The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [103]
This was a land at war, decimated by plague. Athens wanted action, not theories; heroes, not nay-sayers; answers, not questions.
Stellar in intellect, Socrates was also, we are told, infuriating. Unlike the sophists, who gave the audience what they wanted, Socrates wrong-footed hoi polloi. There is something of the Lord of Misrule about him. The apparent open-season of conversation in the Agora seems to goad the philosopher into pushing the boundaries of good taste.
The iconic superheroes of Athens – Themistocles, Pericles, Miltiades and his son Cimon – are described by Socrates as ‘pastry-cooks, flatterers of the ignorant multitude.’34 ‘Ironic’ and ‘irony’ (derived from eironeia in Ancient Greek) are words first applied to Socrates. To be the first ironic man on earth was not necessarily an enviable position.35
… And he on hearing this gave a great guffaw and laughed sardonically and said, ‘Ye gods! Here we have the well-known irony of Socrates, and I knew it and predicted that when it came to replying you would refuse and dissemble and do anything rather than answer any question that anyone asked you.’36
There are many ways to translate eironeia; it is a nuanced expression to describe a tricky concept. In Aristophanes’ comedies it meant a downright lie, in Plato more of an intended simulation. For Aristotle, irony was a concealed superiority – the opposite of boasting. Ancient authors tussled with this new, spikily playful notion.37 But all were clear that, while fascinating to witness, irony could wrong-foot the ordinary man. Ironic Socrates had the ability to make honest democrats look like fools. To have been closeted in a debate with Socrates must, in many ways, have been an uncomfortable experience; sitting in the Agora, or gym, or at a drinking session with friends and discovering you’ve been seated next to a laser-sharp barrister, an odd-looking man who elegantly slices through your woolliness and lights up your inadequacies. Socrates was a philosopher who, over dinner, made others pink and shiny with embarrassment:38
Thrasymachus produced an amount of sweat that was a wonder to behold, since it was summer – and then I saw what I had never seen before, Thrasymachus blushing.39
His enemies said that by employing irony Socrates dissembled, that he covered up his true feelings, that he mocked Athenians as he appeared to indulge them, laughing at the demos from behind his sturdy, hairy hands. But his friends and admirers were roused, aroused by his ironic smile, his cleverness, his just-out-of-reachness. Of all the attractions on offer in the Agora, Socrates was coming to be (particularly for the impressionable population of the young) one of the most eagerly sought out. A fact that, later, would be used against him:
So what gives one a deal of happiness is not to park next to Socrates and waffle all day long, neglecting all great culture, music and the best of the tragedian’s works. It’s sheer madness to waste your time with lofty, pompous, idle words, with words for idle speculation! That’s the sign of a man who’s lost his mind!40
On the fringes of the Agora men today still cluster when it looks like there could be the chance to make a fast buck, or a rumpus is brewing. It might be a gambler or an illusionist, throwing dice, hiding ping-pong balls in tumblers, a makeshift cardboard-box gaming table quickly kicked aside when the local police cruise by. Or it might be a row, a debate that’s attracted attention; a small crowd (even in the twenty-first century still mainly of men), worry-beads clacking, can cluster together so fast, setting the world to rights. Nearby students gather, buying up past-their-expiry-date spray cans from the flea-market so that they can protest on the streets. They are, in one sense, all Socrates’ children. The fact that they talk about politics, and challenge one another’s opinions – not to mention the status quo – is what Socrates would have wanted them to do.
SOCRATES: I am one of the few Athenians – not to say the