where it is argued that one or two points in the speech of defence may be got from Xenophon's Apology, that the speech of Anytus followed the speech of Meletus and dealt with the charge of corruption of the young men, while Meletus mainly confined himself to the charges of irreligion, and it is suggested that some of the points which Anytus made may possibly be gathered from the declamation (Apologia Socratis) in which Libanius replied to the attack on Socrates by the sophist Polycrates.

⁸ Compare A. D. Keramopoullos.…

⁹ Plato, Ep. VII, 324 E-325 c.