SOURCE: "The Socratic Problem," in The Socratic Presence, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993, pp. 1-19.

[In the following essay, Navia offers an overview of the Socratic problem and suggests ways in which the apparent discrepancies between the various Socratic sources may be reconciled.]

There are two facts about Socrates that can be affirmed without hesitation: that his influence on the development of Western culture in general and philosophy in particular has been extraordinary, and that his historical presence remains a baffling phenomenon. The first of these two facts does not need to be particularly emphasized, for it is widely acknowledged, even by those who are superficially acquainted with the history of ideas, that Socrates constitutes a major turning point in our civilization, and that he represents a new point of departure in the mind's quest for understanding and knowledge. With him, philosophy assumed a new direction, and all subsequent endeavors to come to grips with the mystery of existence have been compelled to take into account Socrates' own thoughts, convictions, and methodology. Without Socrates, one could venture to assert, culture would have probably followed a different route, or would have moved at a different pace, and this not only on account of Socrates' influence on Plato, but on account of the impact of his presence on all other philosophical schools of antiquity. If nothing else, one is certainly justified in saying that Socrates stands before our eyes as the embodiment of the philosophical spirit, and as a high plateau of intellectual and spiritual excellence to which few persons after him have been able to attain. To speak of Socrates is to speak of philosophy, especially because he was able to merge in one indivisible reality thought and action, theory and practice, which explains the undeniable circumstance that he was able to teach both through his words and through his deeds. For him, philosophy was not an inert academic discipline, but a living commitment to a set of principles that cannot be abandoned even in the presence of death.

The second fact, namely, Socrates' historical elusiveness, is something that must be reiterated from time to time. Its roots can be traced to various interrelated circumstances, chief among which is his refusal to confine his ideas to writing. For nothing written can be attributed to him, and about this, all the sources are in explicit or implicit agreement, the only exception being a passing reference by Arrian (Discourses of Epictetus, 11, i,32) who wrote around the year A.D. 100.

Arrian speaks of the many writings of Socrates, but it is evident that what he had in mind was the copious Socratic literature that had become known as 'the discourses of Socrates' and which was the work of Socrates' disciples. This phrase appears already in Aristotle (e.g. in Politics 1265a), and refers to dialogues where Socrates is presented as the main interlocutor. Nowhere in the primary sources is there any reference to Socrates' writings, and the secondary sources (with the exception of Arrian) are in agreement with this. Plutarch (Alex. fort., I, iv,328) states that Socrates, like Pythagoras, wrote nothing, and Dio-genes Laertius mentions no writings attributable to him. The poem and the fable alluded to by Diogenes (ii,42), no less than the poetical compositions which according to Plato (Phaedo 60d) were composed by Socrates at the end of his life, must have been, if genuine, probably compositions in the style of oral literature. Socrates spoke and conversed a great deal, and his mature life was literally spent talking to anyone who would care to discourse with him, as we learn from the Euthyphro (3d), but he felt disdain for the written word, as we are told in the Phaedrus (275c ff.): the written word, he said, is something inert and dead with which one cannot enter into meaningful discourse.

Much has been said and written about Socrates' unwillingness to use the written word. The fact that for him the word is always something spoken and heard, not written and seen, has been viewed as a necessary consequence of his philosophical position, for if he claimed to know only that he knew little or nothing, how could he have chosen to express himself in a form which admits of no subsequent alterations? If he conceived of himself as a searcher after wisdom, not as someone who possessed wisdom, what better medium could he have opted for but the living and direct discourse with his contemporaries? Furthermore, it has been argued that Socrates belonged to a stage in the development of European culture during which orality remained the primary mode of expression, and that, his revolutionary spirit notwithstanding, he did not attempt to establish a bridge to a more elaborate stage in which first the written dialogue, and then the didactic prose, made their appearance.¹

For us, however, Socrates' choice is one of the roots of his elusiveness, because on account of it, we are compelled to gather information about his person and philosophy from the testimonies of others who do not appear to convey to us one cohesive and unified picture. As one reviews the exceedingly rich Socratic literature, whether it be the primary or the secondary sources, one is often tempted to conclude that there must have been various persons by the name of Socrates, with different lives and diverse philosophical orientations, so that it is not always easy to avoid the conclusion, reached by a number of scholars, that the historical Socrates is a perfectly unknown entity, and that the literary Socrates is nothing more than a dramatic invention constructed by writers who used him as an eloquent mouthpiece for the expression of their ideas.² On this basis, accordingly, the search for the real Socrates is bound to end in disappointment, and Socrates emerges only as a focal point, or rather as a collection of focal points, around which various legends, myths, and ideologies have come into being: the historical reality behind such creations is a chimerical and insubstantial ghost that will always elude all endeavors to shed light upon it.

