Socrates: A Man for Our Times (14 page)

Second, and worse, Socrates insisted on resurrecting the old tale of the prophetess of Delphi, who declared that there was no one in Athens wiser than Socrates. Some of the jurors would already have heard it. Others had not. Both groups might have been, and probably were, shocked that Socrates would bring it up in the context of his trial. Again, it smacked of arrogance and insensitivity. Of course, to those of us who have been able to follow the full flow of Socrates’ thought, thanks to Plato, his object in referring to the oracle is clear and even admirable. It was central to his whole philosophy. At least he was aware of his own poverty of knowledge. In describing to the Athenian jurors his attempts to explore the minds of his fellow Athenians to discover, whether they possessed any wisdom and whether they were conscious of possessing none, he was in fact trying to defend the reputation for truth of the god who inspired the prophetess. He concluded that she was, after all, speaking the truth, for his admission of being ignorant, of
knowing
he had no wisdom, made him unique in Athens, and to that extent, in confessing and acknowledging his miserable bereftness, wiser than his fellow Athenians, who thought themselves to know more than they did. But the subtlety and irony of this argument was quite beyond most of his hearers, who probably thought that Socrates was merely finding a new and tortuous way of praising himself. It was all very clear, no doubt, and to hell with him! So he was the wisest man in Athens, was he? Well: an Athenian jury would show what they made of
that
claim.

Some of Socrates’ friends, listening to his defense, must have winced when he thus played into his enemies’ hands by his candor, and by the fact that he clothed it in that most dangerous of all vestures, irony. However, when all is said about the inadequacies of Socrates’ defense, what probably led to the guilty verdict had nothing to do with it. The damning points were the two names: Critias and Alcibiades. Both were hated figures. Alcibiades had been rich, handsome, reckless, full of braggadocio and temerity, proud as the devil, hugely appealing, and infinitely wicked. He had Athens at his feet and then led it into the most disastrous military adventure in the whole of its long history. In his wicked and childish way, he had blasphemed the most sacred of Athens’s private religious cults, the Eleusinian Mysteries, and condemned accordingly, he had fled to the Spartans, turned traitor to Athens, and advised her enemies how to attack her successfully. Forgiven and reinstated, he had achieved some successes, but met failure, too, and was again a suspect exile when the Persians, conspiring with the Spartans, had him murdered.

Critias, born in 460 B.C., was ten years older than Alcibiades, and a follower and associate of his in some of his exploits, both antireligious and political. He was a writer, poet, and dramatist, some of whose works, which have since disappeared, were once attributed to Euripides. Whereas Alcibiades was by inclination a democrat and populist, Critias was an elitist who valued his aristocratic connections, and on the surrender of Athens in 404, he returned as a violent supporter of the pro-Spartan Thirty Tyrants and took a prominent role in their atrocities. In Xenophon’s account, he was the leader of the extremists among the Thirty, and in a desperate attempt to prolong the regime, he was killed fighting the democrats in the spring of 403.

In 399 B.C., Alcibiades and Critias were the two most hated names in Athens. But they were both dead, and nothing further could be done by Athenians to avenge themselves upon them. Moreover, though associates of both, and especially Critias, were still alive and at liberty, they were covered by an act of amnesty that Anytus and other moderate democrats had caused to be passed in 403 B.C. in an attempt to heal wounds and reunite the shattered political consensus of their city. It was probably because of the inhibiting role of the amnesty that Anytus was under pressure from his side to find a suitable guilt victim who could be blamed for the sins of Critias and Alcibiades and punished accordingly. Hence his decision to attack Socrates and finance his prosecution.

Socrates had taken no part in the events of 404–403 B.C. and thus was not covered by the amnesty. What he had done, many years before, or so it was widely believed, was to teach both Critias and Alcibiades, introducing them to impious and immoral ideas of the kind attributed to him in Aristophanes’
Clouds
or worse, and sowing the seeds of wickedness that eventually produced the evil fruit of treason and mass murder. This, I am sure, was the line of thinking that led directly to the prosecution of Socrates. Whether either of the two hate figures was ever his pupil in any regular sense is doubtful. But they had been at times on friendly terms with him, and Alcibiades had openly boasted of his admiration for Socrates and his wisdom. Critias had family connections with Plato, now Socrates’ favorite pupil, and it could easily be shown, or at least was widely believed, that Critias and Socrates had remained friends.

