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Closeup of
Socrates from
The Greeks
documentary
Socrates was born in 469 BC. His father was a stonemason and his mother was a midwife, a profession
he would later use to characterize himself, since he would later describe himself as a midwife who helped
give birth to truth.
During Socrates' youth Athens was a city at the height of its power and the intellectual center of the
Greek world. The spirit of openness which democracy encouraged had given rise to new fields of thought
and enquiry. Playwrights were exploring new depths of human experience and exposing the hopes, fears,
and vanities of both the great heroes of the past, and the leading politicians of the present. The first
scientists were building on the insights already made by Ionian Greeks such as Thales, while the world's
first historian, Herodotus, had begun his famous 'Histories': our first record of Ancient Greek life.
Undoubtedly the young Socrates absorbed many of these exciting new influences as he walked through
Athens' teeming streets, played sports in the gymnasia, and discoursed with people in the market-place,
but before he began his career as a philosopher, he was destined for more deadly pursuits...
Vase
showing
Hoplite
Battle
c.600,
Louvre,
Paris
In 431 BC war broke out between Athens and Sparta - the two superpowers of the Greek world. Socrates
was enlisted as a hoplite, a wealthy and well-equipped infantryman. Shunning personal comfort and able
to endure great personal hardship without complaint, he was to make quite a name for himself.
One story, in Plato's 'Symposium', describes how Socrates remained oblivious to harm even in retreat.
After one disastrous battle, this total lack of concern is said to have intimidated the pursuing enemy so
much that he was left completely untouched while hundreds of his fellows were picked off and
slaughtered.
Plato also recounts that when Socrates returned to Athens after a long tour of duty, he refused to answer
his friends' questions about the war. Instead he insisted they first tell him the more important news
about how the search of truth was going.
View of
Delphi from
The Greeks
documentary
After his service in the war, Socrates devoted himself to his favorite pastime: the pursuit of truth.
His reputation as a philosopher, literally meaning 'a lover of wisdom', soon spread all over Athens and
beyond. When told that the Oracle of Delphi had revealed to one of his friends that Socrates was the
wisest man in Athens, he responded not by boasting or celebrating, but by trying to prove the Oracle
wrong.
So Socrates decided he would try and find out if anyone knew what was truly worthwhile in life, because
anyone who knew that would surely be wiser than him. He set about questioning everyone he could find,
but no one could give him a satisfactory answer. Instead they all pretended to know something they
clearly did not.
Finally he realized the Oracle might be right after all. He was the wisest man in Athens because he alone
was prepared to admit his own ignorance rather than pretend to know something he did not.
Socrates
discoursing,
from The
Greeks
documentary
Admitting your own ignorance was at the heart of Socrates' method. Through a process of repeatedly
questioning, he would always attempt to tease the truth out of the people he was conversing with.
Asked about whether an action was just or not, he would never simply say 'yes' or 'no'. Instead Socrates
would ask the questioner what he actually meant when he used the word 'justice' and then invite him to
explain how different understandings of justice might lead to different conclusions. Frequently, this
process would come to no real conclusion and hit a frustrating dead end, called 'aporia' by the Greeks.
Nevertheless to Socrates such conversations were still valuable, because only when someone admitted
that he didn't know could he hope to learn anything at all.
Some people have jokingly said that Socrates learnt his unique questioning method by arguing with his
nagging wife, Xanthippe. If he did, she had good reason to be angry with him. Never at home or at work,
Socrates spent his time either arguing in the marketplace or accepting numerous invitations to dinner
parties. Meanwhile, like most respectable Greek wives, Xanthippe was stuck at home with the children,
and only allowed out in public on special occasions!
Walkways
around the
Agora
(market)
from The
Greeks
documentary
The Sophists were a loose collection of thinkers who taught wealthy Athenians to argue convincingly: a
useful skill for anyone who wanted to do well in politics. Because they accepted payment for revealing
their insights, Socrates strongly disapproved of them, and he made it his personal quest to expose the
lazy thinking and unexamined assumption many of their ideas were based upon.
Unfortunately, his constant arguing with the Sophists made Socrates a figure of ridicule and in 423 BC his
activities became the subject of a famous play. Written by the comic playwright Aristophanes, 'The
Clouds' portrayed Socrates as a master of pointless wordplay and verbal trickery. The head of an institute
called 'The Thinkery,' he literally had his head in the clouds.
Unfazed by such notoriety, Socrates continued his pursuit of the truth, but the charges made against him
in the 'The Clouds' would come back to haunt him in the future.
Aftermath of a dinner party, from The Greeks documentary
Though his disciple Plato always made strenuous efforts to point out that Socrates was no sophist, there
were times when his challenges to common sense came very close to the pointless wordplay he so
opposed. Plato's book 'The Symposium', about a drunken dinner party, is one of the most famous Ancient
Greek books about love, romance and friendship, and records just such an incident.
During the party a handsome but very vain young man named Alcibiades does his best to win
compliments from the wisest man in Athens. Yet despite his fondness for Alcibiades, Socrates ignores
him. Instead he demonstrates why, in fact, he is more handsome man:
"My own eyes must be more beautiful, because they bulge out, and therefore I can see better. And by
the same account my nose is more beautiful, because my nostrils flare out and so I can therefore gather
in more smells."