There is, however, another way of viewing the Socratic problem, and this entails the adherence to one of the primary sources and the downgrading of the others. From this point of view, then, we conclude that there must have been a 'true' Socrates, and that one of the sources must have succeeded in capturing his essence, both biographically and philosophically, while the others constitute either intentional deformations or self-serving trivializations of the truth. In general, and especially in our own times, this attitude has resulted in the tendency to regard the Platonic writings, particularly the early dialogues, as the most genuine Socratic testimony, while the other primary sources as mostly worthless pieces of fictional literature. It has been said, for instance, that if Plato's Socrates is the true one, the Socrates of Aristophanes and Xenophon must be false, and that since the former must be the true one, then the latter must be viewed as falsifications.³ Occasionally, too, Xenophon's Socrates has been proclaimed as the true Socrates, and that of Plato as a philosophical fabrication which, its philosophical merit notwithstanding, does not do justice to the historical reality.⁴ And even the comic character created by Aristophanes has been invested with an air of historical genuineness, which implies, of course, that what Plato and Xenophon wrote about Socrates can be viewed as mostly fiction.⁵

The hypothesis of one 'true' Socrates rests, it seems, on two complex assumptions which are not without enormous difficulties. First, there is the conviction that a person is something that can be described and analyzed from one singular perspective, as if it were a simple entity, and second, there is the belief that the portraits of Socrates which emerge from the primary sources are disparate representations that have little in common, and that stand in irremediable contradiction with one another. But reflection reveals that neither one of these assumptions has much value. A person is always a complex reality that exists and functions on a variety of levels which manifest themselves in different ways to the external world, and, accordingly, are perceived differently by different witnesses. In reality, the 'person' which is seen and heard by each witness is, as the etymology of the word reveals, a 'mask' behind which the self remains hidden.⁶ Thus, every person is a collection of masks, and each one of them contains, as it were, an element of truth. As the person functions in the social world, its masks are perceived by different witnesses from various points of view, and each witness is able to understand and appreciate only those aspects of the person that are within his intellectual and emotional capacities. It is, therefore, futile to expect to obtain from the testimony of one single witness a complete or 'true' account of a person, regardless of the level of perceptiveness and understanding of that witness, for, in fact, all he may be able to provide for us is the rendering of one aspect or set of aspects of the person. And if this is the case in the instance of ordinary persons, it is much more so in that of someone as complex and paradoxical as Socrates.

The hypothesis of one 'true' Socrates generally leads us to conclude that it was Plato, and no one else, who can claim to be the real witness of the Socratic phenomenon. Given the enormity of Plato's mind and the extraordinary influence which his philosophy has exercised, this tendency is understandable, for we are naturally inclined to lend a more attentive ear to a witness of impressive credentials. The enthronement of Plato as the Socratic witness par excellence is laden, however, with problems which are not easy to resolve satisfactorily. For, to mention only one such problem, the figure of Socrates which emerges from the Platonic writings is not a monistic representation, but one that varies and undergoes transformations as Plato's own philosophical views change. The Socrates of the early dialogues, for instance in the Euthyphro, is in many respects different from the Socrates of the middle dialogues, as in the Republic, and this in turn is significantly distinct from the Socrates who speaks in the Parmenides. Which one of these Socratic characters is the 'true' one? It would be ill-advised to say, echoing the statement of Plato's second letter (Epist. 2.314c), that everything that Plato attributes to Socrates was actually spoken by Socrates, exactly as Socrates said it.⁷ The fact is probably that there is much in the dialogues that belongs to the historical Socrates, and much, too, that does not; and that in reporting on the historical Socrates, Plato left for posterity those aspects of the Socratic phenomenon which he found significant and was best able to capture, and that in using the name of Socrates to advance some of his own views, Plato was convinced that, had the historical Socrates continued his own philosophical development, he would have espoused similar views. But there is a wide gap between saying this much and affirming that the Socrates of the Platonic writings is the 'true' one.

The same indeed can be said with respect to the testimonies of Aristophanes and Xenophon, and of the minor Socratics. In each case, what we find is a perceiver who captures an aspect, an element, of Socrates, precisely that aspect or element that fits comfortably within his idiosyncratic frame of reference, and serves the specific intentions of the witness. With Aristophanes, for instance, the frame of reference is the mentality of the uprooted Attic peasants who crow-ded the theater of Dionysus, because it was mostly for them (certainly not for the scholars of the twentieth century) that Aristophanes wrote his comedies; and his intention was to cause laughter among such peasants, and perhaps thereby to use the comic stage as an effective catalyst for social and political reforms.⁸ Thus, his Socrates has to mould himself to the exigencies of the comic stage, and the end result is a curious mixture of biographical fact, and comic distortion and exaggeration. Aristophanes' Socrates stands related to the historical man as a pictorial lampoon to a portrait, or as a caricature to a photograph, and is therefore both true and false.