Here we come to another fatal consequence of Socrates’ unwillingness to get involved in politics. Except privately, among intimate friends, he never commented on Athens’s politics and her rulers. He said nothing for the record about Pericles and his regime, for or against. He neither supported nor condemned the Peloponnesian War. He did not discuss the excesses of Alcibiades, applaud his victories, or condemn his follies and failures. So far as we know, he had no public comments to make on the fall of Athens and the murderous regime of the Thirty Tyrants. Yet one thing spoke for itself: He chose to remain in Athens during those terrible months. It is true, he refused to have any part in the murder of Leon. But the fact that he then went home and remained there to await retribution instead of fleeing abroad to join the democratic opposition could be held against him. Few understood the nature of his passionate attachment to the streets of the city, even when stained with the blood of its citizens.

Hence it could be said that Socrates was the first man in history, in a formal trial, to fall victim of guilt by association. He had been a friend of both Critias and Alcibiades, and though he denied having taught either of them, he would not repudiate the friendship to satisfy the court. So he was judged guilty. The verdict, considering the number of jurors, was a narrow one. A total of 280 jurors voted for condemnation, 220 for acquittal: a majority of 60. Under Athenian law, the accused was now entitled to propose an alternative to the death sentence demanded by the prosecuting trio. It was universally expected, at any rate by those who did not know him well, that Socrates would propose his banishment. But this was unacceptable to him for two reasons. First, it meant leaving Athens. This, as he saw it, was a greater punishment than death. Second, to have made an alternative punishment proposal acceptable to the court—as banishment certainly would have been—seemed to Socrates to admit the justice of the verdict and the whole process of prosecuting him in the first place.

Instead, and doubtless against the advice of his friends—if he consulted them—Socrates made a defiant counterproposal. It had two attractions for him. First, it maintained his position that his philosophical ministrations to Athenian citizens, including the young, were a positive benefit to his native city and should be rewarded, not punished. Second, this audacious response was a piece of delicious irony and could be couched in his habitual quasicomic tone. He proposed that, in view of the good he had done to Athens by his work, he should be treated like one of the victors in the Olympic Games or like certain generals, admirals, and statesmen who had rendered exceptional services to the city, and awarded his meals at the celebratory table in the Prytaneum—this rare privilege to be conferred on him for life.

This proposal was intended to shock, and did, but chiefly his own supporters. It appeared to show contempt for the court and its verdict. In response to their frantic signals, Socrates then changed tack. He made a counterproposal that was punitive. He said he would pay a fine, of one
mina
, which was all he possessed. He added that he was sure his friends would stand surety for a larger fine, if the court felt this appropriate, and put forward a figure of 30 minas. This figure, which he seems to have produced from the top of his head, was not negligible. One
mina
, he knew, would buy a well-produced copy of a play, a history or a poem by Homer at one of the new manuscript shops in the marketplace. Thirty
minas
would constitute an adequate dowry for a middle-class bride. But such a fine would not normally be considered a serious alternative to a death sentence, and the proposal of a
mina
fine would have seemed an insult, like his ironic demand to have a seat at the public table in perpetuity.

Socrates made a grievous misjudgment in treating this part of his trial with what most would have seen as levity, if not impudence. This error was reflected in the voting figures for his sentence. Eighty of the jury switched their votes from Socrates to his accusers, and he was condemned to death by a hugely increased majority—360 to 140. If Socrates was disturbed by this swing of Athenian opinion against him, he gave no overt sign of it. His behavior throughout the long day of his trial was composed and relaxed. He behaved as a man of his calling should do and took his reverses philosophically. He then had plenty of time to reflect upon his wisdom or lack of it. According to Athenian customary law, a sentence of death had to be carried out the day after it was pronounced. On the other hand, no execution was permitted during a period of ceremonial purity. One of these had begun the day before the trial to mark the annual commemoration of the deliverance of Athens by Theseus, the pious myth being renewed by the dispatch of a sanctified boat to the shrine of Apollo on Delos. Until it returned, the state of purity remained, and the execution was postponed.