Unfortunately, the comfortable existence enjoyed by the wealthy men of Athens was about to be
shattered.
Hemlock
cups from
The Greeks
documentary
As the Peloponnesian War dragged on, political life in Athens became extremely unstable and dangerous.
For a brief period democracy was overthrown by an oligarchy of aristocrats only to be replaced a year
later, in 410 BC, by a new democratic regime.
Four years later, in 406, the Athenian navy won an important battle against the Spartan fleet. With a
storm brewing, the Athenians immediately set sail for home, worried that by stopping to pick up the
sailors who had fallen overboard they might risk losing the entire fleet.
Back in Athens the congratulations quickly turned into accusations. When the popular assembly learnt
that 2000 men had been lost at sea the citizens demanded the fleet's leaders be executed for cowardice.
Appointed as President of the assembly for that day, Socrates denounced the decision as wrong: mass
trials were illegal.
Sadly, the greatest conversationalist in Athens was a poor public speaker. His protests came to nothing
and the generals were executed by being forced to drink hemlock. Socrates, by standing up for what was
right, had made himself dangerous political enemies.
Spartans
subdue the
people of
Athens, from
The Greeks
documentary
In 404 BC, Sparta finally defeated Athens and occupied the city, replacing the city's democracy with an
oligarchy of thirty tyrants. A period of savage repression followed, including hundreds of political killings
and the exile of thousands.
The Thirty Tyrants put an end to many of the privileges enjoyed under democracy, and reduced the
number of full citizens from over 20,000 to only 3,000 of their most loyal supporters. Though the details
are vague, many historians believe Socrates was one of these specially appointed citizens, since several
of his former pupils were also members of the Thirty Tyrants. His association could not have lasted long.
When the new regime insisted he arrest a prominent foreign resident, he refused on legal grounds, just
as in the case of the generals.
Credited with the phrase 'the majority is always wrong', Socrates' unique style of thinking relied upon
turning commonly accepted ideas upside-down. But by also associating with tyrants, Socrates had
unintentionally made himself appear as an enemy of democracy.
A year later, when Sparta allowed democracy to be restored, he became one of its first scapegoats...
An Ancient
Greek water
clock, from
The Greeks
documentary
In the year 399 BC, seventy years after he was born, Socrates was brought before the Athenian court on
charges of impiety and corrupting the city's youth.
His belief that the gods must be good or otherwise not be gods ran contrary to almost all Greek
mythology, which is filled with jealous and self-serving deities, and the jury had little difficulty in finding
him guilty.
The second charge of corrupting the city's youth raised a dilemma. Should Socrates be held responsible
for the actions of his pupils, particularly those among them who had joined the tyrants?
Timed by a water clock, the old philosopher remained as stubborn as ever. Far from corrupting the city,
he argued, his life of questioning had done it nothing but good.
Plato's 'Apology' records what Socrates said:
'To put it bluntly I've been assigned to this city as if to a large horse which is inclined to be lazy and is in
need of some great stinging fly and all day long I'll never cease to settle here, there, everywhere, rousing
and reproving every one of you.'
The huge jury was infuriated, finding him guilty by 281 votes to 220. But worse was to come...
Socrates in prison
from The Greeks
documentary
After Socrates had been found guilty of impiety and corrupting the morals of the city's youth, he was next
invited to propose a suitable punishment.
This was a legal tradition in Athens and an opportunity for him to show remorse, and hopefully lessen his
sentence. But asked what sort of punishment he thought he should receive, he responded with an
answer that was nothing short of a death wish.
He argued that he should receive the highest honors of the city and be granted free meals at the public's
expense, an honor reserved for Olympian athletes.
The outraged jury voted for his death by even greater majority than had found him guilty of his alleged
crimes.
Led away to the city's prison house, his trial and last days became the subject of Plato's 'Crito & Phaedo'.
Visited by many people, he faced the prospect of death with characteristic unconcern, and even refused
to be rescued and smuggled abroad by a group of friends.
Socrates
after his
death from
The Greeks
documentary
Like the generals he had defended many years before, the manner of his execution was to be the
drinking of hemlock. As the hour drew near, everyone in the room broke down and wept except for
Socrates himself, who continued to treat the affair as if it were nothing at all, at one point turning to
them and saying almost in humor:
'For me the fated hour calls. In other words I think it's about time I took my bath. I prefer to wash before
drinking the poison rather than give the women the bother of washing me when I'm dead.' n
His final request was to ask a friend to sacrifice a cock to Asclepius, the god of healing, as a way of
thanking him for being delivered from the painful disease of life.
Having maintained that 'the unexamined life isn't worth living' and by always insisting upon obeying his
own conscience, Socrates had shown the Athenians a new way to live, and to die. Rather than honor he
believed in principle, and through his sacrifice he helped create a new sense of what it meant to be
human being, leaving a deep impression not only on the Athenians, but all of Western civilization.