With Xenophon, on the other hand, things are not altogether different: his Socrates adjusts himself to the practical frame of mind of the reporter who saw in the philosopher a judicious and sensible citizen, and whose main intention was to vindicate him from the aura of eccentricity and abnormality which surrounded his memory. Behind Xenophon's Socrates, accordingly, we can discern the outlines of Xenophon himself, and still behind such outlines we can discover elements which in all probability reflect genuine historical circumstances. And if we had more ample testimonies from other Socratics, philosophers like Phaedo, Crito, and Antisthenes, we would surely find ourselves in a similar situation.

It is, therefore, unwise to opt for a pessimistic solution to the Socratic problem, and say that we will never know anything definite about Socrates, for information about him is plentiful—indeed as plentiful as that about any other major figure of antiquity. But it is equally unwise to attach undue weight to any one source of information, because no one witness could possibly give us the total picture of the historical phenomenon. The only meaningful approach is to tap all the sources of information, primary as well as secondary, in order to reconstruct from them a portrait as complete and cogent as possible of the historical Socrates, but in this endeavor, too, an element of subjective judgment is unavoidable, for the personality and philosophy of Socrates are so engaging and intense, that their examination always elicits the strongest personal reactions from us: as Guthrie has perceptively noted, "everyone who has written about him was also reacting to him in one way or another,"⁹ which explains the curious circumstance that the Socrates of each person is always an idiosyncratic and personal image which is seldom in full agreement with those of others. After studying Socrates for many years, one is tempted to stand before the academic world and repeat those words of Alcibiades in Plato's Symposium (216c): "Let me tell you that none of you knows Socrates; but I shall reveal him to you." Such revelation, however, would be a combination of subjective and objective elements: in it, we would be revealing as much about ourselves as about Socrates.

The second assumption which apparently justifies the hypothesis of one 'true' Socrates, and which is also unwarranted, is the conviction that the various sources of information stand in irreconcilable disagreement with one another, and that it is not possible to sift through the differences in order to arrive at some sort of common basis. It is undeniable that the portraits of Socrates outlined by the primary sources are individually distinct: the Socrates of the Clouds, for instance, stands in sharp contrast with the Socrates of the Memorabilia, and this, in his turn, cannot be confused with the august and imposing philosopher of the Platonic dialogues. But, in reality, what we do have is the same person viewed from different perspectives and described with divergent aims in mind. Beneath the differences, it remains possible to discern a considerable number of common traits and features, so that a biographical and ideological picture of recognizable outlines can be eventually drawn. Surely, if we insist on emphasizing the divergent elements in the sources, without taking into account the character of the witnesses and their motivations in writing about Socrates, such a picture turns out quite blurry and confusing, but if we adopt the method suggested by Schleiermacher, that is, if we view the sources as complementary, and ask in each instance what else can each one add to the developing portrait of Socrates, then some progress in the resolution of the Socratic problem is possible.¹⁰ In this way, by attempting to integrate eclectically, yet critically, the various sources, both primary and secondary, we may succeed at least in establishing a foundation from which we may proceed, and which may furnish us with a reasonably certain historical basis for the reconstruction of the actual Socrates.

Obviously, as in the instance of other major figures of antiquity, it will always remain impossible to arrive at a perfectly clear and unquestionable collection of statements concerning Socrates: by its very nature, historical description is not a science from which we can demand exactitude and finality, and dogmatism can have no place in it. Socrates has been dead for too many years, and we are already too removed from him in time in order for us to be able to capture all the aspects and details of his presence. Through the unavoidable process of bibliographical selectiveness, to which we shall return presently, innumerable primary and secondary sources are no longer extant, and there can be no hope of retrieving from the past the mountains of lost information which perished towards the end of Roman times. Thus, our existing sources, their significance notwithstanding, are limited and in many respects markedly prejudiced in one direction or another, and, accordingly, our knowledge of Socrates will always remain sketchy and incomplete.

And yet, there are many biographical and ideological details that can be accepted as reasonably certain—indeed as reasonably certain as our historical information of antiquity allows—and that are supported by their explicit affirmation in various sources and by the fact that they are not emphatically denied by any of them. These details constitute, so to speak, the bare 'facts' concerning Socrates' life and thought, and are generally viewed as genuine.