Socrates’ rich friend Crito proposed to the court that Socrates remain at liberty, under his surety, until the boat got back. But the court refused. He was instead put into the city jail and fettered at night to prevent escape. This indignity inflicted on an old man of seventy who had served Athens honorably in her wars and was in no sense a threat to the public peace, strikes us as cruel. But these were cruel times. The defeat in war, the Spartan occupation, the terror imposed by the Thirty, and the bout of civil war that got rid of them had been profoundly demoralizing for a normally self-confident and easygoing city. Locking up their most famous philosopher in chains, as a prelude to his execution was evidence of a psychological crisis that had enveloped the once-proud city in hatred, guilt, and vengefulness. In fairness, one has to remember that most Athenian families had suffered violence within the last three or four years and were still lamenting a murdered father, brother, or son. The atmosphere was raw, bitter, and brutal, and only in this implacable moral climate was it possible for the capital of the civilized world to commit what Aristotle was to call its “crime against philosophy.”

However, the official decision to keep Socrates under duress and chained at night was mitigated by allowing him unlimited visitors by day. Many from home and abroad took advantage of the opportunity to see and talk to the famous seer, now in the shadow of death. Contrary winds delayed the sacred boat for a month, and Socrates spent it in the way that gave him most delight—questioning and speaking to those he respected and loved about the things that mattered: virtue, wisdom, the soul, and death.

He did other things too. He wrote poetry. He composed a paean, or hymn of praise, to Apollo. He turned some of Aesop’s fables into verse. Socrates explained why he made these efforts in a field that had always been foreign to him. He said he had a regular dream in which he appeared to be commanded to “practice music.” He had always interpreted this to mean “do philosophy,” for the search for wisdom is the finest music. But the dream had come again, and since he could not practice his kind of philosophy in prison, he felt that perhaps his dream was now to be taken in a more literal sense: making the music of words.

In fact, as all who have read Plato’s account of Socrates’ last days know, it was not impossible to philosophize in prison. Quite the contrary. Socrates’ thinking and his powers of expressing it reached their highest pitch during his prison days. It was as though the physical restraints on his body, by the kind of paradox he loved, released his mind and soul into a freedom he had never known before. He thought more clearly and luminously than ever, and his expressions took on a kind of beauty that Plato, happily, had the genius to convey. We must not suppose we can enjoy the full glory of the results, at any rate in translation. Ancient Greek is a magical language, both written and spoken. Like ancient Hebrew, it has undertones and overtones, echoes and melodies of its own, which point and counterpoint the strange gifts of the extraordinary peoples who spoke them. Ultimately all that is most worthwhile in the Western civilization we cherish can be traced back to Greek and Hebrew words and their humming, resonating meanings. Socrates, in his last days, gave full expression to the specifically Greek component in this intellectual magic. The Greek he spoke was prose and poetry at the same time. And more: It was as though philosophy, so long nurtured in the Greek breast, had found its authentic voice for the first time and was speaking aloud for all future generations to hear.

Socrates in prison, about to die for the right to express his opinions, is an image of philosophy for all time. It caught Plato’s imagination and brought forth all his powers. Thanks to those powers, it caught the imagination of all those since who have cared about the importance and penetration of thought. This overwhelmingly potent visual image of the thinking, righteous man on the eve of death, became the archetype of philosophy in its human incarnation. All future philosophers were, in a sense, forced to compete with this image and submit to it.

There was a prelude to the last act of Socrates’ life, related in a dialogue with Crito. He was by now Socrates’ most constant and closest friend, and he came to see him in prison to propose a means of escape. It would not be difficult, and he would finance it. Socrates, he said, owed it to his children to adopt the plan. The old man, as we might expect, rejected it, though as we would also expect, courteously and patiently. (It is one of the most agreeable aspects of studying Socrates that we are never aware of any sharpness or irritability, of dogmatic emphasis, let alone exasperation, in his tone of voice. His conversational manners are always impeccable.) He took the opportunity to explain the true relationship between philosophy and the law.