The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [114]
Plato, Apology, 21a–b
When one of his pupils, Chaerephon, enquired of him in front of a large crowd at Delphi the reply came back: Apollo answered that no man was more free than I, or more just, or more prudent. Socrates adds, Apollo did not compare me to a god. He did, however, judge that I far excelled the rest of mankind.
Xenophon, Apology, 14–161
CHAEREPHON HAD TO TAKE HIS MESSAGE back to his mentor. Unlikely that he’d have chosen an overland route – after all, there was a war on, and the journey from Delphi in Central Greece back 250 miles south to Athens would have taken him through tracts of enemy territory.2 So it would be on to the shore at Kirrha, boarding a small boat that would take the weighty news back to Athens. A time-bomb nudging its way in through Piraeus harbour.
KNOW YOURSELF and NOTHING IN EXCESS were the maxims ‘useful for the life of men’ built into the fabric of the Delphi complex. Exactly where, and when, depends on whom you believe. Pausanias describes them appearing in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo.3 Others tell us they were carved into the Propylaia,4 on the temple front or on doorposts,5 on a column or (most likely) across the temple wall.6
But for many Greeks, the incised homilies were as inflexible as the stone into which they were carved. For the Greeks (and remember, of course, Delphi served Greeks of all shades, and men of all ilks), this meant ‘KNOW YOUR PLACE’, do not get above yourself. Do not push your luck. It is, in its fifth-century context, a limiting phrase. Socrates’ peers were a population that ‘knew’ its place, which, day in, day out, participated in rituals and invocations and athletic competitions that confirmed the status quo.
But this was not, it seems, how Socrates interpreted the maxim.
To move the world, first move yourself.
The philosopher’s understanding of the command is paradoxical. It is perturbing at both its polar ends. Know that you have great limits – but do not be content to be told who you are. Know who you are inside. Know yourself through your relations with others. Understand yourself by loving those around you. Know that you know nothing.
When the democracy was feeling strong, such unsettling notions could be confidently batted about in the Agora. But times change. Athens from the 430s onwards was much more thin-skinned.
Whether it had been Chaerephon’s ‘impetuous’ charisma, his money (Delphi was not beyond the odd bribe) or Socrates’ notoriety that inspired the oracle (or history’s myth-makers) to such an answer, the stark response would, almost certainly, be the beginning of the end for Socrates.7 Delphi was believed to hold all the answers to all the questions in the world. When enemies wanted to invade Greece, they checked their battle plans with Delphi’s God; when Themistocles had asked how Athens should be saved, it was to Delphi that he put the question.’8 And cheeky Socrates wasted the great god Apollo’s breath; by confirming that he was Athens’ premier smart-arse he had committed hubris of the highest order.
For in all cities the story of the citizens of Erechtheus makes the rounds,
Apollo,
How they made your dwelling in divine Pytho
A marvel to see.9
The ‘citizens of Erechtheus’ were Athenians. Pytho was an early name for Delphi. Athena’s city felt she had a privileged connection to the sacred site of the Delphic Oracle. It was Athenian nous and Athenian cash that had helped to construct Apollo’s great temple there. The suggestion that Socrates should enjoy some kind of favoured position with the great glittering super-god Apollo, that he be the wisest of all Athenian democrats, of all Greeks – as wise as a god even – would have seemed, to many, to be sheer blasphemy.
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ARISTOCRATS, DEMOCRATS AND THE REALITIES OF WAR
The Agora, c.426 BC
For a sharp … saw … gobbling … of the whole … sharpening the flashing iron. And … the helmets … are shaking their purple-dyed crests, and for the wearers