The date of his birth and death can be readily ascertained: he was born in the year 469 B.C. (fourth year of the 77th Olympiad), and died in 399 B.C. (first year of the 95th Olympiad)¹¹: he was, therefore, seventy years of age at the time of his death. The allegation reported by Diogenes Laertius (ii,44), namely, that he died at the age of sixty, does not appear to hold any ground whatsoever. The coincidence of his birth and death with the Athenian festivity of Apollo and Artemis (Diogenes Laertius ii,44; Porphyry, De vita Platonis, ii,96) may have been the result of a pious legend created in Hellenistic times, although the testimony of Plato lends support to the belief that Socrates was executed at the conclusion of the Delian festival of Apollo, as we can read in the Crito and in the Phaedo. Both his birth and death took place in Athens. His father was a statuary or sculptor named Sophroniscus, and his mother was a midwife named Phaenarete, and both were Athenian by birth of the deme of Alopece.¹² Socrates was, therefore, born an Athenian citizen, and inherited all the rights and privileges of his father. His economic and social status at birth was probably that of what we might call 'middle class', that is, neither that of the wealthy oligarchs (like Alcibiades, Critias, and Plato) nor that of the indigent native population, and this is supported by the various testimonies that state that he served as a hoplite or infantry soldier in the Athenian army.¹³ Wealthy citizens would normally serve in the cavalry, as in the case of Xenophon, whereas the poor would generally function as auxiliaries. In later years, it appears that Socrates' financial resources became significantly diminished, and that this was due to his choice of vocation: he devoted himself to intellectual pursuits and refused to receive payment for his instruction. The statement of Aristoxenus to the effect that Socrates made money by teaching (Diogenes Laertius, ii,20) is not supported either by Plato or by Xenophon, although in Aristophanes (Clouds 98) there is a reference to Socrates' practice of collecting fees. In Xenophon's Oeconomicus (ii,1-4), Socrates states that his possessions did not exceed more than 100 minae (the equivalent of approximately 1000 dollars), a circumstance by which he would have belonged to the fourth and lowest of social classes among the citizens as established by the constitution of Solon, and in the Platonic writings there are various references to his poverty (Apology 19d, 31c).

There is a report in Diogenes Laertius (ii,20) that in his youth Socrates worked as a statuary, and that he was 'rescued' from this occupation by Crito, a wealthy man himself; but there is no confirmation of this in Plato or Xenophon who do not speak of Socrates having ever actually worked for a living. In the Crito (45a), however, we learn that he was the beneficiary of his friends' generosity, and in Diogenes (ii,25) we are told about their willingness and ability to provide for his needs. In general, we can say that he enjoyed an extraordinary amount of leisure, but this was certainly nothing exceptional among the free Athenians of his time who looked upon the necessity of working for a living as something embarrassing and debasing.

He was married to a woman named Xanthippe who is mentioned by Plato and Xenophon (Phaedo 60a, 116a; Xenophon's Symposium ii,10). The report attributed by Diogenes (ii,26) to Aristotle, namely, that Socrates was also married at some time or another to a certain Myrto, a daughter of Aristides the statesman, is not found in the existing Aristotelian works, and is not confirmed by the primary sources. In Diogenes, Myrto is said to have been Socrates' second wife and the mother of his two youngest children, Sophroniscus and Menexenus, but in the Phaedo (60a) the sense is clear that it was Xanthippe who was his wife at the time of his death. The reference in the Memorabilia (1I, ii, j-14) to the mother of Lamprocles (his oldest son) is inconclusive as to who she was, since her name is not given. In Aristophanes, on the other hand, there are no allusions to Socrates' family, but in reality there should not be anything surprising in this: the Athenians did not pay much public attention to the details and circumstances of a man's married life, and Aristophanes' silence on Xanthippe, therefore, has no special significance.

In the secondary sources, Xanthippe became a paradigm of bad temper and nagginess, as can be gathered from various anecdotes in Diogenes (ii,34-37), and there is some basis for this reputation in Xenophon (Symposium ii, 26), where Socrates says that he chose her as his wife in order to learn to cope with even the most difficult among strangers. From Plato, however, nothing definite can be deduced concerning her character or background, and one suspects that her uncomplimentary reputation is mostly the result of exaggeration and distortion, born out of bits of gossip in the secondary literature.

Little is known about Socrates' children, except for their names and approximate ages at the time of their father's death. Plato does not mention them by name, but states that the oldest (Lamprocles) was a boy already reaching manhood (Apology 34d), and that the youngest was small enough to be held in his mother's arms (Phaedo 60a), at the time of Socrates' execution. Xenophon gives us only the name of the oldest son, and says nothing about the other two (whose names appear in Diogenes, ii,26). Some bits of information about them can be gathered from the secondary sources: for instance, in Aristotle (Rhetoric 1390b) and in Plutarch (Cato, xx), they are said to have been rather stupid and vulgar, and to have amounted to little in life."¹⁴

Information regarding Socrates' education is unclear and difficult to sort out. We are told by Diogenes (ii,19) that he was a student of Anaxagoras, Damon, and Archelaus the natural philosopher, and in Ameipsias' comedy the Connus a certain man named Connus is introduced as Socrates' music teacher (cf. Euthydemus 272c, 295d).¹⁵ Also, in the Phaedo (97c ff.), we learn of his having studied a work by Anaxagoras. But both in Plato and Xenophon there is the repeated assertion that he had no formal teachers, and that he regarded himself as the disciple of no one.

