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By Root 1795 0

in Delion, where the gods were ignored, and yet the world did not fall apart; in Scione and Torone, where young children, grabbing at their mother’s skirts, stumbling, were driven down south to be slaves, Socrates developed his ideas.5 And his respect for the Spartans possibly developed too – those extreme southerners who devised their entire society so that life on earth could be as Spartanly perfect as possible, so that eunomia (good order) could hold sway. The Spartans were men who lived vigorously in the mortal world, but who had no fear of death: an attitude that Socrates would take with him to his own grave.6

Come 422 and Cleon lies dead, the Spartan Brasidas lies dead, and the maimed and dying and fleeing warriors bear very little relation to the fallen heroes of the hoplite code. After this campaigning season the towns of Scione, Mende, Torone have been bled dry. The landscape is scored by an army’s tracks. Athens’ army lumbered through the 420s with strength, but little grace. The Spartans matched Athenian audacity with tenacity and dynamism. Cities were beginning to empty because the countryside was full of fighting men. The Hellenic hoplites were the armadillo skin of Greece – its distinctive character, its greatest organ – but no longer a thing of beauty.

Salient then that Socrates has no interest in skin-deep strength. He endeavours to poke through to the soft flesh beneath the superficial layer. The man who asserted that ‘one must never do injustice’ has blood on his hands. He could just remain an ugly soldier in an ugly war. And yet the philosopher brings back into Athena’s city not only bad memories, but beautiful ideas. He exemplifies his own belief that the best way to deal with life’s horrors and its troubles is to live it to the full: to find the good in the world.

The demeaning military actions in the territories north of Athens were the kinds of campaigns that men drank to forget. But one particular night back in Athens in 416 BC (or so Plato would have us believe), Socrates drank to remember. This long, warm, companionable feast is the basis of one of Plato’s most brilliant examples of philosophical theatre – his dialogue the Symposium. Hoplite shields, swords and breastplates have been put aside. Fine dinnerware has been spread out on rugs. With some deep in their cups, amidst carousing, Socrates goaded his compatriots to remember, to debate and to identify the meaning not just of hate and revenge and might and despair, but of virtue, of moderation and, above all, of erotic love.

ACT SIX

SOCRATES AND LOVE

33

SOCRATES IN THE SYMPOSIUM

Domestic dwelling, Athens, 416 BC

SOCRATES: … savouries, perfumes, incense, prostitutes, pastries …

Plato, Republic, 2.373a1

WINE WAS A SERIOUS BUSINESS IN Athens. During excavations of Athens’ city-centre a well was found bunged up with terracotta debris, the mess clearly derived from great drinking binges. Deep inside were pitchers and black-glazed drinking cups, along with amphoras that told of the origins of some of the booze on offer. Here there was honeyed wine from the windy island of Lesbos – alma mater of the poetess Sappho – and here too a vintage from Corinth, on the coast road that ran down to the Peloponnese, and, sweet as nectar, wine from remote Thasos – the island so irresistible to Athenians – and Dionysos himself was said to have blessed it.

So, around 416 BC, according to Plato, we find Socrates entertaining democratic daytime Athens with perceptive, withering philosophical insights, and then in select company consuming the crushed fruits of empire as the sun sets.

Dinner defined the Golden Age citizen. He was the true inheritor of Athens’ greatness, who could lie on a couch, listen to flute-girls, flirt with young boys and eat delicacies grown by another’s hand. It is often said that Socrates was anti-material because he refused payment for his work – but he did accept dinner: and the symposium was up there with the finest gifts that any could give a man. This was, traditionally, how the aristocrats of the day strengthened