The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [214]
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NOTES
PREFACE
1 Socrates is not just a whetstone for scholars, not just an inspiration. He is a key witness to the Golden Age of Athens in the fifth century. For millennia, scholars have wanted to sharpen their wits on his portly legacy. There is a void where Socrates’ personal testimony should be, a void the waters of interpretation have rushed to fill. Around the empty, Socrates-sized space that is the philosopher, all kinds of worlds have been constructed: ethical, legal, spiritual; but only a handful deal with the one thing we do have, the physical setting of his not-thereness.
INTRODUCTION
1 Trans. Brickhouse and Smith (2002).
2 Socrates spent his lifespan in pursuit of an individual morality. See e.g. Rudebusch (1999) on Socrates’ pursuit of both pleasure and virtue as the chief good.
3 Psyche is an Ancient Greek word meaning life-force or breath. It is also the Greek for butterfly.
4 ‘Socrates is the first to show that life at all times and in all parts, in all that we suffer and do, always admits philosophy.’ Plutarch, An seni respublica gerenda sit, 796e.
5 Plato, Apology, 30e.
6 Plato, Republic, VII, 514a-20a.
7 Although some later Christian commentators saw in this the development of a new kind of internal faith.
8 Produced in 423 BC and then possibly rewritten in 418 BC. The lost comedy of Ameipsias, the Konnos, also lampoons Socrates.
9 ‘Do as I tell you and keep away from the gossip of people. For Pheme [Rumour] is an evil thing, by nature, she’s a light weight to lift up, yes very easy, but heavy to carry, and hard to put down again. Pheme [Rumour] never disappears entirely once many people have bigged her up/indulged her. In fact, she really is like some sort of goddess.’ Hesiod, Works and Days, 760ff. (Greek didactic poem, eighth or seventh century BC).
10 Plato, Apology, 18d.
11 Socrates could have been crucified for his crimes (although this was perhaps a punishment reserved for ‘sub-citizens’, e.g., slaves) – hemlock was thought a kinder death. But excruciating death can be measured by degrees, and poison was only a few degrees kinder than crucifixion. David’s painting is romantic in many ways.
12 Plato was a classical author vigorously studied in Baghdad’s ‘House of Wisdom’. Muslim families still call their children Aflatonion.
13 Plato, Apology, 42a.
14 We fondly imagine that democracy is ancient Athens’ greatest legacy, but in fact democracy has consistently been rejected throughout Western history. Plato’s ideas (he can be viewed as an anti-democrat) – and therefore perhaps Socrates’ – proved far more tenacious. Socrates’ disciples in the Ancient World included: Antisthenes, the Cynic philosophers such as Diogenes of Sinope, Plato, Xenophon, Euclides, Aristippus. The following of Plato’s Dialogues are linked in their discussion of Socrates: Theaetetus-Euthyphro-Apology-Crito-Phaedo. In territories both pagan and monotheistic, both