It is possible that we may be able to distinguish two different stages in his intellectual development—a first stage during which he actually studied under one or more teachers, and during which he was genuinely interested in questions and issues concerning the physical world, and a second stage during which he declared his independence from the ideas of others, and turned his attention almost exclusively inward, that is, towards his own self. The mature Socrates, accordingly, was a person that could rightfully regard himself as having no intellectual or philosophical mentors, and as a thinker completely indifferent towards the problems of natural philosophy or science. The point in time that separates these two stages constitutes undoubtedly one of the most enigmatic aspects of his life, and there is some justification in identifying that point with the famous Delphic pronouncement about him.

But be it as it may, one thing remains indisputable: the Socrates who speaks in the writings of Plato and Xenophon, and who inspired the numerous reports of the secondary sources, is a man thoroughly knowledgeable about the philosophical developments of his time, and a person of the most refined culture in a wide variety of fields, indeed someone who could have easily warranted the Pythia's statement about him, namely, that of all living men he was truly the wisest.

Of Socrates' social relations we are able to construct a reasonably accurate picture from the testimonies of Plato and Xenophon: in them, he appears to have been a gregarious man who was willing and able to enter into active discourse with various sorts of people. We find him conversing with statesmen and generals, with philosophers and sophists, with poets and musicians, with wealthy foreigners, with people of humble background, and even with slaves—in sum, with practically anyone who crossed his path, as if he were possessed by an irresistible passion to communicate his message. The Platonic and Xenophontean Socrates is indeed far removed in this respect from the representation given to us by Aristophanes, according to whom, he was an anti-social recluse who lived generally indoors, surrounded by a close entourage of stupefied disciples. The former Socrates, on the other hand, is an open and outgoing person, whose doctrines, as we read in Plato's Apology (33b), are never revealed in secret or by esoteric means: they are spoken in public and in a language that is accessible even to uneducated persons, and couched in metaphors related to the activities of shoemakers, horse-trainers, and other working folk. He functions well at ease among the mighty oligarchs as well as among the simple citizens, and is invariably a paradigm of politeness and civility. He is loved and admired by a small group of devoted friends, who, as in the case of Xenophon, regard him as a philosophical master whose words and memory are to be revered (Memorabilia, 1, ii,61), or who, as in the instance of Plato, look upon him as the best, wisest, and most righteous of men (Phaedo 118a). Others, like Meno (Meno 80a-b), simply stand befuddled and perplexed in his presence, and, as if stung by a sting ray, are unable to speak or move. Still others, like the passionate and overwhelming Alcibiades, as we are told in Plato's Symposium (215 ff.), are literally in love with him and are unable to dispel the spell that he has cast upon their souls.

For his part, Socrates responds to his friends' love and admiration in a two-fold manner: he is modest and unassuming, and even makes protestations about his worthlessness, and he returns their love with an even greater love. For love, he says (Theages 128b),¹⁶ is the only subject in the world in which he regards himself an unsurpassed master. In Xenophon's Symposium (viii,2), he makes the remarkable statement that he cannot remember a time of his life when he was not in love with someone: love appears to have been for him the fundamental force which animated and sustained all his endeavors.

But surely, the circle of Socrates' intimate friends must have been small, and in this respect the testimony of Aristophanes is in agreement with that of Plato and Xenophon: in the Clouds, the group of 'disciples' who remain close to the 'master' is insignificant in the context of the population at large. And in none of the primary or secondary sources does Socrates appear as a charismatic leader addressing the masses: unlike Jesus of Nazareth or Mahatma Gandhi, his message is not heard amid large gatherings of people, but is one that touches quietly only those few who have adequate ears for his words, for his style is not that accustomed in the courts or political assemblies (Plato's Apology 17d). We may assume that for most Athenians, Socrates was merely an eccentric and colorful figure in the Agora and public buildings, perhaps a clever Sophist and a restless philosopher, but in reality nothing else: they must have remained unconcerned about his activities and indifferent towards his philosophical preoccupations, although, as the testimony of the comedians show, they must not have missed the welcomed opportunity of laughing at his expense in the riotous performances at the theater of Dionysus. In Diogenes Laertius (ii,21), we read that often, as a result of his vehement questioning, people would set upon him with their fists and would tear his hair out, and both in Plato and Xenophon, he often succeeded in antagonizing his interlocutors with his frank comments or his persistent interrogations.

But this does not entail that Socrates earned for himself so dreadful a reputation as to be considered a public enemy, and certainly his trial does not appear to have had the trappings of a popular lynching, as was the case, for instance, with the trial of the generals of Arginusae.¹⁷ In this regard, the comment attributed by Plutarch to Aristoxenus (On the Malice of Herodotus 856d), that even though Socrates was an uneducated and impudent fellow, there was no real harm in him,—this comment probably is an echo of the assessment of the Socratic presence on the part of the Athenian populace: for the average Athenian, Socrates was a mild and tolerable public nuisance.

