The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [179]
Aristophanes jokes about the situation.3 Death by domestic implement: the ludicrousness of us carefully, steadily working out mundane ways in which we can more easily force others to die. In 405 BC this was a newfangled bit of terminal chemistry. And by 404/3 BC drinking hemlock became a ‘habitual’ order. Men were forced to die in their own homes, and many were denied a burial. Athena’s city had become a ghoulish morgue, the stuff of nightmares.
The Thirty were established, and many of the Athenians died drinking hemlock, and many went into exile.4
Socrates too was intimidated. Critias had clearly not forgotten that Socrates had criticised his pig-like libido all those years ago around Agathon’s dinner table, and decided to cut him off from his raison d’ětre – the company of the young. The philosopher was told that he could no longer associate with men under the age of thirty.5 Socrates’ old drinking companions had become war criminals. This fact was frequently used to debase the philosopher’s reputation, guilt by association. But Xenophon, that pragmatic writer, came up with the most obvious and natural explanation, one that is typically overlooked. Xenophon says: we cannot blame Socrates for the evil of others, this is not the philosopher’s fault – people let themselves down, they change.
‘But,’ the accuser added, ‘Critias and Alcibiades became intimates of Socrates, and the two of them did the city the most grievous wrongs. Critias became the biggest thief and the most violent and murderous of all those in the Oligarchy, while Alcibiades became, for his part, the most irresponsible and high-handed and violent of all those in the democracy.’6
And I know that Alcibiades and Critias, too, were temperate while they were with Socrates, not because they were afraid of being charged a fee or struck by Socrates, but because they believed at that time that this was the best action to be taking.
Then, perhaps many of those who claim to be philosophers might say that the just man could never become unjust, nor the temperate man rash and high-handed, nor was it possible that a person who learned anything that could be learned might ever un-learn it. But this is not what I understand to be the case about these matters.7
Friends, companions can surprise with their actions – and can suddenly seem strangers. Scholars often chide Socrates for the reactionary outcome of some of his pupils. But there is a tendency to over-promote the absolute tenacity of morality teaching. Socrates, who mingled with all manner of men, cannot be blamed for associating with individuals who went on to disappoint in later life.8
Now a list was drawn up, 3,000 citizens of whom the Thirty approved, and all others in Athens were disarmed. Socrates (and it is unclear why, given Critias’ antipathy towards him) was on the ‘approved’ list.9 One of the Thirty, Theramenes, protested against the new, restrictive policy; he was executed, poisoned with hemlock after being dragged from the railings of an altar by Athens’ heavies, ‘the Eleven’.10 Theramenes’ body should have been wrapped in a shroud with the word ‘persecution’ woven into the fabric. His death signified the empty ethical shell that Athens had become; democracy, liberty and freedom of speech, always qualified, now had no place. Theramenes was no democrat – and yet even he could not speak out. It was becoming crystal-clear what would happen to anyone who exercised their right to isegoria, ‘equal right of expression’. Now, by day and night, a number of Athens’ aghast citizens crept out of the city, exiling themselves from within the walls, broken now, that had protected them since birth.
Seven, fourteen, at least twenty-one harvests had been gathered since the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. But the dark days for Athenian