If we assume this attitude on the part of the Athenians, we can then explain the otherwise perplexing impunity with which he was able to function in a city which despite its alleged democracy and openness was sometimes far from liberal and tolerant. In his seventh letter (Epist. 7.325b), Plato attributes Socrates' ability to remain unpunished for so long a time to an element of 'chance', and indeed this must have also been the case. But still, the climate of public indifference which probably surrounded the philosopher must also be taken into account. We have enough information to conclude, moreover, that the trial did not really have to take place, and that what the prosecutors actually wanted was for Socrates to leave the city permanently.

And yet, there is still another aspect of Socrates' life that should be considered, for side by side with his devoted friends, and against the background of the natural indifference of most people, there was the genuine hatred and dislike of a few who saw in him a formidable enemy of Athenian society—more formidable and dangerous than the Spartan infantry that during the Peloponnesian conflict would devastate yearly the Attic countryside. These enemies were few indeed but sufficiently influential to create for him a constant atmosphere of danger, of which he was obviously well aware (e.g. Meno 94e). They looked upon him as a dangerous man who would not hesitate to question and challenge the beliefs and practices of the State religion, who would pour contempt on long-established political practices and customs (such as the choosing of public officials by lot), who would persuade the youth to break away from parental authority, who through eristic trickery would baffle and corrupt the best among the citizens, and who would embarrass prominent political figures by public interrogations. Foremost in their minds, there must have been the indeed curious and historically ascertainable circumstance that many of Socrates' 'disciples' were men who at one time or another had gained notoriety for their unpatriotic leanings and Laconic tendencies¹⁸—men like Alcibiades, Critias, Charmides, Meno, Plato, Xenophon and others. The enemies of Socrates would allege that such people had been misguided and corrupted by his teachings, and had become, under his influence, the seeds of the destruction of the Athenian empire.

This destruction eventually took place in the year 404 B.C., when the Peloponnesians, under the command of Lysander, compelled the city to surrender. From this point on, the history of Athens was colored by decadence and confusion, and the last few years of Socrates' life witnessed the most unhappy period of its history: the reign of the Thirty, with whom Socrates had a relationship that could not have but appeared ambiguous to the democrats.¹⁹ With the return of the democracy in 403 B.C., a sentiment of revenge surfaced in the political scene, and this, probably more than anything else, accelerated the vicissitudes that befell Socrates.²⁰ In 399 B.C., at last, he was indicted before the court of the King-Archon, on a charge of irreligiosity, and on the legal authority provided by a decree passed five decades earlier at the instance of a certain Diopeithes. The trial took place in the spring of that year, and Socrates was found guilty. One month later he was executed by poisoning.

Such are the bare 'facts' of Socrates' life. More extensive biographical information is not available, unless one is willing to lend an attentive ear to all sorts of reports that began to circulate after his death, reports which cannot be confirmed by reference to the primary sources, and which are probably the result of the imagination of later writers. The secondary sources provide innumerable anecdotal details and the most varied sort of doxographical comments, but, in general, it is difficult to assess their historical and philosophical value.

The sources of information concerning Socrates can be divided into two categories, namely, primary and secondary. The primary sources include exclusively the writings of Socrates' contemporaries which deal in one way or another with his life and ideas. Specifically, such sources are the writings of the poets of the Old Comedy who ridiculed Socrates on the stage, the testimonies of the minor Socratics, the indictment of Polycrates, the writings of Xenophon, and the Platonic dialogues.

If all these sources were extant, an enormous collection of documents would be available to us. Unfortunately, however, this is not the case. The circumstances and accidents of bibliographical history have brought about the irreparable loss of the bulk of the Socratic and related literature of the first one hundred years after Socrates' birth. For instance, of the fifty-four comedies attributed by Suidas to Aristophanes, only eleven have survived, and of the hundreds of comedies written by other poets of the Old Comedy none is extant except in the form of detached fragments. Accordingly, the references probably made to Socrates in many of those lost comic works cannot be retrieved. The many and lengthy writings of the Sophists also disappeared, again except for fragmentary quotations, and thus whatever light they might have shed on the Socratic presence can no longer be revived.

More important still is the loss of the works of the minor Socratics, to whom Diogenes Laertius attributes so many writings. Aristippus, for example, is said to have been the author of thirty-five philosophical volumes, and Aeschines of seven Socratic dialogues, Euclides of six, Stilpo of nine, Crito of seventeen, Simon of thirty-one, Glaucon of nine, Simmias of twenty-three, Antisthenes of sixty-two, and still others could be mentioned. It is difficult not to assume that in most of these writings, many of them written in the style of Xenophon's and Plato's dialogues (although not necessarily as imitations of them), the influence of Socrates must have been present in practically every line, for it was he who led such authors into the pursuit of philosophy.

One is, therefore, compelled to ask, what were the circumstances and accidents which were responsible for the preservation of some primary sources and for the destruction of others, but the answers to this question are inevitably many and quite hypothetical. We could mention, of course, the repeated burnings of the ancient libraries where, whether at Alexandria, Pergamum, or other major centers of learning, thousands of irreplaceable manuscripts perished at the hands of conquering armies or thoughtless religious zealots. And then there was the process of natural decay undergone by the original documents. Thus, either through the destructive hand of man or through the accidents of nature, the vast majority of documents of antiquity perished.

But more significant, however, is the process of bibliographical selectiveness which must be imputed to the scholiasts and librarians in whose hands the ancient documents were placed. They were the ultimate judges of what deserved to be preserved, and of what should be allowed to deteriorate, and thus what they saw fit to copy and annotate survived, and what they looked upon as less important or philosophically offensive eventually rotted away in the underground chambers of the libraries. Ancient scholars, so it seems, were not generally interested in preserving for posterity all the writings of their ancestors, but only those pieces which in their estimation had special value, and this explains, for instance, the far from accidental preservation of some of the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, and the destruction of others.

Surely, at a time when scholarship was dominated, particularly in Egypt, by adherents of Neoplatonism, it is to be expected that the writings of Plato (as opposed to those of the minor Socratics and even Aristotle) were to be carefully preserved and copied, and amply annotated. It is thus understandable that it is only Plato, among all the major philosophers and writers of ancient times, who has the privilege of having passed on to remote posterity the complete body of his writings. How in such an atmosphere the writings of Xenophon managed to survive, is, therefore, indeed a marvel, accountable only by reference to Xenophon's reputation as a historian and military strategist, for his value as a Socratic witness must not have impressed the Alexandrian scholars for whom Plato's testimony in that regard was of paramount importance.

Thus, by the fifteenth century, when the Medici and Venetian noblemen traveled to Constantinople in search of ancient documents, what they found available to them was indeed only a minuscule portion of what antiquity had produced, a portion that had been 'critically' preserved by the Hellenistic scholiasts. Undoubtedly, the documents rescued were the most impressive and instructive, but what was never rescued must have also been quite significant. If we had at our disposal, for instance, the Socratic documents available to Diogenes Laertius, it is difficult not to assume that our representation of Socrates would have been far more complete, albeit perhaps no less challenging and paradoxical.

With respect to the secondary sources, something similar can be said. Here, too, we are in the presence of only a few valuable pieces, the bulk of information having perished by the end of Roman times. By secondary sources we specifically mean the writings of those who were not Socrates' contemporaries, whose information was based either on direct oral traditions or on the reading of the primary sources, or on both, and who belong to Greek and Roman times. A review of Diogenes Laertius' Life of Socrates can give us a general idea of the enormous extent of the secondary sources available to him, but most of these sources remain for us only titles and occasional quotations.

The major secondary sources available to us are Aristotle's references to Socrates (approximately fifty in his extant works), various references in Cicero's works, a dialogue by Plutarch entitled On the Sign of Socrates, one of Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, Apuleius' On the God of Socrates, Diogenes Laertius' Life of Socrates, and Libanius' reconstruction of the indictment of Socrates attributed to Polycrates. Aside from these sources, the rest of the secondary information is of limited historical value, since it ultimately repeats in brief comments what is revealed in them and in the primary sources.

The reconstruction of the Socratic presence, both in its biographical and philosophical dimensions, must take into account all the information furnished by the primary and secondary sources, endeavoring at every point to integrate into one harmonious representation their many apparently disparate and discordant statements. In the end, at least the general outlines of such a harmonious representation can be delineated, especially if we bear in mind at all times that the testimonies about Socrates vary so much from one another because the witnesses themselves approached one and the same subject from vastly different points of view. As a person, Socrates must have been a paradoxical and controversial individual who elicited from those who knew him very different responses, from the unconditional devotion and deep love of some of his friends, to the unforgiving hatred of some of his enemies. His ideas, often couched in the form of confusing questions, must have given rise to different reactions, from the fascination with which friends endeavored to follow the tortuous path of his inquiries, to the exasperation and impatience with which his adversaries dismissed his discourse as empty chatter. Thus, both his life and his philosophy were destined to be the ground on which innumerable interpretations and assessments would grow in time.…

Notes

¹ For a perceptive discussion of the role of the spoken word in Socrates, see E. A. Havelock, "The Orality of Socrates and the Literacy of Plato: With Some Reflections on the Historical Origins of Moral Philosophy in Europe," New Essays on Socrates, ed. Eugene Kelly (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984), pp. 67-93.

² Such are, for instance, A. H. Chroust's view with respect to much of Xenophon's testimony (Socrates: Man and Myth; The Two Socratic Apologies of Xenophon, University of Notre Dame Press, 1957), and K. Popper's view with respect to Socrates' political ideas as these are reported by Plato (The Open Society and Its Enemies, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967). The insoluble character of the Socratic problem is an idea expressed by H. Diels who referred to Socrates as "an unknown X" (quoted in A. E. Taylor, Socrates, Garden City, N. Y.: Doubl-eday, 1953, p. 18).

³ According to G. Vlastos, for instance, the testimonies of Xenophon and Plato cannot be both right, and his conclusion is that it is the latter's account that must be chiefly borne in mind. This attitude generally prevails in contemporary philosophical circles, and while its roots are readily understandable, it fails to do full justice to the Socratic problem. Undoubtedly, as Vlastos says, Plato's Socrates is a more interesting figure than Xenophon's, although this does not mean that the former is, to quote Vlastos, "the only Socrates worth talking about" ("The Paradox of Socrates," The Philosophy of Socrates: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Gregory Vlastos, University of Notre Dame Press, 1971, p. 2).

⁴ The idea that the testimony of Xenophon should be given precedence over that of Plato with respect to the historical aspects of the Socratic presence was defended by Hegel. In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy (tran. E. S. Haldane, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963, Vol. I, p. 426), he states that

…in regard to the content of Socrates' teaching and the point reached by him in the development of thought, we have in the main to look to Xenophon.

⁵ Aristophanes' testimony will be discussed in Chapter 2.

⁶ The word persona literally means a 'mask' such as those worn by actors in Greek and Roman drama.

⁷ The statement from Plato's second letter (Epist. 2.314c) is as follows:

Therefore I have never myself written a word on these matters [philosophy], and there is no written treatise of Plato—no, and neither has been nor shall ever be; what now bears the name of Plato belongs to Socrates, beautified and rejuvenated.

⁸ Comments on Aristophanes' possible intention in ridiculing Socrates will be made in Chapter 2.

⁹ W. K. C. Guthrie, Socrates (Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 4.

¹⁰ This suggestion was made by George Grote (Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates, New York: B. Franklin, 1974, Vol. 1, p. 206), and is a reflection of the approach insisted on by Schleiermacher in his Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato (trans. William Dobson, New York: Arno Press, 1973).

¹¹ Although there are no explicit references to the dates of Socrates' birth and death either in Plato or in Xenophon, there can be hardly any reason for challenging the statement of Diogenes Laertius (ii,44) concerning such dates, specifically, the fourth year of the 77th Olympiad, during the archonship of Apsephion, and the first year of the 95th Olympiad, respectively.

¹² The name of Socrates' father is given by Plato in the Euthydemus (297e), in the Hippias Major (298b), and in the Laches (180d ff.). His mother is referred to by Plato in the Theaetetus (149a). They are both mentioned by Diogenes Laertius (ii,18), but in Xenophon's writings they do not appear anywhere.

¹³ Socrates' participation in Athenian military engagements is mentioned, for instance, in Plato's Apology (28e), in the Laches (181b), and in the Symposium (221a ff.).

¹⁴" A summary statement concerning our knowledge about Socrates' family can be found in E. Zeller's Socrates and the Socratic Schools (trans. Oswald J. Reichel, New York: Russell and Russell, 1962), pp. 62 ff.

¹⁵ Further comments on Ameipsias' comedy will be made in Chapter 2.

¹⁶ As will be indicated in Chapter 4, the Theages is not generally viewed as an authentic dialogue of Plato. Still, it remains undeniable that in it, as well as in other pseudo-Platonic writings, it is possible to find abundant bits of biographical and ideological information concerning Socrates which are extremely useful in the endeavor to reconstruct a fuller representation of him.

¹⁷ Plato's Apology 32b.

¹⁸ Laconism involved the tendency of extolling Sparta and its constitution, and in some cases the actual siding with the Spartan cause during the Peloponnesian conflict. It is unquestionable, although by no means something easy to explain, that many of Socrates' close acquaintances were at some time or another accused of this tendency, as can be seen in the examples of Alcibiades, Xenophon, Meno, Critias, Charmides, and perhaps Plato himself. That Socrates was also suspected of Laconism is clear from a line from Aristophanes' the Birds (1281) where the poet bitterly complains about the representatives of the new intelligentsia who had fallen into the habit of 'Socratizing'.

¹⁹ Plato's Apology 32b.

²⁰ The apparent absence of any direct political references from the indictment drawn against Socrates (as this is reported by Xenophon and Plato) should not lead us to the conclusion that the charges against him were not also politically motivated. It must be remembered that after the re-establishment of the democracy, on the overthrow of the Thirty by Thrasybulus, Anytus, and other democrats, the Athenians pledged under the most solemn oaths not to mention or even remember the tragic circumstances that had led to their defeat, as Xenophon reports in the Hellenica (Il, iv,43). We may thus assume that references to political complicity involving Laconism and the support of the Thirty were seldom allowed as evidence in the courts.